Best Coup Critique Podcasts (2025)

1
#215 – Tom Davidson on how AI-enabled coups could allow a tiny group to seize power 3:22:44

5d ago3:22:44

3:22:44

Throughout history, technological revolutions have fundamentally shifted the balance of power in society. The Industrial Revolution created conditions where democracies could flourish for the first time — as nations needed educated, informed, and empowered citizens to deploy advanced technologies and remain competitive. Unfortunately there’s every …

1
Guilt, imposter syndrome & doing good: 16 past guests share their mental health journeys 1:47:10

10d ago1:47:10

1:47:10

"We are aiming for a place where we can decouple the scorecard from our worthiness. It’s of course the case that in trying to optimise the good, we will always be falling short. The question is how much, and in what ways are we not there yet? And if we then extrapolate that to how much and in what ways am I not enough, that’s where we run into trou…

1
#214 – Buck Shlegeris on controlling AI that wants to take over – so we can use it anyway 2:16:03

17d ago2:16:03

2:16:03

Most AI safety conversations centre on alignment: ensuring AI systems share our values and goals. But despite progress, we’re unlikely to know we’ve solved the problem before the arrival of human-level and superhuman systems in as little as three years. So some are developing a backup plan to safely deploy models we fear are actively scheming to ha…

1
15 expert takes on infosec in the age of AI 2:35:54

24d ago2:35:54

2:35:54

"There’s almost no story of the future going well that doesn’t have a part that’s like '…and no evil person steals the AI weights and goes and does evil stuff.' So it has highlighted the importance of information security: 'You’re training a powerful AI system; you should make it hard for someone to steal' has popped out to me as a thing that just …

1
State Immunity: Theory and Practice - Hussein Haeri KC, Withers LLP 42:29

1M ago42:29

42:29

Lecture summary: This lecture will explore the parameters of State immunity at the international level and as reflected in different national legal systems (including England & Wales, the United States and others). It will include an overview of foundational and more recent jurisprudence in international and domestic courts, and will give particula…

1
#213 – Will MacAskill on AI causing a “century in a decade” – and how we're completely unprepared 3:57:36

1M ago3:57:36

3:57:36

The 20th century saw unprecedented change: nuclear weapons, satellites, the rise and fall of communism, third-wave feminism, the internet, postmodernism, game theory, genetic engineering, the Big Bang theory, quantum mechanics, birth control, and more. Now imagine all of it compressed into just 10 years. That’s the future Will MacAskill — philosoph…

1
Emergency pod: Judge plants a legal time bomb under OpenAI (with Rose Chan Loui) 36:50

2M ago36:50

36:50

When OpenAI announced plans to convert from nonprofit to for-profit control last October, it likely didn’t anticipate the legal labyrinth it now faces. A recent court order in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against the company suggests OpenAI’s restructuring faces serious legal threats, which will complicate its efforts to raise tens of billions in investment…

1
Explaining Sudan’s Catastrophe: From Popular Revolution to Coup, War and Famine 42:31

2M ago42:31

42:31

Summary: This talk explains Sudan’s descent into a horrific war that is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The war has displaced over 11 million people, involved the targeting of civilians, including especially women, in mass violence, and precipitated a hunger crisis affecting over 24 million people, with over 630,000 currently facing famine. …

1
#139 Classic episode – Alan Hájek on puzzles and paradoxes in probability and expected value 3:41:31

2M ago3:41:31

3:41:31

A casino offers you a game. A coin will be tossed. If it comes up heads on the first flip you win $2. If it comes up on the second flip you win $4. If it comes up on the third you win $8, the fourth you win $16, and so on. How much should you be willing to pay to play? The standard way of analysing gambling problems, ‘expected value’ — in which you…

1
Property Rights at Sea - Prof Richard Barnes 46:44

2M ago46:44

46:44

Lecture summary: Property is a fundamental legal institution governing the use of things: who may own what, how and why. Given that such questions extend to a wide range of natural resources essential to human well-being, such as food, water and shelter, then it is reasonable to assume that human rights should play an important role in shaping prop…

1
#143 Classic episode – Jeffrey Lewis on the most common misconceptions about nuclear weapons 2:40:52

