The Escaped Sapiens Podcast Shane Farnsworth

Housing regulation is often put in place for good reasons, namely comfort, safety, environmental protection, availability of utilities and services, and more. With each additional regulation, however, restrictions are being placed on what you can build, where you can build, and how quickly you can build it. Professor Bryan Caplan argues that our current mess of regulations dramatically increases the price of housing, by limiting supply. This, he argues, has disastrous effects on fertility, and many social issues that we care about today, including social mobility and financial inequalities. Bryan argues further that inappropriate zoning and regulation creates widespread environmental damage through urban sprawl, congestion, and by limiting the number of people who are able to live in environmentally less damaging areas of the country (e.g. where heating and air condition is not required throughout the year, or where water is not scarce).
Bryan's preference would be to lift many, if not all building regulations. My approach would be somewhat more conservative. We discuss the nuances of the debate in this conversation.
►Watch on YouTube:https://youtu.be/Rh1eFIveLfE
►For more information about Bryan's work:http://www.bcaplan.com/
►For Bryans new book:https://www.cato.org/books/build-baby-build
►Follow Bryan on X: @bryan_caplan
These conversations are supported by the Andrea von Braun foundation (http://www.avbstiftung.de/), as an exploration of the rich, exciting, connected, scientifically literate, and (most importantly) sustainable future of humanity. This interview is one of a series of interviews that explores the impact of economics on sustainability and the environment. The Andrea von Braun Foundation has provided me with full creative freedom with their support. The views expressed in these episodes are my own and those of my guests.
 

Julia Berezutskaya is one of the worlds leading researchers working in the area of brain computer interfaces. She is part of the brain-computer interface group (dept. Neurology & Neurosurgery) at UMC Utrecht, where she works at the intersection of fundamental and clinical neuroscience research. A key goal of her work on the computational modeling of cognitive and neurobiological processes is to one day allow for the decoding of naturalistic human speech from the brain signals of patients who have lost all motor function. In this conversation we discuss the basics of her work: what do the implants look like? Where do they go in the brain? What does the signal look like? What is being decoded? How are brain signals decoded? Who is getting these implants, and what is the state of the art?
►Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JrE-Ux7BnHA
►You can find out more about the EU project that Julia is a part of where she will implant individuals with an intracortical BCI here:https://intrecom.eu/
►You can see one of the mockup implants she uses here: https://wysscenter.ch/advances/ability/
►Visit Julias website to find out more about her work:https://www.juliaberezutskaya.com/
These conversations are supported by the Andrea von Braun foundation (http://www.avbstiftung.de/), as an exploration of the rich, exciting, connected, scientifically literate, and (most importantly) sustainable future of humanity. The views expressed in these episodes are my own and those of my guests.

Carl Bender is an applied mathematician and mathematical physicist holding positions at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Heidelberg, Imperial College, London. He was also one of my own favorite lecturers. He taught me about perturbation theory and asymptotic series which are powerful mathematical tools for solving difficult problems in physics. I invited Carl on to the podcast to discuss complex numbers, and their application in physics. At a conceptual level Carl talks about the link between mathematics and reality, the history of complex numbers and what they are good for, his research into weird new quantum systems known as PT-symmetric quantum systems, his interactions with Richard Feynman, and the role that beauty plays in Mathematical discovery.
►Watch on YouTube:https://youtu.be/UbHaAziq6jY
►You can find out more about Carl Here:https://web.physics.wustl.edu/cmb/
These conversations are supported by the Andrea von Braun foundation (http://www.avbstiftung.de/), as an exploration of the rich, exciting, connected, scientifically literate, and (most importantly) sustainable future of humanity. The views expressed in these episodes are my own and those of my guests.
 

What role should Nuclear Power play in energy production? This episode of the podcast explores the case for Nuclear Energy. I speak with Rachel Slaybaugh, who was an Associate Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Division Director at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She also served as a Program Director at the Department of Energy’s ARPA‑E, where she created the nuclear fission program. She is currently a partner at DCVC. We discuss three of the main problems that people have with nuclear power: (i) The risk of plant meltdowns, (ii) the storage of nuclear waste, and (iii) the expense of setting up new nuclear plants. We also cover the environmental benefits of nuclear as a low carbon energy source, as well as some of the exciting new advanced reactor designs that are coming online right now.►Watch on YouTube:https://youtu.be/BIMj1-GAE4E
►You can find out more about Rachel Here:https://www.dcvc.com/team/rachel-slaybaugh/
►Follow rachel on twitter:@RachelSlaybaugh
These conversations are supported by the Andrea von Braun foundation (http://www.avbstiftung.de/), as an exploration of the rich, exciting, connected, scientifically literate, and (most importantly) sustainable future of humanity. The views expressed in these episodes are my own and those of my guests.
 

On this episode of the podcast I speak with UCL Honorary Professor of Economics and ISRS Distinguished Research Fellow Steve keen. Steve famously predicted the 2008 market crash. He is also known for his criticism of modern economic theory, which he views as being inconsistent, unscientific, and empirically unsupported. He is currently working on a new science of economics built upon incontrovertible facts. We discuss the history of economic theory, the problems with neoclassical economics, and the way that our economic theory causes environmental destruction. 
►Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Ma_TiVNa9wE
►Find out more about Steve's work: profstevekeen.substack.com/www.profstevekeen.com
►Support Steve on Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/ProfSteveKeen or Substack https://
►Follow Steve on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen 
These conversations are supported by the Andrea von Braun foundation (http://www.avbstiftung.de/), as an exploration of the rich, exciting, connected, scientifically literate, and (most importantly) sustainable future of humanity. The views expressed in these episodes are my own and those of my guests.

On this episode of the Podcast I speak with economist and public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs. Jeffrey is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He served as Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General for almost two decades, and is co-founder and chief strategist of the Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty and hunger. In this conversation we cover the question: "Is Capitalism Responsible For the Environmental Destruction We are Seeing Today?"These conversations are supported by the Andrea von Braun foundation (http://www.avbstiftung.de/), as an exploration of the rich, exciting, connected, scientifically literate, and (most importantly) sustainable future of humanity. The views expressed in these episodes are my own and those of my guests.
►Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/kNv94Ggf9YI
 
►Find out more about Jeffery's work: https://www.jeffsachs.org/
https://sdgs.un.org/panelists/mr-jeffrey-d-sachs-29781
https://www.sipa.columbia.edu/communities-connections/faculty/jeffrey-sachs
https://csd.columbia.edu/sachs
 
►Watch more of Jeffery on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JeffreySachsOfficial2023