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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

90:36

He’s Here To End Death - EP 90 Dr. Emil Kendziorra

Core Memory ·

2026/09/30

A few years ago, some people put me in a van and drove me to the edge of Moscow. And by “the edge of Moscow,” I mean where things started to get a bit rural. We turned off a road and went toward what looked like a modest farmhouse with a shed. After exiting the van, we entered said shed and found two large metal containers that were full of human bodies and heads along with the bodies of many animals, including dogs, cats, and a hummingbird. Have a look.These bodies were being cryopreserved with

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88:55

The Wordcel Queen Of Silicon Valley — EP 89 Anna Gát

Core Memory ·

2026/09/23

We’ve heard a lot of moonshot ideas on this podcast, but this week’s guest may have the most impossible one yet: making tech more cultured.In this episode, Ashlee sat down with Anna Gát, a Hungarian philosopher, playwright, and founder of Interintellect, a platform for hosting intellectual conversations online. She calls herself “the bridge” between the humanities, academia, and the tech world, which in practice means getting engineers to read Goethe.Gát grew up on a TV set in communist Hungary. Her

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89:37

Solar Energy's Second Act — EP 88 Joel Jean

Core Memory ·

2026/09/16

In this episode, Ashlee sits down with Joel Jean, CEO of Swift Solar, a San Carlos-based startup trying to create new solar technology using perovskite. We previously published a story about Swift, if you’re wondering what the f*ck perovskite is! In short, it’s a synthetic crystal that turns sunlight into electricity better and cheaper than the silicon currently used in solar panels. This stuff is finicky though, and experts have doubts, as they always do — but Jean explains how Swift is closing in

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83:57

The Xbox Nearly Destroyed Him - EP 87 Seamus Blackley

Core Memory ·

2026/09/09

This episode is nerd catnip unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.Ashlee sat down with Seamus Blackley, who you might know as the man who talked Microsoft into building the Xbox. Nowadays, you can find Blackley in a Pasadena laboratory making the world’s best chocolate. If you’re just here for the cacao, well, we did a video on it.Blackley grew up in rural New Mexico and studied electrical engineering, then physics, at Tufts University. He spent years working on titles you know and love, like

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94:27

Gene Therapies That Work? - EP 86 Adrian Veres

Core Memory ·

2026/09/02

We have been promised glorious gene therapies for decades. This is supposed to be the stuff of reprogramming the body to blunt or cure diseases with something approaching a permanent fix. While gene therapy progress has been made, treatments remain rare and expensive, and it’s very tough to get the therapies to go into the desired parts of the body.Our guest this week is here to help. He’s Adrian Veres, the chief scientific officer and co-founder of Dyno Therapeutics. Founded in 2018, Dyno has been

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99:33

The Realest Longevity Guru - EP 85 Alex Colville

Core Memory ·

2026/08/26

Over the past five years, Alex Colville has become one of the most influential figures in the longevity and aging fields.There’s a decent chance you have not heard of him, which is a bit by design. Unlike many longevity gurus, Colville does not seek much attention and, for the most part, operates in the background where he’s been doling out many millions of dollars in investments. Today, Colville runs age1, a venture capital firm that has backed the likes of Loyal, Science, Conception and a bunch of

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118:51

AI Will Cure Us All!! Or Not!! - EP 84 Abhi Mahajan

Core Memory ·

2026/08/20

Every couple of days, a new AI-meets-biotech startup sends me a pitch, and the pitches all sound the same. AI is amazing, and it can now tame biology. We’re on the cusp of producing new cures for diseases at a rapid rate, and these startups know just how to get the job done. To which you should wonder – is this at all true?On this week’s Core Memory episode, we have brought in the big brains to answer – or at least debate – this question. Our resident science whiz and medical professional Eryney

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127:05

The Google Engineer Who Set The Skydiving Record At...

Core Memory ·

2026/07/22

Most people think that the Red Bull guy Felix Baumgartner holds the skydiving record. But this is not the case.The real record-holder is Alan Eustace. In 2014, at age 58, the Google engineer rode a helium-filled balloon into the stratosphere and then fell back to Earth from 135,890 feet. Eustace’s fall lasted 4 minutes and 27 seconds, and he broke the sound barrier, reaching a max speed of 822 mph. And now, in a very rare appearance, Eustace has come on the podcast to discuss his

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82:13

An Implant That Tracks And Treats Cancer Tumors - EP...

Core Memory ·

2026/07/15

Treating cancer remains a crude practice. We cut, burn and poison tumors, and we do all this with relatively little precision around both the initial treatment and our ongoing monitoring of how effective the treatment is. You show up for scans now and again and hope that whatever you’ve been doing has been working.Ben Woodington - who is an absolute unit - and the team at Coherence have come up with a new way to monitor and treat tumors. They’ve built an implant that, as the name suggests, gets

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5:30

Inside The Media Marvel That Is TBPN

Core Memory ·

2026/07/09

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.corememory.comRunning a media business is hard. You’re competing for people’s attention. You must produce a relentless stream of new things that are good and different. And you’re often dependent on the ever-changing whims of the public and advertisers.John Coogan and Jordi Hays somehow made all of this look easy when they started TBPN in late 2024. The daily tech ne…

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98:04

Quantum Everything Explained - EP 81 Prineha Narang

Core Memory ·

2026/07/08

Prineha Narang is one of the rising stars of science and the field of quantum technology.She earned her PhD in applied physics at Caltech, taught materials science at Harvard and now has her own lab at UCLA. The lab focuses on quantum materials, non-equilibrium dynamics, photonics, quantum information science and other easily digestible areas. Beyond her academic career, Narang is a science advisor to the government and a venture capitalist at DCVC.As you might imagine, we get into quantum computing

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58:17

He Came From Oz To Save American Manufacturing - EP...

