Idea Machines
49 episodes - English - Latest episode: 3 months ago - ★★★★★ - 13 ratingsIdea Machines is a deep dive into the systems and people that bring innovations from glimmers in someone's eye all the way to tools, processes, and ideas that can shift paradigms.
We see the outputs of innovation systems everywhere but rarely dig into how they work. Idea Machines digs below the surface into crucial but often unspoken questions to explore themes of how we enable innovations today and how we could do it better tomorrow.
Idea Machines is hosted by Benjamin Reinhardt.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Industrial Research with Peter van Hardenberg [Idea Machines #50]
February 10, 2024 14:09 - 46 minutes - 42.7 MBPeter van Hardenberg talks about Industrialists vs. Academics, Ink&Switch's evolution over time, the Hollywood Model, internal lab infrastructure, and more! Peter is the lab director and CEO of Ink&Switch, a private, creator oriented, computing research lab. References Ink&Switch (and their many publications) The Hollywood Model in R&D Idea Machines Episode with Adam Wiggins Paul Erdós Transcript Peter Van Hardenberg [00:01:21] Ben: Today I have the pleasure of speaking wit...
MACROSCIENCE with Tim Hwang [Idea Machines #49]
November 27, 2023 01:28 - 57 minutes - 52.5 MBA conversation with Tim Hwang about historical simulations, the interaction of policy and science, analogies between research ecosystems and the economy, and so much more. Topics Historical Simulations Macroscience Macro-metrics for science Long science The interaction between science and policy Creative destruction in research “Regulation” for scientific markets Indicators for the health of a field or science as a whole “Metabolism of Science” Science rotation programs ...
Idea Machines with Nadia Asparouhova [Idea Machines #48]
October 03, 2022 11:40 - 55 minutes - 50.9 MBNadia Asparouhova talks about idea machines on idea machines! Idea machines, of course, being her framework around societal organisms that turn ideas into outcomes. We also talk about the relationship between philanthropy and status, public goods and more. Nadia is a hard-to-categorize doer of many things: In the past, she spent many years exploring the funding, governance, and social dynamics of open source software, both writing a book about it called “Working in Public” and putting th...
Institutional Experiments with Seemay Chou [Idea Machines #47]
September 01, 2022 12:12 - 1 hour - 67.6 MBSeemay Chou talks about the process of building a new research organization, ticks, hiring and managing entrepreneurial scientists, non-model organisms, institutional experiments and a lot more! Seemay is the co-founder and CEO of Arcadia Science — a research and development company focusing on underesearched areas in biology and specifically new organisms that haven't been traditionally studied in the lab. She’s also the co-founder of Trove Biolabs — a startup focused on harnessing mole...
DARPA and Advanced Manufacturing with William Bonvillian [Idea Machines #46]
August 02, 2022 15:41 - 48 minutes - 44.3 MBWilliam Bonvillian does a deep dive about his decades of research on how DARPA works and his more recent work on advanced manufacturing. William is a Lecturer at MIT and the Senior Director of Special Projects,at MIT’s Office of Digital Learning. Before joining MIT he spent almost two decades as a senior policy advisor for the US senate. He’s also published many papers and a detailed book exploring the DARPA model. Links William's Website The DARPA Model for Transformative Technol...
Philanthropically Funding the Foundation of Fields with Adam Falk [Idea Machines #45]
July 02, 2022 16:00 - 1 hour - 59.9 MBIn this conversation, Adam Falk and I talk about running research programs with impact over long timescales, creating new fields, philanthropic science funding, and so much more. Adam is the president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which was started by the eponymous founder of General Motors and has been funding science and education efforts for almost nine decades. They’ve funded everything from iPython Notebooks to the Wikimedia foundation to an astronomical survey of the entire...
Managing Mathematics with Semon Rezchikov [Idea Machines #44]
May 30, 2022 22:40 - 57 minutes - 52.4 MBIn this conversation, Semon Rezchikov and I talk about what other disciplines can learn from mathematics, creating and cultivating collaborations, working at different levels of abstraction, and a lot more! Semon is currently a postdoc in mathematics at Harvard where he specializes in symplectic geometry. He has an amazing ability to go up and down the ladder of abstraction — doing extremely hardcore math while at the same time paying attention to *how* he’s doing that work and the broader...
