TalkRL: The Reinforcement Learning Podcast

Robin Ranjit Singh Chauhan
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TalkRL podcast is All Reinforcement Learning, All the Time. In-depth interviews with brilliant people at the forefront of RL research and practice. Guests from places like MILA, OpenAI, MIT, DeepMind, Berkeley, Amii, Oxford, Google Research, Brown, Waymo, Caltech, and Vector Institute. Hosted by Robin Ranjit Singh Chauhan.

  1. David Abel on the Science of Agency @ RLDM 2025

    8 SEPT

    David Abel on the Science of Agency @ RLDM 2025

    David Abel is a Senior Research Scientist at DeepMind on the Agency team, and an Honorary Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. His research blends computer science and philosophy, exploring foundational questions about reinforcement learning, definitions, and the nature of agency.   Featured References   Plasticity as the Mirror of Empowerment   David Abel, Michael Bowling, André Barreto, Will Dabney, Shi Dong, Steven Hansen, Anna Harutyunyan, Khimya Khetarpal, Clare Lyle, Razvan Pascanu, Georgios Piliouras, Doina Precup, Jonathan Richens, Mark Rowland, Tom Schaul, Satinder Singh   A Definition of Continual RL   David Abel, André Barreto, Benjamin Van Roy, Doina Precup, Hado van Hasselt, Satinder Singh   Agency is Frame-Dependent   David Abel, André Barreto, Michael Bowling, Will Dabney, Shi Dong, Steven Hansen, Anna Harutyunyan, Khimya Khetarpal, Clare Lyle, Razvan Pascanu, Georgios Piliouras, Doina Precup, Jonathan Richens, Mark Rowland, Tom Schaul, Satinder Singh   On the Expressivity of Markov Reward   David Abel, Will Dabney, Anna Harutyunyan, Mark Ho, Michael Littman, Doina Precup, Satinder Singh — Outstanding Paper Award, NeurIPS 2021   Additional References   Bidirectional Communication Theory — Marko 1973  Causality, Feedback and Directed Information — Massey 1990  The Big World Hypothesis — Javed et al. 2024  Loss of plasticity in deep continual learning — Dohare et al. 2024  Three Dogmas of Reinforcement Learning — Abel 2024  Explaining dopamine through prediction errors and beyond — Gershman et al. 2024  David Abel Google Scholar  David Abel personal website

    1 hr
  2. Jake Beck, Alex Goldie, & Cornelius Braun on Sutton's OaK, Metalearning, LLMs, Squirrels @ RLC 2025

    19 AUG

    Jake Beck, Alex Goldie, & Cornelius Braun on Sutton's OaK, Metalearning, LLMs, Squirrels @ RLC 2025

    Recorded at Reinforcement Learning Conference 2025 at University of Alberta, Edmonton Alberta Canada. Featured ReferencesLecture on the Oak Architecture, Rich Sutton Alberta Plan, Rich Sutton with Mike Bowling and Patrick Pilarski Additional References Jacob Beck on Google Scholar Alex Goldie on Google ScholarCornelius Braun on Google ScholarReinforcement Learning Conference

    12 min
  3. Outstanding Paper Award Winners - 2/2 @ RLC 2025

    18 AUG

    Outstanding Paper Award Winners - 2/2 @ RLC 2025

    We caught up with the RLC Outstanding Paper award winners for your listening pleasure. Recorded on location at Reinforcement Learning Conference 2025, at University of Alberta, in Edmonton Alberta Canada in August 2025. Featured References Empirical Reinforcement Learning ResearchMitigating Suboptimality of Deterministic Policy Gradients in Complex Q-functionsAyush Jain, Norio Kosaka, Xinhu Li, Kyung-Min Kim, Erdem Biyik, Joseph J Lim Applications of Reinforcement LearningWOFOSTGym: A Crop Simulator for Learning Annual and Perennial Crop Management StrategiesWilliam Solow, Sandhya Saisubramanian, Alan Fern Emerging Topics in Reinforcement LearningTowards Improving Reward Design in RL: A Reward Alignment Metric for RL PractitionersCalarina Muslimani, Kerrick Johnstonbaugh, Suyog Chandramouli, Serena Booth, W. Bradley Knox, Matthew E. Taylor Scientific Understanding in Reinforcement LearningMulti-Task Reinforcement Learning Enables Parameter ScalingReginald McLean, Evangelos Chatzaroulas, J K Terry, Isaac Woungang, Nariman Farsad, Pablo Samuel Castro

