Not Boring

Here's our full-length interview with Jordan Bramble and our own Julia DeWahl, co-founders of Antares, where we dive deep into how Antares plans on manufacturing in mass micro-sized nuclear reactors to provide abundant energy for all. Huge thank you to our sponsors: Range Fund Holdings: Tired of volatile markets and unreliable energies? Look no further than the Range Nuclear Renaissance ETF, your gateway to the clean, safe, and ever-expanding world of nuclear power. Visit https://www.rangeetfs.com or contact your financial advisor to learn more about the Range Nuclear Renaissance ETF and start investing in the future of energy. Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 10% off your first year of Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/packy Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy Tegus: combine fragmented workflows under one roof and compete on your ability to analyze companies — not on how well you aggregate data. Learn more and start your free trial at tegus.com/miracles Clean Air Task Force: CATF is one of the few NGO's in the world paving the way toward the global demonstration and establishment of a fusion energy industry this decade. They are undertaking and commissioning fusion energy market studies, technology readiness assessments, and regulatory analysis, emphasizing areas for international collaboration. As an objective and independent resource for stakeholders in the fusion sector, CATF is working to raise awareness and accelerate the potential for fusion energy. Learn more and support their efforts at: https://www.catf.us/fusion-energy/ For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/  Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/ Follow our hosts: Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn Timestamps: (00:10) Introduction (03:50) Background story of starting Antares (05:50) Role of military applications in microreactor development (10:11) Working with DoD and commercial sector (15:28) The process of building a microreactor (20:04) On shifting from Software to Nuclear (23:06) Addressing risks in Antares (32:03) Next steps and timeline for Antares (39:18) The future of the world with abundant nuclear energy This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more.  Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

Here's our full-length interview with David Kirtley, founder of Helion Energy, where we dive deep into the need for fusion as a replacement for fossil fuels. Huge thank you to our sponsors: Range Fund Holdings: Tired of volatile markets and unreliable energies? Look no further than the Range Nuclear Renaissance ETF, your gateway to the clean, safe, and ever-expanding world of nuclear power. Visit https://www.rangeetfs.com or contact your financial advisor to learn more about the Range Nuclear Renaissance ETF and start investing in the future of energy. Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 10% off your first year of Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/packy Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy Tegus: combine fragmented workflows under one roof and compete on your ability to analyze companies — not on how well you aggregate data. Learn more and start your free trial at tegus.com/miracles Clean Air Task Force: CATF is one of the few NGO's in the world paving the way toward the global demonstration and establishment of a fusion energy industry this decade. They are undertaking and commissioning fusion energy market studies, technology readiness assessments, and regulatory analysis, emphasizing areas for international collaboration. As an objective and independent resource for stakeholders in the fusion sector, CATF is working to raise awareness and accelerate the potential for fusion energy. Learn more and support their efforts at: https://www.catf.us/fusion-energy/ For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/  Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/ Follow our hosts: Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn Timestamps: (00:00) The future of energy sources in the US (03:10) Introduction to Helion Energy (08:33) Different approaches in fusion (12:21) Partnerships with Microsoft (16:16) Size and scalability of fusion reactors (20:21) Power control and regulation in fusion (25:44) Tracking progress at Helion (29:51) The market and competition in commercial fusion (34:30) Working with academia and regulatory (42:29) Challenges and risks in fusion development (44:13) The vision of abundant fusion energy This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more.  Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

Here's our full-length interview with Bret Kugelmass, founder of Last Energy, where we dive deep into nuclear manufacturing and the importance of manufacturing efficiency. Huge thank you to our sponsors: Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 10% off your first year of Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/packy Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy Tegus: combine fragmented workflows under one roof and compete on your ability to analyze companies — not on how well you aggregate data. Learn more and start your free trial at tegus.com/miracles Clean Air Task Force: CATF is one of the few NGO's in the world paving the way toward the global demonstration and establishment of a fusion energy industry this decade. They are undertaking and commissioning fusion energy market studies, technology readiness assessments, and regulatory analysis, emphasizing areas for international collaboration. As an objective and independent resource for stakeholders in the fusion sector, CATF is working to raise awareness and accelerate the potential for fusion energy. Learn more and support their efforts at: https://www.catf.us/fusion-energy/ Range Fund Holdings For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/  Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/ Follow our hosts: Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (04:38) Regulatory capture and the NRC (09:45) The cost of nuclear + manufacturing (18:11) The Last Energy product and manufacturing process (25:14) The future of nuclear energy (29:31) Risks and mitigation in the nuclear energy business (35:52) The limitations of wind and wolar (40:49) Gigawatt scale power (43:14) What would the world look like with abundant nuclear energy? This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more.  Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

