Technology policy, with the hard parts intact.
Two Think Minimum is a policy conversation show from the Technology Policy Institute, built around careful questioning and expert debate. Recent episodes move from generative AI in scientific writing to spectrum diplomacy, antitrust remedies, GDP measurement, and the economics of AI infrastructure.
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Two Think Minimum is a technology policy show that stays close to the institutions where rules, markets, and technical systems meet. It comes from the Technology Policy Institute, and its recent episodes have the feel of seminar-room conversations with people who have spent years inside the subjects being discussed. The show is not built around hot takes. It is built around careful distinctions. One episode may ask whether generative AI is narrowing language barriers in global science, while another works through the preparation needed for a World Radio Communication Conference. The same feed can move from Google and Meta antitrust remedies to public-interest standards at the FCC, then into GDP measurement and AI data center economics. That range is broad, but the through-line is consistent: how policy should respond when technology changes faster than familiar legal or statistical tools. The conversations often linger on mechanism. Guests explain how agencies choose legal forums, how spectrum negotiations require interagency coordination, why conduct remedies are difficult, and what economists can or cannot infer from prices, productivity, and market structure. Short answers are rare. The show gives experts room to qualify claims, revise assumptions, and admit uncertainty. That can make it dense, but it also makes it useful. Scott Walston, Tom Leonard, Sarah O'Lam, and their guests ask practical questions about implementation rather than treating policy as abstract preference. Recent AI episodes are especially grounded in incentives: who pays, who switches, who benefits, who measures quality, and who is left using old tools for a new economy. The antitrust conversations are similarly institutional, attentive to courts, agencies, remedies, and international credibility. Two Think Minimum suits listeners who want to understand the architecture behind public debates about AI, communications, competition, and innovation. It rewards patience. The payoff is a clearer sense of how technical disputes become policy choices.
Made for: For policy professionals, economists, lawyers, researchers, and serious technology observers who want more than surface-level AI and regulation coverage. It also suits listeners who follow antitrust, telecom, digital markets, and public-sector measurement debates.
What sets it apart: The show pairs current technology-policy issues with institutional memory and economic method. Rather than flattening debates into pro-regulation or anti-regulation positions, it tracks legal procedures, incentives, measurement limits, and implementation constraints.
Podcast of the Technology Policy Institute of Washington, D.C. The Technology Policy Institute is a think tank that focuses on the economics of innovation, technological change, and related regulation in the United States and around the world. Our mission is to advance knowledge and inform policymakers by producing independent, rigorous research and by sponsoring educational programs and conferences on major issues affecting information technology and communications policy.
Google keeps its pieces; you get the harder question of what antitrust enforcers should try next.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A focused look at how ChatGPT may be reshaping the language and evaluation of global science.
Generative AI arrives in this episode as a question about scientific language and the systems that judge it. Scott Walston talks with Georgetown professor Jeff Bacher about research tracking millions of papers for signs of generative AI use over time.
A clear look at the diplomacy behind the radio spectrum modern communications rely on.
Radio spectrum can sound like background infrastructure, but Ambassador Steve Lang makes clear how much diplomacy sits behind a phone working when someone lands abroad.
A focused guide to what the Google and Meta rulings reveal about competition policy.
To Think Minimum uses two disappointing antitrust rulings as a way into the machinery of competition policy. John and Bill Kvasek, former FTC chairman, unpack Judge Mehta's refusal to order Google to divest Android and Judge Boesberg's rejection of the FTC's case over Meta's…
Diane Coyle explains why GDP struggles to capture digital value, depleted assets, and the statistical ground policymakers need around AI.
Diane Coyle turns a familiar technology-policy worry into a clearer measurement problem: the economy is moving faster than the statistics used to describe it.
Shane Greenstein links AI data-center geography to the practical work that turns technology into value.
TPI President Scott Walston brings a useful skepticism to the AI data-center boom by asking Harvard Business School's Shane Greenstein where these facilities land and whether the spending behind them is likely to pay off.
Conservative energy policy with live-wire banter.
Host Jack Rhysider narrates true hacking, breach, and privacy stories from the people involved.
David Pierce and Verge staffers cover AI industry news, gadgets, and tech policy weekly.
Long-form interviews on AI coding agents, infrastructure, and security, plus a recurring SED News roundup.
Founders and engineers on AI coding agents like Claude Code, and supply chain security.
Two Think Minimum asks whether generative AI is changing who can write science in English.
