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This week’s guest is Brent Underwood, the proud owner of Cerro Gordo Mines. That’s right. In 2018, Underwood bought the ghost town of Cerro Gordo, located near Death Valley in California, and its old mining operations for $1.4 million. This was a legit crazy thing to do. But, here we are eight years later, and Underwood has turned his sidequest into his mainquest, and he now has a booming YouTube channel in which he documents life at Cerro Gordo. This includes exploration of the mines and Underwood’s attempt to restore the ghost town into a habitable site that people can visit. You will notice (if you’re viewing instead of just listening) that the set for this podcast is awesome. That’s because we went to visit Underwood a couple of months back for this podcast and for a video that will be coming out on our own booming YouTube channel. We spent a couple of nights at Cerro Gordo, living in an old miner’s house, and we explored the grounds with Underwood. As you’ll hear in this episode, Cerro Gordo was a long-running silver mine and, at its peak, had 4,000 people living in the mountains and working the many miles of mines. It’s quite well preserved. You can see the old brothel, theater, and store. And Underwood has been rebuilding the American Hotel that once served as the centerpiece of the town. Underwood does crazy things at Cerro Gordo. He’ll lower himself down the main mine shaft and then spend days underground. He’s used his exploring to help build out the history of Cerro Gordo and wrote an amazing book about Cerro Gordo and his adventures. You should probably buy it and read it. We obviously get into all of the above with Underwood, who is a wonderful storyteller and a good dude. SPONSOR Some of you will be wondering, “Is this episode sponsored?”. Yeah, it is. By the wonderful people at Brex. I’ve worked at large companies like The New York Times and Bloomberg, and their expense systems were terrible. Brex’s expense management systems, by contrast, are fantastic. AI agents run around taking care of tons of stuff for you and give you back your time. Your company should switch to Brex to make life better for everyone. Find out more here. Timestamps 0:00 Intro4:53 How to Buy a Town11:29 The American Hotel Burns17:36 History Meets the YouTube Algorithm22:46 Five Days Below Ground28:29 The West Was Brutal33:33 Who Actually Got Rich?40:37 Where the Water Went44:31 California Versus the Hotel49:14 Can a Ghost Town Live? 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, some people put me in a van and drove me to the edge of Moscow. And by “the edge of Moscow,” I mean where things started to get a bit rural. We turned off a road and went toward what looked like a modest farmhouse with a shed. After exiting the van, we entered said shed and found two large metal containers that were full of human bodies and heads along with the bodies of many animals, including dogs, cats, and a hummingbird. Have a look. These bodies were being cryopreserved with liquid nitrogen in the hope that they could be reanimated at some point in the future when science has advanced and more illnesses can be cured. Cryopreservation/reanimation is not a new idea. It’s been contemplated in literature for hundreds of years. Alcor, perhaps the most well-known cryopreservation company, was founded way back in 1972. The field, though, has suffered from questionable science and been seen as a scientific backwater. Our guest this week wants to add scientific, intellectual, and pragmatic rigor to the cryopreservation field or what he calls the biostasis field. He’s Dr. Emil Kendziorra, the founder and CEO of Tomorrow Bio. Tomorrow Bio has a team that will show up at the end of life and prepare someone’s body for preservation and then store their body in a Swiss vault. In this episode, we get into the mechanics behind Tomorrow Bio and the pros and cons of biostasis. Kendziorra is a sober, deep thinker on this topic and a great listen. OUR SPONSOR BREX The Core Memory 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. TIMESTAMPS (they link out to YouTube) CHAPTERS0:00 Intro5:08 Cryonics Without the Ice8:45 Heads in a Russian Shed12:26 Longevity's Backup Plan19:39 The First Hours After Death30:11 Funding a Second Life37:15 Does Cryonics Actually Work?43:40 Preserving Brains Without Bodies50:52 Why Not Reverse Aging?55:21 Can the Company Outlive You?1:03:37 Waking Up Centuries Later1:08:28 The Problem of Rewarming1:15:14 Selling Hope Without Overselling Science1:19:40 Would Longer Lives Be Better?1:23:42 Elective Cryonics and Family Life 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’ve heard a lot of moonshot ideas on this podcast, but this week’s guest may have the most impossible one yet: making tech more cultured. In this episode, Ashlee sat down with Anna Gát, a Hungarian philosopher, playwright, and founder of