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The Existential Hope Podcast features in-depth conversations with scientists, technologists, and thinkers about the ideas that could shape a better future.
In contrast to both doom and hype narratives, we focus on what positive futures are possible through scientific and technological progress, and the decisions we make about it.
Existential Hope (existentialhope.com) is an initiative of the Foresight Institute (foresight.org), an independent nonprofit that has been advancing technology for the benefit of life since 1986.
→ Show notes, transcripts and resources: existentialhope.com/podcasts
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The boring revolution humanity needs most | Indy Johar
Since 2011, anyone could have downloaded an open-source house design, cut out the parts and assemble it themselves. So why is building a new home still so hard? In this episode, we talk with Indy Johar, founder of Dark Matter Labs. He argue
Should we choose politicians by lottery? | Jeremy Lent
We see elections as the foundation of our democracy, but Aristotle thought they create an oligarchy. In ancient Athens, democracy worked by choosing leaders among ordinary citizens by lottery. How could we revive this idea to improve today’
The safest AI might be one that doesn't know what we want | Stuart Russell
For 50,000 of generations, humans have passed civilization down to their children. We could be the first generation to hand its future to AIs instead. Should we? Or could the best AI be the kind that chooses to step back and leave some thin
How a board game helps Google DeepMind plan for AI in science
Google DeepMind has a 7-hour-long roleplaying game that helps real scientists and policy makers understand how AI will transform science by 2030. And those who played it have found it more informative than any policy brief. In this episode,
Civic tech in action: how 447 random citizens fixed an AI deepfake crisis | Audrey Tang
In 2024, Taiwan was flooded with deepfake scam ads. Instead of a crackdown, the government texted 200,000 random citizens: what should we do? People’s proposals became law within months, and by 2025 deepfake ads were down 94%. In this episo
What happens when you let an AI run a science lab
There are AIs running labs with little human intervention right now. And they’re doing experiments that human experts would never try. Is this changing what and how science gets done? In this episode, we speak with Antony “Ant” Rowstron, wh
The only 12 proven self-help tools for a meaningful life and improving the world
There's an overwhelming amount of self-help advice out there, which makes it really hard to know what will work for you. But it turns out that over 450 self-help techniques from 100 books and 20 types of therapy actually boil down to just 1
How tech can earn public trust and why 21st century science needs 21st century funding | Dorothy Chou
What does it take to fund a Nobel Prize-winning idea? Apparently, not a Nobel Prize. AlphaFold solved the shape of 200 million proteins in one shot, a problem that used to take a PhD four years per protein, and biotech investment still fell
AI learned to be a villain from Hollywood. Here's how we retrain it. | Peter Diamandis
Science fiction has always shaped the technologies we build, from the submarine to the smartphone. But almost every story we've ever told about AI is dystopian. And now we're training AI on those stories. In this episode, we spoke with Pete
Why people agree on the future more than the present, and what it means for governance
Political polarization might have a surprisingly simple fix: ask people what they want for their communities in 50 years instead of today, and their answers start to look remarkably similar. But almost no political system is built to plan t
The AI future where humans get paid to be creative
Most AI futures give us two options: mass unemployment, or a government handout to soften the blow. But what if there's a third option, one centered on completely new categories of creative work that don't yet exist, where people get paid f
Teaching AI empathy using brain signals
AIs could get much better at understanding what we truly value if we gave them access to our brain signals. And doing that is becoming easier than ever before. In this episode, we talk with Thorsten Zander, professor at Brandenburg Universi
How to build a career that actually changes the world
More and more people want to make a real-world difference with their career. Very few of them do. Why are careers in consultancy or finance still so much more mainstream than careers tackling the world's biggest problems? In this episode, w
How AI could improve the lives of trillions of animals
We think a lot about how AI will affect humanity, and for good reason. But AI could have an enormous impact on the trillions of animals that share our world (for better or worse), and almost nobody is talking about it. In this episode, we t
