The Problem with Knowing Things

More from Plausibly Deniable All episodes →

1. 

   8 Oct 2026 · 2 hr 49 min

   Ideological Reflexivity | Oliver Traldi

   Lukas and Saila talk about political ideology, sacred beliefs, cultural shifts, and the changing nature of social norms with Oliver. They explore the rise and decline of wokeness, political tribalism, status competition, the influence of social media on democracy, and why people change their political allegiances. The conversation also covers academic freedom and tenure, modern dating and relationships, AI alignment and existential risk, the future of writing and journalism, AI-generated content, and why universities function more as credentialing institutions than places of…

2. 

   1 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 25 min

   The Diminishing Returns on Telling the Truth

   Lukas and Saila talk about absurdly long game release timelines, predicting movies before they exist, why “deny, deny, deny” and strategic dishonesty increasingly go unpunished, AI safety messaging and media incentives, technological pessimism and Ted Kaczynski’s critique of modernity, LASIK and cosmetic surgery, American healthcare and tort law, Social Security and voting incentives, and Roy Lee’s viral marketing strategy.Sponsored by:Polymarket: https://polymarket.comZcash: https://z.cashCitizenX: https://citizenx.comNetwork Press:…

3. 

   24 Sep 2026 · 2 hr 42 min

   The Audience Problem | Matthew Peterson

   Matthew Peterson, founder of FORUM and The American Mind, joins Lukas and Saila to discuss the fights inside the Trump coalition, why Silicon Valley hasn't won over the populists, and what right-wing media would look like if it cared about building things. They get into FORUM's Joe Lonsdale–Joe Allen debate, the resentment behind the data-center backlash, AI as empowerment or centralized control, privacy, regulation, and whether the government ends up with its own frontier lab. The conversation also covers Peterson's route through academia, Claremont, New Founding, and Blaze; corporate…

4. 

   10 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 38 min

   Game Theory Optimal

   Welcome back to the Plausibly Deniable Experience. Lukas and Saila enter Soycast mode to reconstruct cooking from first principles, prove that bachelor slop is game-theory optimal, and explain why sharing food with roommates produces resentment instead of consumer surplus. We investigate the hidden fat tax, nuclear-powered dishwasher cabinets, and whether the government should pay your grandmother to cook for you.Then: why Twitter got boring, quote-tweet parasitism, synthetic OpenAI equity, and corporate jobs that have quietly become pensions. Doug Leone’s homelessness story becomes a debate…

5. 

   3 Sep 2026 · 2 hr 3 min

   AI News And The Manufactured Internet | Brian Chau

   Brian Chau has figured out how to use AI for journalism without producing AI slop: make the models read mountains of documents, then make humans write the story.Brian is the founder of Effort News, a publication using long-context AI to comb through federal databases, financial records, legal filings, and other giant piles of public data for stories everyone else missed. He joins Lukas and Saila to explain the refugee-resettlement grant investigation that convinced him to launch Effort, why ordinary journalism is often built around stories sources want “placed,” and what changes when you can…

6. 

   27 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 33 min

   The Reindustrialization Of America | Jakob Diepenbrock

   Jakob Diepenbrock is running a hard-tech fund from El Segundo, backing young engineers building defense, manufacturing, robotics, energy, and other critical industries. He joins Lukas and Saila to explain how he skipped the credential ladder, built Discipulus Ventures, raised a fund by treating the process like a startup launch, and why Anduril’s breakout made defense tech the allocation everyone suddenly wanted. They also discuss cost-plus military contracts, drones versus soldiers, DJI’s domination of creator hardware, automated American textile factories, why humanoid robots are TikTok…

7. 

   20 Aug 2026 · 2 hr 3 min

   The Bliss of Confirmation Bias — w/ Covfefe Anon

   Covfefe Anon returns to Plausibly Deniable to discuss the bliss of confirmation bias: how to engineer a viral take, why the edit may be the native medium of the 21st century, and why Angry Birds might be the most fascist movie ever made. Lukas, Saila and Covfefe review films they have not seen, explain why ironic criticism only makes its targets cooler, and consider whether Confirmation Bias is actually a better name for the podcast. The conversation also covers Ryan Gosling, Barbenheimer, James Bond, public-domain superheroes and AI remakes, Joe Biden and the death of the presidency,…

8. 

   13 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 34 min

   Coin-Flipping and the Linguistic Destruction of America

   America has become a coin-flipping economy—and the language we use now punishes anyone foolish enough to take things seriously. Lukas and Saila discuss AI psychosis and a 76,000-contact CRM, the fragmented B2B SaaS economy, travel-authorization scams, tax software, W-2 employment, lawsuits, bankruptcy, fake sponsorships, macro investors with monkey pictures, crypto traders posting inspirational corn after blowing up, and Costco gold arbitrage. Then they turn to the linguistic destruction of America: how “try-hard,” “glazing,” the IDGAF war, and “Woke One” made effort, admiration,…