Leadership conversations often center on feedback, culture, and performance. But sometimes the most important leadership questions are bigger:
What future are we building?
Who gets to decide?
And what stories are shaping our choices?
In this episode of the Radical Candor Podcast, Kim Scott and Amy Sandler sit down with astrophysicist and science journalist Adam Becker, author of More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity.
It’s a conversation about AI, billionaires, space colonization, effective altruism—and the powerful myths driving Silicon Valley’s vision of the future.
Watch the episode:
In this episode of the Radical Candor Podcast, Kim Scott and Amy Sandler sit down with astrophysicist and science journalist Adam Becker, author of More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity.
Becker unpacks three dominant myths shaping Silicon Valley’s vision of the future:
These aren’t fringe ideas. Becker argues they actively motivate companies and leaders across the tech industry. Yet he challenges both their scientific plausibility and their moral framing.
At the heart of the conversation is a bigger question:
Is this future even possible? And even if it were, would it be good?
Becker critiques the ideology of “more everything forever”—the belief that endless growth and technological expansion are both inevitable and desirable. As a physicist, he reminds us that the natural world has limits. Markets are tools, not laws of physics.
The episode also explores:
The conversation ends not with apocalypse or utopia- but with something grounded and human: read physical books, go outside, pull weeds, plant wildflowers, and reconnect with the world as it is.
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[00:00:03] Kim Scott: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Radical Candor Podcast. I'm Kim Scott.
[00:00:09] Amy Sandler: I am Amy Sandler. Today we are talking with science journalist and astrophysicist Adam Becker. Adam has a PhD in computational cosmology, which, if you're like me, you had to look up. I'm impressed already. Adam's first book is called What Is Real? It was about the unfinished quest for the meaning of quantum physics.
[00:00:32] And then Adam moved on to an even easier topic for his newest book, and I will quote the subtitle: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity. Yes, you are very curious about the book title. It is More Everything Forever. We're going to be talking about this new book, More Everything Forever, which you all have got to check out.
[00:00:56] It is a deep dive into the stories that Silicon Valley is telling us about the future, why these stories matter for all of us, whether we work in tech or not. We are so thrilled to have you, Adam.
[00:01:09] Kim Scott: Welcome, Adam. Your book is absolutely one of the best books I read all year. I can't tell you how much I admire what you did. You went deep on some seriously disturbing ideas, some of which were transhumanism, effective altruism, long-termism. These ideas have taken hold here in Silicon Valley. You went deep enough to understand them so that you could challenge them, and yet you were still able to have compassion for people with whom you disagree vehemently.
[00:01:45] That is what radical candor is in a nutshell. So welcome, Adam.
[00:01:50] Adam Becker: Thank you for having me, Kim and Amy. This is a delight to be here.
[00:01:55] Amy Sandler: This book, as Kim said, was one of her favorite books, and I agree. I had the audio and now I have the hard copy because I want to keep going back to it. We'll get into what you cover, but what actually motivated you to write this book?
[00:02:14] Adam Becker: That's a great question. The short answer is that I've lived out here in the San Francisco Bay Area now for well over a decade, and I just got tired of all the nonsense that I was seeing. I got invited to one too many parties where people were saying things to me, and I thought, that's definitely not true.
[00:02:37] The longer answer is that I was struck by the shallowness of certain kinds of criticism of the tech industry that I was seeing. I was seeing a lot of accurate and hard-hitting criticism based on politics, on the social and psychological impact of tech products. All of that was accurate and good. I was glad people were raising those points. But it didn't seem like enough.
[00:03:09] Yes, these products are really bad for us, but the entire tech industry is enthralled to these ideas about what the future holds: superintelligent AI, space colonization. As I say in the first sentence of the book, the dream is always to go to space and live forever. What I noticed was that there wasn’t enough criticism pointing out that these guys don’t actually know what they’re talking about when it comes to science and technology.
[00:04:30] There’s this assumption that Elon Musk is a terrible person, but when he’s talking about space, he knows what he’s talking about.
[00:04:32] Adam Becker: It’s not true at all. So I started thinking about that. There was a particular incident that got me thinking more deeply. I allude to this briefly in the book. I found an online magazine publishing articles saying that evolution wasn’t true—pseudoscientific nonsense. It was being funded by Peter Thiel.
[00:05:14] That got me thinking. The political situation in the U.S. was getting worse. I was starting to see tech billionaires get more involved. This was before Musk openly supported Trump, but Thiel already was. Musk was railing against coronavirus restrictions and shelter-in-place orders.
[00:05:52] I thought, these guys really don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to science. All the things they’re saying have political implications, but they’re in service of this idea of the future that doesn’t work and comes from science fiction, not science.
[00:06:03] Kim Scott: I feel like there’s an idea virus here in Silicon Valley, and your book is the inoculation.
[00:06:06] Adam Becker: That was the idea.
[00:06:17] Amy Sandler: For folks who haven’t read the book yet, what are some of these stories—especially for people who might not be well-versed in science fiction? Many of these ideas seem to come from science fiction. What are some of the myths that have been latched onto?