Scientific Irrationality with Michael Strevens [Idea Machines #43]
January 18, 2022 18:06 - 1 hour - 57.8 MBProfessor Michael Strevens discusses the line between scientific knowledge and everything else, the contrast between what scientists as people do and the formalized process of science, why Kuhn and Popper are both right and both wrong, and more. Michael is a professor of Philosophy at New York University where he studies the philosophy of science and the philosophical implications of cognitive science. He’s the author of the outstanding book “The Knowledge Machine” which is the focus of mo...
Distributing Innovation with The VitaDAO Core Team [Idea Machines #42]
January 02, 2022 19:54 - 1 hour - 67.5 MBA conversation with the VitaDAO core team. VitaDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization — or DAO — that focuses on enabling and funding longevity research. The sketch of how a DAO works is that people buy voting tokens that live on top of the Etherium blockchain and then use those tokens to vote on various action proposals for VitaDAO to take. This voting-based system contrasts with the more traditional model of a company that is a creation of law or contact, raises capital by sellin...
The Nature of Technology with Brain Arthur [Idea Machines #41]
October 03, 2021 16:18 - 1 hour - 105 MBDr. Brian Arthur and I talk about how technology can be modeled as a modular and evolving system, combinatorial evolution more broadly and dig into some fascinating technological case studies that informed his book The Nature of Technology. Brian is a researcher and author who is perhaps best known for his work on complexity economics, but I wanted to talk to him because of the fascinating work he’s done building out theories of technology. As we discuss, there’s been a lot of theorizing a...
Philosophy of Progress with Jason Crawford [Idea Machines #40]
September 29, 2021 01:52 - 46 minutes - 43 MBIn this Conversation, Jason Crawford and I talk about starting a nonprofit organization, changing conceptions of progress, why 26 years after WWII may have been what happened in 1971, and more. Jason is the proprietor of Roots of Progress a blog and educational hub that has recently become a full-fledged nonprofit devoted to the philosophy of progress. Jason’s a returning guest to the podcast — we first spoke in 2019 relatively soon after he went full time on the project . I thought it wou...
Fusion, Planning, Programs, and Politics with Stephen Dean [Idea Machines #39]
August 30, 2021 02:44 - 1 hour - 62.1 MBIn this conversation, Dr. Stephen Dean talks about how he created the 1976 US fusion program plan, how it played out and the history of fusion power in the US, technology program planning and management more broadly, and more. Stephen has been working on making fusion energy a reality for more than five decades. He did research on controlled fusion reactions in the 60s and in the 70s became a director at the Atomic energy commission which then became the Energy Research and Development Adm...
Policy, TFP, and airshiPs with Eli Dourado [Idea Machines #38]
July 27, 2021 05:06 - 1 hour - 61 MBEli Dourado on how the sausage of technology policy is made, the relationship between total factor productivity and technological progress, airships, and more. Eli is an economist, regulatory hacker, and a senior research fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University. In the past, he was the head of global policy at Boom Supersonic where he navigated the thicket of regulations on supersonic flight. Before that, he directed the technology policy program at the Mer...
In the Realm of the Barely Feasible with Arati Prabhakar [Idea Machines #37]
January 25, 2021 01:11 - 53 minutes - 49.1 MBIn this conversation I talk to the Amazing Arati Prabhakar about using Solutions R&D to tackle big societal problems, gaps in the innovation ecosystem, DARPA, and more. Arati’s career has covered almost every corner of the innovation ecosystem - she’s done basically every role at - DARPA she was a program manager, started their Microelectronics Technology Office, and several years later returned to server as its Director. She was also the director of the National Institute of Standards and...
Shaping Research by Changing Context with Ilan Gur [Idea Machines #36]
December 18, 2020 01:10 - 1 hour - 65.2 MBIn this conversation I talk to Ilan Gur about what it really means for technology to “escape the lab”, the power of context to shape the usefulness of research, the inadequacies of current institutional structures, how activate helps technology escape the lab *by* changing people’s context, and more. Ilan is the CEO and founder of Activate, which is a nonprofit that runs a fellowship enabling scientists to spend two years embedded in research institutions to mature technology from a concep...
Your Equity is a Product with Luke Constable [Idea Machines #35]
November 25, 2020 18:18 - 1 hour - 77.4 MBIn this conversation I talk to Luke Constable about the complicated tapestry of finance, funding projects, incentives, organizational and legal structures, social technologies, and more. Luke is the founder of the hedge fund Lampa Capital and publishes a widely-read newsletter full of fascinating deep dives. He’s also trained as a lawyer and historian so he looks at the world with a fairly unique set of lenses. Disclaimer: nothing Luke says is an offer to buy or sell a security or to mak...