Interintellect, a platform for hosting intellectual conversations online. She calls herself “the bridge” between the humanities, academia, and the tech world, which in practice means getting engineers to read Goethe. Gát grew up on a TV set in communist Hungary. Her parents made the country’s biggest shows in an era when there was one channel available on Saturdays. In 2015, a family crisis left her starting over in London with two suitcases, one of them for books. She rebuilt her life on Twitter, DM’d Sam Altman, and got him as her first meeting on her first trip to America. Before Interintellect, Gát did just about every wordcel job you can do: playwright, screenwriter, script doctor. She holds graduate degrees in philosophical aesthetics and linguistics, currently splits her time between SF and NYC. The company that would become Interintellect began in London in 2016 as an AI tool for helping “humans have categorically better conversations.” On the side, she angel invests in aerospace. The two get into why X was once the French café that could publish you and is now a place you can’t get discovered from, why the East Coast’s healthiest, wealthiest people are so convinced the future is doomed, and the duty AI builders have to explain themselves. Gát also admits, on the record, that she’s a sucker for Elon Musk’s syntax. Ashlee tries to convince her that kids don’t read books anymore. She tries to convince him Silicon Valley should fund symphonies. IN THIS EPISODE Interintellect — https://www.interintellect.com The Hope Axis — https://twitter.com/TheHopeAxis Anna on X — https://x.com/TheAnnaGat OUR SPONSORS BREX The Core Memory 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. 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. TIMESTAMPS 0:00 — Intro 2:56 — The science of dialogue 6:34 — Growing up famous in communist Hungary 13:06 — Nobody saw 1989 coming 16:43 — Losing everything in 2015 20:57 — Silicon Valley as the new Ellis Island 28:38 — Balaji's DAO campaign33:42 — Elon's syntax 39:18 — Why does America hate tech? 46:25 — Engineers took over the world 53:20 — Have LLMs solved language? 1:01:29 — Are books dying? 1:06:51 — No Pop-Tarts 1:10:46 — Who funds culture? 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

In this episode, Ashlee sits down with Joel Jean, CEO of Swift Solar, a San Carlos-based startup trying to create new solar technology using perovskite. We previously published a story about Swift, if you’re wondering what the f*ck perovskite is! In short, it’s a synthetic crystal that turns sunlight into electricity better and cheaper than the silicon currently used in solar panels. This stuff is finicky though, and experts have doubts, as they always do — but Jean explains how Swift is closing in on a solution. “Everyone and their mom can make a perovskite that’s decently efficient,” Jean says, but no one seems capable of making it as durable as silicon. The material degrades under heat, light and its own moving ions. This is obviously not the ideal situation for an energy grid. So why not stick with silicon? Well, the laws of physics haven’t quite blessed it. A silicon panel can turn, at most, about 30 percent of the sunlight it gets into electricity, and today’s panels usually churn out about 25 percent. If they’re able to successfully layer perovskite on top, that pushes the ceiling to 45 percent. These are fabulous gains in the solar nerd world, and we could really use some innovation here because we are one very, very energy-hungry species. And of course, this is Core Memory, so you know where this is headed: China and AI. China makes 90 percent of the world’s solar cells and wafers, installs more panels than the rest of the planet combined, and builds the machines that nearly every U.S. solar factory runs on. (Except for Swift, apparently!). That dependency is, as always, a risk. Meanwhile, AI data centers need more power than God, and the folks making models are happy to welcome any new gains in that department. Some are even putting their money on it; renowned AI researcher Jeff Dean has invested Swift. Charge your crystals, folks. We’re perovskite-maxxing. IN THIS EPISODE This Is The U.S.’s Last Chance At Solar — Core Memory Swift Solar Meyer Burger acquisition Joel's "solar for AGI" piece OUR SPONSORS BREX The Core Memory 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. 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. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 — Intro 04:56 — How The U.S. Lost Solar1 2:36 — Maxed-Out Physics 20:03 — How China Won 27:53 — What Is Perovskite? 36:52 — The 30-Year Problem 45:41 — China's Scale-First Bet 51:00 — The Meyer Burger Deal 58:50 — Can Solar Power AI? 1:09:43 — Patents, China And The Machines 1:22:15 — Solar For AGI 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

