Welcome to Faster, Please! — The Podcast. Several times a month, host Jim Pethokoukis will feature a lively conversation with a fascinating and provocative guest about how to make the world a better place by accelerating scientific discovery, technological innovation, and economic growth. fasterplease.substack.com
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Nov 13, 2026 · 41:55
Welcome to Faster Please!—The Podcast , the audiovisual companion to my Faster Please! newsletter. I am your host, Jim Pethokoukis. My guest this episode is Dr. Kevin Cannon .…
Nov 6, 2026 · 43:21
My guest this episode is Chelsea Follett . Chelsea is a research fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity , where she works with HumanProgress.org.…
Oct 30, 2026 · 39:06
My guest this episode is journalist and author Art Tavana . Art is currently a PhD researcher at the University of Southern California, focusing on Disney and fan studies. He…
Oct 16, 2026 · 31:21
My guest this episode is Stephanie Wakefield . Stephanie is an assistant professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Design at Florida Atlantic University. She is also the…
Oct 9, 2026 · 38:27
My guest this episode is Ramez Naam . Ramez has spent years thinking , writing, and investing around technological progress in energy and artificial intelligence. He is the…
Oct 1, 2026 · 29:01
My guest this episode is Scott Strand . Scott is Head of Strategy, Operations, and Special Projects at Google, where he founded the Google AI Economy program as well as Google…
Sep 24, 2026 · 31:58
On this episode of Faster Please!—The Podcast , I am joined by Dalibor Rohac . Dalibor is the director of global research at GLOBSEC and a longtime senior research fellow in…
Sep 17, 2026 · 34:35
On this episode of Faster Please!—The Podcast , I am joined by Christian Catalini . Christian is a research scientist and the founder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab . Recently,…
Sep 9, 2026 · 32:36
On this episode of Faster Please!—The Podcast , I am joined (again) by Tyler Cowen . Tyler is an economics professor at George Mason University and co-founder of the economics…
Aug 26, 2026 · 34:37
Thanks in large part to the massive drop in the cost of getting a pound or kilogram of stuff into orbit and beyond, many of the boldest Space Age dreams are now possible. The…
Aug 18, 2026 · 30:20
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world: The AI race between America and China isn’t just about whose AI models are at the frontier or…
Aug 6, 2026 · 35:41
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world: With the massive buildout of data centers has come an equally massive backlash. They’ve been…
Jul 30, 2026 · 34:00
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world: Artificial intelligence is expected to transform the economy, but what about the AI industry…
Jul 21, 2026 · 31:32
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world: What problem does a data-center moratorium solve, exactly? As these warehouse-sized…
Jul 14, 2026 · 34:43
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world: If my podcast guest today is correct, the emergence of generative artificial intelligence…
Jun 25, 2026 · 37:35
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world: Will artificial intelligence displace workers or make them more valuable? Probably plenty of…
Apr 28, 2026 · 28:27
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world: Artificial intelligence is undoubtedly poised to change the workplace—the question is, by how…
Apr 10, 2026 · 19:46
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world: As a college sophomore, Josh Farahzad assembled a group of students from around the country in…
Mar 24, 2026 · 42:55
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world: Anxiety is running rampant about the future of artificial intelligence and its place in…
Feb 19, 2026 · 34:44
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world: Headlines portend rising seas, raging storms, and a planet in crisis. It’s easy to feel like…
Feb 4, 2026 · 26:41
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world: Since humanity’s beginning, we’ve been pondering about our end. From war, to disease, to…
Jan 30, 2026 · 31:32
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world: The human pursuit of progress stems from our desire for security and a higher quality of life.…
Jan 20, 2026 · 26:52
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world: Headlines abound with news of the coming nuclear renaissance — a long-awaited era of clean,…
Dec 4, 2025 · 28:53
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world: NASA is attempting the difficult task of juggling highly ambitious goals, but also possibly…
Nov 20, 2025 · 25:15
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world: What really gets AI optimists excited isn’t the prospect of automating customer service…
Nov 4, 2025 · 30:01