We're kicking off the first of our bonus episodes with Tyler Bernstein, founder and CEO of Zeno Power, where he shares in-depth how they're creating radioisotope power systems for lunar applications. Huge thank you to our sponsors: Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 10% off your first year of Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/packy Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy Tegus: combine fragmented workflows under one roof and compete on your ability to analyze companies — not on how well you aggregate data. Learn more and start your free trial at tegus.com/miracles Clean Air Task Force: CATF is one of the few NGO's in the world paving the way toward the global demonstration and establishment of a fusion energy industry this decade. They are undertaking and commissioning fusion energy market studies, technology readiness assessments, and regulatory analysis, emphasizing areas for international collaboration. As an objective and independent resource for stakeholders in the fusion sector, CATF is working to raise awareness and accelerate the potential for fusion energy. Learn more and support their efforts at: https://www.catf.us/fusion-energy/ Range Fund Holdings For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/  Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/ Follow our hosts: Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (00:22) The Pie of Energy Sources in 2050 (01:35) Nuclear Energy in Space (06:12) Radioisotope Power vs. Nuclear Power for Propulsion (10:54) Building Zeno Power (14:18) Economics and Regulation in Space Nuclear (20:01) Competitive Dynamics and Protecting Market Position (23:00) Challenges and Risks (25:29) Business Models and Financing (29:42) De-risking the Supply Chain (32:17) Product and Process of Zeno Power (35:22) Geopolitics and the Moon (38:48) Abundant Energy in the Universe This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more.  Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

We can live in an Age of Miracles, but it's going to take a lot of work.  Energy abundance is the most important thing we can work towards as a species.  More than simply surviving climate change, we have the opportunity to unlock a new level of human thriving if we can successfully navigate this transition.  That's why we chose to do the first season of Age of Miracles on the energy sources of the future. In this episode of Age of Miracles, the final episode of season one, Packy and Julia reflect on the importance of energy abundance, how nuclear energy helps us unlock it, and what the future might look like when we do. Thank you to all of our guests this season for making this show possible—we're so grateful. Huge thank you to our sponsors: Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 10% off your first year of Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/packy Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy Tegus: combine fragmented workflows under one roof and compete on your ability to analyze companies — not on how well you aggregate data. Learn more and start your free trial at tegus.com/miracles Clean Air Task Force: CATF is one of the few NGO's in the world paving the way toward the global demonstration and establishment of a fusion energy industry this decade. They are undertaking and commissioning fusion energy market studies, technology readiness assessments, and regulatory analysis, emphasizing areas for international collaboration. As an objective and independent resource for stakeholders in the fusion sector, CATF is working to raise awareness and accelerate the potential for fusion energy. Learn more and support their efforts at: https://www.catf.us/fusion-energy/ Range Fund Holdings For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/  Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/ Follow our hosts: Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn Timestamps: (00:00) The best way to create the future is to invent it (07:55) What can you do today? (16:09) Josh Wolfe on a future of abundance (18:29) Casey Handmer on a future of abundance (20:49) Angelica Oung on a future of abundance (23:22) Alex Epstein on a future of abundance (29:42) Final recap This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more.  Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Nancy Xu. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

In the bizarro relay marathon that is the fusion race, the baton is firmly in the hands of the startups. The outcome, to be sure, is still uncertain, but the question isn't whether humanity will achieve commercial fusion, but which companies will, with which approaches, when? Fusion, many believe, will be one of humanity's greatest triumphs: we will be able to generate energy in the same way that stars do, right on earth. And in this episode, Packy and Julia talk to some of the people who are most likely to make it happen. They'll answer the question of “Why now?” for fusion, and for startups in particular, dive into their business models and the economics of a fusion plant, and discuss what a rollout of fusion across the globe might look like. Thank you to this episode's guests: David Kirtley, Sehila Gonzalez, Clay Dumas, JC Btaiche, Francesco Sciortino, Clea Kolster, Ryan Umstattd, Derek Sutherland, and Ian Hogarth. Huge thank you to our sponsors: Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 10% off your first year of Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/packy Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy Tegus: combine fragmented workflows under one roof and compete on your ability to analyze companies — not on how well you aggregate data. Learn more and start your free trial at tegus.com/miracles Clean Air Task Force Range Fund Holdings For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/  Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/ Follow our hosts: Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn Timestamps: (00:00) The fusion race (04:54) Why now? What changed? (10:28) Commonwealth (13:21) Fuse Energy (23:35) Proxima Fusion (31:10) Zap Energy (39:09) Helion Energy (52:30) The unit economics of a fusion plant (1:01:24) Fusion commercial rollout (1:05:03) Recap This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more.  Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Nancy Xu. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

There's this joke that fusion is always 30 years away. 50 years ago, it was 30 years away. 20 years ago, it was still thirty years away. Today, though… we might be within a decade.  We spent the first half of the season on nuclear fission, and the last episode on many of the other energy sources that will play a role in meeting humanity's growing energy demands and building an Age of Miracles. All of them will be critical.  But there's a growing chorus of people who believe that if we're going to meet the demand for 3-5x the amount of energy we use today, and do it with clean energy, we're going to need clean energy. And that as we climb the Kardashev Scale – the framework for measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it can use – fusion is going to be our ladder.  In today's episode, we'll cover the basics of fusion energy – what it is, how it works, why it matters, how progress is measured, and what the main approaches are.  Thank you to this episode's guests: Clay Dumas, Andrew Côté, Sehila Gonzalez, Ian Hogarth, and Ryan Umstattd. Huge thank you to our sponsors: Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 10% off your first year of Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/packy Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy Clean Air Task Force Range Fund Holdings For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/  Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/ Follow our hosts: Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn Timestamps: This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more.  Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Nancy Xu. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

