High Variance with Danny Buerkli

AI Strategy for Middle Powers – with Anton Leicht

If you don't have a frontier AI lab within your borders, as a country, what exactly is your plan? Anton Leicht — visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of the "Threading the Needle" Substack — joins Danny Buerkli to talk through the strategic options available to middle powers. They discuss why the UK seems more situationally aware than others, what leverage the Netherlands truly has (or not) thanks to ASML, and why the window to act may be measured in low single-digit years rather than decades.

The Quest for the Perfect Weapon – with Jeff Stern

Jeff Stern — reporter and author of The Warhead — joins Danny Buerkli to talk about the long quest to build the “perfect weapon.” They discuss how a company mostly known for calculators revolutionized warfare, the paradox of precision-guided munitions, what disappears behind the language of “surgical” force, and how covering conflict changed Jeff’s understanding of his own role as a reporter.

Intelligence Saturation and the Economics of AI – with Ioana Marinescu

Ioana Marinescu — associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania, research associate at the NBER, and member of Anthropic's Economic Advisory Council — joins Danny Buerkli to discuss her "intelligence saturation" paper, which divides the economy into an intelligence sector and a physical sector to model what happens as AI automates cognitive work. They discuss why a recent scenario piece that moved markets gets the economics wrong, what parameters to watch to understand where we're headed, why being first to AGI may matter less than people think, her policy proposals for AI Adjustment Insurance and a Digital Dividend, what UBI experiments do and don't tell us about a world without work, Ioana's favorite theory of divorce, and what it feels like to be an intelligence worker watching AI get better at your job.

France, Germany, and the State of Europe – with Joseph de Weck

Germany and France have historically formed the core of Europe and the European Union. Joseph de Weck - political analyst, historian, author, columnist, and Europe Director at Greenmantle - knows both exceptionally well and joins Danny Buerkli to unpack the state of Europe. They discuss the influence of Paul Ricœur on Emmanuel Macron, why French baguette bread is so standardized, what may happen at the German elections in 2029, and the big shifts under way in Europe’s geopolitical posture.

Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World – with Richard Cockett

Every aspect of modernity was shaped by individuals with intellectual roots in Vienna, argues Richard Cockett, author of "Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World". Richard, historian and senior editor at The Economist, joins Danny Buerkli to discuss his latest book. They cover the story of the stunningly productive and creative Viennese emigrés, discuss implications for progress today and trace how the intellectual feud between Vienna and Frankfurt still reverberates today.