#2409 - Brian Redban
Joe Rogan and Brian Redban have a wide-ranging conversation about emerging technologies, politics, media manipulation, culture, comedy, and everyday life. They discuss quantum computing, AI, phones, drones, surveillance, and SpaceX, alongside U.S. politics, media bias around Donald Trump, war in Ukraine, drugs, gambling, porn and OnlyFans, and the future social impact of AI and virtual reality. They also talk about cars and racing, simulation theory, AIDS/AZT controversies, aging pets, and Redban's current creative projects using VR and AI-generated music.
How AI is discovering athletes that human scouts miss | Richard Felton-Thomas
Sports scientist Richard Felton-Thomas explains how his team is using AI, computer vision, and biomechanics to make youth sports scouting more equitable and data-driven. He describes the AI Scout smartphone app, built with clubs like Chelsea and Burnley FC, which analyzes standardized movement drills to identify talent regardless of geography or background. Through examples from the UK, India, and Senegal, he shows how the technology is uncovering overlooked athletes and scaling across sports and regions.
TECH005: What Tech Is Doing to Us with Justin Evidon (Tech Podcast)
Host Preston Pysh and guest Justin Evidon discuss how modern technology can be a double-edged sword, offering huge benefits while quietly reshaping behavior, privacy, and health. They cover social media recommendation algorithms, data sovereignty, decentralized protocols like Nostr, and emerging privacy-preserving AI tools. The conversation also explores physical impacts of technology such as LED light flicker, blue light, and electromagnetic exposure, along with practical strategies to protect circadian rhythms and use tech more intentionally.
The Anxious Generation with Jonathan Haidt
Neil deGrasse Tyson, Gary O'Reilly, and Chuck Nice interview social psychologist Jonathan Haidt about his book "The Anxious Generation" and the mental health crisis among Gen Z. Haidt argues that a combination of overprotected, low-risk real-world childhoods and underprotected exposure to smartphones and social media has driven sharp rises in anxiety, depression, self-harm, and loneliness, especially among girls. He outlines evidence for the crisis, explains developmental brain mechanisms, details platform-specific harms, and proposes four social norms and policy changes to roll back the "phone-based childhood," while warning about emerging AI chatbot toys aimed at children.
#482 - Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Lex Friedman interviews Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, about his philosophy on freedom, discipline, technology, and the design of secure, scalable messaging systems. Pavel describes his strict lifestyle, his refusal to compromise on user privacy under pressure from powerful governments, and the technical and organizational principles behind Telegram's lean but highly productive engineering team. They also discuss government overreach, Pavel's legal ordeal in France, earlier clashes with Russia and Iran, the economics and crypto ecosystem around Telegram, and broader reflections on human nature, education, abundance, and mortality.