Episoder
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Most people think that the Red Bull guy Felix Baumgartner holds the skydiving record. But this is not the case.
The real record-holder is Alan Eustace. In 2014, at age 58, the Google engineer rode a helium-filled balloon into the stratosphere and then fell back to Earth from 135,890 feet. Eustace’s fall lasted 4 minutes and 27 seconds, and he broke the sound barrier, reaching a max speed of 822 mph. And now, in a very rare appearance, Eustace has come on the podcast to discuss his adventure.
Baumgartner, who dropped from 128,852 feet, received tons of attention because Red Bull turned his jump into a media spectacle. Eustace, by contrast, came up with the plan for his jump and spacesuit at his kitchen table, paid for a small team to help him build his suit and then did his skydive with just a single reporter there as a witness.
This all fits with Eustace’s personality. He’s quite private and just goes about his work.
It took several months of begging to get Eustace on the show, and I don’t think he’s ever discussed his skydive in this type of detail before.
In this episode, we get into what drove a 58-year-old man to want to chase this feat, the rich history of stratosphere jumping and Eustace’s remarkable career as one of the key Google engineers who built the modern internet. We also hear Eustace’s thoughts on AI and his latest quest to search the ocean floor.
(I apologize for saying that Eustace jumped from space in the episode. It was the stratosphere. I was excited.)
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OUR SPONSORS
SendCutSend
You know who else makes stuff for America? That would be SendCutSend. If you want to celebrate our great nation by building a metal part, then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
Brex
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
Timestamps (they link out to YouTube)
00:00 Intro03:26 Chasing Alan Eustace07:42 Rocket Sleds and Seatbelts10:38 Why Build a Capsule?13:00 Kittinger’s Three Jumps18:11 The Idea Takes Hold21:07 Elon’s Mars Greenhouse23:18 The Jump That Failed28:37 Solving the Death Spin30:07 Racing Red Bull32:26 One Reporter, No Livestream34:12 The Kittinger Coincidence38:26 Not Your Typical Daredevil40:43 Goodbye Videos for His Kids44:35 The First Spacesuit Jump48:37 Two Hours to Space50:53 Google Earth in Reverse54:36 Can I Get a Countdown?58:55 Breaking the Sound Barrier1:00:08 The Crash Landing1:02:16 What It Really Cost1:08:28 The Magic of Gas Balloons1:10:30 Did the Jump Change Him?1:17:03 The VLSI Golden Age1:22:56 Is AI Revolutionary?1:29:20 The Google Translate Story1:35:49 The Fall of DEC1:41:09 Reinventing the Data Center1:48:51 Impossible to Inevitable1:51:40 Inside Commonwealth Fusion1:56:21 Hunting Amelia Earhart2:03:21 What’s Under the Golden Gate?
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe -
Treating cancer remains a crude practice. We cut, burn and poison tumors, and we do all this with relatively little precision around both the initial treatment and our ongoing monitoring of how effective the treatment is. You show up for scans now and again and hope that whatever you’ve been doing has been working.
Ben Woodington - who is an absolute unit - and the team at Coherence have come up with a new way to monitor and treat tumors. They’ve built an implant that, as the name suggests, gets placed inside the body to keep a constant watch on a tumor’s behavior. The chip also brings with it the ability to deliver electrical signals that may blunt a tumor’s growth. We’re talking constant monitoring of a tumor to see if treatments are working and the ability to read and write electrical signals as part of a totally novel bio-tech device.
In this episode, Ben explains how this technology works and, more broadly, he walks us through the emerging field of neuro-oncology or cancer neuroscience. We have a look at Coherence’s device, which is reminiscent of Neuralink’s implant, and rival technology.
Since we recorded this episode, Coherence has begun a study in Australia where its device is being used to record and stimulate brain activity in patients having brain tumors removed. The company has also put out a paper detailing some of its work and has brought on Neuralink’s neurosurgery lead Matthew MacDougall as an advisor and investor.
This episode was a treat for me because I had no idea this type of technology even existed, and because Coherence seems to have made a remarkable amount of progress on its hardware in a short time.
