The Hope Axis by Anna Gát

Anna Gát

What is there in the world to hope and work for? Let's discuss!

  1. 6d ago

    Hollis Robbins - Hope for AI in Education and Beyond

    This week on The Hope Axis, Hollis Robbins joins me to talk about her dense career and what it actually means to build a life dedicated to the humanities today. Hollis, a dear friend of Interintellect and one of the first hosts, stepped back from her role as Dean of Humanities at the University of Utah in 2024 to focus on writing three upcoming books, including one with the incredible title, “Do Not Go to College Unless.” We get into her journey, and finding room for hope and leisure in the middle of it all. Hope you enjoy! For the full transcript of our conversation, click here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QrykHXAFjyGdh6OlLQ1WD7yo06rIBf8J/view?usp=drive_link Important Links: X (Twitter) – https://x.com/anecdotal?lang=en Substack - https://substack.com/@hollisrobbinsLinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/hollisrobbins Google Scholars - https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=d2MNMeMAAAAJ&hl=en Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/_anecdotal/ Show Notes: (00:00) Introduction (02:12)  College, dropping out, intellectual ideals and AI (07:22)  The state of universities and colleges in the time of information abundance (15:01)  Intellect and technology (29:00)  Anti-AI and pro-intellectual discourse is missing the point (33:39) America's higher (mid) education doesn't compete with AI (42:45)  Reinventing tutoring (48:04)  How is Hollis Robbins surviving in the humanities? (53:59)  The process of ""dumbing down"" of the American University (01:04:03)  If a specialist won't be teaching you at the university - don't go there. (01:07:24) Intellectual labour in scale economy. (01:10:02)  Final thoughts

    1h 14m

  2. Mar 29

    Dylan O'Sullivan - The Classics Are Never Getting Old

    This week on The Hope Axis, Dylan O’Sullivan joins to talk about the classics and their second life online. We get into reading in the age of TikTok and AI, and whether people today can still take on long, difficult books, along with the experience of going back to books and seeing them differently over time. Hope you enjoy. For the full transcript of our conversation, click here:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fGdRmgt7ZO6MKGzd6sHUX15n3q5QBINl/view?usp=sharing Important Links:  X (Twitter) – https://x.com/DylanoA4?lang=en  Essayful - https://substack.com/@essayful  LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanoa4/  The Spectator - https://spectator.com/writer/dylan-osullivan/  Show Notes:  (00:00) Introduction (02:33) The Right Age to Start Reading The Classics (07:53) The Feeling of Cultural Stagnation (12:22) How to Find Good Books (21:53) Finding What to Read and Where to Think (31:09) Dylan's Most Quoted Authors (39:03) Modern World of Self-publishing (41:38) What Do You Write About If You Don't Live First (48:19) What's up with Dostoevsky (56:14) Ulysses and End Notes Books, Essays & References Mentioned: C.S. Lewis — The Abolition of Man C.S. Lewis — Mere Christianity Arthur Koestler — Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler — The Act of Creation Leo Tolstoy — War and Peace Leo Tolstoy — Anna Karenina Fyodor Dostoevsky — The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky — Notes from Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky — White Nights James Joyce — Ulysses

    58 min

  3. Mar 15

    Alastair Benn - Human Power of Editing, and a Hope for Literacy - With Englesberg Ideas's Alastair Benn

    This week on The Hope Axis, I’m very happy to welcome Alastair Benn, deputy editor of Engelsberg Ideas. In this conversation, we talk about Scottish identity and language, the challenges of writing clearly in a “post-literate” age, and the editorial philosophy behind Engelsberg Ideas. We also discuss the idea of Bildung and Benn’s view of the editor as a mentor who helps writers turn strong ideas into clear, readable essays. Hope you enjoy. For the full transcript of our conversation, click here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IZLw1IkUsu5Q5A-AbAf_mAJZKCUAkQjd/view?usp=drive_link Important Links:  X (Twitter) –https://x.com/alastair_benn  Engelsberg Ideas - https://engelsbergideas.com/author/alastair-benn/ LinkedIn – https://uk.linkedin.com/in/alastair-benn-0327b578 Bokforlaget Stolpe– https://bokforlagetstolpe.com/en/authors/alastair-benn/ Show Notes:  (0:00:00) Introduction (0:00:58) Misunderstanding the Scots (0:05:32) Linguistic Identity and Code-Switching (0:10:24) Scotland Compared to Scandinavia (0:13:02) Whisky, the Burning Bush, and Scottish Identity (0:22:26) Engelsberg Ideas (0:25:07) Plain Language, Complex Ideas (0:31:12) Why the Written Word Still Matters (0:37:25) Writing Essays like Montaigne (0:42:39) Gatekeepers of the World of the Ideas (0:48:35) Are We Becoming Post-Literate? (0:56:47) What Is Bildung (1:01:08) The Bildungsroman from Goethe to Thomas Mann (1:10:31) Innerlichkeit and the Cult of Inwardness (1:18:14) Hans Castorp and the Arid Cult of Productivity (1:24:38) The Biases of the Hyper-Literate Elite (1:27:10) Schopenhauer, Hegel, and the Problem of Jargon (1:30:03) The Editor as a Mentor (1:36:35) AI and Editing: What It Can and Cannot Do (1:43:19) Closing Remarks  Books, Essays & References Mentioned: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Thomas Mann — The Magic Mountain Great Expectations — Charles Dickens Arthur Schopenhauer Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Robert Louis Stevenson Miguel de Cervantes — Don Quixote Virgil — Aeneid John Milton — Paradise Lost

