Political economist Nick Srnicek breaks down how AI is reshaping capitalism, work, and global power — and why the real story isn’t “robots taking all our jobs”, but who owns the systems and how states choose to deploy them.

Nick Srnicek is a Canadian writer and academic, and a lecturer in Digital Economy at King’s College London. He’s best known for his books Platform Capitalism, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work (with Alex Williams), and After Work: The Fight for Free Time (with Helen Hester). He’s also closely associated with debates around accelerationism, post-work politics and the digital economy.

In this episode you get an insider’s view of how AI, platforms and states interact — from Washington and Beijing’s different strategies to Europe’s struggle for “digital sovereignty”, and what all of this really means for ordinary workers over the next decade.

He explains, among other things:
◼️ Why today’s AI boom sits on top of decades of digital capitalism — and how platforms like Google, Amazon and Nvidia turn data, chips and models into monopoly power
◼️ The crucial difference between the US and China’s AI strategies: chasing “the best model” vs. deeply integrating AI into industry, logistics and state capacity
◼️ How beliefs about fast vs slow AGI “takeoff” are quietly shaping export controls, chip policy and national security decisions in Washington
◼️ Why Europe risks becoming a mere “rule-taker” between US and Chinese AI stacks — and what it would take to become a genuine third pole
◼️ What a realistic future of work under AI might look like: not total job loss, but more surveillance, precarity, and intensified exploitation unless politics changes

Explore Nick Srnicek’s work
◼️ Platform Capitalism – how digital platforms extract rent and dominate markets
◼️ Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work (with Alex Williams) – a manifesto for a post-work, high-tech left
◼️ After Work: The Fight for Free Time (with Helen Hester) – why real freedom means transforming work and care, not just adding gadgets

(Search “Nick Srnicek Platform Capitalism” or “Nick Srnicek After Work” on your favourite bookstore or platform.)

https://x.com/nsrnicek

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Kevin Kelly – co-founder of WIRED and one of the world’s most influential technology thinkers – explains why you shouldn’t try to be “the best”, but “the only”, why your most “wasted” year might become the engine of your future, and why we’re still at day one of AI.

Kevin is the founding executive editor of WIRED magazine and now its “Senior Maverick”. For decades he’s been known as a “cool hunter” of the future – predicting trends in technology, culture and work long before they go mainstream. He’s the author of books like What Technology Wants, The Inevitable, Excellent Advice for Living and his new photography book The Colors of Asia, based on 50 years of traveling and shooting across the continent.

In this episode, you’ll hear what it’s like to build a life as a project-driven creator rather than a career employee, to help invent internet culture at WIRED, and to spend half a century documenting a disappearing Asia – all while thinking deeply about the future of AI, work and meaning.

He explains, among other things:

◼️ Why “follow your bliss” is terrible advice for most young people – and why mastering anything first is the real unlock if you don’t know what to do with your life
◼️ How to design a life where you’re the only one who does what you do, instead of competing to be “the best” in a crowded field
◼️ Why time off, “goofing off” and even taking 6–12 months to do something that looks like failure might become the most important period of your life
◼️ How to think in projects and seasons instead of a linear career – the “Hollywood model”, 5-year projects, and moving between the “cave and the commons”
◼️ His honest reflections on WIRED: what they got right, what he regrets, and why he thinks they could have invented Google-style ad auctions
◼️ Why he believes we’re still at day one of AI, what surprised him about large language models, and why intelligence is not a ladder but a “high-dimensional space”
◼️ Why he thinks truly practical AI needs bodies (robots), what’s missing from today’s language-only systems, and how self-driving and embodied AI may really unfold over decades
◼️ The four books that shaped his worldview – from the Bible and Walden to Finite and Infinite Games – and how the idea of “infinite games” changed how he designs his own life
◼️ The deeper message behind The Colors of Asia: how paying close attention to “ignored” things can become a source of joy, creativity and even a career

Explore Kevin Kelly’s work
◼️ Books (selection): What Technology Wants, Out of Control, The Inevitable, Excellent Advice for Living, The Colors of Asia
◼️ More of Kevin’s essays, talks and projects: search for “Kevin Kelly” and “The Technium” or “The Colors of Asia”

The Colors of Asia: https://kevin2kelly.myshopify.com/products/colors-of-asia-a-visual-journey

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Biotech CEO Liz Parrish explains why you’re legally allowed to choose euthanasia in many countries – but not allowed to choose experimental medicine that might extend your life – and why she decided to become “patient zero” for gene therapies targeting aging itself.