If you can spare a minute, please do us a favor by filling out this ever so brief survey, so we can learn a bit more about our subscribers. Help us be better for you. Thanks!!
OUR SPONSORS
SendCutSend
You know who else makes stuff for America? That would be SendCutSend. If you want to celebrate our great nation by building a metal part, then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
Brex
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
Timestamps (they link out to YouTube)
0:00 Intro3:54 Cut It, Poison It, Burn It. Is There a Fourth Way?6:16 Your Tumor Is Rewiring Your Brain8:29 The Clunky Device That Somehow Already Works11:35 Why Patients Take It Off15:12 Inside the Implant: A Neuralink for Tumors20:32 Could a Chip Replace the MRI?27:13 What the Mice Are Already Telling Them31:38 First Humans, and Why It's Always Australia35:36 "They Should Have Hired a Few Apple Engineers"43:24 Neuralink vs ONWARD: Who's Right About the Spine?47:09 The Idea Nobody Else in Neurotech Had1:01:45 Cut One Nerve and the Cancer Stops Spreading1:06:12 A Cancer Sensor Inside All of Us?1:09:12 Do Cancer Drugs Work Better Before 11 a.m.?1:14:59 If AI Ran Medicine, It Would Build This
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Running a media business is hard. You’re competing for people’s attention. You must produce a relentless stream of new things that are good and different. And you’re often dependent on the ever-changing whims of the public and advertisers.
John Coogan and Jordi Hays somehow made all of this look easy when they started TBPN in late 2024. The daily tech ne…
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Prineha Narang is one of the rising stars of science and the field of quantum technology.
She earned her PhD in applied physics at Caltech, taught materials science at Harvard and now has her own lab at UCLA. The lab focuses on quantum materials, non-equilibrium dynamics, photonics, quantum information science and other easily digestible areas. Beyond her academic career, Narang is a science advisor to the government and a venture capitalist at DCVC.
As you might imagine, we get into quantum computing and quantum technology in this episode. Quantum vs. AI, the US vs. China, when quantum tech will break encryption, quantum sensing and whether or not quantum technology actually has a bright future. The quantum sensing portion of the chat was all new to me and rather astonishing.
Since Narang is also a competitive runner and mountaineer, we provide some top tips on gear because that is just the kind of all-purpose podcast that we deliver.
And, if you can’t get enough quantum computing, come check out our video episode on PsiQuantum building the largest quantum machine in history.
Enjoy!
OUR SPONSORS
SendCutSend
You know who else makes stuff for America? That would be SendCutSend. If you want to celebrate our great nation by building a metal part, then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you!
Brex
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
Narang Lab at UCLA:
https://naranglab.ucla.edu
DCVC:
https://www.dcvc.com
Oratomic (the Caltech neutral atom spinout):
https://www.oratomic.com
Atom Computing:
https://atom-computing.com
Mesa Quantum:
https://mesaquantum.com
Google's work on the cost of quantum factoring: https://blog.google/security/tracking...NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography: https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/post-q...DARPA Quantum Benchmarking Initiative: https://www.darpa.mil/research/progra...Hyperlite Mountain Gear (the Dyneema packs Prineha swears by):
https://www.hyperlitemountaingear.com
Timestamps (they link out to YouTube)
00:00 Intro02:17 The Physicist Who Almost Became a Pro Runner13:39 A Cold Email, a Full Ride, and the Road to Caltech26:15 How Video Game Chips Quietly Took Over Science31:56 Is Quantum Losing the Spotlight to AI?40:50 "I Still Don't Believe in Quantum": Answering the Skeptics46:28 The Google Result That Could Break Encryption53:44 Is It Time to Panic About Q-Day?1:06:48 Quantum Sensing and the Case of Who Sneezed1:17:30 Does Consciousness Run on Quantum Rules?1:22:28 The Advice She Gives Terrified Students1:30:20 So When Does Quantum Actually Get Real?
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe -
A few years ago, I was lunching with a young Australian man who told me he hoped to modernize manufacturing in America. This man seemed enthusiastic and ambitious, but I must confess to holding some serious doubts about the dramatic scope of his plans and his ability to pull them off.
