Core Memory

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 on a solution.
“Everyone and their mom can make a perovskite that’s decently efficient,” Jean says, but no one seems capable of making it as durable as silicon. The material degrades under heat, light and its own moving ions. This is obviously not the ideal situation for an energy grid.
So why not stick with silicon? Well, the laws of physics haven’t quite blessed it. A silicon panel can turn, at most, about 30 percent of the sunlight it gets into electricity, and today’s panels usually churn out about 25 percent. If they’re able to successfully layer perovskite on top, that pushes the ceiling to 45 percent.
These are fabulous gains in the solar nerd world, and we could really use some innovation here because we are one very, very energy-hungry species. And of course, this is Core Memory, so you know where this is headed: China and AI.
China makes 90 percent of the world’s solar cells and wafers, installs more panels than the rest of the planet combined, and builds the machines that nearly every U.S. solar factory runs on. (Except for Swift, apparently!). That dependency is, as always, a risk.
Meanwhile, AI data centers need more power than God, and the folks making models are happy to welcome any new gains in that department. Some are even putting their money on it; renowned AI researcher Jeff Dean has invested Swift.
Charge your crystals, folks. We’re perovskite-maxxing.
IN THIS EPISODE
This Is The U.S.’s Last Chance At Solar — Core Memory
Swift Solar
Meyer Burger acquisition
Joel's "solar for AGI" piece
OUR SPONSORS
BREX
The Core Memory podcast is sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
SENDCUTSEND
You know who else makes stuff for America? That would be SendCutSend. If you want to celebrate our great nation by building a metal part, then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 — Intro
04:56 — How The U.S. Lost Solar1
2:36 — Maxed-Out Physics
20:03 — How China Won
27:53 — What Is Perovskite?
36:52 — The 30-Year Problem
45:41 — China's Scale-First Bet
51:00 — The Meyer Burger Deal
58:50 — Can Solar Power AI?
1:09:43 — Patents, China And The Machines
1:22:15 — Solar For AGI


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe

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 Madden, and ones perhaps you don’t, like Jurassic Park: Trespasser, a flop notorious enough to earn him his first death threats.
Also, Ashlee is away for a few weeks on a big video shoot in India, which means I, Kylie, will be filling in on all the writing stuff. Now that you know who the voice of God is here, let’s get into the most important thing — what I think about this episode!
Blackley is totally captivating and eccentric, exactly the way you’d expect a physicist who builds holograms and runs a chocolate farm to be. He got deep in ways I didn’t expect, about his abusive childhood and what it was like working at Microsoft. I particularly loved this line from him:
“The khaki pants wearing guys, the lifers, they show up and we had fought them to keep them away from [the Xbox]. The more we kept them away from it, the more consumers got excited because we were talking about things with the power of Microsoft and not the b******t of Microsoft. That was incredibly effective. But it was exhausting and it was a conscious effort of will to fight it. At some point it was going to destroy me and I had to stop.”
Blackley seems to talk at 2x speed naturally, and I’m grateful for it, because he has no shortage of brain-exploding lore to fit into these 80 minutes. He describes his whole career as “one long tale of woe and rapid dancing in the face of failure,” which is a very modest way to describe inventing the Xbox, shepherding Guitar Hero into existence, and abducting Jimmy Fallon. You’ll have to listen for that last one.
IN THIS EPISODE
Core Memory on Seamus Blackley's chocolate experimentSmithsonian Magazine on Blackley's ancient Egyptian bread projectPacific Light & Hologram
OUR SPONSORS
BREX
The Core Memory podcast is sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
SENDCUTSEND
You know who else makes stuff for America? That would be SendCutSend. If you want to celebrate our great nation by building a metal part, then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
TIMESTAMPS
* 00:00:00 — Intro
* 00:02:38 — Why Tech Hype Sucks
* 00:07:37 — Why Talking About Your Work Kills It
* 00:10:42 — Early Life, Physics, and Jazz
* 00:21:57 — Fermilab & Academic Politics
* 00:30:47 — Building the First 3D Video Game Engines
* 00:34:18 — Early Game Development Culture
* 00:38:37 — DreamWorks & Working for Steven Spielberg
* 00:44:32 — Joining Microsoft & Pitching the Original Xbox
* 00:54:04 — Fighting Corporate Bureaucracy to Save Xbox
* 01:03:42 — Abducting Jimmy Fallon
* 01:07:20 — Baking Bread with 4,500-Year-Old Egyptian Yeast
* 01:10:40 — Growing Cacao Trees in a Lab
* 01:17:09 — Accidentally Launching a Chocolate Empire


