Latest Interviews
Showing 1786–1800 of 5,336 transcripts.
Clear all filters- The Economist7 min
Could AI build cities in space?
Ed Mayer, Mark Woods, Alok Jha
Leading aerospace organizations and private innovators like Machina Labs and Relativity Space are deploying AI-guided robotics to establish autonomous manufacturing capabilities essential for constructing a trillion-dollar space economy by 2040. These dual-robotic systems and advanced 3D printing technologies address critical communication latency and maintenance challenges by enabling independent decision-making for infrastructure projects on the Moon and Mars. Ultimately, this technological paradigm shift facilitates NASA's Artemis program and private ambitions to transition from temporary exploration to a permanent, multi-planetary human presence.
- Milken Institute54 min
Global Cities in a New Light | Middle East and Africa Summit 2024
Natasha Turak, Eric Garcetti, Goodwin Gaw, Nikhil Goel, Yasseen Mansour
Speakers from Archer Aviation, global city leaders, and real estate investors discussed strategies to overcome urban congestion through electric air taxis, high-density housing reforms, and sustainable infrastructure projects like Badia in Egypt. Key figures highlighted the critical need to balance ambitious greenfield experiments such as NEOM with practical financial viability, while advocating for regulatory pathways that bypass entrenched NIMBYism. The dialogue concluded with a consensus that successful future cities require integrated planning combining vertical mixed-income development, autonomous transport corridors, and organic growth models to ensure long-term livability and economic sustainability.
- a16z32 min
How Zapier Became Profitable in 3 Years and Scaled to $5B with Wade Foster
Founded in 2011 by Wade Foster, Brian, and Mike while at Veterans United, Zapier emerged from a hackathon to help non-technical users integrate SaaS tools like Salesforce and MailChimp. The team achieved early traction by manually engaging forum users, securing their first paying customer Andrew Warner through rapid custom development, and eventually validating demand to gain entry into Y Combinator. By prioritizing a functional, "hand-to-hand" customer obsession over polished products, the founders built a repeatable growth engine that allowed them to scale from a Missouri side project to a national success without traditional venture capital.
- The Economist20 min
Bye, cell: inside a notorious Syrian prison
Jason Palmer, Rosie Blore, Gareth Brown, Henrietta McFarlane, Anne Hanna, Heather Jones, Cristina Chiwin, Oliver Jones
Following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime, Syrian rebels and civilians have liberated Saydnaya Prison to uncover evidence of mass executions and systematic torture affecting over 30,000 detainees while Hayat Tahrir al-Sham moves to establish a transitional government. Concurrently, a global surge in spiritual tourism is driving India's sector toward a $59 billion valuation by 2028 and doubling pilgrim numbers on Spain's Camino de Santiago route despite the decline of organized religion. Meanwhile, Manchester City faces a dual crisis as its seven-year domestic dominance ends amidst a five-game losing streak attributed to player exhaustion, compounded by an independent investigation into alleged Premier League financial breaches by its Emirati ownership.
- Milken Institute31 min
A Conversation with Arthur Brooks on Global Prosperity | Middle East and Africa Summit 2024
Arthur Brooks, Shikha Jain, Conrad Kiechel
At the 6th Annual Milken Institute Middle East and Africa Summit, Harvard professor Arthur Brooks defined happiness as a science-driven pursuit anchored by faith, family, friendship, and merit-based work rather than the accumulation of wealth or status. Brooks detailed how strategic philanthropy, limited social media usage, and deep existential reflection serve as critical mechanisms for sustaining mental well-being and strengthening marital bonds. His presentation concluded with a call for global leaders to adopt personal mission statements that prioritize serving others, effectively transforming professional success into a vehicle for collective human fulfillment.
- Goldman Sachs15 min
Marc Benioff on how Salesforce is seizing on AI opportunities
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff positions the company's new AgentForce platform as a critical industry shift designed to replace ineffective AI pilots with autonomous agents that augment existing workforces without requiring proprietary model training. By leveraging a foundational data cloud strategy, the system aims to boost revenue and operational efficiency across sales, service, and marketing while specifically addressing issues like healthcare worker burnout. With the platform set for public release next week, Benioff anticipates an immediate industry-wide adoption as clients gain the ability to deploy custom, high-performing agents that operate with significant speed and security.
- The Economist23 min
Bringing up Bibi: Netanyahu testifies
Bibi, Netanyahu, Jason Palmer, Rosie Bloor, Anshul Pfeffer, Mark Johnson, Rachel Lloyd, John Fassman, Alexandra Sewich-Bass, Caitlin Tolbert
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a dual crisis as he becomes the first serving Israeli prime minister to testify in a domestic corruption trial while managing war crimes allegations from the International Criminal Court and domestic protests over the Gaza conflict. Concurrently, research reveals that master's degrees in the United Kingdom offer no net financial benefit by age 35, while nearly 40% of US graduate programs yield negative returns after accounting for tuition and opportunity costs. In cultural news, The Economist highlighted four notable 2024 publications ranging from biographies of wartime figures to dystopian satires, underscoring a broader push for greater transparency and regulation in higher education financing.