Packy and Julia have spent the first five episodes of Age of Miracles diving into the past and present of nuclear fission—before jumping from the yin to the yang and covering nuclear fusion in the second half of this season, today we wanted to take a step back and talk about all the non-nuclear energy sources out there. We ask this icebreaker question to every guest we bring onto the show: "What does the pie chart of energy sources look like in the US in the year 2050?" From advocating for the widely accused fossil fuels like oil and gas, to the widely celebrated renewables like geothermal, solar, and wind, each guest brings a new perspective to the mix. In this episode, Packy and Julia hear out their cases, and afterwards, answer the infamous question themselves. Thank you to this episode's guests: Meredith Angwin, Mark Hinaman, Alex Epstein, Casey Handmer, Noah Smith, Angelica Oung, and Eli Dourado. Huge thank you to our sponsors: Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 10% off your first year of Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/packy Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy Clean Air Task Force For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/  Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/ Follow our hosts: Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn Timestamps: (00:00:00) Energy in 2050 (00:08:29) Fossil fuels (00:28:41) Geothermal (00:36:53) Wind (00:56:54) Understanding the grid (01:03:30) Solar (01:25:02) Batteries (01:36:06) Episode Recap This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more.  Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Nancy Xu. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

This week, Packy and Julia take a break from our regularly scheduled narrative programming to look back on the past five episodes we've published focused on nuclear fission—and address news stories, feedback, and listener questions collected through this season so far. We cover: Illinois pushing back on the nuclear moratorium, Nuscale's cancelled contracts, COP 28 Why QA makes building new nuclear so difficult, solar cost curves, and more listener feedback on episodes 1-5 Investing in nuclear, nuclear waste recycling, how to create more political support for the AP1000, and more listener questions Thank you to this episode's guests: Jim Hopf, Robert Bryce, Brett Rampal, Heather Hoff, and Paris Ortiz-Wines. Huge thank you to our sponsors: Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 10% off your first year of Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/packy Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy Clean Air Task Force For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/  Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/ Follow our hosts: Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn Timestamps: (00:00) Nuclear news: Illinois, Nuscale, COP 28 (8:27) Nuclear-specific QA standards (15:52) Comparing and contrasting other countries' nuclear programs (20:55) The truth about solar (23:50) What sectors win with nuclear? (24:55) Investing in nuclear (29:18) Does being "eco friendly" matter if we get energy right? (33:24) Nuclear waste recycling (36:03) Leading investors in nuclear (38:19) Policy playbook to shift investments to nuclear (41:07) Arguments for nuclear waste at dinner tables (42:20) How to get more political support for the AP1000 (45:25) Deeper dive into developing nuclear projects (48:46) How to get involved in nuclear This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more.  Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Nancy Xu. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

Let's dive into the world of advanced nuclear startups—where founders are playing entrepreneurship on hard-mode, and navigating how to build new reactor designs, sell to new markets, and forge new regulatory pathways. This episode is the second focused on nuclear fission startup founders—while last week Packy and Julia spoke with entrepreneurs who laser-focused on the problem of manufacturing ready-made designs at scale, this new crop of founders featured are tackling a seemingly even more difficult task of creating new forms of nuclear reactors from scratch. As a16z American Dynamism partner Katherine Boyle says, "to build a successful energy startup, you have to excel at math, deep technology, storytelling, recruiting, and regulatory." Tune in as Packy and Julia spotlight five founders taking radically different paths to bringing more nuclear online—from radioisotopes on the literal moon to the novel production of hydrocarbons. Thank you to this episode's guests: Katherine Boyle, Albert Wenger, Jake DeWitte, Isaiah Taylor, Matt Loszak, Tyler Bernstein, Jordan Bramble, Josh Wolfe, and David Ulevitch. Huge thank you to our sponsors: Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 10% off your first year of Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/packy Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy Clean Air Task Force For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/  Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/ Follow our hosts: Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn Timestamps: (00:00) What are advanced reactors? (11:58) Introducing the startup founders (14:01) Oklo (17:55) Valar Atomics (25:27) Aalo (26:41) Zeno Power (30:07) Antares (37:18) Why we need a new playbook for nuclear (48:53) Selling to new markets and customers (1:07:00) On regulation (1:30:18) Nuclear startup operations (1:46:40) The importance of design (1:52:24) The advanced nuclear startup playbook This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more.  Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Jake Salyers. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

