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PODCAST

Core Memory

Core Memory is a podcast about science and technology hosted by best-selling author and filmmaker Ashlee Vance. Vance has spent the past two decades chronicling advances in science and tech for publications like The Economist, The New York Times and Bloomberg Businessweek. Along with the stories, he"s written best-selling books like Elon Musk’s biography, made an Emmy-nominated tech TV show watched by millions and produced films for HBO and Netflix. The goal has always been to bring the tales of

technology

All Episodes

72:44

He's Building A Space Station For $1 Billion - EP 38...

Core Memory ·

2025/10/15

Jed McCaleb grew up in Arkansas where he lived in a cabin in the woods that had no electricity or running water. Now, he’s a billionaire building a space station and funding some of the world’s most adventurous science.America remains a thing, I guess.McCaleb, 50, has been at the center of several major technology movements. Back in the peer-to-peer glory days, he released the eDonkey application for music and file-swapping and had the pleasure of being sued by the major record labels. Then, in

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93:29

The State Of Gene Editing - EP 37 Eryney Marrogi

Core Memory ·

2025/10/08

We have a proper treat this week. Core Memory special correspondent Eryney Marrogi comes on the pod.Marrogi is a scientist and soon-to-be doctor who has followed the rise of the gene editing tools at humanity’s disposal. He wrote a piece for us a couple of months ago on “Baby KJ,” the child who received a customized, life-saving gene therapy in record time. Now we get into what Baby KJ means for the future of gene therapies.The gene therapy field is advancing quickly but remains costly and

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84:09

We Shall Finally Map The Brain - EP 36 Andrew Payne

Core Memory ·

2025/10/01

In the 1970s, scientists created the first wiring diagram of a worm brain. To do this, they sliced up a worm, imaged the slices under microscopes and then reconstructed a map of the worm’s neurons and their synaptic connections. Wonderful. (It was 302 neurons and really a map of the worm’s central nervous system.)We haven’t come terribly far since then. It took until 2024 for scientists to create a full map – aka a connectome – of an adult fly brain (140,000 neurons) and researchers now dream of

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89:08

China Builds, The US Regulates - EP 35 Dan Wang

Core Memory ·

2025/09/24

In this episode, Dan Wang comes on the show to discuss his new book Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future.I’ll start by noting that the book is fantastic, and you should read it. It’s a well-researched, vibrant account of how China became dominated by its engineering culture. The country has displayed an unmatched ability to build over the past forty years, and Wang traces the scale of these accomplishments in detail. He also documents how pervasive this engineering mindset is by diving

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1:37

This Is: How Neuralink Builds A Head

Core Memory ·

2025/09/19

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.corememory.comIn January of 2024, Noland Arbaugh became the first human to receive one of Neuralink’s brain-computer interface implants.Ahead of that surgery, Neuralink pulled off a first-of-its-kind engineering feat. The company created a detailed replica of Arbaugh’s skull and brain. With this replica, Neuralink’s surgeons and its surgical robot could practice the …

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102:57

Can California Ever Build Again?

Core Memory ·

2025/09/17

This week, we bring you the story of California Forever in all its “never told before” glory.For the past eight years, Jan Sramek and a group of wealthy investors have been buying up land in Solano County with the hopes of creating a great new city in Northern California. All told, the California Forever group has spent $1 billion to acquire 68,000 acres (100 square miles) in an area about halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento. Their goal is to create a community of 400,000 people who can

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89:14

The Man Who Changed Policing In America

Core Memory ·

2025/09/10

Most of you have not heard of Axon Enterprise. But there it is – a $57 billion company that has reshaped pretty much every police department in the United States. (San Francisco being the major exception.)Rick Smith founded the company in 1993 and turned its major invention – the TASER – into a blockbuster product. Smith hoped the taser would lessen cops’ inclination to grab their guns by giving them a non-lethal option for dealing with dangerous situations. In more recent years, Axon has moved into

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76:39

Cathy Tie Is Ready To Gene Edit Babies

Core Memory ·

2025/09/03

Cathy Tie has been having an eventful year.First she co-founded a company determined to gene edit animals and build literal unicorns. Then she held a wedding ceremony in China with Dr. Jiankui He - the controversial scientist who spent three years in prison for performing gene editing procedures on twins. And then, in May, we brought you the story of Tie being banned from China with government officials apparently not liking the idea of her teaming up with Dr. He romantically and/or

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91:18

The History And Future Of Brain Implants

Core Memory ·

2025/08/27

Into the brain we go.Sumner Norman, the co-founder and CEO of Forest Neurotech, comes on the show to take us on a journey across the history and future of brain implants. We start with the first experiments prodding the body and mind with electricity and end up in mind uploading land. Along the way, we cover many of the major brain-computer interface technologies and advances.Norman has a unique perspective in this field. He’s a mechanical engineer by training but can talk neuroscience with the best

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73:23

The Ultimate Bryan Johnson Interview

Core Memory ·

2025/08/20

Well, here we go. Bryan Johnson has come to the pod.You have likely heard an interview with Johnson before, since he’s become such an object of love, hate and fascination among the media over the past couple of years. That said, you will not have heard an interview like this with Johnson.I was covering Johnson’s exploits in the brain-computer-interface and health fields in-depth before anyone else. Back then, my editors and others often seemed to think too much ink was being spilled on the man. But,

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70:00

How North Korea Infiltrated American Companies With...

