The Vance Crowe Podcast

Vance Crowe

The Vance Crowe Podcast is a thought-provoking and engaging show where Vance Crowe, a former Director of Millennial Engagement for Monsanto, and X-World Banker, interviews a variety of experts and thought leaders from diverse fields. Vance prompts his guests to think about their work in novel ways, exploring how their expertise applies to regular people and sharing stories and experiences. The podcast covers a wide range of topics, including agriculture, technology, social issues, and more. It aims to provide listeners with new perspectives and insights into the world around them.

  1. 20H AGO

    Joscha Bach on AI, Religious War, and Cyber Animism

    Joscha Bach is back on the show, and Vance opens by asking the question almost everyone is asking right now: should we be afraid of AI? Joscha’s answer is no, and his reasons are not the usual ones. AI is creating more jobs than it removes, it’s already the most equitable technology ever built (a $20-a-month plan gives anyone in the world access to a thousand Einsteins), and most of the fear is a media reaction to a business model under threat — not a reflection of what’s actually happening in the economy. From there the conversation moves through the strangest version of an AI episode you’ll hear. Joscha frames hallucinations as the natural state of a “dream machine” not coupled to reality, dreams themselves as fine-tuning on synthetic data, the history of why neural nets won over symbolic AI (Rich Sutton’s “bitter lesson”), and why every modern model — including Grok — inherits the same biases from the same training data. He and Vance then turn to religion as the same problem from another angle: why modern secular thought is structurally a form of Protestantism, why Harvard became its Vatican, why birth rates are collapsing in liberal societies, and why Joscha worries we are badly underprepared for a coming religious conflict. The episode reaches its philosophical core when Joscha lays out what he calls cyber animism — the idea that spirits are real, and that they are literally self-organizing software running on physics. Your “self” is not your cells or your electricity; it’s the pattern that keeps the cells coordinated, the same way a religion keeps a civilization stable across generations. Vance, who has heard Joscha describe this idea for ten years, says this is the first time it has actually landed. They close on Joscha’s upcoming inaugural machine consciousness conference, MC001, hosted by the California Institute for Machine Consciousness: https://machine-consciousness.ai/ .

    1h 26m
  2. 4D AGO

    Why Alberta Wants to Leave Canada, with Dustin Newman

    A federal judge just blocked Alberta's independence referendum from going on the ballot in October, ruling that the citizen-led petition — which gathered 300,000 signatures in four months — should have consulted First Nations first. Vance sits down with Dustin Newman, an Alberta oil company owner who helped collect those signatures and was active in the Wild Rose party, to figure out what just happened and what it means.  Dustin walks through why the movement exists in the first place: a centralized federal system where Ontario and Quebec decide every election, billions of dollars in equalization payments flowing out of Alberta each year, a West Coast tanker ban that forces Alberta to sell its oil to the U.S. at a discount, and pipeline rules so cumbersome that no one will build them. He and Vance get into the history that shaped Alberta's independent streak — homesteaders surviving 40-below winters in sod houses, the trucker convoy, the COVID-era fights that toppled premiers — and the deeper structural pieces most Americans miss, like how First Nations treaties, mineral rights, and the Clarity Act actually work in Canada.  They close on what comes next. Premier Danielle Smith can still put the independence question on the October ballot if she chooses, and Dustin argues she may have to: 60% of UCP members back independence, and she could face a leadership vote if she stalls. Polling sits around 30–40% in favor today, but a referendum win would force Canada into a negotiation it has never had to seriously consider — one Dustin believes could go peacefully, or could go the way the American colonies did.