This episode is nerd catnip unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Ashlee sat down with Seamus Blackley, who you might know as the man who talked Microsoft into building the Xbox. Nowadays, you can find Blackley in a Pasadena laboratory making the world’s best chocolate. If you’re just here for the cacao, well, we did a video on it. Blackley grew up in rural New Mexico and studied electrical engineering, then physics, at Tufts University. He spent years working on titles you know and love, like Madden, and ones perhaps you don’t, like Jurassic Park: Trespasser, a flop notorious enough to earn him his first death threats. Also, Ashlee is away for a few weeks on a big video shoot in India, which means I, Kylie, will be filling in on all the writing stuff. Now that you know who the voice of God is here, let’s get into the most important thing — what I think about this episode! Blackley is totally captivating and eccentric, exactly the way you’d expect a physicist who builds holograms and runs a chocolate farm to be. He got deep in ways I didn’t expect, about his abusive childhood and what it was like working at Microsoft. I particularly loved this line from him: “The khaki pants wearing guys, the lifers, they show up and we had fought them to keep them away from [the Xbox]. The more we kept them away from it, the more consumers got excited because we were talking about things with the power of Microsoft and not the b******t of Microsoft. That was incredibly effective. But it was exhausting and it was a conscious effort of will to fight it. At some point it was going to destroy me and I had to stop.” Blackley seems to talk at 2x speed naturally, and I’m grateful for it, because he has no shortage of brain-exploding lore to fit into these 80 minutes. He describes his whole career as “one long tale of woe and rapid dancing in the face of failure,” which is a very modest way to describe inventing the Xbox, shepherding Guitar Hero into existence, and abducting Jimmy Fallon. You’ll have to listen for that last one. IN THIS EPISODE Core Memory on Seamus Blackley's chocolate experimentSmithsonian Magazine on Blackley's ancient Egyptian bread projectPacific Light & Hologram OUR SPONSORS BREX The Core Memory 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. 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. TIMESTAMPS * 00:00:00 — Intro * 00:02:38 — Why Tech Hype Sucks * 00:07:37 — Why Talking About Your Work Kills It * 00:10:42 — Early Life, Physics, and Jazz * 00:21:57 — Fermilab & Academic Politics * 00:30:47 — Building the First 3D Video Game Engines * 00:34:18 — Early Game Development Culture * 00:38:37 — DreamWorks & Working for Steven Spielberg * 00:44:32 — Joining Microsoft & Pitching the Original Xbox * 00:54:04 — Fighting Corporate Bureaucracy to Save Xbox * 01:03:42 — Abducting Jimmy Fallon * 01:07:20 — Baking Bread with 4,500-Year-Old Egyptian Yeast * 01:10:40 — Growing Cacao Trees in a Lab * 01:17:09 — Accidentally Launching a Chocolate Empire 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 have been promised glorious gene therapies for decades. This is supposed to be the stuff of reprogramming the body to blunt or cure diseases with something approaching a permanent fix. While gene therapy progress has been made, treatments remain rare and expensive, and it’s very tough to get the therapies to go into the desired parts of the body. Our guest this week is here to help. He’s Adrian Veres, the chief scientific officer and co-founder of Dyno Therapeutics. Founded in 2018, Dyno has been pursuing new and better ways to deliver gene therapies via modified viruses. Dyno was well ahead of the AI meets biotech curve, using AI models to design new viral shells that let genetic instructions get into the right places of the body. For the moment, Dyno has focused on creating delivery mechanisms for companies working on therapies aimed at the brain, eye and muscles. In this episode, we talk with Veres about the promise and perils of gene therapy technology, some of the most recent cases where gene therapies worked and how Dyno’s technology came to be and functions. And we get Veres’s take on whether or not we’re entering a golden age of biotech on the back of AI. Due to some poor camera work on my part, Veres, who is a tall man, looks particularly giant. Fear not, he did not harm me and was actually quite nice. OUR SPONSORS BREX The Core Memory 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. 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. IN THIS EPISODE Dyno Therapeutics: https://www.dynotx.com/ The FDA framework for individualized ultra-rare disease therapies: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-launches-framework-accelerating-development-individualized-therapies-ultra-rare-diseases Core Memory on Baby KJ and the new gene therapy playbook: https://www.corememory.com/p/the-new-gene-therapy-playbook-babykj Core Memory’s gene-editing conversation with Eryney Marrogi: https://www.corememory.com/p/the-state-of-gene-editing-eryney-marrogi Core Memory’s podcast with Jennifer Doudna: https://www.corememory.com/p/the-present-and-future-of-gene-editing-jennifer-doudna-crispr TIMESTAMPS (they link out to YouTube) 0:00 Intro 3:34 Why Does Gene Therapy Still Feel Rare? 7:38 What Is Gene Therapy, Really? 