Episode notes
Curtis Yarvin has one mission: make Casey Rodarmor try Urbit again.
The last time Casey reviewed Urbit, he called it "fucking insane". Apparently, Curtis took that as constructive feedback.
Curtis joins Casey and Erin Redwing for a live demo of the new Urbit experience. There are broken passkeys, a second attempt on Casey's phone, a $20 Ethereum bailout, and—against all odds—Casey admits that Urbit has actually gotten better.
We also get into Curtis's nearly 25-year quest to reinvent computing, what went wrong with the original Urbit, and his new vision for a "self-driving computer" where AI agents write and maintain their own applications. Casey grills Curtis on performance, programming languages, and why he shouldn't just write everything in Rust.
Plus: anonymous internet communities, censorship-resistant computing, the future of AI agents, and whether the next king will be human or artificial.
Maybe the world just needed to get weird enough for Urbit to work.
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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Why Curtis Yarvin Came to Hell Money
5:05 Usenet, Haikus & Early Internet Culture
7:00 How the Internet Lost Personal Autonomy
11:35 Designing Urbit: Address Space, Funding Model, Lisp-Like Architecture
15:10 Berkeley, Grad School & Early Mobile Computing
17:10 Funding Urbit & Founding Tlon
18:06 What Is Urbit?
22:10 Casey's Thoughts on Urbit
25:50 Live Demo: Curtis Shows Casey the New Urbit
53:54 Curtis Yarvin's Self-Driving Computer Manifesto
1:02:00 Why AI Could Finally Make Urbit Work
1:18:00 When Will Urbit Get AI Agents?
1:28:00 Uncensorable Computing & Internet Privacy
1:39:00 Curtis Yarvin on AI Doomerism & Cybersecurity
1:42:00 Could AI Be King? Politics & Artificial Intelligence
1:49:00 Final Thoughts: The Future of Urbit & AI