Venture Research with Donald Braben [Idea Machines #34]
November 09, 2020 19:28 - 59 minutes - 54.3 MBIn this conversation I talk to Donald Braben about his venture research initiative, peer review, and enabling the 21st century equivalents of Max Planck. Donald has been a staunch advocate of reforming how we fund and evaluate research for decades. From 1980 to 1990 he ran BP’s venture research program, where he had a chance to put his ideas into practice. Considering the fact that the program cost two million pounds per year and enabled research that both led to at least one Nobel prize a...
Focusing on Research with Adam Marblestone [Idea Machines #33]
October 26, 2020 03:31 - 1 hour - 61.1 MBA conversation with Adam Marblestone about his new project - Focused Research Organizations. Focused Research Organizations (FROs) are a new initiative that Adam is working on to address gaps in current institutional structures. You can read more about them in this white paper that Adam released with Sam Rodriques. Links FRO Whitepaper Adam on Twitter Adam's Website Transcript [00:00:00] In this conversation, I talked to Adam marble stone about focused research organizat...
Hanging Out in the Valley of Death with Michael Filler and Matthew Realff [Idea Machines #32]
October 19, 2020 17:14 - 56 minutes - 51.5 MBMichael Filler and Matthew Realff discuss Fundamental Manufacturing Process innovations. We explore what they are, dig into historical examples, and consider how we might enable more of them to happen. Michael and Matthew are both professors at Georgia Tech and Michael also hosts an excellent podcast about nanotechnology called Nanovation. Our conversation centers around their paper Fundamental Manufacturing Process Innovation Changes the World. If you’re in front of a screen while you’re ...
The Decline of Unfettered Research with Andrew Odlyzko [Idea Machines #31]
September 01, 2020 04:00 - 48 minutes - 44.6 MBA conversation with Professor Andrew Odlyzko about the forces that have driven the paradigm changes we’ve seen across the research world in the past several decades. Andrew is a professor at the University of Minnesota and worked at Bell Labs before that. The conversation centers around his paper “The Decline of Unfettered Research” which was written in 1995 but feels even more timely today. Key Takeaway The decline of unfettered research is part of a complex web of causes - from incenti...
On the Cusp of Commerciality with Eleonora Vella [Idea Machines #30]
August 23, 2020 02:33 - 40 minutes - 37.3 MBA conversation with Eleonora Vella about getting the right people in the room, finding research on the cusp of commercializability, and generally how TandemLaunch’s unique system works. Eleonora is a Program director at TandemLaunch. Tandemlaunch is a startup foundry that builds companies from scratch around university research. This is not an easy task - check out Episode 15 with Errol Arkilic, Episode 19 with Mark Hammond, or Episode 21 with Eli Velazquez if you need convincing. Given th...
Innovating Through Time with Anton Howes [Idea Machines #29]
August 06, 2020 17:20 - 1 hour - 56.6 MBA conversation with Dr Anton Howes about The Royal Society of Arts, cultural factors that drive innovation, and many aspects of historical innovation. Anton is a historian of innovation whose work is expansive, but focuses especially on England in the 18th and 19th centuries as a hotbed of technological creativity. He recently released an excellent book that details the history of the Royal Society of Arts called “Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation” and he publish...
Inventors, Corporations, Universities, and Governments with Ashish Arora [Idea Machines #28]
July 09, 2020 20:29 - 55 minutes - 50.8 MBA conversation with Ashish Arora about how and why the interlocking American institutions that support technological change have evolved over time, their current strengths and weaknesses, and how they might change in the future. Ashish Arora is the Rex D. Adams Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. His research focuses on the economics of technology and technical change and we spend most of this conversation focused on his recent paper: “The...
Invention, Discovery, and Bell Labs with Venkatesh Narayanamurti [Idea Machines #27]
May 29, 2020 19:27 - 53 minutes - 49.4 MBIn this episode I talk to Venkatesh Narayanamurti about Bell Labs, running research organizations, and why the distinction between basic and applied research is totally wrong. Venkatesh has led organizations across the research landscape: he was a director at Bell Labs during its Golden Age, a VP at Sandia National Lab, the Dean of Engineering at UC Santa Barbara and started Harvard’s engineering school. Our discussion touches on the ideas in his book Cycles of Invention and Discovery. In it...
