The Etan Ilfeld Podcast

From founding billion-dollar companies to reshaping debates on technology and governance, Joe Lonsdale has spent his career at the frontier of progress. Recorded in June 2025 with Etan Ilfeld, this episode dives into the future of AI, national resilience, and what it takes to build and protect the civilization of tomorrow.

Terence Stamp passed away on August 17, 2025.Recorded a decade earlier, this episode is both a time capsule and a tribute to a legendary actor, artist, and seeker.On July 26, 2015 in London, Etan Ilfeld sat down with Stamp for an intimate and wide-ranging conversation. Best known for films such as Billy Budd, The Collector, Superman II, and The Limey, he spoke candidly about his life on and off the screen—his collaborations with icons like Marlon Brando and Laurence Olivier, his reflections on figures from Winston Churchill to the Queen Mother, and his years of spiritual exploration in India and beyond.He also shared insights on health, discipline, voice, and the daily practices that shaped his outlook—wisdom later distilled into his memoir The Ocean Fell into the Drop, published by Watkins.This conversation is shared in memory of an extraordinary artist and human being.

This interview took place on March 13, 2024. David Lynch is a writer and director of groundbreaking films like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. In this interview, he discusses the power of Transcendental Meditation (TM), which he's done every day for over 50 years. He also shares his outlook on life and synchronicity. His creative endeavours include building and designing furniture, recording a solo album, and much more. This interview also references his autobiography Room to Dream published in 2017.

Stephen Wolfram is one of a kind, he's a mathematician, computer scientist, and theoretical physicist. He's also the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, which includes Mathematica and Wolfram alpha. He's written numerous books, including A New Kind of Science, which delved into the mystery of cellular automata, and most recently, What is ChatGPT Doing and Why Does it Work? Etan Ilfeld and Stephen Wolfram discuss a wide range of topics from the future of artificial intelligence to open source versus proprietary software, to the evolution of culture and the future of education.

Many have studied it, written about it and even died for it and yet, it appears, we are mostly blind to the essence of love. Dr Liat Yakir takes us on a fascinating journey through the evolution of love in history and in modern times, showing the importance of hormones, neurons and genes that dictate who we’ll fall in love with and who we’ll reject. A Brief History of Love is Dr Liat Yakir's first book.

Masayuki "Mochy" Mochizuki is a two-time Backgammon World Champion and is widely regarded as the greatest living backgammon player. In this interview with Etan Ilfeld, Mochy shares his insights on the influence of Artificial Intelligence in both games and life, and explains why he believes backgammon is a powerful tool for learning, personal growth, and developing strategic thinking.

Uri Levine is the founder of Waze and Moovit, and one of the world's most successful entrepreneurs. In this interview with Etan Ilfeld, he gives you the ultimate guide to starting and running a business. He is also the author of Fall in Love with the Problem Not the Solution, which is published by Watkins. As the cofounder of Waze – the world's leading commuting and navigation app with more than 700 million users to date, and which Google acquired in 2013 for $1.15 billion – Levine is committed to spreading entrepreneurial thinking so that other founders, managers, and employees in the tech space can build their own highly valued companies. Levine offers an inside look at the creation and sale of Waze and his second unicorn, Moovit, revealing the formula that drove those companies to compete with industry veterans and giants alike. He offers tips on: Raising funding Firing and hiring Understanding your users Making up-scale decisions Going global Deciding when to sell Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution offers mentorship in a book from one of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and empowers you to build a successful business by identifying your consumers' biggest problems and disrupting the inefficient markets that currently serve them.

Tony Buzan believed that anyone can improve their memory, creativity, reading speed and spiritual intelligence. He developed mind mapping as a learning tool, co-founded the memory world championship, the mind sports olympiad, and the mind, body and spirit festival. He also managed to write over eighty books and was the editor of the International Journal of Mensa! His last book, Mind Mapping 2.0, was also a bestseller and has already been translated into 19 languages. Tony past away in 2019, at the age of 76 but not before leaving a very positive impact on the world. The interview you’re about to hear was recorded in 2016.

Oliver Roeder is a journalist in New York City. Recently, he has been a senior writer at FiveThirtyEight and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Roeder holds a PhD in economics with a focus on game theory, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Economist, Slate, Nautilus, Aeon and elsewhere. Beyond the cultural and personal stories, Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. Funny, fascinating, and profound, Seven Games is a story of obsession, psychology, history, and how play makes us human. This interview includes the development of AIs in games, and classic games such as Go, Checkers (aka Draughts), Bridge, Poker, Chess, Backgammon,  and Scrabble.

Julia Cameron is often referred to as the High Priestess of creativity and has authored more than forty books. Her best-selling title is called The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path To Higher Creativity, and has sold over five million copies and has been translated into over forty languages. Julia is also a poet, songwriter, filmmaker, and playwright. She really can do it all. Join me for this inspiring conversation on how to unleash your creative potential! https://juliacameronlive.com/