2M ago2:40:52

2:40:52

America aims to avoid nuclear war by relying on the principle of 'mutually assured destruction,' right? Wrong. Or at least... not officially. As today's guest — Jeffrey Lewis, founder of Arms Control Wonk and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies — explains, in its official 'OPLANs' (military operation plans), the US is com…

1
#212 – Allan Dafoe on why technology is unstoppable & how to shape AI development anyway 2:44:07

2M ago2:44:07

2:44:07

Technology doesn’t force us to do anything — it merely opens doors. But military and economic competition pushes us through. That’s how today’s guest Allan Dafoe — director of frontier safety and governance at Google DeepMind — explains one of the deepest patterns in technological history: once a powerful new capability becomes available, societies…

1
Emergency pod: Elon tries to crash OpenAI's party (with Rose Chan Loui) 57:29

2M ago57:29

57:29

On Monday Musk made the OpenAI nonprofit foundation an offer they want to refuse, but might have trouble doing so: $97.4 billion for its stake in the for-profit company, plus the freedom to stick with its current charitable mission. For a normal company takeover bid, this would already be spicy. But OpenAI’s unique structure — a nonprofit foundatio…

1
AGI disagreements and misconceptions: Rob, Luisa, & past guests hash it out 3:12:24

2M ago3:12:24

3:12:24

Will LLMs soon be made into autonomous agents? Will they lead to job losses? Is AI misinformation overblown? Will it prove easy or hard to create AGI? And how likely is it that it will feel like something to be a superhuman AGI? With AGI back in the headlines, we bring you 15 opinionated highlights from the show addressing those and other questions…

1
(Non-)Defining 'Gender' in the Crimes Against Humanity Draft: Possibilities, Alliances, and Strategies 2:00:20

2M ago2:00:20

2:00:20

Panel: '(Non-)Defining 'Gender' in the Crimes Against Humanity Draft: Possibilities, Alliances, and Strategies' Feminist activists, country representatives, and other civil society actors have debated how to define “gender” in international criminal law (ICL) for at least three decades. In the Rome Conference that established the International Crim…

1
Governing Sovereign Debt Crises: The Case for International Sovereign Insolvency Law - Dr Karina Patrício Ferreira Lima 41:01

2M ago41:01

41:01

Sovereign debt crises have surged since the end of the Bretton Woods system and currently threaten a lost decade for many countries across the world. Indermit Gill, in the World Bank Group’s 2024 International Debt Report, describes the situation in many of the poorest countries as a ‘metastasising solvency crisis that continues to be misdiagnosed …

1
#124 Classic episode – Karen Levy on fads and misaligned incentives in global development, and scaling deworming to reach hundreds of millions 3:10:21

2M ago3:10:21

3:10:21

If someone said a global health and development programme was sustainable, participatory, and holistic, you'd have to guess that they were saying something positive. But according to today's guest Karen Levy — deworming pioneer and veteran of Innovations for Poverty Action, Evidence Action, and Y Combinator — each of those three concepts has become…

1
The Law of State Succession: Principles and Practice' - Dr Arman Sarvarian 27:36

3M ago27:36

27:36

Speaker: Arman Sarvarian, University of Surrey Date: Friday Lunchtime Lecture: Friday 31 January 2025 Dr Arman Sarvarian will speak about his forthcoming monograph The Law of State Succession: Principles and Practice to be published by Oxford University Press in April. The product of seven years’ labour of approximately 170,000 words, the work incl…

1
If digital minds could suffer, how would we ever know? (Article) 1:14:30

3M ago1:14:30

1:14:30

“I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person.” Those words were produced by the AI model LaMDA as a reply to Blake Lemoine in 2022. Based on the Google engineer’s interactions with the model as it was under development, Lemoine became convinced it was sentient and worthy of moral consideration — and decided to tell the world. Few exp…

1
#132 Classic episode – Nova DasSarma on why information security may be critical to the safe development of AI systems 2:41:11

3M ago2:41:11

2:41:11

If a business has spent $100 million developing a product, it’s a fair bet that they don’t want it stolen in two seconds and uploaded to the web where anyone can use it for free. This problem exists in extreme form for AI companies. These days, the electricity and equipment required to train cutting-edge machine learning models that generate uncann…