Sarah O'Lam and Scott Walston interview Ambassador Steve Lang about WRC 27, the World Radio Communication Conference headed for Shanghai, China.
["Two Think Minimum's January 5, 2026 conversation with Scott Walston, John Nuechterlein, and Bill Kovacic focuses on Judge Mehta's Google remedy order and Judge Boasberg's rejection of the FTC's Meta case.", "Kovacic says Mehta found Google's exclusivity arrangements with Apple and the iPhone unlawful, but declined to order a Chrome or Android divestiture and instead imposed conduct rules on exclusivity, data sharing, and search syndication.", "He links that caution to generative AI, Trinko, and NCAA Alston, and he argues that U.S.
Diane Coyle says GDP has become a distorting lens for an economy built on data, ideas, patents, and AI, even though it still tracks jobs and incomes.
Shane Greenstein says the AI data-center boom is a bet that billions of dollars in hyperscale infrastructure will create enough new revenue to pay itself back.
Catherine Tucker of MIT Sloan argues that AI monetization—subscriptions, advertising, or business-to-business sales—will determine how economists evaluate competition and consumer welfare.
Two Think Minimum examines whether the Communications Act’s “public interest, convenience, and necessity” standard protects democratic access or gives the FCC political leverage over broadcasters.
Bill Kovacic, a former FTC chair and George Washington Law School professor, evaluates how Biden and Trump antitrust officials have treated big tech, merger policy, and institutional continuity.
Laura Martin of Needham & Company argues that Disney could economically benefit from shutting down ABC after a roughly $10 billion write-off, potentially creating $20 billion in value for a company with a $200 billion market cap.
At the TPI Aspen Forum, Shane moderates Jeff Green, Jim Kolenberger, and Jennifer Huddleston on AI, cybersecurity, privacy, and government surveillance.
Scott Walston interviews NIH director Jay Bhattacharya at TPI's 2025 Aspen Forum about shifting NIH funding toward frontier research and away from incremental science.
The Technology Policy Institute’s 2025 Aspen Forum panel examines whether Biden-era antitrust enforcement replaced economic expertise with populism and whether that approach will persist under Trump 2.
Two Think Minimum hosts Tom Leonard, Scott Walston, and Sarah O'Lam question Jonathan Barnett and Larry White about antitrust enforcement under the Trump administration.
Bill Kovacic and John Nexterline examine why antitrust enforcement against big technology platforms has continued from the Biden administration into President Trump's second administration.
On To Think Minimum, Matt Perault of Andreessen Horowitz defines 'little tech' as startups that may have only a founder and an engineer while competing against firms with hundreds of policy staff.
Gordon Krovitz, co-CEO of NewsGuard, explains how the company rates 35,000 news and information sources against nine journalistic criteria, including ownership disclosure and the separation of news from opinion.
Christian Catalini, founder of the MIT Crypto Economics Lab and co-founder of LightSpark, explains how stablecoins could enable real-time cross-border payments between wallets in countries such as the United States and Mexico.
Tom Leonard, Scott Walston, and Sarah O’Lam interview Nicholas Pettit about Mario Draghi’s 2024 report on European competitiveness.
On November 6, 2024, To Think Minimum examines prediction markets with John Phillips, CEO of Aristotle, and David Mason, General Counsel of Aristotle.
Ajay Agrawal tells Technology Policy Institute President Scott Walston that AI can be understood as a drop in the cost of quality-adjusted prediction.
Ellen Goodman, principal author of NTIA's March 2024 AI Accountability Policy Report, explains how 1,400 public comments shaped its approach to accountability.
On Two Think Minimum, MIT Sloan professor Catherine Tucker argues that economists should understand artificial intelligence as prediction whose costs are changing, not simply as robotics or “Terminator” technology.
Caroline Seacott, an Associate Professor at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, explains how Loper Bright's observer-payment dispute under the Magnuson-Stevens Act could reshape the meaning of congressional silence.
Scott Walston and Tom Leonard interview Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle about the House legislation requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a U.S.
Scott Walston and Sarah O'Lam interview Xiaomeng Lu about US-China technology policy, focusing on the CHIPS Act and strategic competition in semiconductors and AI.
Michael Katz discusses the Google antitrust case, its background, and key issues in a TPI podcast.
Professor Eugene Volokh discusses his law review article on liability for false and damaging AI-generated outputs, using a Bing search example.