    1h 44m

  4. Mar 8

    Alana Newhouse - Why Everything Is Broken and How to Fix It

    This week on The Hope Axis, I’m very happy to welcome Alana Newhouse. Alana is a journalist, editor, and founder of Tablet Magazine, and the author of the influential 2021 essay “Everything Is Broken.” In this conversation, we revisit the idea of brokenism a few years later and talk about how people who are intelligent and well-read enough to despair all day might still find a small ray of hope. Hope you enjoy. For the full transcript of our conversation, click here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HaBI_AINhbkwXo2aXaVfiUd1qvMTcc1J/view?usp=drive_link Important Links:  X (Twitter) – https://x.com/alananewhouse  Tablet Magazine – https://www.tabletmag.com/contributors/alana-newhouse     LinkedIn –      / https://www.linkedin.com/in/alana-newhouse-25214716a  The New York Times – https://www.nytimes.com/by/alana-newhouse  Website - https://www.alananewhouse.com/  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/alana.newhouse/?hl=en  Show Notes:  (0:00:00) Introduction (0:02:01) "Everything Is Broken" - The Backstory (0:15:36) The Diagnosis and the Dinner that Changed Everything (0:28:01) What It Means to Be a Part of Community (0:35:19) The Internet Has Shrunk the World (0:38:09) Alana's Concept of Flatness (0:46:17) Long-form Content Exercises Your Brain (0:49:24) The Legibility Crisis (0:56:19) Critical Reception of Media and News (0:59:28) The Future of Journalism (1:08:12) Extremes, Media and Antisemitism (1:13:25) 2030 Predictions and End Notes Books, Essays & References Mentioned: “Everything Is Broken” — Alana Newhouse Jürgen Habermas Tablet Magazine The New York Times Bluesky Donald Trump COVID-19 pandemic Legibility crisis Public sphere fragmentation

    1h 15m

  5. Feb 18

    Eli Dourado - Avoiding Societal Collapse, Complexity, and the Path to Abundance

    This week on The Hope Axis, I’m happy to welcome back Eli Dourado. Eli has joined us before in Interintellect salons, and now he’s on the podcast to revisit some of the ideas we talked about in the past. He previously worked at the Abundance Institute and is now the Head of Strategic Investments at Astra. We talk about abundance, progress, and what it takes to help the world flourish a little bit more. Hope you enjoy. For the full transcript of our conversation, click here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mO1maYYI0KzoR-lrjkhB9w9IZbT1XZFc/view?usp=sharing Important Links:  X (Twitter) – https://x.com/elidourado  Astera –  https://astera.org/team/eli-dourado/ .    LinkedIn –    https://www.linkedin.com/in/elidourado  Substack – https://www.elidourado.com/  Show Notes: (00:00) Guest Introduction (01:51) Why Joseph Tainter (09:45) The Great Stagnation (15:13) Imagining Someone in 1866 (16:48) Hungary (22:24) The Fragility of Economic Growth (26:02) Complexity (29:56) Chernobyl as The Cause of USSR's Collapse (32:32) The Uneven Stagnation, Explaining Mismanagement (39:16) The Nature of The Elites (43:05) Staving off the Collapse, History and the Future (50:05) Diminishing Marginal Returns (55:24) How to Rebuild Faith in the System Books, Essays & References Mentioned:  The Collapse of Complex Societies — Joseph Tainter The Great Stagnation — Tyler Cowen End Times — Peter Turchin Collapse — Jared Diamond Cliodynamics Total Factor Productivity The Roman Empire The Soviet Union Industrial Revolution Diminishing marginal returns Resource subsidies Technological progress Nihilism in stagnating societies Expansion into the solar system Complexity budget