What if we treated building nuclear more like a manufacturing challenge than a construction challenge? How could nuclear benefit from the tried-and-true methodologies of other large industrial industries like ship-building and oil and gas to make nuclear as cheap as solar and wind to produce? In this episode – the first of two with leading nuclear fission startup founders – Packy and Julia talk to a new crop of nuclear entrepreneurs who are focused on manufacturing small modular reactors at scale. Drawing on best practices from very different industries like building reactors in shipyards or adapting the methods of offshore oil and gas rigs, these founders are taking a radically different approach from the incumbents in nuclear power plant construction. They're focused on bringing the experience curves for building nuclear way down But how will it actually work in practice? How do they balance pleasing regulators with innovating on new designs for more efficiency and manufacturability? How do they finance these businesses? What is the plan for connecting these power sources to the grid – or finding other “behind the meter” use cases? Tune in to go deep with the people turning theories about nuclear manufacturing into reality. Thank you to this episode's guests: Matt Slotkin, Nick Touran, Bret Kugelmass, Katherine Boyle, Josh Wolfe, and Jake DeWitte  Huge thank you to our sponsors: Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 20% off your first year of Secureframe by mentioning "Age of Miracles" during your free demo: https://secureframe.com/ Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy Clean Air Task Force For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/  Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/ Follow our hosts: Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn Timestamps: (00:00) Building a shipyard to manufacture nuclear reactors (06:22) The experience curve (11:00) Which industries can we steal ideas from? (19:40) Blue Energy with Matt Slotkin (25:10) Last Energy with Bret Kugelmass (31:40) Good strategy, bad strategy (38:41) Financing nuclear companies (44:00) Oklo going public (51:30) Recap This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more.  Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Jake Salyers. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

If we just tried to implement and scale the technology we have today for large scale nuclear reactors, with no innovation on reactor designs or business models, could we do it? How hard (or expensive) could it really be? Turns out, this question gets to the heart of the paradox of nuclear power in America: this incredible energy source, which has the potential to be the cheapest and cleanest of all, is currently the most expensive to build by orders of magnitude. To get more nuclear power on the grid as fast as possible, we need to dramatically change the economics of new reactors. The complex economics stem from three main intertwined issues: construction, financing, and regulation.  In this episode, Packy and Julia dig into the nitty gritty of these issues and look at what it actually takes to build a plant in America (and around the globe). They point out some opportunities to improve key problem areas like financing and workforce deployment. And they talk with nuclear experts, government financing officials, investors, and entrepreneurs who are all trying to figure out: how do we fix the economics of building large scale nuclear reactors? Some of the answers include innovations in financing and possible regulatory changes – and some get more creative, like floating shipyards and repurposing old coal plants. Tune in to go deep on the economics of nuclear power plants.  Thank you to this episode's guests:, Bret Kugelmass, Mark Nelson, Josh Wolfe, James Krellenstein, Emmet Penney, Julie Kozeracki, and David Ulevitch. Huge thank you to our sponsors: Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 20% off your first year of Secureframe by mentioning "Age of Miracles" during your free demo: https://secureframe.com/ Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy Clean Air Task Force For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/  Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/ Follow our hosts: Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn Timestamps: (00:00) Why is building new nuclear in the U.S. so expensive? (07:40) How nuclear fission and nuclear plants work (16:50) Nuclear power plant economics (29:05) So, how do we fix the economics of building nuclear power plants? (41:45) What's actually holding industry executives back from ordering more projects? (48:12) Serialized construction and developer models (58:50) Why is nobody talking about regulation? (1:08:30) Acceleration through federal and popular support (1:16:32) Recap This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties, where experts talk to experts about tech, business, culture, and more.  Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Jake Salyers. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg.

“Nuclear fission is a miracle technology, and we've had it for 80 years. But we don't live in an energy abundant world. Because progress takes more than miracles.” Almost exactly 50 years ago, nuclear fission and large scale reactors were on track to deliver abundant, cheap energy to the globe. But instead, nuclear power declined even faster than it had scaled, becoming a pariah of the energy industry and relegated to a footnote. What actually happened? And how do we prevent it from happening again?  The rise and fall of nuclear power in the 20th century are even more complicated and weirder than you might think – and yet the themes of global economic systems in flux, misinformation and pseudoscience, the complicated relationship between government and business, and the wide gaps between technological innovation and putting that innovation into practice will all feel familiar.   From nuclear's origins in small reactors for submarines and planes after WWII to its rapid scaling into gigawatt-scale reactors in the 60s and 70s; from President Eisenhower's calls for “atoms for peace” to the pressures of the original “decels”, the degrowth anti-nuclear environmental movement; from regulatory boosterism to regulatory overreach, the story of nuclear is one of extremes. And there's much to learn about pushing nuclear forward in the 21st century.  Thank you to this episode's guests: Emmet Penney, Rod Adams, Nick Touran, James Krellenstein, Bret Kugelmass, Alex Epstein, and Mark Nelson.  Huge thank you to our sponsors: Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 20% off your first year of Secureframe by mentioning "Age of Miracles" during your free demo. Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy Clean Air Task Force For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/  Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/ Follow our hosts: Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn Timestamps: (00:00) Two narratives of nuclear energy (05:50) Nuclear's early history and rise (11:34) The start of the fall (19:44) Five key factors that led to nuclear's decline (20:09) Factor #1: the AEC (25:32) Factor #2: good old-fashioned economics (29:35) Factor #3: regulation (41:33) Factor #4: the environmentalists (49:13) Factor #5: the nuclear disasters (53:00) Recap of the historical lessons This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties. Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Jake Salyers. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