This man was Chris Power, and, well, he did the thing. He’s the founder and CEO of Hadrian, which has a growing empire of mega factories packed full of machines that cut, bend and weld metal. Hadrian has become a workhorse for defense and aerospace and other big industries. It has used software to make it easier for people to control many machines at once and to keep track of the manufacturing process in a bid to add more quality control to industry.
Power has become one of the main players in the Reindustrialization movement and one of its more direct and critical voices.
We did this interview at Hadrian’s headquarters in Los Angeles with factories humming behind us, and we’ll have a video with all the machines soon on our YouTube channel. Chris and I get into his history, Hadrian’s history and the state of American manufacturing.
To celebrate AMERICAN MANUFACTURING and AMERICA and THE WORLD CUP and BEING SUBJECTED TO A BROKEN HEALTH INSURANCE SYSTEM, we’re offering a magnificent 4th of July merch SALE, SALE, SALE. Come get 30 percent off Core Memory’s hats, shirts and hoodies by using the promo code AMERICAAA right here.
OUR SPONSORS
SendCutSend
You know who else makes stuff for America? That would be SendCutSend. If you want to celebrate our great nation by building a metal part, then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
Brex
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
Timestamps (they link out to YouTube)
00:00 Intro
04:07 From Melbourne to a California Factory Floor
07:37 The Thesis He’d Work On for the Rest of His Life
10:00 How America Gave the Whole Farm Away
14:46 Why We Can’t Rebuild Our Own Missiles
19:08 Can You Really Put a Master Machinist Into Software?
24:38 From Missile Parts to the Entire Missile
29:19 The China Problem Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud
33:40 How Far Behind Is America Really?
41:45 “You Can’t Automate This.” Answering the Critics
45:22 Why Can’t Anyone Else Copy Tesla and SpaceX?
53:03 Can America Actually Build Its Own Shenzhen?
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe -
If you spend any time inside a company that actually makes things in the U.S., then you’ll hear about SendCutSend.
Started in 2018, SendCutSend has become an American manufacturing phenomenon. The company makes metal parts for more than 300,000 customers, ranging from giants of aerospace and defense to hobbyists working on their cars. You ship SendCutSend a computer file of what you want built, and it often arrives at your house or factory the next day.
Jim Belosic started the company because he always had hardware side projects running in the background and wanted something like SendCutSend to exist. He spent $750,000 on his first metal cutting machine and then soon discovered that there were lots of other people like him who also wanted something like SendCutSend to exist.
The company has since evolved into one of the few homegrown options that can compete with China in terms of getting metal parts to customers quickly and at a reasonable price.
SendCutSend had been flying under the radar of the wider public for years with Belosic building the business largely with his own money and some smaller investments. Recently, though, SendCutSend raised $110 million from Sequoia, Paradigm, and Stripe founders Patrick and John Collison is now valued at $1 billion.
Our interview with Jim was conducted at SendCutSend’s headquarters in Reno and covers his history, the company’s history and the state of manufacturing in the U.S.
Full Disclosure: SendCutSend is a sponsor of the Core Memory podcast. This interview, for what it’s worth, took place before the company came on as a sponsor when my brain and soul were still objective.
Jim and I subsequently found a lot of overlap in what we care about and how we go about things. Our readers and viewers will know that we’re rather into folks who make things, and so is SendCutSend, so it’s quite the natural fit.
OUR SPONSORS
SendCutSend
Do you make stuff? Do you need metal parts fast and believe in truth and justice? Then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
Brex
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
Timestamps (Links head to YouTube)
00:00 Intro
04:09 What Does SendCutSend Actually Do?
06:01 The Black Market for One-Off Parts
08:31 The $750,000 Bet That Started It All
11:22 From Facebook Software to Cutting Metal
18:02 What on Earth Is a Teslonda?
24:31 The One Thing Nobody Else Tried
30:28 300,000 Customers, From Rockets to His Mom
35:23 Is Reindustrializing America Just Theater?
