a16z Podcast

In this episode, we continue our community series with a recent discussion that applies to many kinds of community building...

with @jorgecondebio @andy23tran and @lr_bio On this episode of the a16z Journal Club we discuss new research using engineered T cells to attack and destroy the "sleeping" cells that build up as we age and underlie many age-related conditions. This research lays the groundwork for a possible therapy that, in addition to treating specific diseases like liver fibrosis, is broadly health-promoting and restorative as we age.

with @nayafia @smc90 Communities are everything, but the word "members" is faceless. What if there's a better, more modern way to understand, support, and design for communities of all kinds -- whether open source, passion economy, or other groups coming together? Nadia Eghbal offers the latest research and insights from her new book, Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software... but it's not all participatory, and it's not all public, either.

with @smc90 @withfries2 Given all the recent buzz around the language model GPT-3 -- what is "it", how does it work, where does it fit into the arc of broader tech trends -- what's hype, what's real here? Are we really getting closer to artificial general intelligence? We cover all this and more and discuss broader implications for startups, incumbents, and the future of work too.

Many don’t realize we even need to think about the possibility of security hacks when it comes to things like pacemakers, insulin pumps, and more. But when bits and bytes meet flesh and blood, security becomes literally a life or death concern...

With Nathalie Balaban and @lr_bio Antibiotic resistance is an urgent problem, but many aspects of how bacteria acquire this ability to evade the drugs designed to target them are still mysterious...

A dive into the sociological, operational, and tactical realities of this murky underworld, Lusthaus and de la Garza discuss who the players are, what they are motivated by, and specialize in—as well as how basic ideas like trust and anonymity function in a world where no one wants to get caught...

Dr. Marty Makary—surgical oncologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and health policy and innovation expert—has long been a passionate advocate for transparent pricing in the healthcare system. We don’t talk enough (or really at all) about price in healthcare, says Makary (instead, we talk about cost)...

More than 98% of the information on the web is lost within 20 years, and huge gaps exist in our digital and cultural history. Zoran Basich and Alex Pruden of a16z talk to Brewster Kahle and Sam Williams, who are using different approaches to attack this problem. Brewster cofounded the Internet Archive, which is well known for creating the Wayback Machine that crawls a billion URLs every day. Sam cofounded Arweave, a company that uses decentralized crypto networks to store information forever...

In part 2 of our series on human performance, rock climber Alex Honnold talks about the risk, fear, and preparation around his free solo of El Cap... and the parallels it has with entrepreneurship.