Welcome to the first episode of the first season of “Age of Miracles”. This new show from Packy McCormick, investor and writer of the Not Boring newsletter, asks the question: how do we create a future of abundance? This season, we're exploring the future of energy – specifically, diving deep into nuclear energy, both fission and fusion. The world needs more energy, not less, argues Packy, and nuclear has been neglected as a clean, reliable source of energy for too long. Joining Packy as co-host this season is Julia DeWahl, who previously helped scale SpaceX's Starlink and Opendoor and is now co-founder of micro-nuclear reactor startup Antares.  In this episode, Packy and Julia set the stage for the season. They start with how they each got nuke-pilled and how the global narrative on energy has shifted, following events like the war in Ukraine and growing inflation. Next, they bust the three most common myths about nuclear energy: it's too unsafe, there's too much nuclear waste, and nuclear energy = nuclear weapons. And then they set the stage for the real challenges we'll tackle this season: the economics of nuclear power, regulation and the role of government, and the power of public perception.  If you're curious about the future of energy, technology, or how to get out of a doomer loop and start working towards an abundant future, join us. An age of miracles is within reach — if we're willing to work for it. Huge thank you to our sponsors: Secureframe: the only compliance automation platform with AI capabilities that help customers speed up cloud remediation and security questionnaires. Get 20% off your first year of Secureframe by mentioning "Age of Miracles" during your free demo. Pilot.com: accounting, CFO, and tax services that are designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. To get 20% off your accounting bill for the first 6 months, go to https://pilot.com/packy Clean Air Task Force For the full list of resources referenced in this show: https://ageofmiracles.co/  Subscribe to Not Boring to get weekly doses of tech and business strategy, straight to your inbox: https://www.notboring.co/ Follow our hosts: Packy McCormick on Twitter and LinkedIn Julia DeWahl on Twitter and LinkedIn Timestamps: (00:00) Why the world needs more energy (06:43) Preview of this season of Age of Miracles (10:03) Let's talk nuclear fission (19:15) Busting common nuclear myths: disasters, waste, and proliferation (30:22) The 201 challenges with nuclear energy (36:21) Could all the energy in 2050 just be fusion? (45:23) Closing thoughts This show is produced and distributed by Turpentine, a network of shows and other media properties. Credits: Nancy Xu produced this season of Age of Miracles. Audio editor: Justin Golden. Video editor: Jake Salyers. Executive producers: Amelia Salyers, Packy McCormick, and Erik Torenberg. 

Age of Miracles is a narrative show that explores the complex industries that will play an important role in creating an abundant future for humanity. Episodes 1 and 2 drop October 27th. Every season, host Packy McCormick – a venture investor and writer of the popular Not Boring newsletter – brings in an expert cohost to go deep into the possibilities and challenges of making “sci-fi” dreams our reality in our lifetimes. The first season starts at the root of all progress and prosperity: unlocking 10x more clean and reliable energy by splitting and fusing atoms themselves. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ageofmiracles/message

Crusoe is on a mission to align the future of computing with the future of the climate. It has pioneered infrastructure that taps into stranded energy — methane being flared or excess production from clean and renewable sources — to power the compute resources we need to drive our shared progress and reduce its environmental impact. The company is building an AI-native cloud infrastructure from scratch, and doing so by colocating and powering its data centers with stranded energy from some of the harshest and most remote locations on earth. Packy sat down Crusoe's CEO Chase Lochmiller and President Cully Cavness to discuss the company's unique founding story and its future. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/notboring/message

Emi Gal is the founder and CEO of Ezra. Ezra is on a mission to detect cancer early for everyone in the world. The company offers full-body MRI scans in order to catch cancer earlier to increase the odds of beating it.  I recently did an Ezra scan myself, and while it was nerve-wracking to face cancer, confirming that I'm cancer-free was a priceless relief. My scan took 60 minutes, but Ezra just received FDA clearance for the world's first 30-minute full body MRI to screen for cancer. It's faster, more affordable, and just as accurate thanks to Ezra Flash AI.  Book your Ezra scan and use the code PACKY150 to get $150 off.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/notboring/message

Dylan Beynon is the founder and CEO of Mindbloom. Minbloom's mission is to transform lives today, to transform the world tomorrow through psychedelic medicine. It's starting with Ketamine therapy serving patients with depression and anxiety. 89% of Mindbloom clients report improvements in anxiety and depression symptoms. Beyond Ketamine therapy, Mindbloom is riding a wave of new research and regulation that's mainstreaming psychedelics for clinical use and shaping how approach physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/notboring/message

