We’ve been traveling through New Mexico for the past week, and all you hear about is how thirsty the state is – both for water and technology.

I will not claim to be a New Mexico water expert after a few days on the ground, but the stories of dire times have been relentless. One woman we met lives in the mountains near Albuquerque where people have been digging their own wells and tapping into the local aquifer for decades. The wells of all her neighbors have run dry, and the mountain folk are now trucking in water to get by. Not too far away, Elephant Butte Reservoir on the outskirts of Truth Or Consequences sits at two percent of its total capacity. Meta also has a huge datacenter complex in the area, but the locals want nothing to do with any more datacenter expansion if the great silicon farms are going to suck away whatever the aquifers have left.

New Mexico runs on oil, farming and tourism, and the feeling seems to be that the farming has about two decades left, the oil has three decades left and the tourism will have to work pretty damn hard to keep this economy going.

But there is hope. I guess.

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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.

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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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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
03:26 Chasing Alan Eustace
07:42 Rocket Sleds and Seatbelts
10:38 Why Build a Capsule?
13:00 Kittinger’s Three Jumps
18:11 The Idea Takes Hold
21:07 Elon’s Mars Greenhouse
23:18 The Jump That Failed
28:37 Solving the Death Spin
30:07 Racing Red Bull
32:26 One Reporter, No Livestream
34:12 The Kittinger Coincidence
38:26 Not Your Typical Daredevil
40:43 Goodbye Videos for His Kids
44:35 The First Spacesuit Jump
48:37 Two Hours to Space
50:53 Google Earth in Reverse
54:36 Can I Get a Countdown?
58:55 Breaking the Sound Barrier
1:00:08 The Crash Landing
1:02:16 What It Really Cost
1:08:28 The Magic of Gas Balloons
1:10:30 Did the Jump Change Him?
1:17:03 The VLSI Golden Age
1:22:56 Is AI Revolutionary?
1:29:20 The Google Translate Story
1:35:49 The Fall of DEC
1:41:09 Reinventing the Data Center
1:48:51 Impossible to Inevitable
1:51:40 Inside Commonwealth Fusion
1:56:21 Hunting Amelia Earhart
2:03:21 What’s Under the Golden Gate?

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The screwworm is responsible for the disease known as obligate traumatic myiasis, which leads to the consumption of living somatic tissue in warm-blooded hosts. The flesh gets eaten. The wounds smell and hurt. Animals suffer and then meet their demise. Over the decades, this severe pathology has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of livestock, including 180,000 cattle during a single localized 1935 Texas outbreak. Until their eradication from the North American continent in mid-century, the screwworm inflicted the equivalent of billions of dollars of losses upon the American agricultural sector.

It’s a big deal that these pests are back, and now there is a race to figure out what to do about them. Luckily, an entirely new tech tree - based on CRISPR - developed since we last battled these pests. The multi-billion dollar is - will it be enough to save us?

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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.

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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 Intro
3:54 Cut It, Poison It, Burn It. Is There a Fourth Way?
6:16 Your Tumor Is Rewiring Your Brain
8:29 The Clunky Device That Somehow Already Works
11:35 Why Patients Take It Off
15:12 Inside the Implant: A Neuralink for Tumors
20:32 Could a Chip Replace the MRI?
27:13 What the Mice Are Already Telling Them
31:38 First Humans, and Why It's Always Australia
35:36 "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 Had
1:01:45 Cut One Nerve and the Cancer Stops Spreading
1:06:12 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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We were in the Canadian wilderness, much too far from caffeine and bathrooms, on a particularly important adventure. Not only was this my first international shoot for Core Memory, but this was also the day I’d see my first rocket engine test. I had high expectations. There would be the smell of rocket fuel, the earth would rumble under my snow boots, and my eyebrows would get singed off my face, hopefully on camera.

Our videographer Camen (who you might remember from “The Missing Frozen Fish Fortune”) piloted us through the pine trees while I suited up in my gear for the day — fleece-lined pants, cheap mittens from the gas station, and a jacket I stole off the back of our other cameraman Armaan (who you might remember from “Micturating On A Commune”). It looked cooler on me, sorry!

The trail opened up and revealed our destination: Area 66, home to a Canadian rocket startup called NordSpace. The icy terrain contained two shipping containers, nitrogen tanks, and an engine on a horizontal teststand. There to guide us was NordSpace CEO Rahul Goel, donning a blaze-orange jacket meant to ward off hunters in the area.

This property, plus a small office just outside Toronto, and about thirty engineers is what makes up NordSpace. It’s humble, it’s simple, it’s all Goel ever wished for.

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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.

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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 Intro
02:17 The Physicist Who Almost Became a Pro Runner
13:39 A Cold Email, a Full Ride, and the Road to Caltech
26:15 How Video Game Chips Quietly Took Over Science
31:56 Is Quantum Losing the Spotlight to AI?
40:50 "I Still Don't Believe in Quantum": Answering the Skeptics
46:28 The Google Result That Could Break Encryption
53:44 Is It Time to Panic About Q-Day?
1:06:48 Quantum Sensing and the Case of Who Sneezed
1:17:30 Does Consciousness Run on Quantum Rules?
1:22:28 The Advice She Gives Terrified Students
1:30:20 So When Does Quantum Actually Get Real?

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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.

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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 4^th 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.

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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 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?

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It has been orbiting the Earth for 27 years and has been bombarded by a constant stream of space debris. The ISS leaks and requires much repair. As NASA alum…

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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.

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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

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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.

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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 Intro
0:38 Inside Midjourney's Secret MRI Machine
15:42 What Does Brian Johnson's Skin Really Look Like?
21:14 The First AI Model America Ever Banned
36:26 Why Is DeepMind Obsessed With a 20-Year-Old Space Game?
45:47 The Transformer Inventor Just Switched Sides
49:36 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 Cup
1:05:32 The Time Ashlee Nearly Pocketed Rafael Nadal's Racket
1:16:21 A Robot That Kills Fish the Japanese Way
1:19:31 Is Ashlee Turning Republican? Plus Where Batteries Go to Die

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Skydio is the largest drone maker in the U.S. and produces its hardware right …

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David Holz is living this dream, and we’re now catching a glimpse of what his version of rich, smart, eccentric guy with no one to answer to looks like.

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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.

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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 Intro
4:23 One Company or Three? Inside Science's Real Master Plan
6:25 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 Works
22:34 The BCI Gold Rush and the Money Problem No One Talks About
31:44 Keeping Human Organs Alive Outside the Body
36:52 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 Missed
56:02 Can a Brain Implant Make Us Superhuman?
1:05:04 What Will Surprise Us Most by 2035?

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Also, none of the below constitutes medical advice. (Seriously. This …

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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.

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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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Late last week, a high-profile list of frontier AI folks, policy experts and biologists released a letter calling for immediate measures to mitigate the risk of AI-mediated bioterrorism. The details …

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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.

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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

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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.

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The Guarding the U.S. Against Adversarial Robotics Dominance (GUARD) Act was introduced last week by Rep. John Moolenaar, who chairs the House Select Committee on China, alongside Reps. Jay Obernolte of California and Jennifer McClellan of Virginia. In a press release published Wednesday, they warn that China-made humanoids and quadrupeds contain backdoors the People’s Liberation Army can fling open at will — a threat one endorser compares to the plot of the 1984 film Red Dawn. Here’s Molenaar’s take:

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