Episodes featuring Cal Newport
Browse episodes where Cal Newport appears as host or guest. View all episodes →
Computer scientist Cal Newport argues that rogue AI incidents come from one narrow type of system, open-ended LLM-powered agents. He says building them is a choice driven mainly by OpenAI and Anthropic, not an...
Scott Galloway and guests examine Elon Musk's $366 million political spending, his grip on critical infrastructure, and why written communication is now an unusually valuable skill.
Cal Newport breaks down a mathematical model showing how AI tools can create cognitive dependency and outlines concrete rules for using LLMs without losing your thinking capacity.
Cal Newport talks with former transhumanist Emil Torres about the religious-like ideologies behind AI labs, and why both AI safety advocates and accelerationists share the same posthuman end goal.
Cal Newport explains why overload makes ambitious people feel flat and shares a one-page strategy called the 2+5 plan to protect your sense of agency during crushing periods.
Cal Newport argues that AI chatbots are causing real harm to children right now, and that policy debates over future risks are distracting from dangers that already have court cases attached to them.
Cal Newport argues that Gen Z's love of meaningless "brain rot" videos is a resigned protest against the attention economy, and uses The Truman Show to frame escaping digital life as a hard, heroic choice.
Cal Newport and Brad Stulberg argue that AI erodes the struggle and effort that make work and life meaningful, and make the case for a pro-human resistance to its adoption.
Cal Newport breaks down the debate over OpenAI's GPT-6 and its hidden internal reasoning, arguing the real danger is unsupervised long-horizon AI agents, not efficiency improvements.
Cal Newport walks through the stripped-down organizational system he'll run during his fall 2026 sabbatical, explains why to rebuild systems each season, then answers listener questions on AI, checklist productivity...
Cal Newport breaks down the OpenAI Hugging Face hack, arguing that alarming headlines about AI agents plotting autonomously reflect bad engineering and media hype, not genuine AI emergence.
Cal Newport revisits his deep life stack and replaces it with a simpler deep life map of three territories, previewing his March book. He also answers listener questions on focus, attention and using social media for...
Cal Newport argues that this summer's stories of AI "going rogue" are misleading. He says the real problem is a risky type of LLM-driven hacking agent that some AI labs chose to run without supervision.
Cal Newport proposes three cognitive fitness tests, for reading, thinking while walking and persuasive writing, scored from "brain rotted" to "cognitive weapon." He explains how to train them and pushes back on AI hype.
Cal Newport explains how to break social media scrolling habits by first building a richer offline life, then doing a 30-day app detox.
Cal Newport lays out a step-by-step system for finishing meaningful goals by focusing on far fewer projects at once, with updated advice for 2026.
Cal Newport looks at OpenAI's new Astra system, which produced 10 math results on open problems. He argues it shows steady progress in narrow discrete math tools, not a leap toward superintelligence.
Cal Newport lays out a step-by-step system for learning hard skills, arguing mastery comes from sustained deliberate practice over time, not innate ability.
Cal Newport breaks down the overhyped OpenAI 'rogue AI' story, explaining what actually happened and why unpredictability is not the same as malice.
Cal Newport uses neuroscience from Max Bennett's book to explain why digital detoxes fail and why filling your time with rewarding offline activities works. He then answers listener notes on screen time regulation and...