Public Service Podcast

Hon Phil Goff is a former New Zealand Minister of Trade, Foreign Affairs, Defence, Education, Housing, and Justice. In 2016 he was elected mayor of the Auckland 'Supercity'. We discuss that experience, contrasting central and local government, as well as his role negotiating the first Western Free Trade Agreement with China in 2008.Full transcript, with inline notes and links is available at alethios.substack.comAuckland Skyline image from Ssiyamalan.

Ludo is one of the most interesting and successful public servants of the 21st Century, leading a radical transformation of Auckland’s urban design over his 13 years as the city’s ‘Design Champion’. YIMBY’s rightly celebrate the city’s upzoning successes and improving affordability, but it’s easy to forget how strong public opposition to ‘ugly’ tower blocks almost unraveled the movement before it started. Delivering change is always challenging, particularly in the public sector. Ludo’s extraordinary efforts required building and managing a world-class team, maintaining political support, leading a relentless and incisive comms strategy, and coordinating the efforts of numerous public organisations all to deliver quality public spaces at such scale that it came to be expected, and therefore easy and unremarkable.

Anish Tondwalkar is a former employee of OpenAI and Google Brain, now the co-founder of Y-Combinator backed AI interpretability startup ‘dmodel.ai’. We sat down in June to discuss the underappreciated capabilities of the latest generation of AI models, and how individuals, institutions, and society is likely to respond, even if no further progress were made.Full transcript with links and inline notes available here:https://alethios.substack.com/p/anish-tondwalkar-the-societal-implications

Steve Hsu completed his PhD in theoretical physics at age 24. He’s since made numerous contributions as a scientist, tech startup founder, professor, and institutional advisor. Little is known about the role he played during Boris Johnson’s ill-fated tenure as Prime Minister of the UK. In Steve’s first interview on the subject, he shares that hidden history, and what lessons can be drawn from it.Later, we discuss the rapidly changing power dynamics of the Western Pacific, as China continues to flex its growing might.Full transcript with links is available here:https://alethios.substack.com/p/with-steve-hsu-in-no10-with-boris

⁠Nuño Sempere⁠ is a founding member of the legendary forecasting group ‘Samotsvety’. His track record puts him at the top of the world’s most accurate predictors of the future. I sat down with him last month to discuss forecasting, global risk, and his new non-profit ‘⁠Sentinel⁠’, a free early-warning system for large-scale catastrophes like pandemics, wars, and financial turmoil.Read the full transcript and more at ⁠alethios.substack.com