    1h 3m
  3. APR 17

    AI Will Make Niche Farming Possible & Updates About Vance

    Vance Crowe returns to the podcast after several months away with a vision for how AI agents are about to reshape commerce — and an explanation of where he's been. He argues the era of Google search is ending: websites built to communicate with AI agents, not human readers, will win the next decade. Using grass-fed beef as an extended example, Crowe walks through how AI agents will handle product discovery, payment, logistics, and recurring delivery on behalf of consumers, and what that shift means for small producers who have long struggled to reach customers directly. He also offers a caution drawn from his own experience: building too much too fast with AI creates brittle systems that break in unexpected ways.  In the second half, Crowe explains his absence. A January case of shingles was followed by the discovery that a long-standing lump on his throat was cancer — low likelihood of malignancy and highly treatable, but enough to reorder his priorities. He describes using AI to make Articulate Ventures more resilient: bringing on Brian King as a new host for online Legacy Interviews (legacyinterviews.com), building a signup system for his Interest-Based Communications classes (articulate.ventures/ibc), and scaling back his own interview load to spend more time with family. He closes by reflecting on why facing a potentially serious diagnosis left him calm rather than anxious.  Upcoming IBC classes in St. Louis: June 1–3 and July 6–8, 2026. Limited to 12 participants per class. Sign up at articulate.ventures/ibc.

    38 min
  4. 12/19/2025

    ATR: How To Ask Better Questions CHRISTMAS SPECIAL EPISODE

    In this Christmas special of The Ag Tribes Report, I pause the weekly news breakdown to share a chapter-in-progress from my upcoming book on interest-based communicating—practical ways to create deeper, more meaningful conversations over the holidays and beyond. I tell the story of a second mate who taught me it’s better to be interested than interesting, then walk through how presence turns conversations into a kind of meditation: put the phone away, make eye contact, breathe, and really listen. I cover common pitfalls like fast matching and internal tripping, why mirroring has its place, and simple tools that change everything—body-language feedback, the three-word prompt “tell me more,” and question types that draw people out, like “beautiful questions,” contrast questions, and spotting “tiny choices” in a story. I also explain why “how” beats “why” for uncovering real motivations, and close with a reminder about the law of mutual self-disclosure: don’t ask questions you wouldn’t answer yourself. Whether you’re talking with grandparents, welcoming a new in-law, or trying to better connect with employees and vendors, this episode offers specific, repeatable techniques to help you listen with attention, ask with intention, and discover the kind of shared insight that makes conversations memorable—and relationships stronger. For more on Interest Based Communication: https://www.vancecrowe.com/interest-based-communication For a Legacy Interview: https://www.legacyinterviews.com/

    48 min
  5. 12/12/2025

    ATR: Europe failing and China is Deflating with @nnzp1730

    In this week’s Ag Tribes Report on The Vance Crowe Podcast, host Vance Crowe tosses the script and sits down with returning guest “NNZP,” a veteran CEO and global manufacturer who joins anonymously to speak candidly about the world economy. They dig into Europe’s rapid de-industrialization, energy policy missteps, and why cheaper Chinese imports may be a short-term fix with long-term strategic risks. NNZP explains China’s deflationary “involution,” the chasm between commanded capacity and real demand, and how that excess is being exported—pressuring Western industry and defense resilience. They explore supply-chain fragility from chips to pharma inputs, the knock-on effects for agriculture, and why abundant, affordable energy (including nuclear) underpins everything. They also discuss the “debasement trade,” hard assets, and what investors might consider in a world of persistent inflation and policy intervention. NNZP offers a contrarian ag take on when solar can be the highest-and-best use of certain lands, the future of ethanol in an EV world, and why nuclear may arrive first for data centers, not households. Despite near-term turbulence, they end on pragmatic optimism about America’s capacity to adapt once incentives and priorities realign. Resources: Find NNZP on X/Twitter at @nnzp1730 for more on Legacy Interviews: https://www.legacyinterviews.com/ for more on Vance Speaking: https://www.vancecrowe.com/ To buy Bitcoin and support the show: https://river.com/invite?r=OAB5SKTP

    38 min
4.7
out of 5
145 Ratings

About

The Vance Crowe Podcast is a thought-provoking and engaging show where Vance Crowe, a former Director of Millennial Engagement for Monsanto, and X-World Banker, interviews a variety of experts and thought leaders from diverse fields. Vance prompts his guests to think about their work in novel ways, exploring how their expertise applies to regular people and sharing stories and experiences. The podcast covers a wide range of topics, including agriculture, technology, social issues, and more. It aims to provide listeners with new perspectives and insights into the world around them.

You Might Also Like