S2E4: Robert Zubrin - The Next Frontier: Settling Mars
We got to the Moon in eight years using slide rules. We still haven't returned, despite four times the GDP, twice the population, and artificial intelligence. Robert Zubrin's diagnosis is blunt: the system is senile.In the final episode of season two, we speak with Dr. Robert Zubrin, aerospace engineer and probably the most influential advocate for human Mars settlement of the last thirty years. He developed the Mars Direct mission architecture with David Baker at Martin Marietta — the plan that made Mars look affordable by manufacturing return propellant on Mars rather than hauling it from Earth. Elon Musk read Zubrin's book The Case for Mars, which drew him to the Mars Society, and Starship runs on methane and oxygen for exactly the reason Mars Direct specified: it's the propellant you can make on Mars.The conversation covers why Zubrin thinks we should settle Mars, what caused decades of delay, and whether a Starship lands on Mars in 2029 or 2031. We get into terraforming, his response to the Jakosky 2018 study, and what he thinks about the health effects of space travel.We also discuss where he thinks Musk has it wrong, what the first settlement's economy looks like, how used Starships could put a seat to Mars within reach of ordinary people, and why he believes Martian colonies will be politically free rather than tyrannical.The Mars Society: https://www.marssociety.org/Their next convention is at USC, October 22-24: https://convention.marssociety.org/This podcast can also be found here: https://linktr.ee/new_horizons_thepodcast
7 Sept 2026
S2E3: Niklas Anzinger - The Promise of Charter Cities
It now takes around fourteen years and hundreds of millions of dollars to get a new drug approved in the United States — up from about four years in 1962. And despite decoding the human genome, AI for protein folding, and computational biology, the cost of developing an approved drug roughly doubles every nine years. Some call this Eroom's Law: Moore's Law in reverse.We sit down with Niklas Anzinger, founder and CEO of Infinita, which is building a biotech district in Próspera — the special economic zone on the island of Roatán in Honduras. Niklas's core thesis is that the bottleneck on medical progress isn't science, it's law, and that the solution is jurisdictional competition: places allowed to try different rules, so the good experiments can spread.The conversation covers where Próspera currently stands, including its ongoing legal fight with the Honduran government, and why Niklas is now bullish on US federalism and Right to Try laws in states like Montana and New Hampshire. We get into what actually makes clinical trials so expensive, the "invisible graveyard" of people who die waiting for drugs that were never developed, and the standard objection that these rules exist because of real historical harms like thalidomide.We also discuss whether governments should be treated as service providers competing for customers, why he thinks charter cities could be an equalizing force rather than a playground for the wealthy, and his prediction that AI companies moving into biotech will soon want jurisdictions of their own.Infinita: https://infinitavc.com/Próspera: https://www.prospera.co/Infinita Substack: https://substack.com/@infinitacoThis podcast can also be found here: https://linktr.ee/new_horizons_thepodcast
30 Aug 2026
S2E2: David Pearce - Engineering a World Without Suffering: Is it Possible?
What if suffering isn't an unavoidable feature of conscious life, but a solvable engineering problem? Philosopher David Pearce has spent three decades arguing that we could — and morally should — use biotechnology to abolish suffering entirely, not just in humans but across all sentient life.We sit down with David Pearce, co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association (now Humanity+) alongside Nick Bostrom, and author of the 1995 manifesto The Hedonistic Imperative. His recent work with the Far Out Initiative draws inspiration from people like Jo Cameron, who because of a rare genetic mutation lives essentially without physical or psychological suffering — raising the question of whether that could eventually be given to everyone.The conversation covers what an "information-sensitive gradient of bliss" is and whether lower bliss states would just become the new suffering, why so many people find this project instinctively repellent, how you would manage ecosystems if predators no longer hunted, and the timeline for these interventions. We also venture into David's more heterodox views on physics and conciousness, e.g., why he thinks the binding problem is the thing most theories of consciousness quietly ignore.. From the practical question of what we should be doing right now, to the prediction that future generations may look back on Darwinian life the way we look back on the Dark Ages, this episode makes the case for one of the most radical, yet perhaps one of the most reasonable, ideas in contemporary philosophy.David's website: https://www.hedweb.com/ (https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUM4Zm9rVDl0QWhkSGkyRmljLWR5V3dvNEVVLXxBR3JiS2FsUktZRkdyenFLSHppVmlWeVNfZzZGclFUU05pN1Z4SEYzYldiTnE4YV93WkN0VjV4NmpmWFZVbk5tYjZEWnRKZ3liNGNIek12NlBiclpvT1NkR2JmSFB3Q3NwRXBL&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hedweb.com%2F&v=Frwy84OGyII)Far Out Initiative: https://www.faroutinitiative.com/ (https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUM4Zm9rVG1uY0w2NDBQOUhZRFVDbXY4WGVMa3xBR3JiS2FraHYwVGdqLV93TzdkaWEzQlFaZklSSlJIbTFid2QxSDdacnAtUU9FQ0cxUVJQS0xrYUx3T3ZKSGtBRGZxVngzd2pzb1FTSUY5aEQ0a1dIVG9MNlh4VWtBVFJMVmx1&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.faroutinitiative.com%2F&v=Frwy84OGyII)This podcast can also be found here: https://linktr.ee/new_horizons_thepod... (https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUM4Zm9rU0xHdE9FenRrOXpuVXhxVG4tV24zc3xBR3JiS2FtSVJheDNreU9sbWJLcUNSeXpwZXQ0ZWp6X1Q3bHJHMnB6dmZ0YU5OQ0xlamhNRVlLRjY0ekVic0J6cjBpb1pvOFlQZThxNE1YcWh2eVJXYTQ4MzN0YjFkaEhwZUlQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Flinktr.ee%2Fnew_horizons_thepodcast&v=Frwy84OGyII)
22 Aug 2026
S2E1: Aurelia Song - Cryonics, Mind Uploading, and the Science of Preservation
Cryonics has been around since the 1960s, but it's never had a good answer to a basic question: does it actually work? For most of its history, nobody could show that the preservation techniques being sold to dying people were saving anything at all.
