James King
jamesking.io
James King
@jamesking.io
Digital product designer from London. Founder at https://science-practice.com and co-founder at https://fora.health. Contributor to the Ergodicity Economics research community. https://jamesking.io
Episode 17 of my Audiolog podcast. Richard Thaler, Channing Tatum, Björk, Lady Gaga and Andrew Wiles. audiolog.jamesking.io/2025-11-10/
It was so indescribably beautiful - Audiolog
Richard Thaler doesn't think there is any progress to make on economic theory (strong disagree!). Channing Tatum's Olympic-level effort. A conversation that never happened between Björk and Lady Gaga....
audiolog.jamesking.io
November 10, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by James King
I'm telling my kids this is Socrates and Plato
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScRL...
The Talk: Björk & Lady Gaga
YouTube video by THE TALK
www.youtube.com
November 6, 2025 at 12:12 PM
Really enjoyed this two part interview with @craigmod.com on the Tim Ferriss Show podcast. He talks about being adopted, walking, making books, working at the right scale, living in Japan and lots more.

Part 1: www.youtube.com/watch?v=B87A...

Part 2: www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3dP...
The Real Japan — Craig Mod
YouTube video by Tim Ferriss
www.youtube.com
October 26, 2025 at 3:53 PM
Episode 16 of my Audiolog podcast. Craig Mod on being adopted and Japan, Alan Alda on communication, Andrej Karpathy on learning and Boards of Canada on the PDP-1. audiolog.jamesking.io/2025-10-26/
Ensorcelled by mega scale - Audiolog
Craig Mod on being adopted and Japan, Alan Alda on communication, Andrej Karpathy on learning and Boards of Canada on the PDP-1.
audiolog.jamesking.io
October 26, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Reposted by James King
The biologist's view of how flight works. Courtesy of Rory Maizels. #GenerativeBiology
October 21, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Reposted by James King
Ted Chiang: "In the here and now, a philosophical question might be strictly theoretical, but in the world of a science fiction story, it could have practical consequences. That means there could be inhabitants of that world for whom the answer to that question is hugely important."
Ted Chiang is one of the most insightful science fiction writers of our time.

This volume, which includes a foreword by Chiang and twenty-one short essays by philosophers, analyzes the philosophical significance of Chiang’s popular science fiction.

link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

#PhilSky
October 10, 2025 at 12:07 AM
Love this. Switch Angel live-coding a trance track using strudel.cc. Favourite part is her narration that explains what's going on at the same time as sounding fantastic. New electronic music genre? www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWXC...
Coding Trance Music (Full Narrated)
YouTube video by Switch Angel
www.youtube.com
October 17, 2025 at 11:00 AM
Episode 15 of my Audiolog podcast. Featuring clips from Acquired, Dwarkesh, Moneystuff, Gary's Economics and Jane Goodall. audiolog.jamesking.io/2025-10-11/
What message do I want to leave? - Audiolog
Acquired on Google's Jeff Dean, Nick Lane on mitochondria, Moneystuff on the AI bubble, Gary Stevenson on the problem with the Western intellectual class and Jane Goodall's final message.
audiolog.jamesking.io
October 11, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Reposted by James King
A decade after it was written, I find myself pulling out the @cingraham.bsky.social's gerrymandering explanation to help people understand why California’s Prop. 50 is so important to pass.

wapo.st/3WfcjeB
This is the best explanation of gerrymandering you will ever see
By simplifying gerrymandering we see how problematic it really is.
wapo.st
October 8, 2025 at 12:50 AM
Enjoyed this video from @tantacrul.bsky.social about the design and engineering of the new version of Audacity (open source audio software). Beautifully explained and produced. This link is to the last section, but whole video is great. youtu.be/QYM3TWf_G38?...
How We're Redesigning Audacity For The Future
YouTube video by Tantacrul
youtu.be
October 7, 2025 at 1:29 PM
Latest episode of Acquired is great! It’s a recent history of Google’s successes and failures on AI, but covers most of the main players like OpenAI, Anthropic and others along the way. It’s 4 hours long, like all good podcasts should be. www.acquired.fm/episodes/goo...
Google: The AI Company | Acquired Podcast
The complete podcast (and transcript!) of Google and Alphabet’s AI history and business strategy.
www.acquired.fm
October 7, 2025 at 6:48 AM
Yesterday @aubreyclayton.bsky.social delivered a talk for the Ergodicity Economics seminar series. Aubrey shows how it is possible to derive the equations of probability without linking them to frequencies. A video of the talk is here: ergodicityeconomics.com/2025/10/01/6...
Ergodicity Economics
ergodicityeconomics.com
October 2, 2025 at 9:47 PM
Reposted by James King
New episode of HARD DRUGS!