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers, China’s spacefaring ambitions pose tough competition for America. With a focused, centralized program, Beijing seems likely to…
Oct 24, 2025 · 29:31
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers, Some Faster, Please! readers have told me I spend too little time on the downsides of AI. If you’re one of those folks, today…
Oct 8, 2025 · 23:48
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers, For most of history, stagnation — not growth — was the rule. To explain why prosperity so often stalls, economist Carl…
Sep 26, 2025 · 30:25
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers, Artificial intelligence may prove to be one of the most transformative technologies in history, but like any tool, its immense…
Sep 12, 2025 · 32:48
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers, In 1976, America celebrated 200 years of independence, democracy, and progress. Part of that celebration was the release of To…
Aug 22, 2025 · 33:03
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers, Global population growth is slowing, and it’s not showing any signs of recovery. To the environmentalists of the 1970s, this…
Aug 12, 2025 · 27:20
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers, Nuclear fission is a safe, powerful, and reliable means of generating nearly limitless clean energy to power the modern world.…
Jul 31, 2025 · 23:10
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers, The innovation landscape is facing a difficult paradox: Even as R&D investment has increased, productivity per dollar invested…
Jul 25, 2025 · 27:28
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers, With tariff and immigration policies uncertain, and the emerging AI revolution continuing to emerge, there’s plenty to…
Jul 10, 2025 · 31:22
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers, The 1990s and the dawn of the internet were a pivotal time for America and the wider world. The history of human progress is a…
Jun 27, 2025 · 36:09
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers, Once-science-fiction advancements like AI, gene editing, and advanced biotechnology have finally arrived, and they’re here to…
Jun 12, 2025 · 29:45
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers, America is embarking upon a New Space Age, with companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin ready to partner with NASA to take…
May 8, 2025 · 39:25
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers, As we seemingly grow closer to achieving artificial general intelligence — machines that are smarter than humans at basically…
May 2, 2025 · 25:38
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers, With the rise of American populist nationalism has come the rise of nativism: a belief in the concept of “heritage Americans”…
Apr 17, 2025 · 28:19
In the 1960s, a deep anxiety set in as one thing became seemingly clear: We were headed toward population catastrophe. Paul Ehrlich’s “ The Population Bomb ” and “ The Limits to…
Mar 21, 2025 · 30:38
In his famous 1962 address to Rice University, President Kennedy declared, We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but…
Mar 14, 2025 · 30:58
The American economy is growing, and, in many ways, it’s looking a lot like the 1990s. Upward trends in productivity growth and employment paired with downward trends in…
Mar 6, 2025 · 27:32
The space business landscape is changing. Companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are moving at breakneck speed toward goals Americans have dreamed of since the 1960s. At the same…
Jan 31, 2025 · 24:54
The 2020s have so far been marked by pandemic, war, and startling technological breakthroughs. Conversations around climate disaster, great-power conflict, and malicious AI are…
Jan 24, 2025 · 28:08
My 2023 book, The Conservative Futurist , is based on the idea that we, as a society, are failing to meet our potential: Inefficiency, overregulation, and an overabundance of…
Jan 16, 2025 · 29:45
Big changes are happening: space; energy; and, of course, artificial intelligence. The difference between sustainable, pro-growth change, versus a retreat back into stagnation,…
Dec 19, 2024 · 26:39
Farmer is the Baillie Gifford Professor of Complex Systems at Oxford's Institute for New Economic Thinking . Before joining Oxford in 2012, he worked at Los Alamos National…
Dec 13, 2024 · 26:58
The future will be built on the big ideas we dare to conjure up today. We know that the most groundbreaking ideas often seemed ludicrous or simply impossible when first dreamed…
Nov 26, 2024 · 27:47
Washington’s initial thinking about AI regulation has evolved from a knee-jerk fear response to a more nuanced appreciation of its capabilities and potential risks. Today on…
Nov 15, 2024 · 28:21
Housing in the United States has come to be known as a panacea problem. Gone are the days when tossing the graduation cap meant picking up the keys to a front door, and the…