Core Memory ·

2026/07/01

A few years ago, I was lunching with a young Australian man who told me he hoped to modernize manufacturing in America. This man seemed enthusiastic and ambitious, but I must confess to holding some serious doubts about the dramatic scope of his plans and his ability to pull them off.This man was Chris Power, and, well, he did the thing. He’s the founder and CEO of Hadrian, which has a growing empire of mega factories packed full of machines that cut, bend and weld metal. Hadrian has become a

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80:59

The Manufacturing Phenomenon That Is SendCutSend - EP...

Core Memory ·

2026/06/24

If you spend any time inside a company that actually makes things in the U.S., then you’ll hear about SendCutSend.Started in 2018, SendCutSend has become an American manufacturing phenomenon. The company makes metal parts for more than 300,000 customers, ranging from giants of aerospace and defense to hobbyists working on their cars. You ship SendCutSend a computer file of what you want built, and it often arrives at your house or factory the next day.Jim Belosic started the company because he

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86:30

Body Scanners, Banned Models, and DeepMind's Space...

Core Memory ·

2026/06/19

Did Kylie and I attend the Midjourney Scanner event? Yes, we did. Did Kylie compare notes on her skincare routine with Bryan Johnson at the event? Also, yes. Meanwhile, I formed more wrinkles by downing cocktails while all this happened.Since the Midjourney pivot into medical devices and health spas is all the rage, we had no choice but to dive right in on this week’s episode. We also explored the government’s ban of Anthropic’s latest model, the odd tie-up between DeepMind and Eve Online, Noam

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69:53

The Future Of Our Brains And Bodies - EP 77 Max Hodak...

Core Memory ·

2026/06/17

Max Hodak is back.The co-founder and CEO of Science Corp. joined me for our first-ever live podcast recording, which took place at the Brex headquarters in San Francisco. Thanks so much to all the Core Memory subscribers who turned up.Max walked us through Science’s technology aimed at restoring vision in the blind, and the company’s new product lines focused on organ transplants and extending the abilities of brains. So, like, totally normal, everyday stuff.Mostly, we talked about the merger of

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82:37

The Space Race Is So Back — EP 76 Ashlee Vance And...

Core Memory ·

2026/06/10

The theme for this week’s episode is tick, tick, boom.America is running out of time to catch up with China on manufacturing, and we’re physically incapable of spending an hour together without bringing it up. Release the glorious machines please!! We also go behind the scenes on Kylie’s reporting on motors and actuators — the unglamorous parts that sit in every joint of a humanoid robot, account for roughly 60% of what that robot costs to build, and come almost entirely from China. Her piece

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67:56

Redwood Materials Has Built A Recyling Empire

Core Memory ·

2026/06/09

A couple of months ago, we went out to Nevada to hang with JB Straubel, the founder and CEO of Redwood Materials and the co-founder of Tesla. JB took us on a tour of Redwood’s massive battery recycling operations and showed us the company’s next chapter, which centers on building battery and solar farms to power AI data centers.The result of our time with JB is a different style of podcast episode. You’ll probably want to consume this on the Substack, Spotify or YouTube where there’s video, and you

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120:29

Can You Reverse Decades of Drinking Damage? Perhaps....

Core Memory ·

2026/06/02

Jacob Kimmel returns to the show. And he might have cured the hangover and liver disease. NBD.Kimmel is the co-founder and president of NewLimit and one of the deepest thinkers in the longevity field. His company has been working to reverse the aging process in the body and has seen some stunning results with a new therapy that undoes liver damage in mice. We’re talking old mice that shrug off the effects of too much booze as if they were teenagers and that exhibit recoveries from long-term alcohol

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108:17

The Startup Trying to Save Us From AI Bioweapons- EP...

Core Memory ·

2026/05/27

Our guest this week is the renowned science fiction author Hannu Rajaniemi. And he has come to terrify and then perhaps comfort you.Rajaniemi made an immediate name for himself in literary circles with his debut novel The Quantum Thief. He’s since written a string of novels that explore the directions technology might take in the future, and his work always stands out for its creativity and imagination.These days, Rajaniemi is putting those skills to very practical use at Red Queen Bio. The company

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54:30

Schmidt Out of Luck — EP 73 Ashlee Vance And Kylie...

Core Memory ·

2026/05/22

We are back with another episode of Ashlee and Kylie gossiping about the latest in Silicon Valley.First, a re-cap of our Alexandr Wang interview — his first real sit-down in eleven months — and what it actually revealed about Meta’s AI play. Wang seemed nervous hashing out the strategy in the studio, and we both keep circling the same puzzle: Meta has endless compute and top talent in Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, so why does the model still feel underwhelming?We get into Eric Schmidt getting booed

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94 results

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