42:20 Why “Software First” Is a VC Trap
50:22 Is U.S. Manufacturing Stronger Than We Think?
1:03:42 Anodizing, Nevada, and What They Can Build Now
1:13:29 The One Competitor That Scares Him
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe -
Did Kylie and I attend the Midjourney Scanner event? Yes, we did. Did Kylie compare notes on her skincare routine with Bryan Johnson at the event? Also, yes. Meanwhile, I formed more wrinkles by downing cocktails while all this happened.
Since the Midjourney pivot into medical devices and health spas is all the rage, we had no choice but to dive right in on this week’s episode. We also explored the government’s ban of Anthropic’s latest model, the odd tie-up between DeepMind and Eve Online, Noam Shazeer leaving Google for OpenAI, Snapchat’s Snapcrap glasses, the Rafael Nadal documentary (naturally) and a robot that kills fish in the name of better sushi.
Come get it.
OUR SPONSORS
SendCutSend
Do you make stuff? Do you need metal parts fast and believe in truth and justice? Then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
Brex
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
Timestamps (links go to the YouTube channel)
0:00 Intro0:38 Inside Midjourney's Secret MRI Machine15:42 What Does Brian Johnson's Skin Really Look Like?21:14 The First AI Model America Ever Banned36:26 Why Is DeepMind Obsessed With a 20-Year-Old Space Game?45:47 The Transformer Inventor Just Switched Sides49:36 Whatever Happened to "Scaling Hit a Wall"?52:26 Who on Earth Is Buying $2,200 Smart Glasses?1:00:34 Dating in San Francisco, COVID Shots, and the World Cup1:05:32 The Time Ashlee Nearly Pocketed Rafael Nadal's Racket1:16:21 A Robot That Kills Fish the Japanese Way1:19:31 Is Ashlee Turning Republican? Plus Where Batteries Go to Die
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe -
Max Hodak is back.
The co-founder and CEO of Science Corp. joined me for our first-ever live podcast recording, which took place at the Brex headquarters in San Francisco. Thanks so much to all the Core Memory subscribers who turned up.
Max walked us through Science’s technology aimed at restoring vision in the blind, and the company’s new product lines focused on organ transplants and extending the abilities of brains. So, like, totally normal, everyday stuff.
Mostly, we talked about the merger of humans and machines and the progression of bio-tech and AI technology.
We’ve had Max on the show twice now because, for our money, he’s one of the most daring minds in the neuroscience and bio-tech fields, and there’s a decent chance that Science becomes one of the most fascinating companies in the world.
Thanks, of course, to Brex for hosting this event and to you guys for all the great questions.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you like the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
Timestamps
0:00 Intro4:23 One Company or Three? Inside Science's Real Master Plan6:25 Why Is Humanity So Bad at Curing Disease?9:12 Implants That "Work" But Don't: Miracle or Mirage?13:34 Restoring Sight to the Blind: How PRIMA Really Works22:34 The BCI Gold Rush and the Money Problem No One Talks About31:44 Keeping Human Organs Alive Outside the Body36:52 Artificial Wombs and Bodies Grown Without a Brain?41:23 Audience Q&A: Is the AI Biotech Boom Actually Real?47:53 The Bet Every Other Bionic Eye Company Missed56:02 Can a Brain Implant Make Us Superhuman?1:05:04 What Will Surprise Us Most by 2035?
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe -
The theme for this week’s episode is tick, tick, boom.
America is running out of time to catch up with China on manufacturing, and we’re physically incapable of spending an hour together without bringing it up. Release the glorious machines please!! We also go behind the scenes on Kylie’s reporting on motors and actuators — the unglamorous parts that sit in every joint of a humanoid robot, account for roughly 60% of what that robot costs to build, and come almost entirely from China. Her piece profiles the two startups trying to change that. Plus a new proposed bill out of Congress that would kick Unitree’s robot doggies to the curb.