AlphaFold, ProteinMPNN & other AI tools are transforming biology and drug design.

But how do they work? What can’t they do? And can we use them to make a vaccine against Strep A for the very first time?

In this episode, Jacob and I talk about hacking proteins with AI.
Hacking proteins with AI
open.spotify.com
October 1, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Just spotted that this was shared in the @observablehq.com newsletter. Nice!
Big fan of @observablehq.com and since their preview release of Observable Notebooks 2.0 my team at Fora Health have integrated Notebook Kit into our app. Works really well so far. Quick demo ⬇️

screen.studio/share/TqvyfFbU
Observable Notebooks 2.0 in Fora Health — Screen Studio
Observable Notebooks 2.0 in Fora Health — Created and shared with Screen Studio
screen.studio
September 24, 2025 at 12:27 PM
I'm helping to organise this seminar series. The next seminar will be given by Aubrey Clayton, the author of Bernoulli's Fallacy. Come and join us: ergodicityeconomics.com/event/semina...
Seminar. Aubrey Clayton. “Teaching Probability Without Frequencies” – Ergodicity Economics
ergodicityeconomics.com
September 24, 2025 at 12:05 PM
Reposted by James King
Observable Notebook Kit & Desktop 1.4 now support TypeScript cells, along with TypeScript for Node.js data loader cells. (Just type stripping, but greatly helps interoperability.)
September 16, 2025 at 5:05 AM
Incomplete Open Cubes | James King
jamesking.io
September 10, 2025 at 8:48 AM
Big fan of @observablehq.com and since their preview release of Observable Notebooks 2.0 my team at Fora Health have integrated Notebook Kit into our app. Works really well so far. Quick demo ⬇️

screen.studio/share/TqvyfFbU
Observable Notebooks 2.0 in Fora Health — Screen Studio
Observable Notebooks 2.0 in Fora Health — Created and shared with Screen Studio
screen.studio
September 9, 2025 at 2:28 PM
New blog post: Failing to reproduce Axelrod, 1980

Today I learned that a foundational result in game theory hasn’t been successfully reproduced, and not from lack of trying.

jamesking.io/2025/09/02/f...
Failing to reproduce Axelrod, 1980 | James King
jamesking.io
September 2, 2025 at 8:33 PM
This thread is a really good short summary/review of the Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies.
I enjoyed this very much - thanks for writing it @dsquareddigest.bsky.social !
August 26, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by James King
Notebooks 2.0 is here! 📓🔮 Previewing today:
Notebook Kit, an open file format for notebooks with open-source tooling for generating static sites; and
Observable Desktop, a macOS desktop application for editing notebooks as local files, with a radical new approach to AI. observablehq.com/notebooks/2/
Observable Notebooks 2.0 Technology Preview | Observable
observablehq.com
July 29, 2025 at 2:38 PM
It’s the Aquired podcast format applied to drug discovery. That’s a very good thing.
LAUNCH DAY 🚀

Today I’m launching a new podcast, Hard Drugs, with Jacob Trefethen (@jacobtref.bsky.social)

Our first episode is about lenacapavir — a new HIV drug that blocks infections with an efficacy rate of nearly 100%, and which could completely change the fight against HIV worldwide.
Lenacapavir: The miracle drug that could end AIDS
Hard Drugs · Episode
open.spotify.com
June 11, 2025 at 10:25 PM
Reposted by James King
Excellent video on whether retinol is a scam — there are only few low quality RCTs, why would one still believe in it? — and it’s so good, talking about various incentives and the role of mechanistic knowledge. I’ll have to think about how to fit this into teaching!>
m.youtube.com/watch?v=e6Z5...
Does retinol in skincare even work?
YouTube video by Lab Muffin Beauty Science
m.youtube.com
May 14, 2025 at 4:35 AM
@mmtpodcast.bsky.social your intro to MMT at the start of the latest episode was excellent. Such a good distillation. 👏
March 22, 2025 at 12:51 PM