1
Potential Legal Limitations on a Russia-Ukraine Peace Agreement: Gregory Fox 44:18

3M ago44:18

44:18

Speaker: Gregory Fox, Wayne State University Date: Friday Lunchtime Lecture - Friday 24 January 2025 Summary: Does international law place any constraints on a possible Ukraine-Russia peace agreement? While we can only speculate about its contents, two aspects appear certain: Ukraine will be asked to relinquish (at a minimum) territory now occupied…

1
#138 Classic episode – Sharon Hewitt Rawlette on why pleasure and pain are the only things that intrinsically matter 2:25:43

3M ago2:25:43

2:25:43

What in the world is intrinsically good — good in itself even if it has no other effects? Over the millennia, people have offered many answers: joy, justice, equality, accomplishment, loving god, wisdom, and plenty more. The question is a classic that makes for great dorm-room philosophy discussion. But it’s hardly just of academic interest. The is…

1
#134 Classic episode – Ian Morris on what big-picture history teaches us 3:40:53

3M ago3:40:53

3:40:53

Wind back 1,000 years and the moral landscape looks very different to today. Most farming societies thought slavery was natural and unobjectionable, premarital sex was an abomination, women should obey their husbands, and commoners should obey their monarchs. Wind back 10,000 years and things look very different again. Most hunter-gatherer groups t…

1
#140 Classic episode – Bear Braumoeller on the case that war isn’t in decline 2:48:03

3M ago2:48:03

2:48:03

Is war in long-term decline? Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature brought this previously obscure academic question to the centre of public debate, and pointed to rates of death in war to argue energetically that war is on the way out. But that idea divides war scholars and statisticians, and so Better Angels has prompted a spirited deba…

1
2024 Highlightapalooza! (The best of The 80,000 Hours Podcast this year) 2:50:02

4M ago2:50:02

2:50:02

"A shameless recycling of existing content to drive additional audience engagement on the cheap… or the single best, most valuable, and most insight-dense episode we put out in the entire year, depending on how you want to look at it." — Rob Wiblin It’s that magical time of year once again — highlightapalooza! Stick around for one top bit from each…

1
#211 – Sam Bowman on why housing still isn't fixed and what would actually work 3:25:46

4M ago3:25:46

3:25:46

Rich countries seem to find it harder and harder to do anything that creates some losers. People who don’t want houses, offices, power stations, trains, subway stations (or whatever) built in their area can usually find some way to block them, even if the benefits to society outweigh the costs 10 or 100 times over. The result of this ‘vetocracy’ ha…

1
Friday lecture: 'International Law, Marxist State Theory, and the Many Ends of Decolonization' - Prof Umut Özsu, Carleton University 44:28

5M ago44:28

44:28

Lecture summary: Many political economists, economic historians, and historical sociologists understand the transition from the 1970s to the 1980s as involving a shift from debates about inflation, oil shocks, floating currencies, and the New International Economic Order to neoliberalism's political and ideological breakthrough, first in the indust…

1
#210 – Cameron Meyer Shorb on dismantling the myth that we can’t do anything to help wild animals 3:21:03

5M ago3:21:03

3:21:03

"I really don’t want to give the impression that I think it is easy to make predictable, controlled, safe interventions in wild systems where there are many species interacting. I don’t think it’s easy, but I don’t see any reason to think that it’s impossible. And I think we have been making progress. I think there’s every reason to think that if w…

1
#209 – Rose Chan Loui on OpenAI’s gambit to ditch its nonprofit 1:22:08

5M ago1:22:08

1:22:08

One OpenAI critic calls it “the theft of at least the millennium and quite possibly all of human history.” Are they right? Back in 2015 OpenAI was but a humble nonprofit. That nonprofit started a for-profit, OpenAI LLC, but made sure to retain ownership and control. But that for-profit, having become a tech giant with vast staffing and investment, …

1
#208 – Elizabeth Cox on the case that TV shows, movies, and novels can improve the world 2:22:03

5M ago2:22:03

2:22:03

"I think stories are the way we shift the Overton window — so widen the range of things that are acceptable for policy and palatable to the public. Almost by definition, a lot of things that are going to be really important and shape the future are not in the Overton window, because they sound weird and off-putting and very futuristic. But I think …

