Latest Interviews

How to Be a Man in 2018

Richard Sandler, Michael Ian Black, Joanne Lipman, Kevin O'Leary, Alex Rodriguez

Moderated by Richard Sandler, a panel of business leaders and activists including Kevin O'Leary, Joanne Lipman, Michael Ian Black, and Alex Rodriguez argued that gender inequality is a detrimental business practice that harms productivity and financial returns. The discussion integrated diverse perspectives on systemic bias, with O'Leary citing performance data showing female-led companies outperform male-led counterparts, while panelists emphasized the need for men to embrace vulnerability and allyship to drive cultural change. Concluding that economic incentives and shared responsibility are the most effective drivers of progress, the group warned that avoiding cross-gender mentorship due to fear undermines organizational success and social equity.

Simon Benjamin on Architectures for Quantum Computing

Simon Benjamin, John Preskill, Craig Cannon

Driven by experimental progress surpassing the 99% fault-tolerance threshold, Oxford University's ion trap systems now achieve 99.9% gate fidelity, enabling the first viable implementations of quantum error correction. The research team proposes a modular networking architecture that links high-fidelity units via optical fibers and entanglement purification to scale toward useful applications like molecular simulation while avoiding the engineering bottlenecks of monolithic designs. By addressing hardware limitations through this approach, the project aims to demonstrate a fully linked two-module system within a year, bridging the gap between current quantum supremacy demonstrations and future large-scale computational utility.

Avoiding War With North Korea

Nicholas Kristof, Jean Lee, Yasuhide Nakayama, John Park, Bill Richardson

Moderated by Nicholas Kristof at the Milken Conference, experts Jean Lee, Yasuhide Nakayama, John Park, and Governor Bill Richardson analyzed the shifting geopolitical landscape of the Korean Peninsula following the Panmunjom Declaration. While Park and Richardson acknowledged tangible momentum such as the dismantling of the Punggye-ri test facility, Lee and Richardson warned that full denuclearization by 2021 remains unlikely due to Kim Jong-un's strategic use of nuclear capabilities for regime survival and internal legitimacy. The panel ultimately characterized the current diplomatic efforts as a fragile "action-for-action" process where South Korea and Japan face risks of marginalization, with prospects for a permanent freeze on nuclear programs rather than immediate total disarmament.

A Conversation With Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall, Brian Sheth, Melissa Stevens

Jane Goodall and Brian Sheth discuss the convergence of private equity capital and global conservation through Goodall's Jane Goodall Institute and Sheth's leadership of Global Wildlife Conservation. They detail the expansion of Goodall's Roots & Shoots program to 150,000 youth groups and the institute's use of satellite technology to protect chimpanzee populations in Gombe and the Republic of Congo. The dialogue concludes with a strategic emphasis on integrating scientific rigor into policy-making and leveraging financial markets to sustain long-term environmental resilience.

Strategy and Leadership in an Age of Disruption

Adam Lashinsky, Jorge Paulo Lemann, Jim McCaughan, Tim Sloan, Julie Sweet, Seth Caller, Jatrice Martel-Gator, Major Ken Tarr, Seema Shah

Leaders from Accenture, Wells Fargo, and 3G Capital discussed how accelerating disruption forces major corporations to shift from control-based leadership to innovation-focused cultures, with artificial intelligence becoming a ubiquitous utility rather than a niche experiment. Panelists detailed specific strategies for this transition, including Wells Fargo's restructuring into unified customer-centric models, Accenture's rapid sprints that delivered complex solutions in weeks, and 3G Capital's internal units dedicated to self-disruption. To sustain these advancements, the group emphasized that ethical AI adoption and proactive workforce reskilling are critical, noting that successful organizations are reinvesting automation savings into talent development while addressing diversity gaps to prevent systemic flaws.

Lord of the Rings: A Conversation With Five-Time Super Bowl Champion Tom Brady

Tom Brady, Jim Gray

Tom Brady reaffirmed his commitment to playing through the 2018-2019 season by prioritizing longevity through his TB12 Method, a wellness protocol focused on pliability and injury prevention that aims to extend his career into his mid-40s. During a comprehensive discussion on team dynamics and personal philosophy, he clarified that he had no input on the Super Bowl LII roster decisions while emphasizing his reliance on family for motivation and his distinct approach to leadership. The conversation also covered his skepticism of new NFL rules, his assessment of Bill Belichick's genius, and his belief that the league must balance entertainment value with player safety to sustain industry growth.

Big Tech and Antitrust: Rethinking Competition Policy for the Digital Era

David Faber, Tyler Cowen, Makan Delrahim, Sally Hubbard, Luigi Zingales

Justice Department official Makan Delrahim, panelists Luigi Zingales, Sally Hubbard, and Tyler Cowen debated the implications of the AT&T/Time Warner and T-Mobile/Sprint mergers while critiquing Big Tech's "platform privilege" and data monopolies. Critics argued that digital services function as monopolies through advertising control and product replication, challenging Delrahim's assertion that these firms have primarily benefited consumers through innovation and low prices. The discussion concluded by exploring regulatory remedies ranging from data portability and interoperability to potential common carrier status should antitrust enforcement fail to restore competition.