Brandon Arvanaghi⁠⁠ is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠⁠Meow⁠⁠. Meow is Costco meets financial services. It offers low-cost, high-value cash and treasury management products for high-growth businesses. This is Brandon's third time on the podcast, and this time he discusses Meow's navigation of the recent banking crisis and why Meow is built to last. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/notboring/message

Zach Marks is the co-founder and CEO of Jia. Jia connects capital to small businesses in every corner of the world. Here's how Jia works: When business owners repay a loan, they drive value to lenders and the economy. They deserve to be compensated as owners of that economy. That's why Jia rewards borrowers with an ownership stake in Jia's long-term growth. Ownership leads to better borrower behavior, which benefits the entire ecosystem. Packy and Zach discuss how blockchain can help align incentives in emerging market lending, Jia's launch, and in a small-world moment, Jia's partnership with Oze (a company founded and run by Packy's sister, Meghan. You can learn more Jia and it's recent funding in this TechCrunch article. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/notboring/message

LINK TO ESSAY: Google isn't facing the Innovator's Dilemma; it's just so deeply Positioned in search that it's been a sitting duck for the first superior technology or business model strong enough to take it on.  Positioning is the flip side of one of Hamilton Helmer's 7 Powers, counter-positioning: “​​A newcomer adopts a new, superior business model which the incumbent does not mimic due to anticipated damage to their existing business.” As Helmer points out in the book, counter-positioning is distinct from disruptive innovation.  Similarly, Positioning is distinct from the Innovator's Dilemma. We can define Positioning as: “An incumbent is susceptible to a new, superior business model due to anticipated damage to their existing business.” The goal of this essay is to provide a framework – Positioning – that we can all lazily reach for any time an impressive new technology or business model threatens an established incumbent (and many more situations, from the personal to the national, besides) without tripping any technical definitions.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/notboring/message

LINK TO ESSAY Will AI steal our jobs, let us work less, or force us to do more, better?  Induced demand, Jevons Paradox, the Marchetti constant, and consumer psychology 101 suggest that the increased supply of intelligence will create more demand for tasks that require intelligence, that we'll turn gains in intelligence efficiency into ways of doing new things that weren't previously feasible.  Instead of a zero sum competition with the bots, we might be on the cusp of intelligence superabundance. We may the same amount of time working, we'll just achieve much more in those hours than we currently do.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/notboring/message

