Episodes

Dr. Brent Seales, computer scientist at the University of Kentucky and co-founder of the Vesuvius Challenge, joins guest host Nick Tawil on Infinite Loops to explain how synchrotron X-rays and machine learning are making unopenable ancient scrolls readable, and why the work has now shifted from engineering to reading. This summer in Naples, his team presented results from three sealed Herculaneum scrolls, including the first read end to end. Show Notes Brent Seales & Nick Tawil Dr. Brent Seale...

Ryan Resch, former Assistant General Manager and VP of Basketball Operations for the Phoenix Suns, joins guest host Jimmy Soni on Infinite Loops to explore what happens to competitive advantage when every team has the same data, and why the real edge comes from the questions you ask of it. Ryan traces his path from a cold email to Baylor coach Scott Drew to nearly a decade in the Suns front office and his current work leading data and AI in private equity. Show Notes Ryan Resch & Jimmy Soni Rya...

Brian Chau, founder of Effort News, joins Infinite Loops to explore how AI could fundamentally reshape investigative journalism—not by writing articles, but by searching, analyzing, and connecting millions of legal, financial, and government records that humans could never examine manually. Show Notes Brian Chau & Effort News Effort News — Brian Chau’s document-led investigative journalism publication, using AI to search and analyze large datasets while keeping the reporting and final writing...

Julian Gough sums up his career as follows: “I just sit in my room and write.” Well, I think being an acclaimed children’s author, novelist, stage playwright, poet and top-ten Irish musician is a little more impressive than he’s letting on… Oh, and I didn’t even mention that he wrote the ending to the computer game Minecraft! His current project, The Egg and The Rock, puts all of this to shame. This book, which Julian is writing in public on Substack, seeks to do no less than redescribe the un...

Hi everyone, Jim here. We’re taking a short pause on new episodes through the end of August. In the meantime, we’re digging out some of our favorite conversations from the archive. This one is from August 2023, with Dr. Julie Gurner. Enjoy. Dr. Julie Gurner is a doctor of psychology and executive performance coach to top percentile executives, primarily in finance and technology. She is also the proprietor of the Ultra Successful newsletter, which delivers a weekly challenge pulled from global b...

Hi everyone, Jim here. We're taking a short pause on new episodes through the end of August. In the meantime, we're digging out some of our favorite conversations from the archive. This one is from November 2022, so a few of our references (and jobs!) are out of date, but the ideas have only gotten better. Enjoy this conversation with Lulu Cheng Meservey. Lulu Cheng Meservey is the Chief Communications Officer and Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Activision Blizzard. She joins ...

Hi everyone, Jim here. We're taking a short pause on new episodes through the end of August. In the meantime, we're digging out some of our favorite conversations from the archive. This one is from February 2023, so a few of the references have aged since (mine included), but the ideas have only gotten better. Enjoy this one with the wonderfully heretical Jesse Michels. Jesse Michels is an investor at Thiel Capital and the creator and host of ‘American Alchemy’, a Youtube channel dedicated to hi...

Nat Eliason joins guest host Jimmy Soni to discuss Founders School, a new high school for entrepreneurs that guarantees students will generate $1 million in gross profit by graduation or get their tuition refunded. We explore how AI is changing what teenagers can build, why traditional entrepreneurship education falls short, and what happens when we take young people seriously. Important Links: Learn more about Founders School: https://founders.school/ Read more from Nat here: https://www.na...

Philip Howard joins Infinite Loops to explain how America’s legal and regulatory system became too complicated to function effectively—and how we can rebuild it around judgment, accountability, and human agency. We discuss why government has become unmanageable, how thousand-page rulebooks discourage individual judgment, why infrastructure projects can take decades to approve, and how public institutions end up costing more while delivering less.

Sangeet Choudary joins Infinite Loops to explain why AI’s greatest impact will not be automating today’s work, but rebuilding the structures beneath it. They discuss AI-native companies, the future of knowledge work, the American and Chinese AI models, creative “exhaust,” changing career paths, and how to compete when the rules of the game are constantly being rewritten. Important Links: Learn more about Sangeet and Reshuffle here: https://reshufflebook.com/ Read more about the Platform Revo...

What if the great stories were more than just stories? Jameson Olsen, host of Becoming the Main Character, joins guest host Liberty to explore fiction as a kind of operating system for life — a way to study agency, ambition, empathy, failure, courage, and change without having to live every consequence yourself. Through Hamlet, Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, Lord of the Rings, training montages, NPCs, and the Hero’s Journey, they discuss what it means to stop drifting through life and start hol...

David Gelles joins guest host Jimmy Soni to discuss his career covering business for The New York Times. They talk about his books - Mindful Work, The Man Who Broke Capitalism, and Dirtbag Billionaire - and the reporting behind major stories on Bernie Madoff, Jack Welch, Boeing's 737 Max crashes, and Patagonia's Yvon Chouinard. David explains how he broke a front-page story five weeks into journalism school, how he convinced Bernie Madoff to grant him a prison interview, and his process for wri...