    1h 6m

  6. Feb 6

    The End of Year Collective Episode

    This week on The Hope Axis, I’m joined by Natasha Joukovsky, Noah Smith, Musa al-Gharbi, Erica Robles Anderson, Santiago Ramos, Jacob Falkovich, and Gena Gorlin for a free-flowing conversation about AI, culture, creativity, and how people are actually living through all this change. We talk about what’s exciting, what’s worrying, what’s weird, and where a bit of hope still sneaks in. Hope you enjoy. For the full transcript of our conversation, click here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BghQ... Important Links:  Natasha Joukovsky — https://natashajoukovsky.com/home Noah Smith — https://substack.com/@noahpinion Musa al-Gharbi — https://musaalgharbi.com/musa-al-ghar... Erica Robles Anderson — https://www.roblesanderson.org/ Santiago Ramos — https://substack.com/@santiagoramos Jacob Falkovich — https://substack.com/@yashkaf Gena Gorlin — https://genagorlin.com/ Show Notes: (0:00:00)Warming Up Banter   (0:01:43) Introducing the Topic: Summarizing the Year Together   (0:05:03) Introducing the Guests   (0:21:58) Trump, Wars, and AI   (0:29:50) Nothing's Really New   (0:34:14) AI Pessimism vs Optimism   (0:51:23) Education   (0:57:24) The Dangers of Making Lives Too Easy   (1:01:44) Is Social Media For Old People?   (1:04:11) Favorite Movies, Books of the Year   (1:10:35) Sharing Good Things in Public   (1:14:13) The Future of Creativity   (1:22:07) Motivation & Hope Books, Essays & References Mentioned: The Road to Wigan Pier — George Orwell The Revolt of the Public — Martin Gurri The Mystic Fable — Michel de Certeau Becoming Supernatural — Joe Dispenza The Name of the Rose — Umberto Eco Natasha Joukovsky Noah Smith Musa al-Gharbi Erica Robles Anderson Jacob Falkovich AI and creative work Education as a civic project Over-optimization Rage bait Meaning and purpose

    1h 26m

  7. Feb 3

    Emmett Shear - Explaining AI to the Humanities

    This week on The Hope Axis, I’m joined by Emmett Shear to talk about AI, hope, and how we should actually think about the future. Emmett is the co-founder and former CEO of Twitch, former interim CEO of OpenAI, and now the co-founder and CEO of Softmax. We discuss why AI inspires so much fear, what it really is capable of, and where hope still shows up. Hope you enjoy. For the full transcript of our conversation, click here:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/10qooWrDB9Nr_0MgKy_kkpd1XMo_2gMN0/view?usp=drive_link Important Links:   X (Twitter) – https://x.com/eshear?lang=en  Wikipedia –  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Shear    Softmax – https://softmax.com/about  LinkedIn –    https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmettshear  Show Notes: (0:00:00) Introduction   (0:03:00) AI and The Humanities   (0:06:29) Reframing "The Essence", or "The Core" of Things   (0:13:01) Why People Want to Work on AI   (0:20:13) Kant As The Grandfather of AI   (0:23:57) Thomas Aquinas, Informing Onto The Boundary   (0:29:41) Back To Teleological Thinking   (0:31:44) Art As Imprinting One's Soul On An Object   (0:35:00) "Real" and "Fake" Interiority, AI's Nature Without Nurture (0:41:46) AI & Art   (0:54:40) A Village of AI   (1:01:58) The Risk of Human Extinction   (1:08:47) AI Slop, Human Experience & Taste   (1:12:22) The Beauty, The Good, and The True as Temporal Coarse-Grainings   (1:18:08) Collective Aliveness of The Biosphere   (1:24:05) Problems Too Big For Individuals, But Not Too Big For Humanity Books, Essays & References Mentioned: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Will Die — Eliezer Yudkowsky Superintelligence — Nick Bostrom Thomas Aquinas (informatio; origin of “information”) Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Immanuel Kant Takens’ Embedding Theorem Homotopy / homotopic stability Groupoids (one-, two-, three-, infinity-groupoid) AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) Optimizers & goal-binding Telos vs goals Taste vs skill Beauty, Truth, and the Good Learning systems & dynamic systems The biosphere / Gaia hypothesis Collective intelligence Speed as risk factor in AI systems

    1h 31m

  8. Jan 21

    Jasmine Sun - Bridging the Divide Between Writers and Technologists

    This week on The Hope Axis, I’m joined by Jasmine Sun for a conversation about AI, writing, creativity, and how writers are actually navigating all this change. Jasmine is a writer and leads writing communities, and until last year worked at Substack helping creators think through how new tools might affect their work. We talk about the questions writers ask most often, what feels exciting, what feels worrying, what feels strange, and where a bit of hope still shows up. Hope you enjoy. For the full transcript of our conversation, click here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12cnSKpVbHv2qKuIRk4pCPFWpE2H8lhsf/view?usp=drive_link Important Links:  X (Twitter) – https://x.com/jasminewsun  Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/@jasminewsun  Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/jasminewsun/?hl=en  LinkedIn –   https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasminewsun  Substack – https://jasmi.news/  Shownotes: (00:00) Working at Substack (05:49) Bridging the Divide Between Writers and Technologists (12:40) Working for Major Outlets (16:36) Why Mainstream Media Views Everything Through a Political Lens (21:43) Translating the Jargon and Breaking The Silos (28:47) Technology Being Developed Over People's Heads (30:36) Intelligence and Specialization (34:30) Applications and Limits of AI in Writing, Authenticity (42:19) The SF Writing Community (48:50) Working With Kevin Roose on His New Book About AGI (53:09) Closing Remarks Books, Essays & References Mentioned: Superintelligence — Nick Bostrom The AGI Chronicles (forthcoming) — Kevin Roose “No Free Lunch” — Eric Hoel AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) Large Language Models (LLMs) Jagged frontier of intelligence Human creativity vs automation Tech–culture translation Asterisk Magazine Substack

    55 min
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6 Ratings

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What is there in the world to hope and work for? Let's discuss!

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