El Salvador's violent gang members are finding God in prison

Wilfredo Gómez

Following his deportation from the U.S. to El Salvador in 1996, former 18th Street gang member Wilfredo Gómez founded a Christian prison ministry that expanded to house over 900 inmates within a violent, overcrowded system. While the program offered temporary sanctuary and social mobility through a segregated religious zone, its long-term success remains limited as societal stigma and a lack of employment opportunities prevent most converts from maintaining their faith outside prison. Ultimately, the initiative highlights a critical gap between individual rehabilitation within the jail and the structural barriers preventing former gang members from achieving permanent reintegration into Salvadoran society.

When thoughts control machines

Brain-computer interface projects led by entities such as the U.S. Brain Initiative, Kernel, Neuralink, and DARPA are rapidly advancing from controlling prosthetics to decoding entire neural circuits with the goal of restoring motor function for paralyzed patients. As these technologies evolve to read and write neural codes, experts highlight critical ethical imperatives regarding neuroprivacy and the prevention of a societal capability gap between enhanced humans and artificial intelligence. The immediate focus remains on medical recovery, while long-term aspirations address the profound necessity of co-evolving with machines to ensure equitable access and safeguard human autonomy against the rapid pace of technological development.

John Preskill on Quantum Computing

John Preskill, Steven Hawking, Kip Thorne, Craig Cannon

Established by Richard Feynman's early theoretical work, the field of quantum computing has evolved from theoretical challenges in the 1970s to a practical reality enabled by mid-1990s error correction and recent hardware advancements in superconducting and trapped-ion systems. As current devices approach 100 qubits, they are poised to disrupt public-key cryptography through Shor's algorithm while simultaneously offering transformative capabilities in quantum chemistry simulation and materials science. The industry now focuses on bridging these applications through hybrid classical-quantum systems and developing post-quantum security measures to address the imminent threat to existing encryption standards.

OCaml All The Way Down

Andy Ray

This presentation outlines a hardware design framework utilizing the OCaml-based HardCAML domain-specific language to generate FPGA logic for custom peripherals like LED drivers, SPI sensors, and CORDIC math cores. The implementation targets the MicroBlaze soft CPU architecture, executing OCaml bytecode via a ZINC interpreter while leveraging standard Xilinx place-and-route tools to manage complex FPGA resources such as LUTs and DSP blocks. Future roadmaps prioritize full native CPU development within HardCAML, expanded formal verification using the Z3 solver, and the open-sourcing of testing infrastructure to reduce reliance on vendor-provided software components.

Ireland: divided by abortion

On May 25th, Irish voters will decide whether to repeal the Eighth Amendment, a 1983 constitutional provision that currently bans abortion except when the mother's life is at risk. Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and pro-choice advocates, citing the unsafe nature of current cross-border travel and shifting public sentiment, support legalization up to the twelfth week, while pro-life campaigners warn that removing the amendment permanently prevents future legislative control. With recent polls showing the electorate is nearly evenly split, this referendum represents a definitive test of Ireland's transition toward a secular society or its retention of traditional conservative values.

Mathematical Approaches to Image Processing with Carola Schönlieb

Carola Schönlieb, Craig Cannon

A researcher specializing in inverse imaging problems and partial differential equations is advancing techniques to reconstruct high-resolution medical, environmental, and historical data from severely limited measurements. By developing bi-level optimization strategies that integrate machine learning with interpretable, handcrafted mathematical models, this work addresses critical challenges in noise reduction and adversarial robustness for applications ranging from dynamic MRI imaging to the virtual restoration of illuminated manuscripts. The research successfully bridges theoretical stability guarantees with practical data-driven performance, enabling safer radiation exposure in CT scans and accurate 3D modeling of forest structures from airborne sensor data.

Kieran Snyder of Textio at the Seattle Female Founders Conference

Kieran Snyder

Founded in 2014 by linguists and Microsoft veterans Kieran Snyder and Jensen Harris, Textio has developed a machine-learning platform that analyzes 350 million job postings to predict engagement and reduce bias. The company recently pivoted its pricing to a flat-fee enterprise model and formed data partnerships with major clients like Amazon and Johnson & Johnson to accelerate revenue growth. With a workforce that is 50% female or non-binary, Textio aims to expand its "augmented writing" capabilities beyond HR to eventually challenge major office software providers in a planned IPO within seven years.

Cadran Cowansage Announces Leap at the Seattle Female Founders Conference

Cadran Cowansage, Kaedryn Cowan-Sage

Y Combinator engineer Kaedryn Cowan-Sage founded Leap, a private online network of approximately 2,000 women in tech that uses real-name verification to foster civil discourse and prevent the toxic environments often driving women out of digital spaces. Initially validated within Y Combinator, the platform now connects software engineers, founders, and investors through authentic conversations ranging from career development to technical problem-solving. Members report tangible professional outcomes, including securing co-founders and landing new jobs, proving the hybrid community's efficacy in advancing careers through genuine connection.