[00:06:29] Adam Becker: The big three myths are space colonization—huge numbers of humans living and building civilizations in deep space; superintelligent, godlike AI with powers beyond anything humanity could muster; and the singularity—the idea that technology will reach a point where civilization gains unimaginable powers, allowing humans to transcend biology, upload minds into computers, and live forever in space with an AI god.
[00:08:20] Kim Scott: Which is never going to happen.
[00:08:21] Adam Becker: It’s never going to happen. But that is why OpenAI exists. That is why Anthropic exists. That is why SpaceX exists. It’s why Neuralink exists.
[00:08:48] They are open about this. They believe this is the inevitable future. If you don’t see it coming, they say you lack vision. I think they lack critical thinking skills.
[00:09:15] Adam Becker: Musk has said, “Science fiction should not remain fiction forever.” That’s a direct quote. First of all, it’s fiction for a reason. Some of it can’t be done. Second, which science fiction? Much of it is dystopian.
[00:10:05] Adam Becker: Peter Thiel once said he thought the entire plot of the original Star Wars was motivated by Han Solo owing Jabba the Hutt money. That is not the animating principle of the story.
[00:11:52] Adam Becker: Let me read something from the book. One of the epigraphs quotes a sci-fi author: “In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale.” Tech company: “At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi novel Don’t Create the Torment Nexus.”
[00:13:34] Kim Scott: When I visited effective altruism headquarters, there was a whiteboard that said, “After all the world’s problems have been solved, what will you do?” Someone wrote, “I’ll read The Tempest.”
[00:14:06] Adam Becker: The Tempest is a story about how you can’t solve everything with magic. If you want to rejoin civilization, you have to break your staff and drown your books so you can live with people.
[00:15:05] Adam Becker: You can’t think clearly about the world without taking time to engage with great art.
[00:15:43] Amy Sandler: Why did you choose the title More Everything Forever? And what’s the relationship between capitalism and these myths?
[00:16:22] Adam Becker: Once I understood the structure of the book, I realized the animating principle was that these people want more of everything forever. The idea that it’s possible—and good—to have more everything forever drives the ideology I call technological salvation.
[00:17:26] As for capitalism: markets are a tool humans created. They are not fundamental laws of physics. Markets are good for some things, just as a hammer is good for hammering nails. But you wouldn’t use a hammer for everything.
[00:19:39] If something is broken and you hit it with a hammer, and someone says that won’t fix it, you call them a communist. That’s the logic.
[00:20:26] If you believe the world must run on completely unregulated markets, that logic will lead you to want more everything forever.
[00:23:55] Adam Becker: You can’t escape politics by going to space. Politics happens the minute you have more than one person in a room.
[00:35:00] Adam Becker: I end the book with a call to eliminate billionaires—to make it impossible to have that much money. It clearly does something bad to the human brain. It’s like the One Ring. It poisons you.
[00:42:45] Adam Becker: Eric Schmidt said we’re never going to meet our climate goals anyway, so we should burn as much carbon as possible to build AI, which will magically solve climate change. Even if that worked, the AI would say, “If you wanted to solve climate change, you shouldn’t have built me.”
[00:48:42] The biggest problems facing humanity are not failures of intelligence or technology. They are collective action problems—political and social problems.
[00:50:56] Adam Becker: All I want is a world where we treat everybody like people. I don’t see why that’s radical.
[00:53:18] Adam Becker: The most common question I get is how I stayed sane writing this book. The answer is maintaining a connection to the natural world. Turning off my phone. Hiking. Having face-to-face conversations.
[00:56:16] The solution to loneliness is not synthetic friends. It’s authentic social connection. And nothing with a screen can provide that.
[00:58:14] Adam Becker: Carl Sagan said that if we find even microbial life on Mars, we should leave Mars alone. Mars should be left for the Martians.
[01:00:13] He tried to instill deep appreciation for how special Earth is. I hoped to do something similar in this book.
[01:01:22] Adam Becker: Buy the hardcover and take it into the woods. Physical books don’t need batteries. They don’t glitch. You can write in the margins. And no one is reading over your shoulder.
[01:03:42] Kim Scott: And if you have extra books, give them to your local library.
[01:04:12] Amy Sandler: Visit radicalcandor.com/podcast for show notes. If you liked this episode, rate and review wherever you’re listening. Share the episode and share Adam’s book. If you have feedback or questions, email podcast@radicalcandor.com.
[01:04:33] Kim Scott: Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Adam.
[01:04:38] Amy Sandler: Thanks, Adam.
[01:04:42] Kim Scott: Take care.
[01:04:42] Amy Sandler: Bye-bye.
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The Radical Candor Podcast is based on the book Radical Candor: Be A Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott.
Episodes are written and produced by Brandi Neal with script editing by Amy Sandler. The show features Radical Candor co-founders Kim Scott and Jason Rosoff and is hosted by Amy Sandler. Nick Carissimi is our audio engineer.
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