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe

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 pursuing new and better ways to deliver gene therapies via modified viruses.
Dyno was well ahead of the AI meets biotech curve, using AI models to design new viral shells that let genetic instructions get into the right places of the body. For the moment, Dyno has focused on creating delivery mechanisms for companies working on therapies aimed at the brain, eye and muscles.
In this episode, we talk with Veres about the promise and perils of gene therapy technology, some of the most recent cases where gene therapies worked and how Dyno’s technology came to be and functions. And we get Veres’s take on whether or not we’re entering a golden age of biotech on the back of AI.
Due to some poor camera work on my part, Veres, who is a tall man, looks particularly giant. Fear not, he did not harm me and was actually quite nice.
OUR SPONSORS
BREX
The Core Memory podcast is sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
SENDCUTSEND
You know who else makes stuff for America? That would be SendCutSend. If you want to celebrate our great nation by building a metal part, then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
IN THIS EPISODE
Dyno Therapeutics: https://www.dynotx.com/
The FDA framework for individualized ultra-rare disease therapies: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-launches-framework-accelerating-development-individualized-therapies-ultra-rare-diseases
Core Memory on Baby KJ and the new gene therapy playbook: https://www.corememory.com/p/the-new-gene-therapy-playbook-babykj
Core Memory’s gene-editing conversation with Eryney Marrogi: https://www.corememory.com/p/the-state-of-gene-editing-eryney-marrogi
Core Memory’s podcast with Jennifer Doudna: https://www.corememory.com/p/the-present-and-future-of-gene-editing-jennifer-doudna-crispr
TIMESTAMPS (they link out to YouTube)
0:00 Intro
3:34 Why Does Gene Therapy Still Feel Rare?
7:38 What Is Gene Therapy, Really?
14:48 How Do You Deliver DNA?
17:47 Turning a Virus Into Medicine
21:53 The 700-Letter Box
28:20 Testing a Million Designs at Once
34:28 Why Does the Liver Steal the Cure?
36:43 Getting Past the Brain’s Bouncer
43:04 Is Delivery the Missing Piece?
47:24 Can Million-Dollar Therapies Get Cheap?
52:10 Did Dyno Start Too Early?
1:00:03 Was Biology Oversold?
1:09:36 Will We Cure Every Disease in 10 Years?
1:18:20 Should You Build Your Own Peptide Stack?
1:20:55 Is China Winning the Biology Race?
1:27:40 What Baby KJ Changed
1:32:34 Should the Next Generation Study Biology?



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe

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 other companies listed as “Stealth” on its web site.
Colville is the guy I call to reality check whatever is being hyped up in Longevity Land. He studies the actual science. He reaches sober conclusions. He’s honest about where the technology is today and what might show promise in the future.
In this episode, we get into Colville’s takes on GLP-1s, partial cell reprogramming, China’s biotech rise, the odd animals teaching us the most about longevity and, well, the prospects of living forever. We also get into Colville’s life and unusual rise as the longevity kingmaker, and, of course, we discuss keeping a human head alive without a body because what choice did we have.
If you can spare a minute, please do us a favor by filling out this ever so brief survey, so we can learn a bit more about our subscribers. Help us be better for you. Thanks!!

OUR SPONSORS
SendCutSend
You know who else makes stuff for America? That would be SendCutSend. If you want to celebrate our great nation by building a metal part, then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
Brex
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
Timestamps (they link out to YouTube)
0:00 Intro2:41 Meet the Switzerland of Aging8:01 Why Did Aging Become the Enemy?10:28 What Can an Axolotl Teach Us?26:23 What Works in Worms, but Not Yet in Humans?30:16 The Longevity Expert Who Takes Nothing34:37 Are GLP-1s Already Anti-Aging Drugs?44:14 Can We Make Old Cells Young Again?58:48 What Do Hibernating Squirrels Know?1:05:02 When Does Medicine Become an Upgrade?1:09:57 Has CRISPR Lived Up to the Hype?1:12:43 What Are Altos and Calico Really Doing?1:20:24 The Breakthrough That Could Change Everything1:25:14 Will China Win the Biology Race?1:28:24 Why a Virtual Cell Is Not a Cell1:30:28 A Head in a Waymo?


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe

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 Marrogi takes on the hosting duties to interview Abhishaike Mahajan, he of Owl Posting and now OpenAI Foundation fame.
These two men of science take hold of this AI/biotech moment to explore where we’re seeing the most promise from this new wave of technology and where the messiness of biology continues to confound AI. They also get into some lighter topics like our collective death from AI bioweapons and China’s impending biotech dominance. Good times.
You’re all probably buzzing over Moderna’s stock price doubling and the end of cancer. So ride that enthusiasm right into this podcast and see how you’re feeling on the other side.
If you can spare a minute, please do us a favor by filling out this ever so brief survey, so we can learn a bit more about our subscribers. Help us be better for you. Thanks!!

OUR SPONSORS
SendCutSend
You know who else makes stuff for America? That would be SendCutSend. If you want to celebrate our great nation by building a metal part, then head on over to SendCutSend where you’ll get a 15 percent discount thanks to Core Memory on whatever you’re trying to build. We believe in you.
Brex
The Core Memory podcast is also sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.
Did we go to Texas, find a telescope ranch and then obtain an entire nebula in Brex’s honor? Oh yes, we did.
We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.
Timestamps (they link out to YouTube)
0:00 Intro4:24 Is Intelligence the Bottleneck?6:58 A Thousand von Neumanns12:29 The Cancer Drug That Failed21:15 Can AI Read a Tumor?31:38 Is Text All You Need?44:39 The Machine Nobody Built54:16 A Trillion Dollar Organoid?1:02:26 Biosecurity Lost the Plot1:06:02 ChatGPT vs. a Virus1:19:13 Why the Terrorists Failed1:24:37 Who Gets to Order DNA?1:42:41 China Wins Biology1:53:41 The Lab Nobody Funds
Thanks for listening!



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.corememory.com/subscribe