Oct 31, 2024 · 26:57
In this episode of Faster, Please! — The Podcast , I talk with economist Robin Hanson about a) how much technological change our society will undergo in the foreseeable future,…
Oct 23, 2024 · 27:19
On October 13, SpaceX and Elon Musk successfully launched their Starship rocket into low-Earth orbit. Then, in a milestone moment for space technology, they successfully captured…
Oct 10, 2024 · 38:21
Eli Dourado is on a mission to end the Great Stagnation, that half-century period of economic and technological disappointment that began in the 1970s (what I refer to in my 2023…
Sep 26, 2024 · 32:27
Some signs of tech progress are obvious: the moon landing, the internet, the smartphone, and now generative AI. For most of us who live in rich countries, improvements to our…
Sep 12, 2024 · 22:40
When it comes to sports, everybody is basically aligned that the goal here is helping every kid reach their potential. We celebrate talent, we give athletes the resources and…
Sep 5, 2024 · 27:01
American global leadership is due in great part to its innovators — visionaries who drive society beyond the preconceived limits. Historically, government-led initiatives like…
Aug 15, 2024 · 29:29
In our highly globalized economy, exogenous shocks and unsettling headlines are everywhere. It makes sense that market forecasters should be biting their nails, but so often…
Aug 9, 2024 · 23:33
In a world of Artificial General Intelligence, machines would be able to match, and even exceed, human cognitive abilities. AGI might still be science fiction, but Séb Krier sees…
Jul 19, 2024 · 23:27
✈ A quick note: I will be traveling through the middle of the month and will be posting a bit less than usual and perhaps a bit shorter than usual. These days, it seems that…
Jul 11, 2024 · 25:46
✈ A quick note: I will be traveling through the middle of the month and will be posting a bit less than usual and perhaps a bit shorter than usual. After decades of resistance to…
Jun 28, 2024 · 31:32
Artificial intelligence may revolutionize the American economy, but whether we see that potential actualized depends on a few key factors: whether generative AI is a general…
Jun 14, 2024 · 29:43
The image of the skyscraper is the hallmark of the modern city. Futuristic depictions of urban landscapes nearly always feature towering structures high above the clouds. Today,…
Jun 6, 2024 · 30:17
The media is full of dystopian depictions of artificial intelligence, such as The Terminator and The Matrix , yet few have dared to dream up the image of an AI utopia. Nick…
May 30, 2024 · 25:31
While AI doomers proselytize their catastrophic message, many politicians are recognizing that the loss of America’s competitive edge poses a much more real threat than the…
May 3, 2024 · 27:24
Project Apollo was a feat of human achievement akin to, and arguably greater than, the discovery of the New World. From 1962 to 1972, NASA conducted 17 crewed missions, six of…
Apr 19, 2024 · 24:40
As I often remind subscribers to Faster, Please! , predictions are hard, especially about the future. The economic boom of the 1990s came as a surprise to most economists.…
Apr 11, 2024 · 14:34
As private and government interest in nuclear fusion technology grows, an array of startups have arisen to take on the challenge, each with their own unique approach. Among them:…
Mar 28, 2024 · 31:41
In a world facing climate change and clean energy challenges, it’s starting to look like a nuclear energy renaissance is starting to happen. That is, if we can overcome our…
Mar 7, 2024 · 22:10
Education was among the first victims of AI panic. Concerns over cheating quickly made the news. But AI optimists like John Bailey are taking a whole different approach. Today on…
Mar 1, 2024 · 17:10
Readers and listeners of Faster, Please! know how incredible the untapped potential of nuclear power truly is. As our society (hopefully) begins to warm to the idea of nuclear as…
Feb 9, 2024 · 25:04
The US Space Force , the newest branch of the American military, takes national defense to a new frontier. Here on Faster, Please! — The Podcast , I sit down with AEI senior…
Dec 15, 2023 · 28:29
What if there were a way to generate massive amounts of affordable, carbon-free energy with minimal environmental or safety risk? Sounds too good to be true, but nuclear fusion…
Dec 1, 2023 · 30:44
Science. Ownership. Speed. Openness. These are the four pillars of Andrew McAfee’s observed structure for successful companies. It is the “geeks,” the leaders at the forefront of…
Nov 8, 2023 · 52:05
If you’re looking for a smart and punchy companion piece to my new book, The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised , then you are in luck. Look…
Oct 26, 2023 · 25:27
Johan Norberg’s work revolves primarily around economic and intellictual history and attempting to learn lessons from past financial systems. In this episode of Faster, Please! —…
Sep 28, 2023 · 35:02