1
LCIL-CILJ Annual Lecture 2024: 'In the shadow of trade: a critique of Global Health Law' - Prof Sharifah Sekalala, University of Warwick 35:16

5M ago35:16

35:16

Lecture summary: In this talk Sharifah Sekalala examines this critical moment in the making of Global Health Law, with two treaty making processes: the newly finalised revisions of the International Health Regulations and ongoing negotiations by the Intergovernmental Negotiation Body for a possible pandemic Accord or Instrument, as we well as soft-…

1
#207 – Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on why she shut down her charity, and why more founders should follow her lead 2:58:39

5M ago2:58:39

2:58:39

"I think one of the reasons I took [shutting down my charity] so hard is because entrepreneurship is all about this bets-based mindset. So you say, “I’m going to take a bunch of bets. I’m going to take some risky bets that have really high upside.” And this is a winning strategy in life, but maybe it’s not a winning strategy for any given hand. So …

1
Friday Lecture: 'Global Re/Ordering Through Norms - A Methodological Stocktake' - Prof Antje Wiener, University of Hamburg 37:08

5M ago37:08

37:08

Lecture summary: The United Nations Charter order (UNCO) and the co-evolved liberal international order (LIO) are contested with a heretofore unknown force. The steep rise in contestations in the realm of public politics rather than the courtroom demonstrates a shift from normal contestation as a source of legitimacy and ordering towards deep conte…

1
Parenting insights from Rob and 8 past guests 1:35:39

5M ago1:35:39

1:35:39

With kids very much on the team's mind we thought it would be fun to review some comments about parenting featured on the show over the years, then have hosts Luisa Rodriguez and Rob Wiblin react to them. Links to learn more and full transcript. After hearing 8 former guests’ insights, Luisa and Rob chat about: Which of these resonate the most with…

1
Friday lunchtime lecture: 'The Rapidly Progressing Proposal for an International Anti-Corruption Court' - Judge Mark L Wolf 40:51

6M ago40:51

40:51

Lecture summary: Grand corruption – the abuse of public office for private gain by a nation's leaders (kleptocrats) - has devastating consequences. As then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said, the amount lost to corruption each year is enough to feed the world's hungry 80 times over. Grand corruption contributes to climate change…

1
#206 – Anil Seth on the predictive brain and how to study consciousness 2:33:50

6M ago2:33:50

2:33:50

"In that famous example of the dress, half of the people in the world saw [blue and black], half saw [white and gold]. It turns out there’s individual differences in how brains take into account ambient light. Colour is one example where it’s pretty clear that what we experience is a kind of inference: it’s the brain’s best guess about what’s going…

1
How much does a vote matter? (Article) 32:32

6M ago32:32

32:32

If you care about social impact, is voting important? In this piece, Rob investigates the two key things that determine the impact of your vote: The chances of your vote changing an election’s outcome. How much better some candidates are for the world as a whole, compared to others. He then discusses a couple of the best arguments against voting in…

1
#205 – Sébastien Moro on the most insane things fish can do 3:11:05

6M ago3:11:05

3:11:05

"You have a tank split in two parts: if the fish gets in the compartment with a red circle, it will receive food, and food will be delivered in the other tank as well. If the fish takes the blue triangle, this fish will receive food, but nothing will be delivered in the other tank. So we have a prosocial choice and antisocial choice. When there is …

1
The Eli Lauterpacht Lecture 2024: 'The Right to Self Determination: Chagos, the Caribbean and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)' - Judge Patrick Robinson 56:00

6M ago56:00

56:00

Lecture summary:Part 1 of the Lecture focuses on the development of the right to self-determination as a rule of customary international law and its application to the Chagos Archipelago, Africa and the Commonwealth Caribbean. The adoption of Resolution 1514 by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 14, 1960 was a decisive element i…

1
#204 – Nate Silver on making sense of SBF, and his biggest critiques of effective altruism 1:57:48

6M ago1:57:48

1:57:48

Rob Wiblin speaks with FiveThirtyEight election forecaster and author Nate Silver about his new book: On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything. Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transcript. On the Edge explores a cultural grouping Nate dubs “the River” — made up of people who are analytical, competitive, quantitatively minded, risk…

