Danny In The Valley

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Alex Deghan, founder of Conservation X Labs, to talk about avoiding the sixth mass extinction (3:00), getting near a tipping point in the Amazon (11:40), raising money from tech billionaires (14:40), growing up in northern Idaho (17:50), almost dying from malaria (20:00), rebuilding science in Iraq (23:30), close calls (30:40), setting up the first national park in Afghanistan (33:10), optimism (39:15), air conditioning (42:15), and building their own products (47:10). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Hany Farid, a digital forensic professor, to talk about launching a cybersecurity startup called Get Real Labs (3:00), the growing capability of AI to create totally believable images (6:45), and video (9:00), the Slovakia election example (12:00), the end of shared truth (15:30), why we might learn the lessons from social media regulation failures (20:50), how AI could make things far worse, pre and post election in America (23:45), and how he managed to start a company while also being a university professor (27:00). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy July 4th! Running back one of our favorite episodes from last summer - Fred Lalonde of Deep Sky, who speaks eloquently about the need to bury every ton of CO2 emitted since the Industrial Revolution. Enjoy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When a website goes down, companies lose an average of $500,000 per minute. The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Jennifer Tejada, chief executive of PagerDuty, a company founded to keep that from happening (2:45). She talks about growing up in a small town (8:00), using supercomputers in the 1990’s to sell consumer products (12:30), coming to the West Coast via Australia (14:00), working around the world (16:30), operating as an outsider (18:15), defending DEI (21:00), the crossover of pro sports and tech (25:00), and going public (28:30). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The world is aflutter with talk of "AI doctors". A UK company has actually built one. The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Dr Ross Harper, co founder and chief executive of Limbic to talk about creating a clinical AI chatbot (4:30), how it works (6:40), starting out four years ago 13:40), getting in with 40% of mental health care providers in Britain (17:40), being certified as a medical device (22:40), targeting America (24:40), studying computational neuroscience (27:00), starting the company (33:40), the future of AI in medicine (38:00), and the comparison to self-driving vehicles (41:15). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The climate fight is going far better than you realise. So says this week’s guest, Tom Steyer, former presidential candidate and founder of Galvanize Climate Solutions. He comes on to talk with Sunday Times correspondent Danny Fortson about why doomerism doesn’t work (4:30), beating Big Oil (8:45), when theory meets reality (15:10), whether the climate argument has been won (21:30), his life before dedicating his career to climate (30:20), dabbling in politics (36:30), running a climate investment firm (41:00), running for president (44:00), and the possibility that the oil industry will transform (51:10). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you want to talk to your whales? Monkeys? Your dog? AI will make it possible. The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Peter Diamandis to talk about why he set up an $111m longevity prize (2:30), using AI to prevent death from “something stupid” (8:30), growing up in the Bronx (11:50), falling in love with space exploration (14:00), launching the X Prize (19:50), doing 30 of them in 30 years (26:30), his approach to AI innovation (29:15), speaking to animals (30:00), the power of a prize (33:00), why its hard to get the mega-rich to fund ideas (39:30), optimism (44:50), climate change (47:00), the future of longevity (51:00), and bitcoin (57:00). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are about 1,200 billionaires in Europe and America. Why don't they do more good with their money? This week's guest reckons he can get them to do just that. The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Tom Kalil, founder of Renaissance Philanthropy, to talk about why he created the organisation (4:15), nationalism (8:00), the problem with the current philanthropy model (11:15), leveraging tech and science (16:40), his background in Washington DC and the White House (22:20), working for Eric Schmidt (31:20), taking big swings (33:45), and the changing nature of giving (38:00), Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AI will save the NHS - but not the wya you think. The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Dom Pimenta, a cardiologist and co-founder of Tortus, to talk about the potential of its artificial intelligence interface (AI) for doctors (5:00), preventing burnout (11:00), naming the tool OSLER (18:30), how it works (20:45), why he became a doctor (26:00), founding a charity during Covid (29:15), quitting the NHS (32:45), getting Khosla Ventures to invest (35:35), trying to get the product into market (40:00), and AI's potential in medicine (45:00). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on MIke Schroepfer, Meta’s former CTO, to talk about why he left Meta (3:00), growing up working his parents’ radio station (9:00), going to Stanford (12:00), getting into tech startups (14:15), the dotcom boom (17:15), going to Mozilla (21:15), joining Facebook when MySpace was bigger (23:00), Mark Zuckerberg (26:30), lessons from scaling to a giant company (31:40), the climate opportunity (35:10), focussing on hardware (39:40), using his money (43:30), the talent influx (44:40), the AI moment (47:30), and his climate tech predictions (51:05) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine if you shrunk all of the machines in a hospital and crammed them into a single device the size of an iPhone that could diagnose and treat hundreds of diseases. That is what this week’s guest is trying to do. The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Mary Lou Jepsen to talk about building a mobile device to diagnose stroke at her startup Openwater (4:30), killing cancer cells with infrared light (8:45), how it takes 13 years to create a new medical device (14:45), why MRI’s are so expensive (18:00), her history in consumer electronics (21:10), convincing investors that open-source is the best approach (25:30), when she nearly died (28:20), using the tools of our time (30:30), the device (38:50), the handheld hospital (41:20), a medical app store (51:00), telepathy (52:00), her friendship with Peter Gabriel (57:30), and building a new medical business model (1:00:30). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Would you watch an Olympics where everyone was doping? The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Aron D’Souza, co-founder and president of the Enhanced Games, to talk about launching a new competition where everyone is pharmacologically enhanced (6:00), the events (10:00), why he started it (14:50), meeting Peter Thiel (18:20), leading the Gawker case (19:30), the response from the Olympics (23:00), how it could go wrong (26:00), making sure noone dies (28:10), adding robotics and cybernetics (32:20), the funders (35:00), lining up media rights (39:00), the most recent doping scandal (41:00), and the coming legal fight (41:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’s tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Augustus Doricko to talk about becoming a Thiel fellow (3:15), looking for the proof of God (5:45), starting his first company (9:30) cloud seeding (11:30), the history of cloud seeding (13:30), on whether silver iodide is safe (17:00), how it would work in practice (20:30), how it could go wrong (27:30), geo-engineering (30:45), why now (23:15), the Dubai example (35:00), and finding God (38:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on DoNotPay's Josh Browder to talk about how artificial intelligence is changing his business (4:20), paying a dividend (8:15), blowing up the myth that you have to lose money to get big (11:00), the coming AI crash (13:00), the path forward for DoNotPay (16:40), San Francisco’s moment (19:30), his biggest mistake (21:30), protecting AI’s (24:00), and ambient intelligence (27:40). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Sid Jha of Arbol to talk about the importance of insurance (3:45), using data to change how it works (8:20), how climate has scrambled the industry (10:30), regulation (14:20), creating a new asset class (16:40), weather (24:10), growing up in India (29:20), going to Wall Street (30:40), launching Arbol (33:00), the space revolution (35:40), using blockchain (37:30), and why life is more expensive in an era of climate change (42:45) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times correspondent brings on Noor Siddiquui, founder of Orchid, to talk about screening embryos (5:00), starting the company (9:30), hiring people as a first time founder (13:00), targeting ageing at the very beginning (15:00), how it works (18:20), why she thinks this is the future of conception (22:00), the need for regulation (31:00), the potential to exacerbate societal problems (38:00), why longevity enthusiasts invested (40:30), and the potential conservative backlash (49:40). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Eugenia Kyuda, founder of Replika, to talk about AI friends (4:00), growing up in Russia (6:45), her dad’s experience at Chernobyl (9:00), applying to Y Combinator (12:30), her first idea that didn’t work (16:30), losing her best friend (17:30), launching Replika (20:00), building a bot with pre-written answers (23:40), the key to good conversation (24:30), the bot before the ChatGPT moment (27:15), the changing AI landscape (29:20), how it works (31:50), securing people's secrets (33:50), and disrupting death (39:10). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times; tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Dmitry Shevelenko of Perplexity.ai, to talk about finding the company though the Uber mafia (5:00), taking on Google (6:30), the founders' start as AI researchers (8:45), why he joined (11:35), what he did before this (17:00), closing his startup (20:15), hypergrowth lessons (24:40), the business model (28:00), the Gemini disaster (32:35), and doing it differently (36:00). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Ana Pavlovic Hans to talk about using rocks to cut carbon (3:00), coming up with the best “recipe” (8:00), the measurement breakthrough (11:00), bringing the cost down (20:00), making rock weathering “sexy’ (25:45), being raised in mining country in America and Australia (27:00), the partnership with Stripe (37:40), raising $12 million (41:30), and critter stories from Australia (42:40). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Chris Dixon, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, to talk about writing a book on blockchain and crypto (4:00), why it’s still early (9:30), NFT’s (14:30), the computer versus the casino (18:30), boom and bust (23:00), his vision for a blockchain-based web (27:15), the rise of a new social media model (32:30), overcoming inertia (39:20), bitcoin v everything else (42:10), central bank digital currencies (44:00), and the ethereum economy (48:50). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.