Longevity Fund’s Laura Deming: “Age is a disease”
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Laura Deming, a 24-year-old longevity investor to talk about young scientists (3:05), the goal of the Longevity Fund (4:30), her incubator Age 1 (5:55), starting out as a 11-year-old (7:00), skipping school (10:00), getting funded by Peter Thiel (11:40), raising a venture capital fund as a teenager (13:15), targeting ageing through specific diseases (15:00), her goal (16:20), trying to become superhuman (18:45), “de-ageing” beetles (21:00), whether we should actually try to defeat ageing (23:00), how a little money can go a long way (25:10), who has invested in her fund (27:25), the key scientific advancements (28:35), the effects we’ll start to see first from this revolution (32:30), turning off menopause (34:45), the next step in our evolution (38:50), and winning over the sceptics (40:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
12 Okt 201843min
Former Google PR chief Jessica Powell: "Light-sabre aerobics"
TheThe Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Jessica Powell, former Google communications chief, to talk about her new satire of Silicon Valley, The Big Disruption (2:35), how at her old job she called a hookup site a “meeting platform” (5:55), when noone was interested in a Silicon Valley satire (8:00), the lack of nuance in the industry’s perception (9:20), the growing number of critics (12:40), problem of the tech industry’s ‘sameness’ (14:30), how living in London made her look differently at the industry (20:45), the great oatmeal revolt (24:30), what made her leave and publish the book (26:00), the risk in criticising her own industry (29:55), the most urgent changes required (31:40), the value of diversity (34:15), how free speech is vaunted but devalued (37:25), and her most quintessential Silicon Valley moment (40:40). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
5 Okt 201844min
Lambda School's Austen Allred: "Go to university - if you can pay for it in cash"
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on Austen Allred, founder of Lambda School, to talk about how he moved to Silicon Valley and lived in his car (2:50), getting his first job (5:05), his first failed startup (6:05), trying to kill payday loans (9:05), landing on his current startup idea of offering free university in exchange for a cut of students’ income (9:50), the education problem (11:50), going to Y Combinator (113:50), expanding the model into other industries (15:00), soaring university costs (17:35), the reasons behind it (21:30), why education has been overlooked as a target for disruption (23:00), the cultural role of university (24:25), how he chooses students (27:45), how universities have responded (29:35), raising venture capital (31:10), the importance of Twitter as a marketing tool (31:40), betting all of his money on Tesla (34:40), finding professors for his school (38:05), and his plans to offer free room and board as well (39:35). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
4 Okt 201843min
Five Questions with... Amazon's former chief scientist Andreas Weigend
The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson takes a "Monks to Metallica" tour of the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco before sitting down with Andreas Weigend, Amazon's first chief scientist, to cover five big questions: 1. Is china's social credit score a glimpse of the future? (12:30), 2. Is privacy dead? (24:55), 3. Is the concept of data being used for rather than against every people a realistic prospect? (33:45), 4. What does Amazon do that other's don't that makes it so successful? (38:00), 5. Does the rise of AI signal an epochal shift for humanity, or is this just another false dawn? (47:15). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
28 Sep 201859min
Babylon Health's Ali Parsa: "A doctor in your pocket"
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Ali Parsa, founder of Babylon Health, to talk about ending healthcare as we know it (4:00), doing to medicine what Google did to information (5:45), using artificial intelligence to diagnose patients (7:20), overcoming the trust issue (9:10), the problem with humans (11:30), the complete automation of healthcare (14:05), the challenge of pushing technology into hospitals (17:30), the limitations of remote care (22:40), the half of the world with no access to medicine (24:30), how Babylon’s AI does a consultation every few seconds (25:45), and the hurdles that stand in the way of AI-powered medicine (27:05). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
21 Sep 201832min
Five Questions with.... Adam Fisher
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Adam Fisher, author of Valley of Genius: the Uncensored History of Silicon Valley as told by the Hackers, Founders and Freaks who Made it Boom, to answer five questions. 1. Who is Nolan Bushnell and why is he one of the most important figures in Silicon Valley? (7:40), 2. How did LSD and the hippie counterculture lead us to where we are today? (13:00), 3. Who are the forgotten “other guys” who have founded the biggest companies? (17:25), 4. How big a role has the stealing of ideas played in the valley's history? (29:00) 5. Are the efforts to create “another Silicon Valley” by cities round the world futile? (35:30). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
3 Aug 201848min
HVMN's Geoff Woo and Brianna Stubbs: "Metabolic Dominance"
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Geoff Woo and Dr Brianna Stubbs of HVMN, developer of a synthetic ketone drink to “optimise humans,” to talk about Woo's his early days tinkering “nootropics” (3:30), experimenting on himself (7:10), tapping the biobacker community (10:00), getting investment from Silicon Valley A-listers (11:30), the Pentagon’s super-solder programme “Metabolic Dominance” (14:30), ketones and ketogenic diets (15:55), turning ketone ester into a product (22:15), how fasting led to the creation of the company (24:20), how Brianna Stubbs’ became the youngest person to row the English Channel (28:20), trying the first ketone “space milkshake” (30:30), the early days when ketones costs thousands of pounds per drink (33:10), meeting Woo (34:50), who is using it today (38:45), raising $7m from sports and tech investors (40:30), and my totally unscientific ketone test (42:30). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
27 Juli 201845min
Calm's Michael Acton Smith: "Dopamine-frazzled zombies"
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Michael Acton Smith, co-founder of Calm, the hit meditation app, to talk about starting out with the idea five years ago (4:40), the rise and fall of his previous company Mind Candy (8:30), moving to San Francisco (13:20), trying to build a “moat” around around the app (14:45), how meditating is like jogging (16:45), why Calm uses the smartphone as the delivery mechanism (19:45), the death of boredom (21:15), creating a profitable business (23:30), why sleep is a growth industry (26:35), the science of meditation (28:10), trying to sell rocks as a child (33:10), setting up an Internet retailer in 1998 (35:40), why he thinks Calm is going to be a billion-dollar business (38:45), his plans to buy an island (41:35), and why the world’s top two meditation apps have been created by Brits (43:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
20 Juli 201846min
