The Cognitive Revolution
Erik Torenberg and Nathan Labenz
Deep dives into AI research and development with experts from companies like DeepMind and Criteo.
Why we picked this
We picked The Cognitive Revolution for its host’s willingness to work through live problems on tape. Where most AI shows stick to funding rounds and model releases, this one tests claims against reality—running the same medical data through multiple models to compare outputs, or pressing a DeepMind engineer on internal distillation pipelines. The host is an AI consultant who uses the tools he covers, so the show operates from the friction of actual use, not just observation. The result is a feed that treats AI as a developing technology to be evaluated, not a hype cycle to be amplified.
Recent episodes
Babysitting the Machine: Glean's Rebecca Hinds on the Hidden Human Labor of AI at Work
Jun 10, 20261h 46m
AI in the AM — Week 1 Highlights (June 2026)
Jun 6, 20261h 22m
Nested Learning: Ali Behrouz on the Quest for Continual Learning & Illusion of AI Architectures
Jun 3, 20263h
Inside Nathan's Second Brain: Daniel Miessler, Security Expert & Creator of PAI, Audits My AI Setup
Jun 1, 20262h 32m
Your Biggest Lever: Designing your AI Career for Maximum Impact, with 80,000 Hours founder Ben Todd
May 26, 20261h 42m
All Compute Is Food: Palisade's Jeffrey Ladish on AI Shutdown Resistance, Self-Replication & Ecology
May 24, 20262h 13m
The Model Eats the Scaffolding: DeepMind's Logan Kilpatrick & Tulsee Doshi on 3.5 Flash, Omni & More
May 20, 202659 min
Three Kinds of Software Survive: Tasklet's Andrew Lee on Competing to be a Horizontal Platform
May 15, 20261h 33m
Milliseconds to Match: Criteo's AdTech AI & the Future of Commerce w/ Diarmuid Gill & Liva Ralaivola
May 9, 20261h 27m
"Descript Isn't a Slop Machine": Laura Burkhauser on the AI Tools Creators Love and Hate
May 6, 20261h 23m
The RL Fine-Tuning Playbook: CoreWeave's Kyle Corbitt on GRPO, Rubrics, Environments, Reward Hacking
May 1, 20261h 46m
AI in the AM: 99% off search, GPT-5.5 is "clean", model welfare analysis, & efficient analog compute
Apr 26, 20262h 38m
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