Brave New World is a look into the transformation of humanity by machines in the post-COVID era. It examines a wide range of topics around how technology and "virtualization" of our lives is impacting work, health, faith, emotional well being, government, democracy, and freedom. It is hosted by AI-pioneer Vasant Dhar.
Listen to episodes
60 recent
August 14, 20261 hr 3 min
Ep 108: Prashanth Chandrasekar: Community and the AI Pivot
Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO of Stack Overflow, joins Vasant Dhar to discuss the company's pivot to reinvent the platform and the way forward in an AI-native world. Useful Resources: 1. Prashanth Chandrasekhar2. Stack Overflow3. Nandan Nilekani4. Clayton M. Christensen5. The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change) - Clayton M. Christensen 6. Can Good Writing Be Generative - Tuhin Chakrabarty, Paramveer S. Dhillon 7. Brave New World Episode 102: Alex 'Sandy' Pentland on Humanizing Technology8. Stack Internal9. Jon Skeet10. Trust Pilot11. Stack Overflow AI Assist Check out Vasant Dhar's newsletter on Substack. The subscription is free! Order Vasant Dhar's new book, Thinking With Machines
July 16, 2026Episode 1071 hr 2 min
Ep 107: Rule Breaker Investing — David Gardner on Staying the Course
David Gardner, co-founder of The Motley Fool, joins Vasant Dhar to discuss his approach to investing - the case for holding great companies for decades, and candid takes on stocks as long-term bets. Useful Resources: 1. David Gardner2. The Motley Fool3. Tom Gardner, CEO, The Motley Fool 4. Bill James5. Peter Lynch6. Fool 24, The Motley Fool On YouTube7. John Sexton8. Rule Breaker Investing: How to Pick the Best Stocks of the Future and Build Lasting Wealth - David Gardner 9. Fool Community Foundation10. The Motley Fool Investment Guide: Third Edition: How the Fools Beat Wall Street's Wise Men and How You Can Too (An Investment Guide for Beginners) - David Gardner, Tom Gardner 11. The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game - C. Thi Nguyen12. David Gardner's Stock Picks: Amazon, Tesla, Netflix, Nvidia, Chipotle, Intuitive Surgical, Rocket Lab, Axon Enterprise, Salesforce, Starbucks13. Aswath Damodaran14. Brave New World Episode 33: Aswath Damodaran on Investing15. Philip Tetlock16. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction - Philip Tetlock17. Da Vinci Surgical Robot18. Service Now19. Anthropic Check out Vasant Dhar's newsletter on Substack. The subscription is free! Order Vasant Dhar's new book, Thinking With Machines
June 11, 2026Episode 1061 hr 16 min
Ep 106: Luca Turin On Decoding Smell
Smell is the most mysterious of our senses and we've been getting it wrong. Biophysicist Luca Turin joins Vasant Dhar to reveal why and how our noses detect vibrations and what that could mean for disease diagnosis, security, and the future of AI. Useful Resources: 1. Luca Turin. 2. Perfumes: The A-Z Guide - Luca Turin, Tania Sanchez. 3. The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell - Luca Turin. 4. Perfumes: The Guide, 2018 - Luca Turin, Tania Sanchez. 5. A Spectroscopic Mechanism for Primary Olfactory Reception - Luca Turin. 6. Laying a controversial smell theory to rest - Leslie B. Vosshall. 7. Status of the Vibrational Theory of Olfaction - Ross D. Hoehn, David E. Nichols, Hartmut Neven, Sabre Kais. 8. Implausibility Of The Vibrational Theory Of Olfaction - Eric Block, Seogjoo Jang, Hiroki Matsunami, Hanyi Zuhang. 9. A Psychophysical Test Of The Vibration Theory Of Olfaction - Andreas Keller and Leslie B. Vosshall. 10. A Novel Multigene Family May Encode Odorant Receptors: A Molecular Basis For Odour Recognition - Linda Buck, Richard Axel. 11. A Principal Odour Map Unifies Diverse Tasks In Olfactory Perception - Brian K. Lee, Emily J. Mayhew, Benjamin Sanchez-Lengeling, Jennifer N. Wei, Wesley W. Qian, Kelsie A. Little, Matthew Andres, Britney B. Nguyen, Theresa Moloy and Alexander B. Wiltschko. 12. Luca Turin On Substack. 13. Episode 81 of Brave New World: Alex Wiltschko on the Sense of Smell14. Episode 97 Of Brave New World: Alex Wiltschko on Digitising Scent Check out Vasant Dhar's newsletter on Substack. The subscription is free! Order Vasant Dhar's new book, Thinking With Machines
May 14, 2026Episode 1051 hr 8 min
Ep 105: Nicholas Christakis on The Impacts of Machines on Human Groups