Then the rockets send Ashlee off on his space tangents. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin had an expensive mishap recently when an explosion took out the rocket, its launch pad, and possibly America’s dreams of beating China back to the moon. Ashlee walks through why a pad explosion can be a near-death moment for a rocket company, and why SpaceX — now flying roughly every two days while everyone else is grounded or behind — increasingly just wins by default. Plus the new Starfall capsule, SpaceX’s move into making medicine and maybe chips in orbit, and the wild logic behind a $1.77 trillion IPO.
We also got into the media drama consuming our X timeline: the firing of Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes. Ashlee tweeted an opinion, the trolls came for him hard, and he pleads his case here. We’re a little biased since, well, we’re off building this whole new-media thing ourselves. Will there still be a ticking clock and a man in a suit raking in views twenty years from now? Tune in for what we think, and leave your hot take in the comments.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you like the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
(Ed. Kylie - Don’t think I forgot to make you a playlist. “Lazy Eye” and “New Slang” were key to my college experience. I first crushed on Rivers Cuomo thanks to “Perfect Situation.” Listen to it here, and don’t forget to leave a comment to win tickets to their tour).
OUR SPONSORS
SendCutSend
Do you make stuff? Do you need metal parts fast and believe in truth and justice? Then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
Brex
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
Timestamps
* 00:00:00 – Intro
* 00:02:05 – The American Actuator Crisis
* 00:06:51 – WestMag vs. Atlas Motion Systems
* 00:14:21 – Uncle Sam Pays Attention
* 00:16:47 – Chinese Robot Ban
* 00:21:16 – A Robot in Every Home
* 00:24:29 – Are You AGI-pilled Yet?
* 00:27:23 – Shoutout to Micayla Sortland
* 00:31:01 – Blue Origin’s Explosive Launch
* 00:42:52 – Low Earth Orbit Drugs
* 00:49:42 – The Two-Trillion-Dollar Elon Bet
* 00:57:07 – Founders Fund’s Viral “Mafia” Game Night
* 01:01:23 – Ashlee Braves His Notifications
* 01:06:12 – Legacy Media vs. The World
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A couple of months ago, we went out to Nevada to hang with JB Straubel, the founder and CEO of Redwood Materials and the co-founder of Tesla. JB took us on a tour of Redwood’s massive battery recycling operations and showed us the company’s next chapter, which centers on building battery and solar farms to power AI data centers.
The result of our time with JB is a different style of podcast episode. You’ll probably want to consume this on the Substack, Spotify or YouTube where there’s video, and you can see what’s happening.
If you’re not familiar with Redwood, well, it’s up to big things. Around 70 percent of all the lithium-ion batteries that have reached their end of life make their way to Redwood’s facility where they’re then broken down into their base elements, including lithium, cobalt and nickel. Redwood stands as the largest cobalt producer in the United States and does this all from recycling. As in, zero mining.
Redwood is now taking car batteries that still have some life left in them and clustering them together alongside solar panels to create giant energy storage systems. Naturally, it’s aiming these systems at the AI set first, offering power that does not depend on the grid or turbines or anything else in short supply and high demand.
In this episode, we go through Redwood’s entire recycling process and check out its first storage system. Along the way, we chat with JB about Redwood’s history and the recycling business. It’s a banger.
OUR SPONSOR
SendCutSend
Do you make stuff? Do you need metal parts fast and believe in truth and justice? Then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe -
Jacob Kimmel returns to the show. And he might have cured the hangover and liver disease. NBD.
Kimmel is the co-founder and president of NewLimit and one of the deepest thinkers in the longevity field. His company has been working to reverse the aging process in the body and has seen some stunning results with a new therapy that undoes liver damage in mice. We’re talking old mice that shrug off the effects of too much booze as if they were teenagers and that exhibit recoveries from long-term alcohol abuse.
The results have been good enough to help NewLimit raise another $435 million from the likes of Founders Fund and Thrive Capital. They’re also good enough to have NewLimit kick off a human trial of the therapy next year. And I’ll drink to that.
