New podcast episode with Allison Duettmann (@allisondman), the CEO of the Foresight Institute (@foresightinst). Foresight has spent the past 40 years backing frontier science too early or too interdisciplinary for legacy institutions. Foresight has helped inspire and organize 10,000+ scientists, technologists, philanthropists, investors, students, thinkers, pioneers, and dreamers, including the early 2000s space community where @elonmusk and @FutureJurvetson discussed the importance of commercial space and reusable rockets. Foresight’s Feynman Prize went to Fraser Stoddart and David Baker 9 and 20 years before each won a Nobel. Today, Foresight is one of the main communities where neurotech pioneers gather and explore the frontiers of BCI, connectomics, simulations, and uploading. Allison also founded the Existential Hope movement, rooted on the conviction that we must imagine flourishing futures — in the tradition of ambitious science & sci-fi — as a precondition for building them. She is one of the best people thinking deeply about the future, coordinating humanity to imagine and achieve good outcomes, and working to accelerate the technologies and adoption that will get us there. We go deep into all of that in this episode: how neurotech could let us connect far more directly than language allows; how BCIs are meaningfully improving people’s lives today; why connectomics and whole-brain emulation can keep humans compatible with Superintelligent AI; why uploading can give us a path to exploring ourselves and living vastly richer and more fulfilling lives than a single ~80 year narrative arc allows; the amazing possibility of living billions of years; and how nanotechnology could reshape the physical world, address our sustainability and energy challenges, and build the infrastructure to lift us off planet and explore the universe. This is a ton and goes to show how deeply and broadly Allison thinks. I’m very excited to have her on the podcast, as I think she explains things clearly and bridges huge divides with care, vision, and rigor. Hope you enjoy! Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:25 What is Existential Hope? 00:04:06 Visions of the future: nanotech, longevity, neurotech, AI 00:08:04 From existential risk to building better futures 00:16:15 How far away is nanotechnology? 00:24:26 Is a superintelligent AI a tool, or a new form of life? 00:37:33 How neurotech could connect minds far beyond language 00:41:56 Whole brain emulation: from C. elegans and FlyWire to the human “holy grail” 00:45:16 The connectome problem: a complete wiring diagram isn't enough 00:47:19 Why it's so hard to attract talent to emulation 01:03:04 Longevity, cryonics, and the case for living billions of years 01:22:24 How close are we to never having to die? 01:43:13 How Foresight operates to advance frontier science 01:54:06 From philosophy to Foresight: how a three-month stay became 10 years in SF 02:03:04 Allison’s vision for an optimistic future

Here is Episode 2 of my new podcast dedicated to conversations on the future of neurotech, computing, intelligence, and more. My guest Dr. Ben Rapoport is co-founder and CSO of Precision Neuroscience (@PrecisionNeuro_), Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Scientific Director at Mount Sinai. Previously, he co-founded Neuralink and Simbionics (acquired by Apple). Precision is building a minimally invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) that reads from thousands of points on the cortex without penetrating it. The Layer 7 device is implanted through a one-millimeter slit in the skull rather than the larger borehole other approaches require. It is also fully removable. Precision seeks to help the 5 million people living with severe paralysis in the US (including 800,000 new stroke cases per year). In March 2025, Precision received FDA clearance for a temporary wired version of the system. Over 85 patients have been implanted with and used the device in clinical studies (50 at the time of our conversation). Wireless implants are planned for 2027. We go deep on the history of Neurotech from the 1980s to the ML inflection points that triggered Neuralink's founding, why surface ECoG was a contrarian bet that's now paying off, the path to treating paralysis and stroke at scale, and why Ben believes neural data is at the same inflection point genomic data was in 2000 — a whole class of biological problems about to become tractable as computer science problems. Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:04:39 Paralysis as a lens to understand the brain 00:05:36 The 1980s breakthrough: population encoding and the birth of BCI 00:14:36 Google Translate, ML, and the founding of Neuralink 00:23:08 What is the long-term vision of Precision Neuroscience 00:31:56 Layer 7 and why transformative technology looks impossible at first 00:50:21 The surgery: a slit in the skull, not a borehole 00:55:19 The clinical program: who are the patients 01:04:16 FDA clearance and the path to wireless implants in 2027 01:08:32 The patient population: paralysis and stroke at scale 01:16:26 Neural data as the new genomics 01:30:06 BCIs, AI, and the future of the human-machine interface 01:31:22 From medical necessity to lifestyle technology 01:40:36 Precision as a platform — and an optimistic vision If you're interested in these kinds of discussions, subscribe to the podcast. And if there’s anyone you’d like to see or hear on the podcast, reply with your suggestions. Full Episode 2 here and in other platforms below.

Excited to launch a new podcast dedicated to conversations on the future of neurotech, computing, intelligence, and more. First guest: @maxhodak_ founder & CEO of @ScienceCorp_, which is building PRIMA, a retinal prosthetic that’s restoring meaningful vision for patients with blindness caused by age-related macular degeneration. Science is also developing a biohybrid brain implant that grows living neurons directly onto a silicon chip, then interfaces that system with the cortex. The possibility space here is vast and new. Imagine growing new areas of the brain. Sections 00:00 What counts as neurotech? 01:45 History of brain-computer interfaces and the smartphone dividend 07:25 PRIMA - How Science is restoring vision in blind patients 10:10 Why stimulating bipolar cells works when the optic nerve doesn't 30:30 Are we bottlenecked by biology or engineering? 32:40 Expanding the brain's bandwidth beyond 10 bits per second 37:00 Can we add new areas to the brain? 37:46 Biohybrid BCIs: neurons growing on a chip 39:20 What could neural augmentation look like? 01:13:20 How Science drives Fast R&D 01:44:00 How founders learn and level up This is the kind of discussion I’m excited to explore on this podcast. Enjoy! Full Episode 1 here and in links below.