14:48 How Do You Deliver DNA? 17:47 Turning a Virus Into Medicine 21:53 The 700-Letter Box 28:20 Testing a Million Designs at Once 34:28 Why Does the Liver Steal the Cure? 36:43 Getting Past the Brain’s Bouncer 43:04 Is Delivery the Missing Piece? 47:24 Can Million-Dollar Therapies Get Cheap? 52:10 Did Dyno Start Too Early? 1:00:03 Was Biology Oversold? 1:09:36 Will We Cure Every Disease in 10 Years? 1:18:20 Should You Build Your Own Peptide Stack? 1:20:55 Is China Winning the Biology Race? 1:27:40 What Baby KJ Changed 1:32:34 Should the Next Generation Study Biology? 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

Over the past five years, Alex Colville has become one of the most influential figures in the longevity and aging fields. There’s a decent chance you have not heard of him, which is a bit by design. Unlike many longevity gurus, Colville does not seek much attention and, for the most part, operates in the background where he’s been doling out many millions of dollars in investments. Today, Colville runs age1, a venture capital firm that has backed the likes of Loyal, Science, Conception and a bunch of other companies listed as “Stealth” on its web site. Colville is the guy I call to reality check whatever is being hyped up in Longevity Land. He studies the actual science. He reaches sober conclusions. He’s honest about where the technology is today and what might show promise in the future. In this episode, we get into Colville’s takes on GLP-1s, partial cell reprogramming, China’s biotech rise, the odd animals teaching us the most about longevity and, well, the prospects of living forever. We also get into Colville’s life and unusual rise as the longevity kingmaker, and, of course, we discuss keeping a human head alive without a body because what choice did we have. 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 Intro2:41 Meet the Switzerland of Aging8:01 Why Did Aging Become the Enemy?10:28 What Can an Axolotl Teach Us?26:23 What Works in Worms, but Not Yet in Humans?30:16 The Longevity Expert Who Takes Nothing34:37 Are GLP-1s Already Anti-Aging Drugs?44:14 Can We Make Old Cells Young Again?58:48 What Do Hibernating Squirrels Know?1:05:02 When Does Medicine Become an Upgrade?1:09:57 Has CRISPR Lived Up to the Hype?1:12:43 What Are Altos and Calico Really Doing?1:20:24 The Breakthrough That Could Change Everything1:25:14 Will China Win the Biology Race?1:28:24 Why a Virtual Cell Is Not a Cell1:30:28 A Head in a Waymo? 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

Every couple of days, a new AI-meets-biotech startup sends me a pitch, and the pitches all sound the same. AI is amazing, and it can now tame biology. We’re on the cusp of producing new cures for diseases at a rapid rate, and these startups know just how to get the job done. To which you should wonder – is this at all true? On this week’s Core Memory episode, we have brought in the big brains to answer – or at least debate – this question. Our resident science whiz and medical professional Eryney Marrogi takes on the hosting duties to interview Abhishaike Mahajan, he of Owl Posting and now OpenAI Foundation fame. These two men of science take hold of this AI/biotech moment to explore where we’re seeing the most promise from this new wave of technology and where the messiness of biology continues to confound AI. They also get into some lighter topics like our collective death from AI bioweapons and China’s impending biotech dominance. Good times. You’re all probably buzzing over Moderna’s stock price doubling and the end of cancer. So ride that enthusiasm right into this podcast and see how you’re feeling on the other side. 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 Intro4:24 Is Intelligence the Bottleneck?6:58 A Thousand von Neumanns12:29 The Cancer Drug That Failed21:15 Can AI Read a Tumor?31:38 Is Text All You Need?44:39 The Machine Nobody Built54:16 A Trillion Dollar Organoid?1:02:26 Biosecurity Lost the Plot1:06:02 ChatGPT vs. a Virus1:19:13 Why the Terrorists Failed1:24:37 Who Gets to Order DNA?1:42:41 China Wins Biology1:53:41 The Lab Nobody Funds Thanks for listening! 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

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.) 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) 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 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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.corememory.com 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…

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