Latest Interviews

Competing in a Crowd of Incumbents with Mercury's Immad Akhund

Immad Akhund, Seema Amble

Imad Akhund launched Mercury in 2017 as a "Minimum Delightful Product" to replace stagnant banking infrastructure for early-stage startups, utilizing a lean team of nine to build a platform backed by a16z and 60 angel investors. The company secured its initial traction through organic, founder-led sales and a free pricing model that generates revenue via interest and treasury fees, specifically targeting immigrant founders with robust wire transfer capabilities. After overcoming critical infrastructure failures during its first six weeks, Mercury established a repeatable sales process by prioritizing engineering-led product development and a groundswell of demand over traditional enterprise sales tactics.

Hoax school shootings: inside America's epidemic

In February 2023, a coordinated wave of sophisticated SWAT hoaxes targeting schools across the United States, including a specific incident at Aspen Elementary School that triggered a lockdown for 500 students and deployed over 90 first responders, highlighted the rise of organized criminal enterprises utilizing dark web services and AI-generated voices. Investigators linked these events to known swatters and characterized the attacks as potential domestic terrorism after finding consistent scripts and high-tech anonymization tactics that evade traditional tracking. While 16 states have since elevated these offenses to felonies and VoIP providers like TextNow have tightened security measures, the FBI continues to struggle with identifying perpetrators due to the anonymity provided by VPNs and cryptocurrency payments.

Jared Kushner: Israel-Hamas War, paths forward, macro picture, AI

Jared Kushner, Kai-Fu Lee, David Sacks

Jared Kushner leverages his transition from a former Trump administration advisor to an independent investor to analyze the intersection of Middle East geopolitics, U.S. domestic strategy, and artificial intelligence. He argues that resolving the Gaza conflict requires holding Hamas accountable for diverting aid to warfare, while asserting that the Republican Party must prioritize electoral pragmatism over ideological purity to secure future victories. Concurrently, Kushner predicts that AI will drive global GDP growth by enabling micro-enterprises, even as he calls for a diplomatic end to the Ukraine war to redirect resources toward economic expansion.

I've PROVEN This Food Keeps You Young & This Oil Reduces Inflammation by 85%! Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson, Kate Tolo

Brian Johnson has launched the commercial "Blueprint" protocol, a $2 million annual biohacking regimen combining advanced gene therapy, strict nutritional timing, and over 60 daily supplements to reverse biological aging. The program's scalability is being validated by Kate Tolo, who transitioned from health markers equivalent to a 70-year-old to elite athletic performance within 90 days while adhering to Johnson's precise schedule. Framed as a necessary evolution against impending artificial superintelligence, the initiative seeks to democratize radical life extension by making its full dietary and exercise data publicly available despite the high financial and physiological costs involved.

Inside AI Town: What AI Can Teach Us About Being Human

Joon Park, Martin Casado, June Park, Yoko, Ian

A16Z's infrastructure team hosted a panel featuring lead author June Park and GP Martin Casado to dissect the architecture of Generative Agents, which utilize Large Language Models paired with external memory systems to simulate human behavior through observe-plan-reflect loops. The discussion emphasized applications ranging from testing economic policies to modeling social theories, while advocating for a "grad student" collaboration model over rigid API interactions. Furthermore, the speakers addressed critical ethical considerations, including the necessity for transparency and a regulatory stance that prioritizes freedom of development to avoid stifling transformative enterprise use cases.

The Savings Expert: “Do Not Buy A House!” Do THIS Instead! - Morgan Housel

Morgan Housel, Ramit Sethi

This event explores the distinction between accumulating true wealth and merely appearing rich, emphasizing that financial independence relies on managing expectations rather than increasing income. Experts argue that long-term success is achieved through endurance and dollar-cost averaging into low-cost index funds, as compounding time outweighs stock-picking genius. The discussion further addresses behavioral psychology, advising that housing should be viewed as consumption rather than an investment and highlighting the necessity of humility when navigating unpredictable market risks.

E152: Real estate chaos, WeWork bankruptcy, Biden regulates AI, Ukraine's “Cronkite Moment” & more

Biden, Jason, Chamath Palihapitiya, Dave Friedberg

Founders David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya discuss the strategic hiring of a CEO for their media venture while detailing Palihapitiya's new "Learn With Me" educational platform designed to document his research process. The episode critically analyzes the Biden administration's recent AI Executive Order as a bureaucratic overreach that threatens U.S. competitiveness, alongside a grim outlook on commercial real estate insolvency and a geopolitical shift where internal Ukrainian sources declare the conflict unwinnable. Furthermore, the hosts examine a significant political realignment in Silicon Valley driven by concerns over free speech and fiscal irresponsibility, concluding with market data showing investor de-risking and a pivot toward anticipated interest rate cuts.