Trevor Bacon, Kellan Grenier and Jason Lewris are the founders of Parcl. Parcl bridges traditional real estate investments with cutting-edge blockchain technology to provide data-driven solutions for modern investors. Parcl was built to revolutionize how users approach real estate as an investment towards generational-wealth. By giving everyone the tools they need to access one of the world's most desired investment classes, Parcl aims to deliver real estate to everyone. Parcl is a Not Boring Capital portfolio company and is taking on the exact types of hard problems that we like. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Andrew Herr is the founder and CEO of Fount. Fount is crafting the operating system for the human body. To start, it provides extremely high-touch personal health services to clients: blood tests, fitness plans, meal prep, supplements, and much more to meet its clients personalized health needs. But Fount is running a series of experiments that will allow it to develop software that scales its luxury health services to millions of customers. Andrew Herr knows more about health & fitness than perhaps anyone on the planet. Prior to his current positions, Andrew led studies on the future of human performance and biotechnology for the Department of Defense, taught courses on optimizing performance to U.S. Government personnel preparing for deployment to Afghanistan and Iraq, and worked with the Departments of Homeland Security and Energy on emerging technology strategy, nuclear weapons detection, and radiation dosimetry. Andrew has been selected as a Mad Scientist by the U.S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command, a Fellow by the Synthetic Biology Leadership Excellence Accelerator Program, a Leader of Tomorrow by Global Biotech Revolution, a Next Generation Fellow by the Center for a New American Security, a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellow by the U.S. Department of Education, and a Science & Technology Fellow by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He also regularly judges at iGEM, the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Ryan Glasgow is the founder and CEO of Sprig. Sprig is the easiest way to collect product feedback, inform product decisions, and increase your speed of innovation. The world's best product teams including the teams at Notion, Loom, and Robinhood use Sprig's in-app surveys and concept and usability tests to capture insights from their customers and build better products. Every week, at the bottom of this newsletter, I use a Sprig survey to get your feedback -- you click a button to tell me whether you loved or hated the newsletter and write a comment, and Sprig categorizes responses with machine learning so that I can get a quick pulse check. Here's what I love about Sprig: The UX is clean and simple, consumer-grade, and they have 75 templates which makes getting started so easy It's incredibly fast to source participants and launch a survey or concept test As a dashboard junkie, I love watching the results and AI-driven insights roll in in real-time, even, and especially, when the feedback is harsh! We actually almost stopped publishing this newsletter after edition #11 until we ran a Sprig Survey and discovered that 95% of you enjoyed reading it…so you can thank Sprig for the Weekly Dose of Optimism! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Packy an Anton discuss Chroma's (Anton's company) launch of Stable Attribution. Stable Attribution is a tool that let's anyone find the humans behind AI generated images. Given any image generated by Stable Diffusion, Stable Attribution is able to identify the images in the model's training set which most contributed to the generated image. Packy and Anton discuss the development of Stable Attribution, how to understand the data underlying these sophisticated AI models, and the implications of attribution for creators and artists. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Sam Levin is the co-founder and CEO of Melonfrost. Melonfrost is using the power of evolution and machine learning to launch the next generation of microbes that will revolutionize the fields of therapeutics, biomaterials, food, and agriculture. You'll learn more about what exactly that means in this conversation between Packy and Sam. Melonfrost, a Not Boring Capital portfolio company, recently announced its latest round of fundraising -- a $7M seed round led by Refactor Capital and Alexandria Venture Investments. Forbes did an awesome write up on the company and the round here. The company is one of the most ambitious and complex in the entire Not Boring portfolio, and is the exact type of company we are proud to back. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Andy Chatham is the CEO and co-founder of Dimo. Dimo's mission is to be the driving force behind the future of mobility: a future where data shapes infrastructure, emissions are lower, roads are safer, and life behind the wheel is—well, better. DIMO helps you get more from driving. Save money. Learn how to better take care of your car. And, contribute to a future where driving apps work for vehicle owners, not the companies that build them—just by sharing your data. DIMO is the people-powered movement behind the next generation of mobility services. By connecting drivers and their data with developers and manufacturers, we're building the largest, most useful IoT network of user-owned devices—starting with cars. LINKS: Not Boring Dimo Discount: code NOTBORING on https://shop.dimo.zone/ "Every car has been hacked": https://samcurry.net/web-hackers-vs-the-auto-industry/ The Soking Tires Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5jGw9uGNXSKMQzSIDTSh6t?si=d077ce27c6474e15 SPONSORED BY CAUSAL: Many of us rely on Excel, and we couldn't imagine a world without it. Excel lets us quickly crunch numbers, build financial forecasts and model out scenarios to make better decisions. But modelling in Excel and G-Sheets comes with its challenges: manual data dumps, #REFs, untraceable errors, and a lack of data protection create a constant stream of manual work, stress and a lack of confidence in the work you just did — **and that's where Causal comes in.** Causal is a better way for working with numbers. It's like Excel minus the arcane formulas (no more Sheet1!$E$4 or VLOOKUPs), plus effortless modelling, live data integrations (accounting systems, CRMs, etc.), and beautiful interactive dashboards. And given current market conditions, every startup needs a solid financial model to steer the ship. I've worked with the Causal team to create the Startup Suite — a set of 4 template models for early stage companies. It includes your revenue model, hiring plan, P&L and runway projection: the basics for any startup to keep an eye on the finances and plan for the future. If you're a startup founder, early-stage employee or just a lover of all things data, you'll love Causal. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Michael Kelly is the co-founder of Open Forest Protocol. Open Forest Protocol (OFP) is a scalable open platform that allows forest projects of any size, from around world, to Measure, Report, and Verify (MRV) their forestation data. Through OFP, individuals, communities, NGOs, entrepreneurs, and governments are able to create transparent, immutable, proof-of-impact data that is comprehensively verified by a network of independent experts. OFP is creating the foundation for more inclusive, scalable, and data-backed financing mechanisms for nature-based climate solutions. SPONSORED BY CAUSAL: Many of us rely on Excel, and we couldn't imagine a world without it. Excel lets us quickly crunch numbers, build financial forecasts and model out scenarios to make better decisions. But modelling in Excel and G-Sheets comes with its challenges: manual data dumps, #REFs, untraceable errors, and a lack of data protection create a constant stream of manual work, stress and a lack of confidence in the work you just did — and that's where Causal comes in. Causal is a better way for working with numbers. It's like Excel minus the arcane formulas (no more Sheet1!$E$4 or VLOOKUPs), plus effortless modelling, live data integrations (accounting systems, CRMs, etc.), and beautiful interactive dashboards. And given current market conditions, every startup needs a solid financial model to steer the ship. I've worked with the Causal team to create the Startup Suite — a set of 4 template models for early stage companies. It includes your revenue model, hiring plan, P&L and runway projection: the basics for any startup to keep an eye on the finances and plan for the future. If you're a startup founder, early-stage employee or just a lover of all things data, you'll love Causal. Try Causal for free at the special Not Boring link. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Nicholas Chadwick is the founder and CEO of Mission Zero Technologies. MZT is developing direct air capture (DAC) technology that will recover high-purity CO2 from the air while incurring only a fraction of the costs and energy it takes to do so today. Frontier is a recipient of an advanced market commitment grant from Frontier, the effort from companies like Stripe, Shopify, Meta, and Microsoft to ensure there is a market for carbon removal credits. This podcast is sponsored by Causal: Many of us rely on Excel, and we couldn't imagine a world without it. Excel lets us quickly crunch numbers, build financial forecasts and model out scenarios to make better decisions. But modelling in Excel and G-Sheets comes with its challenges: manual data dumps, #REFs, untraceable errors, and a lack of data protection create a constant stream of manual work, stress and a lack of confidence in the work you just did — and that's where Causal comes in. Causal is a better way for working with numbers. It's like Excel minus the arcane formulas (no more Sheet1!$E$4 or VLOOKUPs), plus effortless modelling, live data integrations (accounting systems, CRMs, etc.), and beautiful interactive dashboards. And given current market conditions, every startup needs a solid financial model to steer the ship. I've worked with the Causal team to create the Startup Suite — a set of 4 template models for early stage companies. It includes your revenue model, hiring plan, P&L and runway projection: the basics for any startup to keep an eye on the finances and plan for the future. If you're a startup founder, early-stage employee or just a lover of all things data, you'll love Causal. Use the Startup Suite as a starting point, or sign up for the product for free. The links are in the description! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Exponential makes it easy to discover, assess and invest in liquidity pools across chains. It wants to be the Coinbase of DeFi. We were joined by the companies three founders: Driss Benamour, Mehdi Lebbar, and Greg Jizmagian to discuss the current crypto market, Exponential's risk-first approach, and how to asses a digital risk-asset. You can learn more at exponential.fi. You can also watch the full video version of this conversation on our Youtube channel @notboringmedia. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