We discuss all of this on the podcast and then go much deeper on the longevity field, bio-tech and the collision of AI and biology.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you like the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
OUR SPONSORS
SendCutSend
Do you make stuff? Do you need metal parts fast and believe in truth and justice? Then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
Brex
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
Timestamps
0:0) Intro3:50 What Is Epigenetic Reprogramming?7:16 Growing a Whole Animal From One Old Cell13:06 Meet Ambrosia, the AI Hunting for Youth22:44 $435 Million and the Race to Human Trials29:26 The Drunk Mice That Skip the Hangover36:48 Inside the First Human Trial43:14 Will There Ever Be a Hangover Pen?49:39 Beyond the Liver: The Delivery Problem1:03:27 Answering the Skeptics1:12:42 Will OpenAI Become a Drug Company?1:23:53 The Health Story Bigger Than AI?1:35:00 How Far Behind Is the US vs China?1:53:10 Can We Build Computers From Neurons?
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe -
Our guest this week is the renowned science fiction author Hannu Rajaniemi. And he has come to terrify and then perhaps comfort you.
Rajaniemi made an immediate name for himself in literary circles with his debut novel The Quantum Thief. He’s since written a string of novels that explore the directions technology might take in the future, and his work always stands out for its creativity and imagination.
These days, Rajaniemi is putting those skills to very practical use at Red Queen Bio. The company appeared near the end of last year with a focus on AI biosecurity. Red Queen’s main objective is to try and outthink and outflank bad actors and/or AI systems run amok that might unleash bioweapons onto the world. As such, Red Queen must concoct all sorts of dark scenarios and then come up with ways to undercut and defeat them.
Rajaniemi has a background in mathematics, physics and bio-tech and possesses one of those fast-twitch minds that makes the rest of us envious. We talked about his life and career and, obviously, the wild reality we now inhabit.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you like the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
OUR SPONSORS
SendCutSend
Do you make stuff? Do you need metal parts fast and believe in truth and justice? Then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
Brex
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe -
We are back with another episode of Ashlee and Kylie gossiping about the latest in Silicon Valley.
First, a re-cap of our Alexandr Wang interview — his first real sit-down in eleven months — and what it actually revealed about Meta’s AI play. Wang seemed nervous hashing out the strategy in the studio, and we both keep circling the same puzzle: Meta has endless compute and top talent in Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, so why does the model still feel underwhelming?
We get into Eric Schmidt getting booed off a commencement stage at the University of Arizona, which becomes a longer conversation about the generational fury aimed at AI. Everyone Kylie’s age seems to hate it, but is it due to misinformation or legitimate anger about jobs and data centers? Ashlee admits he’s more confused by this moment than anything he’s covered in tech: the predicted Wall Street collapse hasn’t come, the models keep getting better, and the valuations still make no sense.
Then, the news that broke minutes before we hit record: OpenAI won the Musk lawsuit on statute-of-limitations grounds. We dig into whether OpenAI’s shift from open-source nonprofit to for-profit was an original sin or just the only way to pay for the compute. Also, Ashlee’s texts with Sam Altman being part of discovery?!
In more Musk news, Bloomberg reported that Musk’s xAI stiffed staff on the $420 they were promised for feeding their tax returns into Grok. One host would decidedly not trust a chatbot with their financials, and the other already has. We also get into the strange new bedfellows: SpaceX selling compute to Anthropic, a company Musk has long been philosophically against.
We even take you behind the scenes at Core Memory — so study up and watch our latest videos on Phantom Neuro and Starfront Observatories. Consider this your homework on mind-controlled arms and galaxy photography. Essay due on our desk by morning.
Don’t forget you could win tickets to the Weezer tour by leaving an amazing review for our podcast wherever you listen.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you like the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
OUR SPONSORS
SendCutSend
Do you make stuff? Do you need metal parts fast and believe in truth and justice? Then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
Brex
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
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As a freshman, Theo Baker signed up to write for The Stanford Daily on a lark. He thought it might be a fun way to spend some time when he wasn’t busy studying and coding. But then, he turned out to be quite good at reporting and tips started coming his way. One of these tips included information suggesting that there were inconsistencies and perhaps massive errors in past scientific papers tied to Stanford’s then-president Marc Tessier-Lavigne.
