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Podcast · 18 episodes

The Last Invention

by Longview · English

The AI revolution has begun – the product of a seventy-year quest by scientists, mathematicians, and visionaries who set out to build machines that could think. But what began as a fringe idea has now become one of the most powerful forces of the 21st century. This is the story of that journey: its rivalries, its competing visions of utopia and apocalypse, and the race to build what may be humanity’s last invention.

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Street Fight Part III: Can We End It?The episode asks whether homelessness can be ended, contrasting Housing First (permanent supportive housing) with “Enforcement Now” approaches after major legal changes ending the constitutional…24 Sep 2026 · 51 min · 20 chapters
Street Fight Part II: Cruel & UnusualEpisode “Street Fight Part II: Cruel & Unusual” follows reporter Emmett Pettit as he revisits Los Angeles’ Skid Row and then shifts to Boise, Idaho, to explain how homelessness enforcement changed…17 Sep 2026 · 38 min · 20 chapters
Street Fight Part I: Hobos, Bums, and the HomelessThe origins and evolution of modern homelessness, framed through a 1980s New York City conflict between Mayor Ed Koch’s forced-commitment program and the ACLU’s civil-liberties challenge, sparked by…10 Sep 2026 · 43 min · 21 chapters
Presenting: Book KeeperThe episode launches Bookkeeper, hosted by Megan Phelps Roper, and focuses on the biblical story of Joseph (Genesis) as a lens for “what to carry forward” after leaving a harmful faith community.20 Jul 2026 · 51 min · 10 chapters
Sam Altman’s Attacker, In His Own WordsThe podcast discusses the April 10, 2025 attempted arson/attack on Sam Altman and OpenAI, framed around Daniel Moreno Gama’s anti-AGI beliefs and alleged manifesto, plus a recorded interview about…16 Apr 2026 · 20 min · 8 chapters
Wetwear“Wetwear” explains “wetware” computing—using living brain tissue on a chip to perform computation and potentially power future AI/robots more efficiently than electricity-hungry silicon systems.9 Apr 2026 · 40 min · 20 chapters
The AI Skeptics“The AI Skeptics” argues that AGI risk and hype are being debated through three skeptic lenses: (1) “AI is grift” (promises don’t match reality), (2) “wrong path” (AGI is coming but current LLM…20 Feb 2026 · 1 h 16 min · 26 chapters
“Build the AI Wall” with Steve BannonThe political fight over AI’s “unknown future,” framed as an inflection point for humanity, with calls to break up big tech, impose AI lab oversight, and build an “AI wall” separating the US from…27 Jan 2026 · 52 min · 16 chapters
Ezra Klein on the Uncertain Politics of A.I.Ezra Klein discusses the “uncertain politics” of AI, arguing society is already entering a new era shaped by AI’s intimacy and ubiquity, and that the biggest risks are likely near-term—loss of human…19 Dec 2025 · 1 h 2 min · 20 chapters
EP 8: The AccelerationistsThe episode follows the hosts’ reporting from the UN-hosted “AI for Good” conference in Geneva, then pivots to a debate about “accelerationists” who argue advanced AI should be developed faster…20 Nov 2025 · 54 min · 20 chapters
EP 7: The Scouts“The Scouts” argues for building AGI/superintelligence while avoiding catastrophe via cooperation, safety research, and long-termist preparation.13 Nov 2025 · 55 min · 21 chapters
EP 6: The AI DoomersThe episode traces how today’s “AI doomers” and “AI accelerationists” emerged from the 1980s Extropians/transhumanist internet culture, then argues that advanced AI poses existential risk and should…6 Nov 2025 · 57 min · 23 chapters
EP 5: ContactThe episode explores “contact” with advanced AI: (1) why AI regulation is urged yet stalled, (2) how early chatbot releases revealed alignment failures, and (3) why leading researchers now fear…23 Oct 2025 · 52 min · 13 chapters
EP 4: SpeedrunHow AI “alarmists” (Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei) ended up accelerating AI development—moving from warning about existential risk to funding and building increasingly powerful…16 Oct 2025 · 1 h 2 min · 26 chapters
EP 3: Playing the Wrong GameThis episode argues that early AI “game wins” (Deep Blue, Watson) didn’t translate into real-world intelligence because they were built to win specific rule-bound contests via hand-coded rules and…9 Oct 2025 · 51 min · 21 chapters
EP 2: The SignalHow modern AI’s “signal” traces back to WWII codebreaking (Enigma), Alan Turing’s ideas about machine thinking and the Turing Test, the 1956 Dartmouth workshop that coined “artificial intelligence,”…2 Oct 2025 · 54 min · 17 chapters
EP 1: Ready or NotThis podcast explores the journey of artificial intelligence (AI) from its fringe beginnings to becoming a powerful force in the 21st century, examining the rivalries, competing visions, and the race…2 Oct 2025 · 36 min
Introducing: The Last InventionThe podcast delves into the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) over the past seventy years, exploring its implications, the rivalries within the field, and the contrasting visions of a utopian…15 Sep 2025 · 2 min