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Interesting Times

The first draft of our future. Mapping the new world order through interviews and conversations. Every Thursday, from New York Times Opinion. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Website ↗ Last published 29 October 2026 88 posts collected by Sputnik

Said on Interesting Times

“America's favorite ice cream flavor is vanilla. And so one could say that in a patriarchy, death by chocolate is taboo because people think that cocoa powder is dirty. But then you would just get a lot of American women saying, no, thank you. I'm just a vanilla gal. It's not that there's a fear of porn. … It's private, like my finances are private. Sex is private for reasons that don't have to do with its intrinsically shameful nature, which I just don't think that all that many people believe in anymore.” — Julia Yost, Interesting Times
Julia Yost · 29 Oct 2026 Listen →
“I think this fixation on top line dollar spent is very misguided and is not the way that any analytical scientist would pursue a budget process. … And I think spending more money on the wrong things is far worse than spending less money on the right things.” — Michael Kratsios, Interesting Times
Michael Kratsios · 22 Oct 2026 Listen →
“Our government is not very good at adopting AI. I don't think that will change rapidly. I work in a university. Progress there is very slow. You could say they're moving backwards. … So I think we have 30 or 40 percent of our economy that just won't flat out make progress at all by 2035, perhaps.” — Tyler Cowen, Interesting Times
Tyler Cowen · 15 Oct 2026 Listen →
“People inside the AI labs claim to have evidence that makes them more worried and they are not allowed to talk about it. … I think it's a terrible state of affairs. If they really believe this, if they think that we're in a situation where we're less than a year away from automating AI research and radically speeding it up, they should make this evidence public.” — Dwarkesh Patel, Interesting Times
Dwarkesh Patel · 15 Oct 2026 Listen →
“People often note that interns are not that useful. They need many months of experience before they are useful to the company. And these AI systems are in a position where they are beginning every single session as if this is their first day on the job.” — Dwarkesh Patel, Interesting Times
Dwarkesh Patel · 15 Oct 2026 Listen →
“All these kind of irrational modes of persuasion that were very common in pre-literate political cultures were sort of banished by print because you can't shout at someone through print, you can't charm someone through print. And this stuff, I think, is rushing back into our world.” — James Marriott, Interesting Times
James Marriott · 8 Oct 2026 Listen →
“Academics are finding that, for instance, they've spent their whole career assigning books like Middlemarch and Ulysses, and they're having to stop because the kids just can't get through them anymore. … I think it's the 400-word wall, which seems to be that 400 words is often the limit that students struggle to get past.” — James Marriott, Interesting Times
James Marriott · 8 Oct 2026 Listen →

Hosts

Interesting Times is hosted by Sarah Isgur .

Recent Episodes

  1. 29 Oct 2026

    Why Are We Having Less Sex? Ask a Pornographer.

    With Erika Lust and Julia Yost

  2. 22 Oct 2026

    ‘A Golden Age of Science’ Brought to You by the White House

    With Michael Kratsios

  3. 15 Oct 2026

    What the Frontier Labs Know That We Don’t

    With Tyler Cowen and Dwarkesh Patel

  4. 8 Oct 2026

    That Daily Brain Rot Break Is Taking Us Back to the Dark Ages

    With Mary Harrington and James Marriott

  5. 1 Oct 2026

    We Are Clueless About What’s Coming

    With Spencer Klavan and Nick Bostrom

  6. 24 Sep 2026

    How Worried Should We Be About the Midterm Elections?

    With Richard Pildes

  7. 10 Sep 2026

    Trump Is Getting Even Richer. Is That a Crime?

  8. 27 Aug 2026

    Ross Douthat and Ezra Klein on the Art of Persuasion

  9. 13 Aug 2026

    Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint for a 150-Year Life: Is It Worth It?

  10. 6 Aug 2026

    Scott Galloway: America Abandoned Its ‘Unremarkable’ Young Men

  11. 30 Jul 2026

    How Older Americans Hoard the Future

  12. 23 Jul 2026

    Iran, China, Canada? A Defense of Trump’s Grand Strategy

Guests

Julia Yost , Mary Harrington , James Marriott , Nick Bostrom , Spencer Klavan , Tyler Cowen , Richard Pildes , Erika Lust , Dwarkesh Patel , Michael Kratsios .