Despite warnings to stay away from the story, Baker pursued it and produced a string of pieces that did, in fact, show a long history of shoddy research publications linked to Tessier-Lavigne. The mighty Stanford president, who had been a towering force in the scientific community, resigned by the end of Baker’s freshman year.
Baker has now written a book about his experience and joined the podcast to discuss it.
How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University is three things: a rollicking account of Baker’s takedown of Tessier-Lavigne, an indictment of the start-up-obsessed culture Stanford has fostered, and something of a memoir, describing what it’s like to endure one of the more unusual freshman years any student will ever have.
The bulk of the book focuses on Stanford and what it has become, which is a meat market of young, brilliant minds being wooed by the venture capitalists seeking to acquire their talents. There are investors paying students tens of thousands of dollars for connections to other students and inviting the kids to their mansions and sex parties. All very wholesome stuff.
The book is fantastic. Baker is a rare talent. We had a wonderful conversation. You will enjoy it.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you like the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
OUR SPONSORS
SendCutSend
Do you make stuff? Do you need metal parts fast and believe in truth and justice? Then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
Brex
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe -
Last June, Meta pried Alex Wang away from Scale AI, the company he co-founded and ran, in a deal valued at $14 billion. Zuck could feel Meta fading in the AI race and decided that Wang was the rescue plan. He would work full-time at Meta, assemble a super team and hopefully make the company more competitive against the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic and Alphabet.
Wang has basically been in hiding ever since. He moved from San Francisco to the South Bay to be closer to Meta’s headquarters and has been working non-stop. Last month, the world saw the first fruits of the revitalized AI effort in the form of Meta’s new Muse Spark model. And now Wang is speaking for the first time about the model, Meta’s grand AI ambitions and all the happenings over the last year in an exclusive interview here on the Core Memory podcast.
Wang arrived at our studio sporting a mullet and a powerful whitetail deer camouflage shirt. He was in good spirits and tried his best to convince us that Meta can catch up to its rivals.
We hit on his personal beef with Sam Altman, Zuck delivering soup to AI recruits, the incredible pay packages Meta has been handing out, the vast amount of work Meta still has to do and the Meta AI hierarchy that includes all-stars like Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross and Shengjia Zhao, who seems to have blocked me on X for reasons I know nothing about.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you like the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
Enjoy!
Do you make stuff? Do you need metal parts fast and believe in truth and justice? Then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe -
We’re in the midst of a new nuclear energy boom. Start-ups – both fusion and fission – abound, and the U.S. government has cleared the way to build again. Meanwhile, China is racing ahead with nuclear plans that dwarf those of the rest of the world combined.
As with any boom cycle, there is a lot of hype and a lot to understand if you want to get a handle on what’s real and what’s not. And so, we brought James Krellenstein onto the podcast. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Alva Energy and he’s sort of frightening in how much he knows about the nuclear industry. Like, really. You’ll see.
This episode runs long because we wanted to use it as a chance to go through the past few decades of history and really explain why the U.S. nuclear industry slowed and how the U.S. might fix the situation. We also wanted to explain how all these new technologies work and, of course, explore where China is heading.
Krellenstein is something of a contrarian and thinks many of the U.S. nuclear start-ups are misguided in their approach.
He’s also incredible to listen to. You will enjoy this one. I think it’s one of the best episodes we’ve ever done.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
This podcast is sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
We’ve also brought on a new sponsor. Welcome, SendCutSend!! They are an American manufacturing powerhouse and will help you make your metal parts with speed and skill. Core Memory subscribers can get a 15 percent discount on their next parts right here.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe -
It is time to talk about robotic body parts.
Connor Glass, this week’s guest, has a company called Phantom Neuro, and it makes a human machine interface. By this, we mean a computing device that gets implanted in your body and lets you control a robotic limb with your mind.
The first people using this technology are amputees. If, for example, you’ve lost your arm, you can get outfitted with a robotic prosthetic coupled with Phantom’s implant and then make your prosthetic move by thinking about what you’d like to do with it.
Phantom’s technology competes in places with implants from the likes of Neuralink and Synchron. The big difference is that nothing needs to be implanted in the patient’s brain. Phantom’s implant goes near the site of the amputation and links the robotic prosthetic with motor neurons to convey signals back and forth from the brain. It’s a simpler, faster surgery.
