The Joe Walker Podcast (Jolly Swagman formerly)

The Joe Walker Podcast (Jolly Swagman formerly)


Latest Episodes

2023 Retrospective — A Listener Interviews Me
December 29, 2023

In this special episode, the tables are turned as I'm interviewed by a listener of the show, DJ Thornton from Sydney. We reflect on the progress of the show in 2023, what I learned from this year's guests, and what's in store for 2024.Full transcript ava

Katalin Karikó — Forging the mRNA Revolution
August 01, 2023

Katalin Karik is a Hungarian-American biochemist. She is one of the inventors of mRNA technology.Full transcript available at: thejspod.com.Episode recorded on 15 February 2023.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Richard Rhodes — The Making of the Atomic Bomb
July 25, 2023

Richard Rhodes is an American historian and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb.Full transcript available at: thejspod.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ken Henry — An Economic Odyssey
May 09, 2023

Dr Ken Henry is an Australian economist who served as Secretary of Australia's Treasury from 2001 to 2011. He was instrumental in helping Australia avoid recession during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis — Australia was the only major advanced economy to

Palmer Luckey — Science (Non)fiction
April 25, 2023

Palmer Luckey is an American tech entrepreneur and billionaire. He has founded two companies: Oculus VR (acquired by Facebook for $2 billion in 2014), and Anduril (recently valued at $8.5 billion). He has been described as the real-life Tony Stark. Full t

Daniel Kahneman — Dyads, And Other Mysteries
April 13, 2023

Daniel Kahneman is widely regarded as the most influential psychologist alive. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics (2002) for his work on judgment and decision-making under uncertainty, much of it done jointly with his late collaborator Amos Tversky. He i

Talent Is That Which Is Scarce — Tyler Cowen
December 30, 2022

In the long run, talent allocation is almost everything. But as a society, we're not actually very good at it. The question of how to reliably match people with jobs they are well suited for is one of the big unsolved problems of our times.  Joe catches u

Intellectual Exoskeletons — Andy Matuschak
December 23, 2022

From language and writing to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, computers and Adobe Photoshop, our species has a history of inventing tools for augmenting our own intelligence. But what comes next?Andy Matuschak is a developer and designer. He helped build

Rationality And Its Opposite — Steven Pinker
December 14, 2022

How rational are we? How can a species smart enough to set foot on the moon also be prone to conspiracy theories that the moon landing was fake? Joe speaks with Steven Pinker to discuss rationality and its opposite.Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Profes

#139: Against Bayesianism — David Deutsch
April 24, 2022

Bayesianism, the doctrine that it's always rational to represent our beliefs in terms of probabilities, dominates the intellectual world, from decision theory to the philosophy of science. But does it make sense to quantify our beliefs about such ineffabl