For the tenth anniversary of Unchained, Laura reflects on the SBF question she never asked, the Charles Hoskinson beef, and why she may be done with strict neutrality.
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Unchained started as a side project by Laura in 2016, with two interviews recorded on Necker Island. Ten years later, it’s become a network of podcasts and newsletters. Haseeb Qureshi of one of most beloved podcasts on the network, The Chopping Block, chats with Laura about everything from its origins to biggest regrets to her interview style and more. Plus, she reveals the one regret she has over a question she never got to ask Sam Bankman-Fried after the collapse of FTX.
Haseeb, managing partner at Dragonfly and an effective altruist himself, traces whether EA's moral framework enabled SBF's fraud, or whether SBF simply had ordinary delusions of grandeur.
The conversation also moves through Charles Hoskinson's disputed PhD claims, the Brian Armstrong interview that never happened, and Laura's emerging conviction that ten years of institutional disillusionment may be pushing her away from the neutrality that built her career.
Host:
Laura Shin, Host / Unchained
Guests:
Haseeb Qureshi - Managing Partner of Dragonfly - https://x.com/hosseeb
Timestamps
🎙️ 1:46 How Unchained started: Necker Island, first guests, and the year-one sponsor
📰 6:46 Why Laura sold her crypto for journalism ethics and why she bought back in years later
😳 10:45 Why the SBF collapse was Laura's biggest shock in 11 years of covering crypto
🧠 14:24 Laura's 'license to play God' critique of effective altruism and Haseeb's rebuttal
❓ 23:32 The question Laura would have asked SBF after the FTX Collapse and why nobody did
🎤 25:16 Why Brian Armstrong has never been on the show and Laura's neutrality code
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⚔️ 32:19 Laura ranks her worst and best Crypto Twitter brawls
🎭 38:33 Why Haseeb thinks The Chopping Block works best as a play, not a roundtable
🤔 47:06 Laura asks whether she should shed journalistic neutrality after ten years
🗞️ 51:06 Why Laura now believes independent journalism is better for humanity
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