The Joe Walker Podcast Creators & Guests

Joseph Walker is a podcaster and co-host of The Jolly Swagmen Podcast.

Yaneer Bar-Yam is a physicist, systems scientist, and founding president of the New England Complex Systems Institute.

Don Watson is an author, screenwriter, former political adviser, and speechwriter.

Joseph Henrich is a scholar, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, and Chair of the department.

David Sloan Wilson is an evolutionary biologist and a Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at Binghamton University.

Vernon Smith is a Nobel laureate economist and professor of business economics and law at Chapman University.

Greek economist, academic, philosopher and politician. He has been Secretary-General of MeRA25, a left-wing political party, since he founded it in 2018. A former member of Syriza, he served as Minister of Finance from January to July 2015 under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Varoufakis was a member of the Hellenic Parliament for Athens B from January to September 2015; he regained a parliamentary seat in July 2019.Varoufakis was born in Athens in 1961 and attended Moraitis School before moving to the United Kingdom, where he studied mathematics at the University of Essex before attaining a postgraduate degree in mathematical statistics at University of Birmingham and a PhD in economics at Essex. He began a career in academic economics, teaching at the universities of Essex, East Anglia and Cambridge between 1982 and 1988. Following Margaret Thatcher's third election victory in 1987, Varoufakis left the UK and moved to Australia, where he taught at the University of Sydney until 2000. After eventually acquiring Australian citizenship, he returned to Greece that year to teach at the University of Athens, where he led a doctoral program and was promoted to full professor in 2005. Following this, Varoufakis had periods of advising George Papandreou and working as the economist-in-residence for Valve before moving to the United States to teach at the University of Texas at Austin. Varoufakis has published a number of texts on economics and game theory, such as The Global Minotaur.In January 2015, Varoufakis was appointed Greek Minister of Finance. He led negotiations with Greece's creditors during the government-debt crisis. However, he failed to reach an agreement with the European troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund) leading to the 2015 bailout referendum. The referendum rejected the troika bailout terms, and the day afterwards Varoufakis resigned as Minister of Finance, being replaced by Euclid Tsakalotos. On 24 August, Varoufakis voted against the third bailout package; in the ensuing September snap election, he did not stand for reelection. Varoufakis has since appeared in numerous debates, lectures and interviews. In February 2016, he launched the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) and subsequently backed a Remain vote in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. In March 2018, he founded MeRA25, the "electoral wing" of DiEM25 in Greece. In the 2019 legislative election, MeRA25 was the sixth most voted-for party, amassing nine parliamentary seats, with Varoufakis himself returning to the Hellenic Parliament.In December 2018, Varoufakis launched the Progressive International with United States Senator Bernie Sanders.

James Damore is a former Google Senior software engineer, who is known for being fired by Google after an internal memo he wrote about its diversity policies was leaked online.

Tyler Cowen is an economist and Professor of Economics at the George Mason University.

Dr. Nicholas Christakis is a sociologist and physician.

Jaan Tallinn is a computer programmer and investor known for his participation in the development of Skype and FastTrack/Kazaa, in 2002 and 2000.

Kevin Rudd is a former politician who was the 26th Prime Minister of Australia.

Peter John FitzSimons is an author, journalist, radio and television presenter. He is a former national representative rugby union player and has been the chair of the Australian Republic Movement since 2015.

Amir Sufi is the Bruce Lindsay Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Matthew Moran is a chef and restaurateur also known for being a guest on various TV cooking shows.

Dave Oliver is the first openly gay premiership rugby coach.

Sam Knight is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes the column "A Letter from the UK."Previously, Knight wrote for The Guardian. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Grantland, and Harper's. His first book, "The Premonitions Bureau," was published in 2022.

Harry Crane is an associate professor of Statistics at Rutgers University.