Gretchen Rubin joins guest host and Infinite Books CEO Jimmy Soni to discuss her journey from Supreme Court clerk to bestselling author, the creative obsessions that shaped her career, and the daily habits that fuel her work. They cover her transition from law to writing Power Money Fame Sex, why she often ends up writing the book before the proposal, the art of editing until the final hour (even during pass pages), her 5:30 AM writing routine, and why "know thyself" remains the foundation of a...

Wall Street Journal columnist Ben Cohen joins guest host Jimmy Soni, CEO of Infinite Books, to explore the hidden art of making things better. They explore the hot hand phenomenon in basketball, why Moneyball shaped a generation of journalists, the peanut butter and jelly crisis in the Warriors locker room, why ASML is the most important company you’ve never heard of, the strange story of Driscoll's tastiest berries, and the troubled development of The Princess Bride. Important Links: Learn mo...

AI is no longer just a tool creators use to make content faster. It is beginning to reshape the entire creator economy. Revan Lazarus is the founder of Jamie, an AI platform for podcast networks and digital sales teams. He joins Infinite Loops, guest-hosted by Nick Tawil, to discuss how AI is changing podcasting, media sales, audience analytics, creator monetization, brand deals, and the future of content itself. Important Links: Learn more about Jamie AI: https://www.jamie-ai.com/

What actually happens after you donate a bag of clothes? Most people assume it gets sold locally to someone in need, but the reality is much bigger, stranger, and more global. In this episode of Infinite Loops, hosted by OSV’s Nick Tawil, we sit down for a roundtable on the hidden global economy of secondhand textiles with Brian London, Marisa Adler, and Eric Stubin, all experts in the field. We discuss how the industry works, why fast fashion has made the problem harder, why 70% of the world u...

Jason Buck, founder and CIO of Mutiny Funds, joins Infinite Loops to tell the painful and darkly funny story of how the 2007–2008 crash destroyed his real estate business, wiped out his paper wealth, and taught him one of the hardest lessons in markets: being right is not the same thing as making money. Jason explains how he went from real estate developer to volatility trader and eventually built his philosophy around survival, resilience, and the “Cockroach Portfolio.” He and Jim explore why ...

Chelsea Follett joins Infinite Loops to explain why the “good old days” were far darker than most people imagine — and why progress should never be taken for granted. Chelsea is the managing editor of Human Progress and author of Centers of Progress and the forthcoming The Grim Old Days. We discuss why humans are so drawn to nostalgia, what life was really like in the preindustrial past, why doomsday predictions keep failing, and how freedom, innovation, and open inquiry helped create the moder...

Mykhailo Marynenko joins Infinite Loops for for a fascinating conversation about the future of AI, creative tools, privacy, and data ownership. From growing up in his father’s phone repair shop in Ukraine to building experimental AI systems today, Mykhailo has spent his life taking things apart, figuring out how they work, and rebuilding them in unexpected ways. We explore how AI can help creators without replacing them, why privacy and data ownership matter, and what it means to design tools ...

On a February morning, Danielle Crittenden’s world cleaved in two: the life before her daughter Miranda was found dead in her Brooklyn apartment, and the life after. Two years and three months later, Danielle joins Infinite Loops to discuss her luminous memoir, Dispatches from Grief, which unflinchingly traces the strange afterlife of grief with precision, restraint, and unexpected humor. This conversation explores what grief really feels like. With extraordinary honesty and grace, Danielle sh...

Saloni Dattani, author of the Scientific Discovery Substack and founding editor of magazine, joins Infinite Loops to discuss why medical innovation is often much slower than it needs to be. We explore why so much research still begins in animal...

Why has America become so bad at building housing, infrastructure, and major projects? Brian Potter, author of The Origins of Efficiency and writer of Construction Physics, explains why prefab housing keeps failing and why there are no easy fixes to America’s building problem. We discuss Katerra, California’s anti-growth turn, and the deeper logic behind local opposition to growth: concentrated harms and diffuse benefits.

What can Aristotle, Plato, Prometheus, and the Greek city-states teach us about AI, innovation, and the future of human flourishing? Alex Petkas joins the show to explore how old myths still matter in a world shaped by technology. We talk about Prometheus as the foundational myth of tech, Plato’s fear that writing would become a tool for forgetting, the real lesson of Icarus, why decentralization creates cultural power, and what it means to remain fully human in the age of AI. Important Links:...

Scientist and writer Sam Arbesman joins us for a wide-ranging conversation on AI, optimism, science, education, archives, science fiction, and why the history of computing still has so much to teach us. We talk about why pessimism is often mistaken for sophistication, why AI may reward open-mindedness more than intelligence, why science works even though scientists are imperfect, and why the future may depend on revisiting forgotten ideas from the past. Important Links: Learn more about Sam h...