More than 20 years ago, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama characterized the Information Technology revolution as "benign" but cautioned that "the most significant threat…
Sep 14, 2023 · 32:17
Is climate change an impending existential threat, or a serious but manageable problem we can tackle with innovation and human ingenuity? Zeke Hausfather joins this episode of…
Sep 1, 2023 · 20:36
As the cost to launch a rocket into orbit has come down over the past decade, a slew of startups have joined the emerging space economy. But is there enough business for all…
Aug 16, 2023 · 36:50
Rapid progress in artificial intelligence, especially large language models such as ChatGPT, has rekindled an old debate about the feasibility of top-down economic planning.…
Jul 27, 2023 · 28:57
Over the past 15 years, the cost to launch a rocket into orbit has declined dramatically thanks to SpaceX. Today, we're witnessing the launch of a new Space Age — one built…
Jul 21, 2023 · 30:22
On Faster, Please! — The Podcas t , I've interviewed guests on exciting new technologies like artificial intelligence, fusion energy, and reusable rockets. But today's episode…
Jul 14, 2023 · 28:06
"The promise of eternal life has conventionally been the dangled carrot of religion. It is now the holy grail of Silicon Valley," writes novelist Lionel Shriver in a recent…
Jun 30, 2023 · 21:31
Nuclear fusion holds the potential to provide the world with cheap, clean, virtually inexhaustible energy for the future. For decades, the technology was dismissed as sci-fi…
May 26, 2023 · 29:23
Many countries around the world have below-replacement fertility rates . And today’s today's guest says it's happening faster than we think, with world population on track to…
May 19, 2023 · 26:40
Does technological progress automatically translate into higher wages, better standards of living, and widely shared prosperity? Or is it necessary to steer the development of…
Apr 20, 2023 · 18:10
I have many times written about the importance of the story we tell ourselves about the future, especially in big-budget science fiction films. But does all the doom and gloom…
Apr 13, 2023 · 27:09
The conventional narrative about the economic history of World War II says that new learning from wartime mobilization jumpstarted a postwar golden age of fast economic growth.…
Apr 7, 2023 · 27:43
When it comes to Up Wing thinking, there's no better litmus test than nuclear power. Setting aside the regulatory barriers we've imposed on ourselves, the United States can tap a…
Mar 9, 2023 · 35:05
As space enthusiasts and entrepreneurs look to expand human civilization to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, few stop to examine the geopolitical risks of space colonization or the…
Mar 2, 2023 · 25:35
Thanks to SpaceX, it’s getting cheaper and cheaper to launch stuff into orbit. But just imagine if instead of using rockets, we could send cargo and people to space on an…
Feb 24, 2023 · 25:30
"You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics," said Nobel laureate economic Robert Solow in 1987. A decade later, the '90s productivity boom was in…
Feb 16, 2023 · 27:45
It was only three decades ago that astronomers first discovered planets outside our solar system. Since then, astrophysicists have found more of these "exoplanets" — including…
Feb 3, 2023 · 32:28
On previous episodes of Faster, Please! — The Podcast and in my newsletter essays, I've argued for the importance of optimistic science fiction. But what exactly qualifies as…
Jan 27, 2023 · 31:14
If humanity is to become a multi-planetary species, we can't forever remain dependent on Earth's resources. That's where space resource extraction comes in. So how would space…
Jan 19, 2023 · 31:15
It's been more than 50 years since humans last set foot on the lunar surface. But the recent success of NASA's Artemis I mission has put the US back on track to return man to the…
Dec 22, 2022 · 26:14
Skeptics joke that nuclear fusion is the energy source of the future … and always will be. But when the Biden White House made a big announcement about the progress of fusion…
Dec 16, 2022 · 33:28
I often write about the need for Up Wing thinking . Despite the political drama that unfolds on cable news and social media, the key divide in America is not Left versus Right…
Dec 9, 2022 · 25:06
This month, December 2022, marks the 50-year anniversary of when man last stood on the Moon. NASA's Apollo missions were an awe-inspiring triumph of human achievement, but do…
Nov 12, 2022 · 27:29
➡ Reminder: I will be writing much less frequently and much shorter in November — and November only . So for this month, I have paused payment from paid subscribers. Also, I’m…
Nov 3, 2022 · 24:01
➡ Reminder: I will be writing much less frequently and much shorter in November — and November only . So for this month, I have paused payment from paid subscribers. Also, I’m…
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