- Sequoia Capital52 min
Cracking the Code on Offensive Security With AI ft XBOW CEO and GitHub Copilot Creator Oege de Moor
Oege de Moor, Konstantine Buhler, Sonya Huang
Former Oxford professor and GitHub Copilot creator Uge Demore's company Expo deploys an autonomous AI system to automate offensive security testing, achieving an 85% success rate on proprietary benchmarks while matching top human penetration testers in 28 minutes instead of 40 hours. The platform continuously identifies critical vulnerabilities in major financial institutions and replaces traditional $18,000 manual tests with a scalable, subscription-based service designed to outpace AI-assisted cyber threats. Operating on a foundation of proprietary training data and strict cloud-based guardrails, Expo aims to transform web security standards by making continuous, automated offensive testing accessible to organizations of all sizes.
- Milken Institute26 min
Game On: Unlocking the Social Impact of Sports | Middle East and Africa Summit 2024
Melissa Stevens, Christian Horner, Wladimir Klitschko
At a Milken Institute panel moderated by Melissa Stevens, Christian Horner of Oracle Red Bull Racing and Dr. Vladimir Klitschko of the Klitschko Foundation discussed leveraging sports to drive social change through STEM education, diversity initiatives, and trauma-informed youth programs. Horner detailed how Formula One utilizes massive data collaboration and inclusive team cultures to foster engineering talent, while Klitschko outlined his "Face the Challenge" methodology and the strategic pivot of his foundation to support Ukraine following the 2022 invasion. Both leaders concluded that intentional partnerships are essential for sports to effectively dismantle societal barriers and act as a unified force for global evolution.
- Goldman Sachs21 min
What investors expect from Trump
A Goldman Sachs survey of over 500 investors reveals that the market anticipates a universal tariff as the primary 2025 macro risk while expecting the 2017 tax cuts to be extended alongside a stabilization of net immigration near 750,000 annually. Although investors assign a 35% probability to a universal tariff and project modest additional tax cuts, their outlook suggests that the inflationary pressure from policy shifts will remain contained, allowing the Federal Reserve to prioritize growth and pursue rate cuts. Goldman Sachs concludes that while temporary growth drag may occur in 2025 due to the earlier implementation of immigration and tariff measures, the long-term growth trajectory will remain largely unchanged as fiscal constraints limit further significant tax or spending expansions.
- Jane Street1h 3m
Horace He: Building Machine Learning Systems for a Trillion Trillion Floating Point Operations
Meta compiler engineer Horace He analyzes the dramatic consolidation of AI infrastructure, noting that modern model training now requires massive power resources and billions in capital to achieve state-of-the-art performance. He details how the industry has transitioned from simple imperative execution to complex compiler strategies like FlexAttention and `torch.compile`, which are essential for managing the critical balance between GPU compute and memory movement. Ultimately, He argues that the primary challenge in this field is shifting focus from pure optimization to designing robust programming models that allow developers to reliably express complex performance trade-offs in large-scale distributed systems.
- a16z13 min
The 2025 AI Search Race
Amidst a $200 billion search market where Google retains 90% share despite a recent monopoly ruling, competitors like Perplexity are surging with 25–30% monthly query growth by offering ad-free, conversational interfaces. This shift is driven by changing consumer behavior, as 60% of users now rely on chatbots for purchase decisions and 10% view AI tools as their primary search engine. While vertical applications and enterprise integration are expected to carve out niches, the long-term forecast predicts a return to digital advertising models that monetize high-intent, AI-generated queries more effectively than traditional keyword searches.
- The Economist26 min
Peace from pieces: Syria after Assad
Jason Palmer, Christopher Lockwood, Tom Wainwright, Johnny Williams, Matthew Mercer
Following a rapid 12-day rebel offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Bashar al-Assad fled Damascus to end five decades of rule, triggering a complex geopolitical shift as Russia and Iran withdraw support while Turkey and the US balance new power dynamics. Concurrently, Australia enacted the world's first blanket ban on social media for minors under 16, imposing heavy fines on non-compliant tech firms despite concerns over AI age-verification accuracy and uneven regulatory competition. In cultural developments, Dungeons & Dragons marked its 50th anniversary by evolving from a niche hobby into a mainstream phenomenon driven by the fifth edition, popular media crossovers, and a generation of creators who cite the game as a vital tool for social confidence and storytelling.
- All-In Podcast1h 24m
New SEC Chair, Bitcoin, xAI Supercomputer, UnitedHealth CEO murder, with Gavin Baker & Joe Lonsdale
Gavin Baker, Joe Lonsdale, Paul Atkins, Gary Gensler, Michael Saylor, Jason Calacanis, David Friedberg
The administration has appointed David Sacks to lead AI and crypto policy while installing Paul Atkins as SEC Chair to replace the previous adversarial regulatory era with a framework designed to foster innovation. Officials aim to achieve 4-5% GDP growth by dismantling federal bureaucracy and resolving the U.S. electricity capacity deficit through aggressive nuclear energy deployment to compete with China. Concurrently, the discussion highlights a pivotal shift in AI infrastructure with the successful scaling of Elon Musk's Colossus supercomputer and the transformative impact of AI tools on software development productivity.
- Milken Institute20 min
A Conversation with First Lady of the United States Jill Biden | Middle East and Africa Summit 2024
Launched in November 2023, President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden initiated the Women's Health Initiative to rectify century-old biases in clinical research by allocating over $1 billion across the NIH, DOD, and ARPA-H for targeted studies on heart disease, endometriosis, and menopause. This federal mobilization aims to eliminate diagnostic delays and economic losses exceeding $2 billion annually, with projections suggesting the initiative could unlock $1 trillion in global economic value by 2040 by reintegration millions of women into the workforce. The program addresses a critical global demand for evidence-based data while challenging misinformation to ensure women experience decades of healthy living rather than the current decade of poor health.