In the first episode of Season 2, we sit down with Aurelia Song, founder and CTO of Nectome, who spent a decade trying to fix that. Her technique — aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation — won both the small and large mammal prizes from the Brain Preservation Foundation, prizes the traditional cryonics industry had failed to claim for years. This year, Nectome begins offering preservation to terminally ill patients for the first time.
The conversation covers how you preserve a brain well enough that every synapse survives, why the procedure has to begin within twelve minutes of death, and the surgical technique — deep hypothermic circulatory arrest — that gives us surprisingly strong evidence that memory is structural rather than electrical. We get into the chemistry of fixation, what electron microscopy can and can't tell us, why Aurelia is agnostic about how revival eventually happens, and the questions Nectome asks clients about what should be done with their preserved bodies if the future goes badly.
From the information-theoretic case for what it even means to preserve a person, to whether any of this still matters in a world of rapid AI progress and radical life extension, this episode asks what we owe to the future — and what the future might be able to do with what we leave it.
Nectome: https://nectome.com/ (https://nectome.com/)
Nectome Substack: https://articles.nectome.com/
Aurelia's Lesswrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/users/aurelia
BPF: https://www.brainpreservation.org/
This podcast can also be found here: https://linktr.ee/new_horizons_thepodcast
13 Jul 2025
S1E8: Eric Elmoznino - Could AIs be Conscious?
As AI systems become increasingly sophisticated, one of the most profound questions facing humanity is emerging: could artificial intelligence already possess consciousness? And if so, how would we even know?
In this season finale, we explore the cutting-edge science of AI consciousness with Eric Elmoznino, a PhD student in Yoshua Bengio's lab at the University of Montreal. Eric's research focuses on bridging the gap between current AI capabilities and human-like conscious reasoning, studying how we might build AI systems that truly think rather than just process information.
The conversation covers what consciousness actually means in computational terms, whether today's large language models show signs of genuine understanding or sophisticated mimicry, and how we might design experiments to detect machine consciousness. We discuss the philosophical hard problem of consciousness, recent research on AI systems that claim to have subjective experiences, and what it would mean morally if we created conscious artificial minds.
From the technical challenges of measuring consciousness to the ethical implications of potentially conscious AI, this episode tackles one of the most important questions of our technological age: are we on the verge of creating digital minds that deserve moral consideration?
7 Jul 2025
S1E7: Riley Jackson - Will Your Next Burger Be Grown From Cells? The Cultivated Meat Revolution
Riley Jackson of Ivy Farm Technologies discusses cultivated meat, a revolutionary technology that grows real animal tissue from cells, and explores its potential to transform the food system in this interview.
2 Jul 2025
S1E6: Michael Poland - Could We Prevent a Supervolcanic Eruption?
Volcanologist Michael Poland discusses supervolcano monitoring techniques, eruption forecasting, and potential mitigation strategies, highlighting the challenges of preventing a civilization-ending volcanic event in this interview.
25 Jun 2025
S1E5: Andre Suzanne - Debating a Catholic
Andre Suzanne and the host engage in a philosophical debate about the existence of God, exploring classic arguments like the First Mover and examining the universe's origins in this interview episode.
8 Jun 2025
S1E4: Tamara Bogdanovic - Listening to the Universe: The Future of Gravitational Wave Astronomy
Astrophysicist Tamara Bogdanovic discusses the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna and how it will revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos by detecting gravitational waves from new sources in this interview.
30 May 2025
S1E3: Jeff Hsu - Same-Sex Babies When?
Jeff Hsu, co-founder of Ivy Natal, discusses the revolutionary reproductive technology of in-vitro gametogenesis and its potential to enable same-sex couples to have biological children in this interview.
22 May 2025
S1E1: Zach Furman - Extinction or Utopia? The Future of AI
Zach Furman explores the critical challenges of AI alignment and safety, addressing how to ensure AI remains beneficial and aligned with human goals in this interview.
22 May 2025
S1E2: Aubrey de Grey - Are we the First Generation to Live Forever?
Aubrey de Grey discusses treating aging as an engineering problem, exploring cellular damage and potential therapies, in an interview about achieving radical lifespan extension.
Who has been a guest on New Horizons
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Riley Jackson
Michael Poland
Andre Suzanne
Tamara Bogdanovic
Jeff Hsu
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142
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
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1 ratings
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2 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 32 / 100
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YouTube
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