Your networks shape you more than you know. Nicholas Christakis joins Vasant Dhar to reveal how machines inserted into human groups quietly rewire the way people cooperate, coordinate, and trust — and why a little artificial noise might be exactly what we need. Useful Resources: 1. Nicholas Christakis2. Human Nature Lab3. The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years - Nicholas Christakis and James H Fowler4. Widowhood Effect5. The Effect of Widowhood on Mortality by the Causes of Death of Both Spouses- Felix Elwert and Nicholas Christakis6. Locally Noisy Autonomous Agents Improve Global Human Coordination in Network Experiments - Hirokazu Shirado and Nicholas Christakis7. ETH Global Lecture, Social Artificial Intelligence8. Graph Colouring9. Vulnerable robots positively shape human conversational dynamics in a human–robot team - Margaret L. Traeger, Sarah Strohkorb Sebo, Malte Jung and Nicholas Christakis 10. Hirokazu Shirado11. Chicken, The Game12. Emergence and collapse of reciprocity in semiautomatic driving coordination experiments with humans - Shunichi Kasahara, Hirokazu Shirado and Nicholas Christakis13. Traffic Patterns in Seattle and Hyderabad: Immediate and Mediate Transactions - Paul G. Hiebert 14. Brian Scassellati15. Iyad Rahwan16. Machine Behaviour - Iyad Rahwan17. A Randomised Controlled Trial of Social Network Targeting to Maximise Population Behaviour Change - David A Kim, Alison R Hwong, Derek Stafford, D Alex Hughes, A James O'Malley, Nicholas Christakis, James H Fowler18. Induction of social contagion for diverse outcomes in structured experiments in isolated villages - Edoardo M. Airoldi, Nicholas Christakis 19. Algorithms for seeding social networks can enhance the adoption of a public health intervention in urban India - Marcus Alexander, Laura Forastiere, Swati Gupta, Nicholas Christakis20. Friendship paradox21. Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society - Nicholas Christakis22. Friendship and Natural Selection - James H Fowler and Nicholas Christakis23. Kin Selection24. Social Network Biology and Human Chemosignaling25. For The Love Of Science Check out Vasant Dhar's newsletter on Substack. The subscription is free! Order Vasant Dhar's new book, Thinking With Machines
April 9, 2026Episode 1041 hr 14 min
Ep 104: Leslie Kay on Smell, Memory and the Brain
Your nose knows more than you think. Professor Leslie M. Kay joins Vasant Dhar to reveal how smell is wired directly into the brain's emotional core — and how every breath you take is quietly synchronising your mind. Useful Resources: 1. Leslie Kay2. GenBank3. National Library of Medicine4. Walter Jackson Freeman III5. Dynamical Systems6. Linda B. Buck and Richard Axel7. Dmitry Rinberg, Rinberg Lab8. S. Murray Sherman9. John Hopfield10. Christof Koch11. Joy Milne12. Aromha test13. Lucia F. Jacobs14. From chemotaxis to the cognitive map: The function of olfaction - Lucia F Jacobs 15. Patricia Churchland16. Andrew Sheriff, Northwestern Human Olfaction Lab17. Long-Range Respiratory and Theta Oscillation Networks Depend on Spatial Sensory Context - Andrew Sheriff, Guinevere Pandolfi, Vivian S Nguyen and Leslie M. Kay18. Evidence for a Chromatographic Model of Olfaction - Maxwell Mozell 19. COVID-19 and olfactory dysfunction: a looming wave of dementia? - Leslie M. Kay 20. SARS-CoV-2 is associated with changes in brain structure - UK Biobank 21. Asifa Majid22. Human Olfaction at the Intersection of Language, Culture, and Biology - Asifa Majid Check out Vasant Dhar's newsletter on Substack. The subscription is free! Order Vasant Dhar's new book, Thinking With Machines
March 12, 2026Episode 1031 hr 27 min
EP 103: Léon Bottou on Fiction Machines and the Limits of AI Alignment
What separates fluency from understanding? Léon Bottou joins Vasant Dhar in Episode 103, Brave New World, to explore the deep question at the heart of AI. Useful Resources: 1. Léon Bottou2. Léon Bottou - The Fiction Machine3. Hopfield Network in AI4. Yann LeCun5. J. L. McClelland, D.E. Rumelhart and G.E. Hinton - The Appeal of Parallel Distributed Processing6. Claude Shannon - Entropy and Redundancy in English 7. Marvin Minsky - Music, Mind and Meaning8. Stafford Beer9. Navier-Stokes Equations10. Terry Sejnowski - Parallel Networks that Learn to Pronounce English Text 11. Christopher D. Manning12. Brave New World Episode 58: Sam Bowman on ChatGPT & Controlling AI13. De Morgan's laws Check out Vasant Dhar's newsletter on Substack. The subscription is free! Order Vasant Dhar's new book, Thinking With Machines
February 12, 20261 hr 10 min
Ep 103: Jayant Sinha on AI Governance In A Fragmented World