Core Memory ·

2025/08/13

For the past few months, The Wall Street Journal’s Bob McMillan has been writing a series of stories on fake North Korean workers who have infiltrated American companies. In this episode, we break the whole situation down with McMillan, who is a longtime friend and a top-notch security reporter.The short of the tale is this: North Koreans hop on LinkedIn and other job sites and pose as American remote workers looking for gigs. Once they get hired, the North Koreans then recruit Americans to help

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66:41

The Company Putting A Score On Your Life

Core Memory ·

2025/08/06

We are awash in longevity tests and services. There are ones that measure your blood, others that measure the quality of your DNA and others that check on your gut and brain. You can Blueprint, Viome, Function Health and on and on.To figure out how at least one of these longevity programs actually works, we decided to have Dugal Bain-Kim from Lifeforce on the pod.As you will notice, the dude is jacked and does indeed seem quite healthy.Lifeforce provides - for a montly fee - a lot of what a decent

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83:54

The Forrest Gump of Silicon Valley

Core Memory ·

2025/07/31

This week’s guest is Leslie Berlin, the author, historian and executive director of the Steve Jobs Archive.My first encounter with Berlin’s work happened when I picked up The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley, which is Berlin’s biography of the Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel co-founder. Noyce, of course, was many things. He co-invented the integrated circuit and reshaped the trajectory of the world in the process. He ran one of Silicon Valley’s most iconic

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75:43

The Iranian Scientist Leading America’s Nuclear Rebirth

Core Memory ·

2025/07/24

Our guests this week are Kurt Terrani, an Iranian-born nuclear scientist, and Tommy Hendrix, a Green Beret turned venture capitalist, and they arrive with an exceptional story.Terrani is the co-founder and CEO of Standard Nuclear, and Hendrix is the company’s Chairman and main investor through his firm Decisive Point. Standard has started making a nuclear reactor fuel known as TRISO (Tri-structural ISOtropic) that comes with the promise of being very safe and with the ability to power a new breed of

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62:14

Priscilla Chan and Her Multi-Billion Dollar Quest to...

Core Memory ·

2025/07/16

Ten years ago, Dr. Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg vowed to aim almost all of their billions at a singular goal: “to cure, prevent and manage all disease by the end of this century.”Dr. Chan recently visited the Core Memory podcast studio to discuss CZI, aka the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the organization that she and her husband built to pursue this massive undertaking. To date, the couple has put $7 billion toward a broad range of scientific programs and has backed bio-tech centers across the

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75:05

Spaceplanes Are Upon Us

Core Memory ·

2025/07/09

Last November, Dawn Aerospace broke some aerospace records. Its spaceplane – the Mk-II Aurora – hit Mach 1.1 on its way to climbing to 20km faster than any aircraft that has ever taken off from a runway. (The previous record was set by an F-15 in 1975.)Dawn, based in New Zealand, now looks to make flying to the edge of space a regular occurrence. Its craft blends rocket engines with a plane design and can carry small payloads (up to 5kg) for defense, science and commercial customers. In June, the

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77:52

The Child Prodigy Teaching Other People How To Learn

Core Memory ·

2025/07/02

Andrew Hsu has been something of a legend for most of his life.In 2007, The Seattle Times published a story documenting Hsu’s graduation from the University of Washington. He was only 16 and had just picked up three degrees in neurobiology, biochemistry and chemistry.But stories of Hsu’s academic feats had already been circulating for years. He’d won science contests, written an award-winning autobiography and started a foundation to help children in need as an adolescent. Hsu’s family hails from

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82:43

Fixing American Science Funding

Core Memory ·

2025/06/25

This week on the Core Memory podcast – we fix American science and advance civilization.We were joined by Anastasia Gamick and Adam Marbleston from Convergent Research. They’ve spent the last few years pioneering a new model of science funding centered on FROs or Focused Research Organizations. And FROs take a little bit of explaining.Convergent Research has backing from Eric Schmidt, James Fickel (a fantastic patron of science) and others and tries to fund small groups of people chasing very big

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84:50

The New Era of Consumer DNA Tests

Core Memory ·

2025/06/18

This week’s guest is Kian Sadeghi, the founder and CEO of Nucleus. Sadeghi has everything you want in a controversialish bio-tech CEO. He’s a college dropout, a Thiel Fellow and a “wild child,” as one Nucleus investor told me. He’s also trying to uplevel the consumer DNA testing game by poring over entire human genomes with every test instead of just looking at snippets of DNA as companies like 23andMe and Ancestry have done for many years.Nucleus charges about $500 for its mainstream health test

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78:18

An AI Engineer Is Here, and It Might Redesign the...

Core Memory ·

2025/06/11

The news here is that Paul Eremenko has a new start-up called P-1 AI.Eremenko is billing P-1 as one of the first stabs at building an AI engineer. The company’s “Archie” AI can help with day-to-day engineering tasks today, and, if all goes according to plan, will be designing buildings, planes and rockets in the future. We, of course, getting into what Archie can do today and what it might do in the years to come in the pod. Spoiler alert: Eremenko thinks we get MUCH better spaceships. Most of our

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