    14 min
  4. Outstanding Paper Award Winners - 1/2 @ RLC 2025

    15 AUG

    Outstanding Paper Award Winners - 1/2 @ RLC 2025

    We caught up with the RLC Outstanding Paper award winners for your listening pleasure.  Recorded on location at Reinforcement Learning Conference 2025, at University of Alberta, in Edmonton Alberta Canada in August 2025. Featured References  Scientific Understanding in Reinforcement Learning  How Should We Meta-Learn Reinforcement Learning Algorithms?  Alexander David Goldie, Zilin Wang, Jakob Nicolaus Foerster, Shimon Whiteson  Tooling, Environments, and Evaluation for Reinforcement Learning  Syllabus: Portable Curricula for Reinforcement Learning Agents  Ryan Sullivan, Ryan Pégoud, Ameen Ur Rehman, Xinchen Yang, Junyun Huang, Aayush Verma, Nistha Mitra, John P Dickerson  Resourcefulness in Reinforcement Learning  PufferLib 2.0: Reinforcement Learning at 1M steps/s  Joseph Suarez  Theory of Reinforcement Learning  Deep Reinforcement Learning with Gradient  Eligibility Traces  Esraa Elelimy, Brett Daley, Andrew Patterson, Marlos C. Machado, Adam White, Martha White

    7 min
  5. Thomas Akam on Model-based RL in the Brain

    4 AUG

    Thomas Akam on Model-based RL in the Brain

    Prof Thomas Akam is a Neuroscientist at the Oxford University Department of Experimental Psychology.  He is a Wellcome Career Development Fellow and Associate Professor at the University of Oxford, and leads the Cognitive Circuits research group. Featured References Brain Architecture for Adaptive BehaviourThomas Akam, RLDM 2025 Tutorial Additional References Thomas Akam on Google ScholarpyPhotometry : Open source, Python based, fiber photometry data acquisition pyControl : Open source, Python based, behavioural experiment control.Uncertainty-based competition between prefrontal and dorsolateral striatal systems for behavioral control, Nathaniel D Daw, Yael Niv, Peter Dayan, 2005Further analysis of the hippocampal amnesic syndrome: 14-year follow-up study of H. M., Milner, B., Corkin, S., & Teuber, H. L., 1968Internally generated cell assembly sequences in the rat hippocampus, Pastalkova E, Itskov V, Amarasingham A, Buzsáki G. Science. 2008Multi-disciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision 2025

    52 min
  6. Stefano Albrecht on Multi-Agent RL @ RLDM 2025

    22 JUL

    Stefano Albrecht on Multi-Agent RL @ RLDM 2025

    Stefano V. Albrecht was previously Associate Professor at the University of Edinburgh, and is currently serving as Director of AI at startup Deepflow. He is a Program Chair of RLDM 2025 and is co-author of the MIT Press textbook "Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning: Foundations and Modern Approaches". Featured References Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning: Foundations and Modern Approaches Stefano V. Albrecht,  Filippos Christianos,  Lukas Schäfer MIT Press, 2024 RLDM 2025: Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making Conference Dublin, Ireland EPyMARL: Extended Python MARL framework https://github.com/uoe-agents/epymarl Benchmarking Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning Algorithms in Cooperative Tasks Georgios Papoudakis and Filippos Christianos and Lukas Schäfer and Stefano V. Albrecht

    32 min
  7. Satinder Singh: The Origin Story of RLDM @ RLDM 2025

    25 JUN

    Satinder Singh: The Origin Story of RLDM @ RLDM 2025

    Professor Satinder Singh of Google DeepMind and U of Michigan is co-founder of RLDM.  Here he narrates the origin story of the Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making meeting (not conference). Recorded on location at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland during RLDM 2025. Featured ReferencesRLDM 2025: Multi-disciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making (RLDM)June 11-14, 2025 at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland Satinder Singh on Google Scholar

    6 min
  8. NeurIPS 2024 - Posters and Hallways 3

    9 MAR

    NeurIPS 2024 - Posters and Hallways 3

    Posters and Hallway episodes are short interviews and poster summaries.  Recorded at NeurIPS 2024 in Vancouver BC Canada.    Featuring   Claire Bizon Monroc from Inria: WFCRL: A Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Benchmark for Wind Farm Control  Andrew Wagenmaker from UC Berkeley: Overcoming the Sim-to-Real Gap: Leveraging Simulation to Learn to Explore for Real-World RL  Harley Wiltzer from MILA: Foundations of Multivariate Distributional Reinforcement Learning  Vinzenz Thoma from ETH AI Center: Contextual Bilevel Reinforcement Learning for Incentive Alignment  Haozhe (Tony) Chen & Ang (Leon) Li from Columbia: QGym: Scalable Simulation and Benchmarking of Queuing Network Controllers

    10 min
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TalkRL podcast is All Reinforcement Learning, All the Time. In-depth interviews with brilliant people at the forefront of RL research and practice. Guests from places like MILA, OpenAI, MIT, DeepMind, Berkeley, Amii, Oxford, Google Research, Brown, Waymo, Caltech, and Vector Institute. Hosted by Robin Ranjit Singh Chauhan.

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