This is probably the conversation I had in mind when I decided to start this podcast. Samy Kamkar is an old buddy of mine, a genius hacker. When you guys hear me praising the minds of hackers and how brilliant they can be and how they think, Samy is the example in my mind that I’m thinking of, and I always love to share him. Samy’s famous for having written a computer virus that he was using to meet girls on the internet, which is probably ill-advised. The virus he wrote took over MySpace. It wa...
Jan 04, 2024•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 16
Today we get to hang out with my buddy Nick Touran . Nick is a nuclear engineer who’s focused on the practical deployment of clean, renewable, carbon free energy. I met Nick when we were both working at the Intellectual Ventures Lab. He is on the TerraPower team, and even though we don’t discuss the TerraPower reactor, or any of that technology on this episode, Nick and I try to dig into history of nuclear a bit. trying to explain what’s possible with nuclear reactors, so people can really under...
Dec 15, 2023•1 hr 50 min•Ep. 15
Short opinion piece about these helium airships and the need to preserve helium. Back before there were memes as we know them, the meme for a disaster was the Hindenburg. The Hindenburg was this giant Zeppelin, an Airship filled with hydrogen gas that’s lighter than air. Like a helium balloon. So it would just float but it had a huge passenger compartment. This is back in. 1937, so 80 years ago, the Hindenburg famously ignited and turned into a giant flame in the sky and scared the shit out of e...
Dec 19, 2022•9 min•Ep. 41
Sleep is the most natural process that you can do other than breathing. Like breathing, we don’t need technology to help us sleep. The reason many people don’t sleep is because of what’s between their ears – their mental stability, anguish, or stress. Do you fall asleep easily or does the slightest noise wake you up? Dr. Michael Breus, gives me a full brain dump as I try to learn everything I can about sleep in one session. He takes on taboo ideas like polyphasic sleep and the role of nutrition ...
Jan 23, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 14
About two billion people that are going to move into cities by 2050 and with that growth, the demand for efficient transportation is going to increase dramatically. In an era where we’re already seeing inefficiencies in urban mobility having a massive impact on the economy, public health and environmental health, it’s hard to imagine a future of transportation that doesn’t border utter chaos. Cognizant of these projected problems, Assaf Biderman , is working on solutions that harness the power o...
Jan 16, 2022•53 min•Ep. 13
Brent Bushnell is one of the most positive people I know. He’s created Two Bit Circus to reimagine how the newest developments in computing technology can shape the future of entertainment, work, education and human interaction. Brent grew up in the house that built Atari and has been a lifelong hands-on maker that brings a prototyping mindset to everything he does. Listen in to this candid and eclectic conversation and learn about the mass of possibilities that we can bring into fruition with j...
Jan 02, 2022•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 12
Probably whatever you were doing with your life as a kid isn’t as cool as building a Dyson swarm . 12 year old Levi Hurt has already decided to devote his life to doing so. Levi is a delightful kid. It will warm your heart to hear his curiosity and excitement about these ideas. Even with my antagonistic questioning, his sense of wonder is infectious. Recorded on October 31, 2021 The post Kids Building Dyson Swarms — Levi Hurt appeared first on ....
Dec 21, 2021•51 min•Ep. 11
My friend, Dr. Melissa Selinger is a Doctor of Neuropsychopharmacology who has done actual research on using psychedelics and virtual reality for treating things like depression, anxiety, and PTSD. A huge frontier where there are all kinds of potential, and very little actual scientific research has been done here so far. It’s an exciting frontier to be able to help a lot of people who we don’t have any real idea how to help otherwise. I’m super thrilled about that and the potential for it. It’s...
Sep 12, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 10
There’s this kind of pattern you can see sometimes, when you dig behind very successful projects, a lot of times there is some woman who is dead set on making it happen. And for a lot of them, she’s working behind the scenes and you don’t find out until you get real close, what’s really going on. But occasionally you meet these women who are badass leaders that are so dogged that they’re going to make something happen by force of will. And I’m always honored to get to meet them. Today we get to ...
Jul 06, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 9
One of the things I get asked the most about is questions about how to be a hacker and how to learn hacking skills. And I think there’s a few people I know who really epitomized what that’s all about, and we’ve had pretty deep journeys and in their lives and their careers about about computer hacking. We talk a lot about the mindset of hackers, which is one of the things I’m super interested in and attracted to. I find to be very helpful way of thinking about things. But you know, when we’re tal...
Mar 24, 2021•2 hr 21 min•Ep. 8
Today we get to hang out with Adina Mangubat , a friend of mine that I know from a salsa dancing, and also hanging out with computer hackers. She’s probably the youngest founder that I know. And she’s been running her company for almost a decade since starting it in college at age 22 called Spiral Genetics . It could be considered probably the most advanced bioinformatics technology for population genomics. And what that means is DNA sequencing, massive populations, hundreds of thousands of peop...
Mar 17, 2021•2 hr 7 min•Ep. 7
David Edery is a buddy of mine who I think you guys are really going to love. Dave is one of the co-founders he’s the CEO of Spry Fox , which is a unique game development studio here. They’re based here in Seattle, but they have people spread out. They made Alphabear, Steambirds, Triple Town, and Realm of the Mad God. These are games that all together have 50 to a hundred million people playing them worldwide. Dave is a very successful game developer making really delightful games. They’re tryin...
Mar 10, 2021•2 hr 3 min•Ep. 6
One of the things I really like to be able to do is go track down some of the friends that I’ve made over the years who have grown up with technology and grew up with computers as kids hackers, computer programmers, people who eventually became engineers and just pick apart their experience. A lot of us had similar experiences and I think there’s a lot that can be learned from that. And sometimes it’s just learning that there are parallel experiences that led us into very technical careers. But ...
Jan 22, 2021•1 hr 59 min•Ep. 5
Hey guys, today we get to hang out with Ben Laurie who is one of my all time favorite geeks. You’re running code right now that Ben wrote. He built ApacheSSL, which is probably like half of the web servers on the internet that are secure running that code. He maintains OpenSSL, which is in everything else. Ben is one of the few folks who’s a true coder and cryptographer. And there are very few people who really understand both sides of that and what it really means to write secure code and how h...
Jan 22, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 4
Steven Sebring is an artist, photographer & inventor. This is a guy who’s invented new technology and advanced the art of photography with the tools that he’s built in a world-class fashion. By his own admission, he is not a technical guy, but when you see what he’s built, you’re going to be blown away. There’s nothing else in the world like it. There’s a lot of work going on to develop new kinds of capture systems for virtual reality that work in 360 ° environments. Steven came at it from a...
Jan 22, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 3
Today, I spent some time with Hod Lipson who is a professor at Columbia University. In fact, we recorded this episode right out in front of the university with crying babies going by and kids playing in the park. So it’s a little noisy, but I’ve been inspired by Hod for a long time, because he’s another inventor that worked on 3D printing early on. He is at the forefront of what we’ve been able to do with computers. That’s the kind of thing I’m always really interested in. He was actually invent...
Jan 22, 2021•57 min•Ep. 2
This is an unusual episode where my old buddy Bill Scannell actually interviews me. Mostly this is a way for people who don’t know me very well to get a sense of who I am and how I think and where I come from. A lot of it’s really about my philosophy and what informs that. Bill does a lot to try and tie that back to how I grew up in Alaska, which may or may not be as relevant as it seems. We don’t really talk too much about projects I’ve worked on, this is just a conversation between friends abo...
Jan 22, 2021•2 hr 25 min•Ep. 1