AI is reshaping national power and governance. Drawing on India's digital public infrastructure, Jayant Sinha and Vasant Dhar discuss innovation and sovereignty over compute, data consent and privacy by design in Episode 103 of Brave New World. Useful Resources: 1. Jayant Sinha2. Eversource Capital3. India's Green Startups: Jayant Sinha and Sandeep Bhammer4. Nandan Nilekani5. Brave New World Episode 15: Nandan Nilekani on an Egalitarian Internet6. Brave New World Episode 50: Pramod Varma on India's Digital Empowerment 7. iSpirit8. Unique Identification Authority Of India9. Unified Payments Interface10. M-Pesa11. DigiYatra. 12. Australia has banned social media for kids under 16. 13. Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture, DEPA14. Paul Gruenwald, Global Chief Economist, S&P Global15. Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, James A. Robinson. 16. Neeraj Chopra17. Thinking with Machines, The Brave New World of AI: Vasant Dhar18. Battery Smart19. Nutrifresh20. Zero Cow21. RevFin22. Upside Foods23. Brave New World Episode 93: Uma Valeti on Cultivating Meat24. Brave New World Episode 101: Deepak Chopra On Consciousness and Reality25. Geoffrey Hinton26. Asimov's Laws27. Jonathan Haidt28. The Anxious Generation: Jonathan Haidt Check out Vasant Dhar's newsletter on Substack. The subscription is free! Order Vasant Dhar's new book, Thinking With Machines
January 8, 2026Episode 10254 min
Ep 102 - Alex 'Sandy' Pentland on Humanizing Technology
Professor Alex 'Sandy' Pentland, one of the most renowned computational scientists in the world, joins Vasant Dhar in Episode 102 of Brave New World to discuss the state and development of human-centric AI. Useful Resources: 1. Alex 'Sandy' Pentland. 2. Stanford Research Institute. 3. MIT Media Lab. 4. Distributed Computing, Blockchain. 5. Nature Magazine, Nature Machine Intelligence. 6. The Hard Problem Of Consciousness. 7. Shared Wisdom: Cultural Evolution In The Age Of AI: Alex Pentland. 8. Brave New World Episode 101: Deepak Chopra On Consciousness and Reality. 9. Digital Dharma: How AI Can Elevate Spiritual Intelligence and Personal Well-Being - Deepak Chopra. 10. Awakening: The Path to Freedom and Enlightenment - Deepak Chopra. 11. Sharing The Wisdom Of Time: Pope Francis. 12. UN, Sustainable Development Goals. 13. Jonathan Haidt. 14. Brave New World Episode 08: Jonathan Haidt, How Social Media Threatens Society. 15. Daniel Kahneman, Behavioural Economics. 16. Brave New World Episode 21: Daniel Kahneman, How Noise Hampers Judgement. 17. Loyal Agents. 18. Loyal Agents Consumer Reports19. EU - AI Act. 20. Duty Of Care. 21. Internet Engineering Task Force. 22. World Trade Organisation. Check out Vasant Dhar's newsletter on Substack. The subscription is free! Order Vasan Dhar's new book, Thinking With Machines Check out Vasant Dhar's newsletter on Substack. The subscription is free! Order Vasan Dhar's new book, Thinking With Machines
December 11, 2025Episode 1011 hr 14 min
Ep 101: Deepak Chopra On Consciousness and Reality
Useful Resources: 1. Deepak Chopra2. Donald D. Hoffman3. Awakening: The Path to Freedom and Enlightenment - Deepak Chopra4. Seymour Reichlin5. Digital Dharma: How AI Can Elevate Spiritual Intelligence and Personal Wellbeing - Deepak Chopra6. The Hard Problem Of Consciousness7. Rosalyn Yalow8. Neuropeptides9. Psychoneuroimmunology 10. Candace Pert11. Molecules of Emotion - Candace Pert12. Richard Dawkins13. The Physics of Consciousness - Richard Dawkins & Brian Greene14. Naïve realism15. Stephen Hawking16. Qualia17. Panpsychism18. Advaita Vedanta19. Sufism20. What is Life?: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches - Erwin Schrodinger21. Brave New World Episode 94: Anil Seth On The Science of Consciousness. 22. Wayne Dyer23. Ludwig Wittgenstein24. Jill Bolte Taylor25. My Stroke Of Insight - Jill Bolte Taylor26. TED - My stroke of insight: Jill Bolte Taylor27. Scott Galloway Check out Vasant Dhar's newsletter on Substack. The subscription is free! Order Vasant Dhar's new book, Thinking With Machines
November 19, 20251 hr 1 min
Ep 100: David Ko, From Panic to Purpose
Episode 100 of Brave New World features David Ko, CEO of Calm, a digital health company focused on mental wellness and mindfulness. From experiencing panic attacks as a teenager to being the driving force behind Calm, his journey is an inspiring exploration of resilience, purpose, and the intersection of vulnerability and innovation. Useful Resources: 1. David Ko, CEO of Calm2. Recharge: Boosting Your Mental Battery, One Conversation at a Time - David Ko3. Jonathan Haidt4. Brave New World Episode 08: How Social Media Threatens Society5. Severance6. Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams7. Recharge with David Ko Order Thinking With Machines: The Brave New World of AI - Vasant Dhar Check out Vasant Dhar's newsletter on Substack. The subscription is free!
Is this your show?
Claim this listing to keep it up to date, reach guests who want to pitch you, and manage bookings with Guestify.