How dating an AI could improve your real love life | David Eagleman
Having an AI boyfriend or girlfriend might seem creepy, but what if it helped you get better at human relationships? In this episode, we talk with David Eagleman, a professor of neuroscience at Stanford, bestselling author, and science comm
How the whole world can exceed Swiss living standards by 2100 (backed by data)
What would the world look like if the poorest country was as rich as Switzerland is today? It turns out we could actually see it happen by 2100, and with an economic growth that is similar to the one we have been experiencing for the past 2
How your personal moral compass helps you build a better world | SJ Beard
To make the future go well, we might not need a perfect model for its end state, or an abstract philosophical theory to guide us. Can your own sense of “the right thing to do” actually help make the world better? In this episode we talk wit
Raising science ambition: how to identify the highest-impact research for an AI world | Anastasia Gamick
Most scientists do “safe” research to secure their next grant. But what if more of them worked on the most important problems instead? In this episode, we talk with Anastasia Gamick, co-founder of Convergent Research, about how to raise our
Jason Crawford on how technology expands human choice and control
Being pessimistic about progress will make you sound smart. You'll look rational by not assuming any breakthroughs, just extrapolating current trends until every technology plateaus. You'll probably also be wrong, for exactly the same reaso
Elle Griffin on researching the ideal society, from utopian books to real-world examples
While dystopian fiction dominates our screens and bookshelves, Elle Griffin is busy researching how things might actually go right. She wanted to write a utopian novel and realized she needed a better understanding of what an ideal society
Andrew Critch on what AGI might look like in practice
When people think about AGI, most of them ask “When is it going to arrive?” or “What kind of AGI will we get?”. Andrew Critch, AI safety researcher and mathematician, argues that the most important question is actually “What will we do with
Anna Gát on creating communities that connect, even when people disagree
Anna Gát, founder of the Interintellect community, joins us to explore the essential role of hopeful action and diverse communities in shaping the future. Anna shares why she started Interintellect as a space for intellectual inquiry free f
Isabelle Boemeke on what everyone gets wrong about nuclear energy
You’d need 200 Chernobyls a year to kill as many people as fossil fuels. And yet most of us are far more scared of nuclear than of any other energy source, despite the overwhelming data telling a different story. Where does this fear come f
Sam Bowman on what’s holding back progress (and how to fix it)
Young people across the Western world are struggling to start their lives. In most cases, it's not for lack of ambition, but because they can't find a place to live. The consequences show up anywhere from sluggish economies to low birth rat
Jacques Carolan on the future of brain health
What if we could treat depression, anxiety, or chronic pain by tuning the brain, just as precisely as a pacemaker regulates the heart? Jacques Carolan, Program Director at the UK’s ARIA (Advanced Research and Invention Agency), joins us to
Amy Proal on rethinking chronic disease
What if chronic diseases, from Alzheimer’s to autoimmune conditions, share a hidden cause: lingering infections deep within our tissues? Microbiologist Amy Proal, co-founder of the PolyBio Research Foundation, joins host Allison Duettmann t
Ken Liu on What AI Reveals About Humanity
In this episode, Ken Liu joins the podcast to explore how science fiction serves as our modern mythology. We discuss his new techno-thriller "All That We See or Seem", the concept of egolets (AI capturing facets of our identity), the noemat
David Duvenaud on the Cruxes and Possibilities of Post AGI Futures
In this episode of the Existential Hope Podcast, Beatrice Erkers is joined by David Duvenaud, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto and former researcher at Anthropic. We discuss David’s work on post-AGI civilizational equilibria
Nathan Labenz on What the Best-Case Scenarios for AI are
What does a genuinely positive future with AI look like? While dystopian visions are common, the most valuable—and scarcest—resource we have is a concrete, hopeful vision for where we're headed.In this episode, we're joined by Nathan Labenz
Fin Moorhouse on Why We Need to Aim Higher Than Survival
For years, the conversation about the long-term future has been dominated by a crucial question: how do we avoid extinction? But what if ensuring our survival is only half the battle? In this episode, Beatrice is joined by Fin Moorhouse, a
