Interesting Times

Pornography gets the blame for a lot of societal problems, including the so-called “sex recession.” Can porn ever really be ethical? Erika Lust thinks so. The adult filmmaker sees porn as an art form. She’s a self-described feminist who centers women’s desires and fantasies in her work. But how different is the product she’s making?

Lust sits down with Julia Yost, senior editor at “First Things,” to make the case for porn. Together, they discuss the adult film industry, stigmas around sex and translating fantasy into reality.

Note: As we work on relaunching “Interesting Times,” the show will feature a series of guest hosts in the coming months.

• 00:00 - Intro
• 01:22 - How Erika Became a Pornographer
• 03:51 - Behind the Scenes of an Adult Film
• 08:07 - The Relationship With Performers
• 08:55 - Porn vs. “Euphoria”
• 10:16 - Ethical Porn
• 13:00 - Accurately Depicting Female Pleasure
• 14:22 - Making Porn as a Feminist
• 16:03 - Andrea Dworkin and the Anti-Porn Feminist Movement
• 19:06 - “The Golden Era of Porn”
• 20:55 - Fantasizing Under The Patriarchy
• 24:01 - Sexuality In Ancient Rome
• 26:15 - The Cornell Seven and Sexual Risk
• 34:30 - Why We Need Stigmas
• 40:55 - Is Porn Causing the Sex Recession?
• 42:23 - “The Most Vanilla People Have the Hottest Sex Lives”
• 43:23 - Porn Addiction and Compulsive Behavior
• 46:44 - Religious Conservatives Aren’t Ashamed of Sex

(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)

Thoughts? Email us at interestingtimes@nytimes.com. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times.

Subscribe today at http://nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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The Trump administration wants to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence for scientific discovery. But can its plan succeed without prioritizing universities?

Guest host Tyler Cowen speaks with Michael Kratsios, President Trump’s top science and technology adviser, about the White House’s new blueprint for American innovation and what it means for the next generation of scientists.

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:54 Why American Science Is Broken
• 02:49 The Case for A New Model
• 04:49 Kratsios’s Funding Priorities
• 08:52 Kratsios’s Silicon Valley Background
• 10:53 The Role of Universities
• 16:31 Immigration’s Effect on Scientific Research
• 18:57 Who Controls Grantmaking?
• 25:20 A.I. Regulation and Safety Tools
• 36:03 Testing Models Before Release
• 39:19 Ten-Year Vision and Risks
• 43:21 A New Golden Age for Science
• 45:53 Closing and Credits

Note: As we work on relaunching “Interesting Times,” the show will feature a series of guest hosts in the coming months.

(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)

Thoughts? Email us at interestingtimes@nytimes.com. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times.

Subscribe today at http://nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Dwarkesh Patel is one of the most important voices in the artificial intelligence world. Deeply embedded in San Francisco’s tech community, he has interviewed nearly every tech chief executive at length.

This week’s guest host, Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University, sits down with Mr. Patel to discuss why researchers are resigning, whether A.I. could become conscious and if he’ll ever get an A.I. girlfriend.

Note: As we work on relaunching “Interesting Times,” the show will feature a series of guest hosts in the coming months.

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:31 What Inspired the “Dwarkesh Podcast”
• 02:47 Documenting Wild Human History
• 04:18 What The Public Doesn’t Understand About A.I.
• 06:25 The Mood in San Francisco
• 06:51 Dwarkesh Didn’t See This Coming
• 09:08 Should More A.I. Researchers Resign?
• 11:09 Unreleased Frontier Models
• 13:26 Pausing A.I.
• 15:45 A.I. Psychosis & Consciousness
• 21:14 What Tech Bros Do for Fun
• 23:50 Bay Area Culture
• 24:06 A.I. Boyfriends v. Girlfriends
• 26:02 Are A.I. Therapists Good?
• 26:54 What Dwarkesh Got Wrong
• 27:44 What’s The Next Big Thing?
• 29:13 Robot Predictions
• 30:26 What Jobs Are Safe?
• 35:21 The Speed of A.I. Adoption
• 37:12 Milestones To Watch
• 42:58 What If 2035 Looks Normal?
• 44:39 Dwarkesh In 2045
• 46:27 Skepticism On A.I. Revenue
• 48:01 How Podcasting Has Changed Dwarkesh

(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)

Thoughts? Email us at interestingtimes@nytimes.com. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times.

Subscribe today at http://nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Literacy is declining sharply across the West. In the era of vertical video, who has the time or concentration to read a long article — let alone a whole book?

As we lose the ability to read long-form text, we might also be losing the capacity for democratic deliberation and self-governance. That’s the argument this week’s guest, the Times of London columnist James Marriott, makes in his recent book, “The New Dark Ages.” He sits down with guest host Mary Harrington to discuss our return to oral culture, the political consequences and what we can learn from the medieval era about storing information in a digital world.

Note: As we work on relaunching “Interesting Times,” the show will feature a series of guest hosts in the coming months.

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:52 What Is Post-Literacy
• 02:05 The Data Behind the Decline
• 05:21 The Shift Toward Video
• 09:44 Why Reading Is Hard
• 10:45 Walter Ong on Oral vs. Literate Cultures
• 14:27 Tribal Politics and Emotion
• 18:21 The Reading Revolution
• 21:14 Literacy as an Engine for Democracy
• 25:15 Medieval Literary Culture
• 27:27 What We Can Learn the Medieval Era
• 30:13 Remembering Everything and Nothing
• 33:49 How Bukele Communicates Visually
• 37:04 Monarchy vs. Dictatorship
• 41:38 Is Postliteracy a Right-Wing Phenomenon?
• 43:29 Can We Resist the Slide?
• 46:33 Closing

(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)

Thoughts? Email us at interestingtimes@nytimes.com. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times.

Subscribe today at http://nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Nick Bostrom rose to prominence for predicting artificial intelligence doom more than a decade ago — garnering support from figures like Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Bill Gates. But now he’s retreating from those warnings, focusing his attention on a more complex question: What if A.I. succeeds beyond humanity’s wildest imaginations? Will we be bored out of our minds? Are we too infantile to understand what’s coming?

Guest host Spencer Klavan, the associate editor at the Claremont Review of Books, presses Bostrom on the potential uses and abuses of superintelligence, rationalist ethics and what makes us human.

Note: As we work on relaunching “Interesting Times,” the show will feature a series of guest hosts in the coming months.

00:00 Intro
01:07 What is P(doom)?
04:44 Bostrom’s Doomsday Scenarios
06:14 Vulnerable World Hypothesis
08:27 The Best-Case Scenario of Superintelligence
12:37 The Problems We Can’t Solve in Utopia
14:47 Paths to Superintelligence
17:02 What Kind of Utopia Do We Want to Live In?
21:56 The Values Worth Keeping in Utopia
32:42 Bostrom’s Influence on Effective Altruism
38:04 Are Existential Warnings Helpful?
43:52 The Trajectory of Humanity
46:51 Why Bostrom Wants Utopia

(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)

Thoughts? Email us at interestingtimes@nytimes.com. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times.

Subscribe today at http://nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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There’s a saying that comes to mind these days: May you live in interesting times. It’s understood to be a curse, even though it sounds like a blessing.

“Interesting Times With Ross Douthat” is a new weekly podcast from New York Times Opinion. Every Thursday, he will map the new world order through interviews and conversations. Answering questions like: What does our new political era really look like? What is the future of democracy around the world, with American empire in retreat? What happens to movies and books — all of culture — in our digital and A.I.-dominated age?

Thoughts? Email us at interestingtimes@nytimes.com.

Subscribe today at http://nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.