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, we sit down for a roundtable on the hidden global economy of secondhand…
Chelsea Follett explains a disturbing historical example from London: a rule against beating wives or servants after 9 p.m. was treated as a noise regulation. A grim reminder that the “good old days” were often far more brutal than nostalgia suggests.
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
Saloni Dattani 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 models, how poor data distorts our understanding of disease, why clinical trials are one of the biggest bottlenecks in medicine, and…
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…
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…
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,…
Johnathan Bi returns to Infinite Loops for a conversation about founders, delusion, America, religion, mysticism, and the strange tension between truth and action. We explore why some of the most effective builders may be the least introspective, why societies often run on useful fictions, how America encourages megalomania, what happens…
Polina Pompliano studies some of the most successful people in the world—and what she’s found challenges how we think about success, creativity, and human behavior. In this episode of Infinite Loops, we explore the mental models behind high performers, why we misunderstand people (including ourselves), and what it really takes…
Sometimes deviance is a bad thing — we call that crime. Other times, we call it creativity.
Everything invented before us feels normal. Everything invented after us feels dangerous. #innovations #inventions #tech
Everyone complains that movies are all remakes—but the data says it’s actually true. #movies #curiosity #infiniteloops
In this episode of Infinite Loops, we speak with Adam Mastroianni—experimental psychologist and sharp critic of modern culture and science. We ask, why does creativity feel like it’s fading? From endless remakes to cultural sameness, Adam argues that as society becomes more stable and risk-averse, we may be unintentionally reducing…
Distraction isn’t always the problem — sometimes it’s the signal. Arkady Kulik explains why the urge to distract yourself can reveal something deeper about your life.
Defeat doesn’t require effort — it only requires blaming someone else. Arkady Kulik explains why the moment we externalize responsibility is the moment everything starts falling apart.
Most people think the problem is having a big ego. But the real question is whether your ego controls you — or you control it.
In this episode of Infinite Loops, we sit down with venture capitalist and physicist Arkady Kulikov to explore the psychology behind founders, responsibility, and self-deception. Kulik discusses why the hardest problems in business are almost always human problems, how great founders deal with stress, and why the biggest lie entrepreneurs…
Modern education produces incredible test takers — but often fails to prepare students for real life. According to neuroscientist Angus Fletcher, the system trains students to believe there is always a single correct answer and that the system already has it. But real life doesn’t work that way.
Why do some of the best planners in U.S. Army Special Operations write their plans on chalkboards instead of using PowerPoint? According to neuroscientist Angus Fletcher, writing by hand activates the motor cortex — the part of the brain responsible for generating actions. And actions are what generate plans. The…
Most people think optimism means believing the future will work out. But neuroscience tells a different story. According to Professor Angus Fletcher, optimism actually comes from looking at the past — remembering all the times you faced uncertainty, made mistakes, and figured things out anyway.
