Save the World with Jay Friedenberg
Jay Friedenberg 7 episodes Nov 8, 2026
Jay Friedenberg hosts lectures and expert interviews about the biggest threats facing human civilization. The show examines the causes, consequences, and possible solutions to issues such as artificial intelligence, climate change, pandemics, disinformation, authoritarianism, and threats to democracy. It draws on science, psychology, politics, and philosophy to understand the problems shaping the future and what can be done to overcome them.
Episodes
Episode 10 - Peter Boettke on Repeating the Mistakes of the 20th Century
The 20th century was a period of violent upheaval characterized by two world wars and the Great Depresssion. These tragedies were the result of bad political and economic ideas. Many countries abandoned democratic and free market principles in favor of totalitarian control and militaristic expansion. Sadly, we see a regression to this type of thinking. In today's conversation, Peter Boettke w
Episode 9 - Seth Baum on Existential Risk
What are the new Four Horseman of the Apocalypse? Climate change? Pandemics? War? Cyberattack? Seth Baum and I discuss whether we should worry about any of these particular risk factors in isolation or combination. We discuss the notion of a polycrisis and how that makes thinking about risk management difficult. We find that some of the dangers we face now are exactly those that may have brought a
Episode 8 - Chris Line on Religious Freedom
Is it permissible to teach the ten commandments in public school? For religious exemptions to vaccination? Chris Line is Legal Counsel at the Freedom From Religion Foundation. In this episode, we discuss the issues surrounding separation of church and state. This constitutional protection is being violated more frequently now in the U.S. In a stimulating discussion we touch on the dangers of theoc
Episode 7 - Ivan Eland on Defense Policy in a Multipolar World
In this episode I interview Ivan Eland, defense analyst and writer, who is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute. We talk about the current and future state of U.S. military foreign policy in the post Cold War era. We address a number of questions in this wide-ranging discusion. What threats do China and Russia pose to world peace? How can we bring the bloated defense budget under control?
Episode 6 - AI and Human Values Part II
If you want an AI to "play nice", you need to give it values to ensure it is acting beneficially toward humans. To solve this alignment problem we need to know what values we are talking about. Today I describe a five-level classification system which helps us to understand all values and how they relate to one another. These include survival, cognition, those related to individuality an
Episode 5 - AI and Human Values Part I
There is a lot of talk about AI alignment, which is getting machines to act in our best interests. But how do we go about doing this? The philosophical secret to this conundrum is values. But how do we determine what human values are? This problem needs to be solved before we program computers to do this or that on our behalf. In this two-part series, I discuss what values are and look at evidence
Episode 4 - Calum Chace on Machine Consciousness
Can a machine become conscious? Could it feel pain and pleasure, be happy or sad? In this episode we address the question of whether the AI systems we are building now are or could achieve such consciousness. If they can the ramifications are enormous. Join me in this wide-ranging interview with Calum Chace to discuss this issue. Calum is a best-selling author, speaker, and founder of the AI safet
Episode 3 - Civility Part II
In this episode we examine ways to stop incivility. We show that attempts to control bad behavior have always been around and can be categorized in terms of social and individual forms. The social classification looks at organizations like the family and church and how they have regulated behavior. The individual approach looks at how a single person can exert self-control, in some cases in conjun
Episode 2 - Civility Part I
In this episode we define civility, provide several contemporary examples and describe why it has important social implications. We look at whether people are more rude now than in the past and whether this is being driven by polarization and politics. We examine several psychological explanations of rudeness, including the frustration-agression hypothesis and failures in perspective-taking.Relate
Episode 1 - Civilization and Existential Risk
In this episode, we introduce the podcast and preview some of the topics covered in succeeding episodes. I introduce myself and define what we mean by existential risks, these being significant threats to the continued existence of humanity. I then discuss what a civilized society is like and how we might be able to achieve that. I conclude by showing that large-scale positive change is possible.
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