Where this technology is heading in the future is another story. Glass can see a day when humans have elective amputations to become, well, cyborgs.
We get into this weird and possibly wonderful future on the episode, along with Glass’s backstory and much more detail on how Phantom’s implant works.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
This podcast is sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe -
We’re trying something new. Ashlee and Kylie dishing on Tech Land and dishing hard. The Core Memory podcast you didn’t know you needed but now can’t live without.
We dove into our recent sit-down with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman: why Greg seems to have stepped back into a real leadership role at OpenAI, our biggest takeaways from the episode, and why the startup has become its own telenovela.
We had to unpack the state of American manufacturing. Ashlee makes the case that we’re screwed on actuators — the motors that move every humanoid robot — and walks through who’s actually trying to fix it. LA as the secret manufacturing capital, Texas as the emerging center of gravity, SendCutSend (our newest sponsor!) as the closest thing America has to China for fast parts, and the hardware cult in central Texas that you should probably watch our video about.
We get into SpaceX’s $10B partnership with Cursor that may or may not be a Hail Mary for xAI. Whether space data centers are real or window dressing. Why Apple under Tim Cook feels creatively bankrupt and who actually builds the next computer for the AI era. Also, Anthropic quietly becoming a trillion-dollar company while Google somehow escapes scrutiny.
Plus: organs grown in mouse wombs (yes, really — go read the KindBio piece), merch is finally live, and a very special listener contest. Leave the most creative review on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube and we’ll send you two tickets to The Shins/Weezer tour. Do it!!! Er, please!!!!
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
This podcast is sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe -
Sam Altman and Greg Brockman came on Core Memory together for a ten-year look back at OpenAI. It’s also the first time they’ve done a media podcast together.
We juiced every second of our 90 minutes with the cofounders of OpenAI. We got into the company restructuring. Why Sora got cut. Why the social network is dead. The “personal AGI” that knows your calendar and your taste and books the concert ticket without asking. Sam said he’s worried Elon Musk will drop the lawsuit before it gets to court. Read that however you want.
There’s new OpenAI tech on the horizon too — a model that “makes ridiculously great images,” another that’s allegedly better at writing.
Ashlee pressed them on American manufacturing and whether we’re cooked. Sam says OpenAI will go so far as producing their own actuators for robots. We discussed the possibility of a real permanent underclass, the two futures Sam sees, and the third one Greg wants instead. Safety. Anthropic. The Mythos thing. Sam also talked, briefly, about the days after the attacks on his home.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
This podcast is sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
The podcast is also made possible by E1 Ventures, which backs the most ambitious founders and start-ups.
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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe -
Guinness. Sharks. American manufacturing. These are a few of the interests I share with the founders of Ulysses, a San Francisco startup building autonomous underwater drones.
The idea for Ulysses started when one of the four co-founders was on a surf trip and learned how much of humanity depends on a single marine plant: the humble seagrass. He spent a weekend designing a robot to plant it. Two years later, the group of Irishmen — and for diversity, a Scot — have moved well beyond ecological restoration. They’re providing services for the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and selling their drones to the U.S. Navy.
The robots are called Mako. They’re two meters long, weigh about 400 pounds, and can dive 5,000 feet for up to 72 hours at a time. They’re also modular — payloads swap in and out like Legos, so the same vehicle that plants seagrass in Australia one week can inspect a submarine cable in the Baltic the next. A base Mako costs $50,000. Most legacy underwater drones built by big defense contractors can run between $1 million and $20 million each.
On this episode of the Core Memory podcast, we’re joined by Will O’Brien and Akhil Voorakkara, co-founders of Ulysses. They build these drones out of an office in San Francisco — for conservation, for academia, for national defense. They just raised a $38 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz through its American Dynamism fund. We discuss what it actually takes to make robots for the most hostile environment on Earth, why the ocean is about to have its SpaceX moment, and the surprisingly thin line between planting seagrass and defending NATO.
The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.
This podcast is sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe - Vis mere