Roadmapping Science with Adam Marblestone [Idea Machines #26]
April 20, 2020 17:09 - 51 minutes - 47.4 MBIn this episode I talk to Adam Marblestone about technology roadmapping, scientific gems hidden in plain sight, and systematically exploring complex systems. Adam is currently a research scientist at Google DeepMind and in the past has been the chief strategy officer at a brain-computer interface company and did research on brain mapping with Ed Boyden and did his PhD with George Church. He has a repeated pattern of pushing the frontiers in one discipline after another - physics, biology, ne...
Distributed Innovation with Jude Gomilla [Idea Machines #25]
March 30, 2020 17:31 - 58 minutes - 53.1 MBIn this episode I talk to Jude Gomilla about distributed innovation systems focused especially around the bottom-up response to the coronavirus crisis. Jude is a physicist, founder and CEO of the knowledge compilation platform Golden, and a prolific angel investor. He’s also been in the thick of the distributed response to the coronavirus response from day one. Key Takeaways - There’s a clear gap between market-based distributed systems and a top down systems coordinated by the government...
Analogies, Context, and Zettleconversation with Joel Chan [Idea Machines #24]
March 17, 2020 19:52 - 1 hour - 78.2 MBIntro In this episode I talk to Joel Chan about cross-disciplinary knowledge transfer, zettlekasten, and too many other things to enumerate. Joel is an a professor in the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies and a member of their Human-Computer Interaction Lab. His research focuses on understanding and creating generalizable configurations of people, computing, and information that augment human intelligence and creativity. Essentially, how can we expand our knowledge fr...
Funding Breakthrough Research with Anna Goldstein - [Idea Machines #23]
February 26, 2020 07:37 - 49 minutes - 45.3 MBIn this episode I talk to Anna Goldstein about how the ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) model works and what makes it unique. We focus on ARPA-E: the department of Energy’s version of DARPA that funds breakthrough energy research. Anna is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of the paper “Funding Breakthrough Research” that systematically breaks down how the ARPA model works based on research at ARPA-E. Anna is full of insights about th...
Systems of Progress with Jason Crawford - [Idea Machines #22]
February 16, 2020 04:51 - 1 hour - 58.8 MBIn this episode I talk to Jason Crawford about his work on the history of progress, funding and incentivizing inventions, ideas behind their time, and more. Jason is the author of the Roots of Progress blog, where he focuses on telling the story of human progress in an amazingly accessible way. Key Takeaways Funding *structures* are understudied as a progress-enabling mechanism *Why* inventions happen is not so straightforward as we might think Culture may matter more than we think f...
Seeding Ecosystems with Eli Velasquez [Idea Machines #21]
October 13, 2019 03:24 - 46 minutes - 42.7 MBIn this episode I talk to Eli Velasquez about creating startup ecosystems, commercializing research, especially when it's not necessarily venture-backable, and how the US government thinks about startups. Eli is the head of Venture Development at VentureWell - a non profit organization that funds and trains faculty and student innovators to create businesses. VentureWell helps run I-corps, which talked to Errol Arkilic about in Episode 15. Currently, Eli runs all over the world helping cre...
Bubbly Innovation with Bill Janeway [Idea Machines #20]
September 23, 2019 05:32 - 1 hour - 65.2 MBIn this episode I talk to Bill Janeway about previous eras of venture capital and startups, how bubbles drive innovation, the role of government in innovation. Bill describes himself as "theorist-practitioner": he did a PhD in Economics, was a successful venture capitalist in the 80's and 90's with the firm Warburg Pincus and is now an affiliated faculty member at Cambridge and the member of several boards. Key Takeaways Bubbles have arguably been the key enabler of infrastructure-heavy t...
Venturing into "Deep" Tech with Mark Hammond [Idea Machines #19]
September 14, 2019 03:53 - 46 minutes - 42.7 MBIn this episode I talk to Mark Hammond about how Deep Science Ventures works, why the linear commercialization model leaves a lot on the table, and the idea of venture-focused research. Mark is the founder of Deep Science Ventures, an organization with a fascinating model for launching science-based companies. Mark has many crisply articulated theses about holes in the current system by which research becomes useful innovations and what we might do to fill them. Key Takeaways: There are m...