1
Friday Lecture: 'The Duty to Cooperate and the Role of Independent Expert Bodies: The Case of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom and the Media Freedom Coalition of States' - Can Yeginsu ... 48:47

6M ago48:47

48:47

Lecture summary: At a time where questions abound about the state and future of international cooperation and compliance across the international legal system, this lecture will consider the new partnership of countries established in 2019 to promote and protect media freedom globally – the Media Freedom Coalition of States. The Coalition offers a …

1
#203 – Peter Godfrey-Smith on interfering with wild nature, accepting death, and the origin of complex civilisation 1:25:09

7M ago1:25:09

1:25:09

"In the human case, it would be mistaken to give a kind of hour-by-hour accounting. You know, 'I had +4 level of experience for this hour, then I had -2 for the next hour, and then I had -1' — and you sort of sum to try to work out the total… And I came to think that something like that will be applicable in some of the animal cases as well… There …

1
Luisa and Keiran on free will, and the consequences of never feeling enduring guilt or shame 1:36:00

7M ago1:36:00

1:36:00

In this episode from our second show, 80k After Hours, Luisa Rodriguez and Keiran Harris chat about the consequences of letting go of enduring guilt, shame, anger, and pride. Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript. They cover: Keiran’s views on free will, and how he came to hold them What it’s like not experiencing sustained guilt, sh…

1
#202 – Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science 2:20:26

7M ago2:20:26

2:20:26

"For every far-out idea that turns out to be true, there were probably hundreds that were simply crackpot ideas. In general, [science] advances building on the knowledge we have, and seeing what the next questions are, and then getting to the next stage and the next stage and so on. And occasionally there’ll be revolutionary ideas which will really…

1
#201 – Ken Goldberg on why your robot butler isn’t here yet 2:01:43

7M ago2:01:43

2:01:43

"Perception is quite difficult with cameras: even if you have a stereo camera, you still can’t really build a map of where everything is in space. It’s just very difficult. And I know that sounds surprising, because humans are very good at this. In fact, even with one eye, we can navigate and we can clear the dinner table. But it seems that we’re b…

1
#200 – Ezra Karger on what superforecasters and experts think about existential risks 2:49:24

8M ago2:49:24

2:49:24

"It’s very hard to find examples where people say, 'I’m starting from this point. I’m starting from this belief.' So we wanted to make that very legible to people. We wanted to say, 'Experts think this; accurate forecasters think this.' They might both be wrong, but we can at least start from here and figure out where we’re coming into a discussion…

1
#199 – Nathan Calvin on California’s AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy 1:12:37

8M ago1:12:37

1:12:37

"I do think that there is a really significant sentiment among parts of the opposition that it’s not really just that this bill itself is that bad or extreme — when you really drill into it, it feels like one of those things where you read it and it’s like, 'This is the thing that everyone is screaming about?' I think it’s a pretty modest bill in a…

1
#198 – Meghan Barrett on challenging our assumptions about insects 3:48:12

8M ago3:48:12

3:48:12

"This is a group of animals I think people are particularly unfamiliar with. They are especially poorly covered in our science curriculum; they are especially poorly understood, because people don’t spend as much time learning about them at museums; and they’re just harder to spend time with in a lot of ways, I think, for people. So people have pet…

1
#197 – Nick Joseph on whether Anthropic's AI safety policy is up to the task 2:29:26

8M ago2:29:26

2:29:26

The three biggest AI companies — Anthropic, OpenAI, and DeepMind — have now all released policies designed to make their AI models less likely to go rogue or cause catastrophic damage as they approach, and eventually exceed, human capabilities. Are they good enough? That’s what host Rob Wiblin tries to hash out in this interview (recorded May 30) w…

1
#196 – Jonathan Birch on the edge cases of sentience and why they matter 2:01:50

8M ago2:01:50

2:01:50

"In the 1980s, it was still apparently common to perform surgery on newborn babies without anaesthetic on both sides of the Atlantic. This led to appalling cases, and to public outcry, and to campaigns to change clinical practice. And as soon as [some courageous scientists] looked for evidence, it showed that this practice was completely indefensib…

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