Liz Parrish is the founder and CEO of BioViva, a US biotech company developing gene therapies for aging and age-related diseases. In 2015 she famously travelled outside the US to receive two experimental gene therapies (telomerase and follistatin), becoming one of the first people in the world to use gene therapy explicitly to treat biological aging. Since then she’s been at the centre of the debates around longevity, regulation and patient rights.

In this episode you get an unfiltered look at what it’s like to take massive personal risk to push medicine forward – from watching her son get diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, to starting BioViva, to challenging regulators with her idea of “Best Choice Medicine”: the right to choose high-risk, high-reward treatments when the alternative is slow, guaranteed decline.

She explains, among other things:

◼️ The personal story behind BioViva: her son’s diagnosis, what she saw in children’s hospitals, and why she concluded that keeping the status quo is not “safety” – it’s guaranteed death
◼️ Why she chose telomerase (TERT) and follistatin as her first gene therapies, what telomeres actually do, and how they’re linked to immune failure, progeria and the diseases of aging
◼️ What it felt like in the weeks after becoming “patient zero”: the fear, the scientific pushback, and why one advisor told her she had “13 days to live”
◼️ The idea of Best Choice Medicine: why you can legally choose euthanasia in places like the Netherlands, but not choose experimental gene therapy even if you fully accept the risk
◼️ How current regulation really works (phase I–III are still experiments), why she thinks we’re overprotecting people from potential harm while guaranteeing they die of aging anyway
◼️ How BioViva operates today: US-based protocol design, international clinics, licensing in places like the Bahamas, Latin America and China, and why she refuses to treat others before treating herself
◼️ Why she believes gene therapy can eventually become affordable at scale – and why the early “super-rich” patients are actually funding the data that will make it cheaper for everyone
◼️ How her team is building a hand-curated database of thousands of gene therapy studies and using AI + genomics to design combinatorial therapies for complex, multi-gene conditions like aging
◼️ What society gets fundamentally wrong about “anti-aging” and why your organs, stem cells and kidneys are aging far worse than your face
◼️ Her philosophical take on life extension: why she believes longer lives could make us more moral and future-oriented, and why she worries more about a world of short, desperate lives than about dictators living longer

Explore Liz Parrish’s work
◼️ BioViva and her gene therapy work (search: “Liz Parrish BioViva”)
◼️ Talks, interviews & articles on aging, gene therapy and Best Choice Medicine (search: “Liz Parrish treating aging as a disease”)

https://bioviva-science.com/our-team

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World-renowned labour economist Guy Standing explains how a new class of people – the precariat – is trapped in insecure work, unstable income and chronic anxiety, and why he believes a universal basic income is now essential if we want to save democracy, freedom and basic human dignity.

Guy Standing is a British labour economist and Professorial Research Associate at SOAS University of London. He co-founded and is honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), the leading global organisation advocating an unconditional basic income. He coined the term precariat in his influential book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, and has spent decades at the International Labour Organization working on labour markets, social protection, and economic security.

In this episode, you get a rare inside look at what it’s like to spend your life on the front line of the fight against economic insecurity – advising governments, designing basic-income pilots, and warning about the political risks of leaving millions of people in permanent precarity.

He explains, among other things:
◼️ What the precariat actually is – and why so many young graduates, migrants and formerly “secure” workers suddenly find themselves in it
◼️ How today’s “rentier capitalism” lets owners of assets thrive while wages stagnate, even as people work harder than ever
◼️ Why he believes an unconditional basic income is no longer a utopian idea but a practical necessity for a stable, innovative society
◼️ What we can learn from basic-income experiments in places like India and other countries, and what happens to people’s health, motivation and agency when their income is secure
◼️ The reforms he believes are needed to move from a fearful, divided precariat towards a more democratic, fair and sustainable economy

Explore Guy Standing’s work
◼️ Books (selection): The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen, The Corruption of Capitalism, The Blue Commons.
◼️ Talks & interviews on precarity, basic income and the future of work: https://www.guystanding.com/

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