Promoting Science Patronage with Alexey Guzey [Idea Machines #18]
September 06, 2019 04:30 - 1 hour - 57.8 MBAlexey Guzey is an independent researcher focusing on how to systemically increase the rate of biology discoveries and the idea that reviving the patronage system may be a way to do that. We spend most of our time talking about the project he's been working on for the past year but also touch on some of his thinking around connecting with people, which he's written about extensively. Key Takeaways Most people doing biology research are embedded in a system that incentivizes incremental c...
"Other" Options in Science and Companies with Cindy Wu and Denny Luan [Idea Machines #17]
June 17, 2019 14:54 - 55 minutes - 51 MBCindy Wu and Denny Luan are the founders of experiment.com - a platform that allows anybody to request funding for a science project and anybody to fund them. It's fascinating because it stands completely outside of the grant funding and publication system that drives most science today. In this podcast we discuss how the current system prevents the creating of new fields, why science communication may be even more important that science funding, and new models for company governance. Key...
Bridging Labs and Markets with Errol Arkilic [Idea Machines #15]
June 02, 2019 09:56 - 49 minutes - 45.6 MBIn this episode I talk to Errol Arkilic about different systems involved in turning research into companies. Errol has been helping research make the jump from the lab to the market for more than fifteen years: he was a program manager at the National Science Foundation or NSF, Small Business Innovation Research or SBIR program, where he awarded grants to hundreds of companies commercializing research. He started the NSF Innovation Corps, a program that gives researchers the tools they nee...
Compounding Ideas with Sam Arbesman [Idea Machines #16]
May 24, 2019 09:55 - 53 minutes - 48.7 MBIn this conversation Sam Arbesman and I talk about unlocking cross-disciplinary innovations, long term organizations, combinatorial creativity and much more. As you might expect from someone with Generalist Thinking as a main area of interest, Sam has out-of-the-box insights in a ton of domains and he's amazing at capturing them in tight concepts like "knowledge mining" and "jargon barriers." By day Sam is the Scientist in Residence at Lux Capital. Don't cite me on it but I think he may be...
Unleashing Talent with Matt Clifford [Idea Machines #14]
May 12, 2019 12:05 - 51 minutes - 58.8 MBIn this episode I speak to Matt Clifford about talent investing, how big long term projects can start small, and financial innovations. Matt is the CEO and co-founder of Entrepreneur First. Entrepreneur First, abbreviated as EF, is a fascinating system. It starts with cohorts of around fifty to a hundred ambitious, talented people who want to start companies but might not even have an idea to build around. Key Takeaways The mental model of predictable vs. unpredictable value. The idea...
Sciencing Science with Evan Miyazono [Idea Machines #13]
April 02, 2019 01:30 - 58 minutes - 67.1 MBIn this episode I talk to Evan Miyazono about tackling metaresearch questions, how novel physical phenomena go from "oh that's cool" to devices that harness cutting edge physics, and how we could better incentivize the creators of innovations where traditionally it's hard to capture value, like open-source software and early-stage research. Evan is a research scientist at Protocol Labs where he helps lead their research efforts - coordinating researchers both inside and outside the company...
Inside (Publishing) Baseball [Idea Machines #12]
March 13, 2019 03:43 - 36 minutes - 50.1 MBIn this episode I talk to William Gunn about the guts of science publishing, changing incentives in science, and the relationship between publishing and funding. William is currently the Director of Scholarly Communication at Elsevier. He joined Elsevier when they acquired Mendeley, which is a platform designed to help researchers share papers and notes about them. Before that he was an academic researcher himself and, for a time, a professional chef. Key Takeaways Science publishers ar...
New Things in Big Healthcare [Idea Machines #11]
March 05, 2019 00:45 - 50 minutes - 92.6 MBIn this episode I talk to Torben Nielsen about creating new products and systems in health insurance. We touch on the tension between insurer's well-founded risk aversion and trying new things, the process of insurance companies working with startups, and how to even know if things are working. Torben runs programs at Premera Blue Cross with both internal teams and external startups to build new products and systems. Premera is one of the largest health insurers in Alaska and the northwest...
Medical (d)Evolution with Dr. Robert McNutt [Idea Machines #10]
February 12, 2019 14:05 - 1 hour - 64 MBIn this episode I talk to Dr Robert McNutt about medical innovation, medical research and publishing, and patient choice. Robert has been practicing medicine for decades and has published many dozens of medical research papers. He is a former editor of JAMA - the Journal of the American Medical Association. He's created pain care simulation programs, run hospitals, sat on the national board of medical examiners, taught at the university of North Carolina and Wisconsin schools of medicine, ...
