Astral Codex Ten Podcast
The official audio version of Astral Codex Ten, with an archive of posts from Slate Star Codex. It's just me reading Scott Alexander's blog posts.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 25
- Latest publication
- Sep 5, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 10, 2026
Latest episodes
The Quest For Caffeine You Can Have At Night (opens the original)
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Since the beginning of time, mankind has yearned to drink a cup of coffee at 5 PM and go to sleep at 10. But now there's an entire scientific subfield and several companies pandering to this absurd fantasy. Here's a simplified diagram of caffeine metabolism: Caffeine is converted to a different stimulating chemical called paraxanthine by a liver enzyme called CYP1A2, over a half-life of ~5 hours. Then the same enzyme converts paraxanthine into other non-stimulating chemicals that don't matter, o
The Foothills Of Bay Area House Party (opens the original)
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[previously in series: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ] Paul Graham once said that every city sends a message. New York says you should make more money. Berkeley says you should live better. Boston says you should be smarter. People shouldn't decide on a permanent residence until they've lived in several cities and understand their differing psychological effects. San Francisco sends a message too. It speaks it in a cacophony of dissonant voices, some sounding like the hissing of snakes, othe
MacGregor The Bridge Builder (opens the original)
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Old Scottish joke: A man at the bar is complaining: "You see that bridge there? I built it with my own hands! But do they call me 'MacGregor The Bridge-Builder'? No! And I raised five beautiful children! But do they call me 'MacGregor The Child-Raiser'? No! But, you fuck one sheep . . ." Has MacGregor been treated unfairly? https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/macgregor-the-bridge-builder
Open Questions On Open Weights (opens the original)
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Last month, some of Silicon Valley's biggest companies signed an open letter supporting open-weights AI. Open weights AI is like open-source software, where the creator makes the raw code publicly available for free download. It's good insofar as it's the only way an AI can truly be the user's property, as opposed to something that companies like OpenAI or Anthropic temporarily let you use subject to their corporate guidelines and increasingly-nanny-state-like restrictions. If AI becomes the lin
The Beauty Of Settled Science (opens the original)
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Commenters convinced me I made a subtle mis-step in my framing of Psychology Research Is Mostly Fine . My framing emphasized that social priming studies had failed to replicate, but that many other subfields of psychology hadn't. This naturally led commenters to point to failed replications in other subfields. Although none of these were as bad as social priming, few or none were entirely problem-free. Instead of emphasizing the difference between social priming and other subfields, I should hav
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