Public Service Podcast

Chinese Trade, Housing, and the Auckland Mayoralty - Hon Phil Goff

Hon Phil Goff is a former New Zealand Minister of Trade, Foreign Affairs, Defence, Education, Housing, and Justice. In 2016 he was elected mayor of the Auckland 'Supercity'. We discuss that experience, contrasting central and local government, as well as his role negotiating the first Western Free Trade Agreement with China in 2008. Full transcript, with inline notes and links is available at alethios.substack.com [http://alethios.substack.com] Auckland Skyline image from Ssiyamalan. [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Auckland_Skyline_383495.jpg]

Smart Cities & Digital Governance, with Sean Audain

Presenting a discussion with Sean Audain, the former City Innovation Lead and now Strategic Planning Manager at Wellington City Council. We covered a wide array of topics, from how Wellington is using sensors at scale to improve earthquake resilience, to the implications of narrowing information asymmetries thanks to AI combined with data collection at unprecedented scale. This recording is from the 2025 Sustainable Development Goals Summit at Massey University and is published here with the permission of the organising committee.

Auckland's Legendary Design Champion, Ludo Campbell-Reid

Ludo is one of the most interesting and successful public servants of the 21st Century, leading a radical transformation of Auckland’s urban design over his 13 years as the city’s ‘Design Champion’. YIMBY’s rightly celebrate the city’s upzoning successes and improving affordability [https://ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/news/2024/03/auckland-upzoning-sparks-more-homes-and-improved-affordability/], but it’s easy to forget how strong public opposition to ‘ugly’ tower blocks almost unraveled the movement before it started. Delivering change is always challenging, particularly in the public sector. Ludo’s extraordinary efforts required building and managing a world-class team, maintaining political support, leading a relentless and incisive comms strategy, and coordinating the efforts of numerous public organisations all to deliver quality public spaces at such scale that it came to be expected, and therefore easy and unremarkable.

Patrick McKenzie - VaccinateCA and Institutional Dysfunction

Patrick McKenzie (aka patio11) is a strategic advisor at Stripe, an angel investor, writes the fortnightly newsletter ‘Bits About Money’ about financial infrastructure, and was CEO of the extraordinary VaccinateCA effort in 2021. Patrick and I previously spoke on his show ‘Complex Systems’ about system dynamics, local government challenges, and organisational scar tissue. Here we follow up on what the insane VaccinateCA saga tells us about modern institutional dysfunction, and how we might avoid repeating the terrible mistakes of 2021. Read the full transcript with inline notes here: https://alethios.substack.com/p/patrick-mckenzie-vaccinateca [https://alethios.substack.com/p/patrick-mckenzie-vaccinateca]

Anish Tondwalkar - The Societal Implications of Reasoning Models

Anish Tondwalkar is a former employee of OpenAI and Google Brain, now the co-founder of Y-Combinator backed AI interpretability startup ‘dmodel.ai’. We sat down in June to discuss the underappreciated capabilities of the latest generation of AI models, and how individuals, institutions, and society is likely to respond, even if no further progress were made. Full transcript with links and inline notes available here: https://alethios.substack.com/p/anish-tondwalkar-the-societal-implications [https://alethios.substack.com/p/anish-tondwalkar-the-societal-implications]