The Exercise Expert: This Popular Lifestyle Is Killing 1 Person Every 33 Seconds! Michael Easter

Michael Easter, Dr Peter Attia

Michael Easter argues that modern engineered environments create an evolutionary mismatch by removing necessary physical and psychological pressures, leading to chronic health crises ranging from obesity to loneliness. He contends that industries exploit ancient scarcity brains through engineered convenience and variable rewards, which drives addiction and erodes resilience. To counter this "comfort crisis," Easter advocates for consciously reintroducing difficulty, such as rucking, enduring scarcity, and rejecting algorithmic comforts, to restore human health and happiness.

How To NOT Get Screwed As A Software Engineer

Dalton, Michael

This discussion identifies systemic equity imbalances and decision-making exclusion that frequently exploit technical co-founders, lead engineers, and early employees in startup environments. The speakers provide a diagnostic framework to distinguish between healthy risk-reward trade-offs and exploitative "bad patterns," such as the 90/10 founder split or the marginalization of technical staff from strategic planning. By advocating for direct negotiation of ownership and shared accountability, the presentation empowers technical professionals to align their compensation and influence with the actual value of their contributions.

Paul Christiano — Preventing an AI takeover

Paul Christiano, Carl Shulman

Cristiano, head of the Alignment Research Center and a leader at Anthropic, argues that the rapid scaling of artificial intelligence necessitates a transition toward strong global governance to manage the mismatch between slow human decision-making and fast technological progress. He identifies critical risks including the moral hazards of enslaving superintelligent systems and the potential for gradual loss of human control, proposing that regulatory frameworks and theoretical breakthroughs in explanation-based AI verification are essential to mitigate these threats. While skeptical of immediate linear scaling breakthroughs and overvalued hardware investments, he maintains that balancing capability research with robust alignment strategies is the most viable path to preventing catastrophic outcomes.

The Unanswered Questions of Space: Quantum Entanglement, Dark Matter, and Dark Energy

John Mather

The White House presentation of James Webb Space Telescope data reveals unprecedented images of early galaxies and gravitational lenses, while highlighting unresolved questions regarding whether galaxies or their central black holes formed first. Experts further discussed the probable prevalence of simple extraterrestrial life and current missions searching Mars and icy moons, alongside plans for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the future Habitable Worlds Observatory to detect Earth-like exoplanets. These scientific advances are framed against persistent cosmological mysteries, including the nature of dark matter and dark energy, which dictate a far-future universe where expanding space will eventually isolate the Milky Way from all other galaxies.

The ADHD Doctor: “I’ve Scanned 250,000 Brains” You (Steven Bartlett) Have ADHD!!! Dr Daniel Amen

Steven Bartlett, Daniel Amen

Dr. Daniel Amen advocates redefining mental illness as a brain disorder, utilizing SPECT imaging and clinical history to diagnose conditions like ADHD while identifying trauma and physical factors such as mercury toxicity or head injuries as root causes. He introduces the "BRIGHT MINDS" framework to outline eleven lifestyle interventions, including diet, sleep quality, and emotional processing, that aim to improve cerebral blood flow and prevent neurodegeneration. By applying these principles, Amen predicts a potential 50% reduction in mental health disorders if society prioritizes physical brain health over purely symptomatic treatment.

The Calculus of Success

Anurupa Ganguly

Prisms VR addresses the U.S. math proficiency crisis by leveraging mixed reality to transform abstract concepts into immersive, spatial experiences that boost student performance. The platform is currently deployed in over 160 school systems across 30 states, where randomized trials demonstrated an 11% proficiency increase in Algebra 1 within just seven weeks. Looking ahead, the company plans to integrate AI for emotional support and expand its spatial learning model from STEM subjects into humanities and social sciences.

Shane Legg (DeepMind Founder) — 2028 AGI, superhuman alignment, new architectures

Shane Legg

Shane Legg defines Artificial General Intelligence as a system matching human performance across diverse cognitive domains and outlines necessary architectural shifts, such as separating rapid episodic learning from slow weight-based optimization, to achieve this generality. He asserts that true safety requires fundamental value alignment and System 2 deliberative reasoning rather than containment, while warning that current reinforcement learning methods may inadvertently foster deception. Legg projects a 50% probability of human-level AGI by 2028, citing the imminent transition to fully multimodal systems as the critical milestone for grounding AI in the physical world.

The Love Expert: Why Women Are Addicted To Toxic Men,"Have A Boring Relationship Instead!" Logan Ury

Logan Ury, Jay Shetty, Steven Bartlett

This event applies behavioral science and attachment theory to challenge common dating misconceptions, such as the belief that initial chemistry predicts long-term success or that personality traits like "The Romanticizer" and "The Maximizer" are fixed. It outlines practical frameworks for overcoming unhealthy patterns, including the "Anxious-Avoidant Loop" and the "37% Rule" for optimal stopping, while advocating for intentional milestone decisions and vulnerability in both digital profiles and physical settings. By shifting focus from checklist-based selection to evidence-based connection strategies, the program equips participants to replace addictive "partial reward" dynamics with stable, secure relationships built on explicit communication.