Dwarkesh Podcast / episode intelligence
Speakers in the public record
Claim mix
Evidence policy
Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.
Claim ledger
21 published records
01 / recommendation
“The first third is about the scientific roots of the physics and it's also the best book I've read about the history of science in the early 20th century and the organization of it.”
02 / uncertainty
“Early 50s by then, the German scientists who had helped the Russians went home. And I think our people stayed here and brought their families over, I don't know.”
03 / evaluation
“Was there an opportunity after the end of World War II, before the Soviets developed the bomb, for the US to do something where either it somehow enforced a monopoly on having the bomb, or if that wasn't possible, make some sort of credible gesture that, we're eliminating this knowledge, you guys don't work on this, we're all just gonna step back from this.”
04 / belief
“I went home and slept that night. And I think he's probably right. Evolution has done such a job.”
05 / commitment
“By and large, the countries that did go toward the bomb, finally built bombs because they were afraid of another country having the bomb. And everyone else stood back and said, well, if you'll protect us with atomic bombs, when somebody comes calling here in South Korea or Germany or wherever, we won't build them and share your knowledge of how to make energy out of nuclear power.”
06 / belief
“I think Fermi said you could never refine uranium and get 235 but then some of these other scientists saw it coming.”
07 / uncertainty
“There's something about Russia, I don't know if it's the language or the education.”
08 / belief
“I find the subject absolutely fascinating. I think my next book might be called Unintended Consequences.”
09 / uncertainty
“I don't know how many people were working on it when he became president, but hundreds of thousands of people are working on it.”
10 / belief
“When the Soviet Union collapsed and the scientists became available, I learned that the KGB in the interest of promoting its service to the state in this new world they were going into, had published a historical piece about their good work in stealing the secret to the bomb.”
11 / belief
“I think that we're waiting for the multi-part series that would really tell a lot more of the story, if not the whole story.”
12 / recommendation
“The people who are working on AI right now are huge fans of yours. They're the ones who initially recommended the book to me because the way they see the progress in the field reminded them of this book.”
13 / evaluation
“I think the whole question of Oppenheimer lying to the security people during the Second World War about who approached him and who was trying to get him to sign on to some espionage was primarily an effort to cover up his brother's involvement.”
14 / evaluation
“I had a former guest, Richard Hanania, who has a book about foreign policy where he points out that our model of thinking about why countries do the things they do, especially in foreign affairs, is wrong because we think of them as individual rational actors, when in fact it's these competing factions within the government.”
15 / evaluation
“You mentioned that a big reason why many of the scientists wanted to work on the bomb, especially the Jewish emigres, was because they're worried about Hitler getting it first.”
16 / evaluation
“I think all the physics had been checked out by a lot of different countries by then.”
17 / preference
“I was buying photographs from them, partly because I needed the photographs and partly because 20 bucks was two months' income at that point.”
18 / commitment
“All these engineers and industrialists who were on the committee with him, skeptical men, men who wouldn't have been easily convinced of anything, but he convinced them this was the right way to go.”
19 / prediction
“They figured in the end that there would be 20 million prompt deaths from the explosions themselves and the fires. But then over the course of the next several years, up to two billion people would die of starvation because you would have the same phenomenon that the world had in the 18th century when there was an interim of rather cold, the sun was pulling back a bit and it was freezing hard in July in New England and the crops failed.”
20 / preference
“Attack in some peripheral country and we won't bomb you because you might bomb us.”
21 / evaluation
“I think that's very important because people somehow don't really understand what a millennial change, the introduction of the release of nuclear energy into the world, really was.”