Hacking Politics with Craig Montouri [Idea Machines #8]
January 13, 2019 04:55 - 52 minutes - 47.9 MBIn this episode I talk to Craig Montouri about nonprofits and politics. Specifically their constraints and possibilities for enabling innovations. Craig is the executive director at Global EIR - a nonprofit focused on connecting non-U.S. founders with universities so that they can get the visas they need to build their companies in America. Craig's perspective is fascinating because contrary to the common wisdom that innovation happens by doing an end run around politics, he focuses on ena...
NASA, Crowdsourcing, and Starshots with Mason Peck [Idea Machines #7]
January 01, 2019 22:33 - 53 minutes - 25.8 MB VideoOvercast Link. My Guest this week is Mason Peck, Professor of Aerospace and Systems engineering at Cornell University and former Chief Technologist at NASA. Previously Mason was a was a Principal Fellow at Honeywell Aerospace and has an extremely colorful history we get into during the podcast. The topic of this conversation is how NASA works, alternatives to the current innovation ecosystem - like crowdsourcing and philanthropy, and also the interplay between government, academia, and ...
Bypassing Systems with Gary Bradski [Idea Machines #9]
December 30, 2018 19:11 - 58 minutes - 40.4 MBIn this episode I talk to Gary Bradski about the creation of OpenCV, Willow Garage, and how to get around institutional roadblocks. Gary is perhaps best known as the creator of OpenCV - an open source tool that has touched almost every application that involves computer vision - from cat-identifying AI, to strawberry-picking robots, to augmented reality. Gary has been part of Intel Research, Stanford (where he worked on Stanley, the self driving car that won the first DARPA grand challenge...
Accelerating Biotech with Jun Axup [Idea Machines #5]
December 25, 2018 21:47 - 59 minutes - 28.4 MBLink to this Episode in Overcast In this episode I talk to Jun Axup about accelerating biotechnology, how to transition people and technology from academia to startups, the intersection of silicon valley and biology, and biology research in general. Jun is a partner at IndieBio - a startup accelerator specializing in quickly taking biotechnology from academic research to products. She has both started companies and did a PhD focused on using antibodies to fight cancer. This experience gi...
Rethinking R&D with Adam Wiggins [Idea Machines #4]
December 18, 2018 18:34 - 51 minutes - 23.5 MBMy Guest this week is Adam Wiggins, the cofounder of Ink & Switch — an independent industrial research lab working on digital tools for creativity and productivity. The topic of the conversation is the future of product-focused R&D, the Hollywood Model of work in tech, Ink & Switch’s unique organizational structure, and whether it can be extended to other areas of research. Links Adam Wiggins’ Home Page Adam on Twitter Ink & Switch's Home Page A presentation on Ink & Swit...
Changing How We Do Science with Brian Nosek [Idea Machines #3]
December 08, 2018 00:14 - 58 minutes - 26.7 MBMy guest this week is Brian Nosek, co-Founder and the Executive Director of the Center for Open Science. Brian is also a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia doing research on the gap between values and practices, such as when behavior is influenced by factors other than one's intentions and goals. The topic of this conversation is how incentives in academia lead to problems with how we do science, how we can fix those problems, the center for open scienc...
Venture Capital Meets Fusion Power with Malcolm Handley [Idea Machines #2]
December 07, 2018 20:55 - 1 hour - 36.6 MBMy Guest this week is Malcolm Handley, General Partner and Founder of Strong Atomics. The topic of this conversation is Fusion power - how it’s funded now, why we don’t have it yet, and how he’s working on making it a reality. We touch on funding long-term bets in general, incentives inside of venture capital, and more. Show Notes Strong Atomics Malcolm on Twitter (@malcolmredheron) Fusion Never Plot Fusion Z-Pinch Experiment. ARPA-e Alpha Program ITER - International Therm...
NASA vs DARPA with Mark Micire [Idea Machines #1]
December 07, 2018 19:23 - 58 minutes - 26.8 MBMy guest this week is Mark Micire, group lead for the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Previously Mark was a program manager at DARPA, an entrepreneur, and a volunteer firefighter. The topic of this conversation is how DARPA works and why it’s effective at generating game-changing technologies, the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA, and developing Robotics and technology in high-stakes scenarios. Links Intelligent Robotics Group DARPA Camp Fire DARPA ...