LINK to essay Every new year is a blank page, a chance to start fresh with new ideas and new sources and new energy. Of course, January 1st isn't actually any more different from December 31st than December 31st was from December 30th. But the collective time we all spend away from the daily routine during the holidays feels like a reset. And we've all tacitly agreed that the new year is a different thing than the old year. So it's close enough to actually different. This particular upcoming new year feels even more different, like a decadal reset. Markets have crashed (optimistically) or are in the process of crashing (realistically). The wave of momentum that the tech industry has been riding since the early 2010s has crashed (optimistically) or is in the process of crashing (realistically). The past few years have been chaotic and weird, and it came to a boiling point in 2022. The things that made sense a couple of years ago, the sure things, don't make as much sense, are no longer sure. You might be experiencing the weird as a general vibe or very specifically in your life and career. This post was sponsored by Masterworks. Learn more. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Audio Essay: Four Seasons Total Tech Link to full essay: https://www.notboring.co/p/four-seasons-total-tech Packy analogizes the Gartner Hype Cycle to the four seasons, to explain why some technology winters feel so long and cold while all summers feel pretty much the same. We're coming out of a many decades long winter for a bunch of frontier technology spaces (AI, Space, Nuclear, etc) seemingly all at once -- it's still spring, but Packy predicts that the we're about to enter a long, hot summer. Today's Not Boring is brought to you by… Oceans Oceans matches busy executives and high-growth teams with top EA+ candidates from global talent pools. Oceans recruits, vets, trains, and employs top talent and you get a high-quality, reliable EA+ for a fraction of the cost! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Packy and Anton breakdown one of the early, foundational artifical intelligence papers, "A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity," which was first published in 1943. The researchers, Warren S. McCulloch and Walter Pitts, were trying to understand how the brain could produce such complex patterns by using basic, connected cells. Their work was foundational in understanding neurons, and l introduced the concept of the neural network which has since become a key concept in artificial intelligence. This was the oldest paper that Anton and Packy have discussed, and its naturally age led to a lengthy conversation on the history of artificial intelligence. That history -- like the history of many technological fields -- is spotted with long winters, golden ages, broken timeline promises, and sudden developments. Today, it seems, we may be in the middle of a golden age for artificial intelligence. LINKS: Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/MpBdVJEx2Aw A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~./epxing/Class/10715/reading/McCulloch.and.Pitts.pdf History of the First AI Winter: https://towardsdatascience.com/history-of-the-first-ai-winter-6f8c2186f80b AI Winter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter#The_abandonment_of_connectionism_in_1969 Bitter Lesson: http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html Chroma: https://www.trychroma.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

The idea is this: the world oscillates between centralization and decentralization, with progress sloping upward through the turns. We're approaching an era of decentralization. This shift from centralization to decentralization is popping up everywhere I look: Energy: Fossil Fuels vs. Renewables Manufacturing: Globalization vs. Reshoring Manufacturing: Making vs. Growing Science: Government Funded vs. Decentralized Hard Tech: Government Agencies & Incumbents vs. Startups AI: Closed vs. Open Talent: Big Tech vs. Startups Apps: Big vs. Small Media: Substack vs. Journalism Education: Factory vs. Personalized Finance: Big Banks vs. Fintech We go deep on all of that in this episode. But here's the wildest part. That's not my real voice you're listening to. It's my AI voice, created by my friends at play.ht by training a model on a bunch of other audio essays. It's wildly good -- give it a listen. Read the full essay at Not Boring: https://www.notboring.co/p/decentralization --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

We're back! In Episode 2, Anton Teaches Packy about Deepmind's March 2022 paper, Training Compute-Optimal Large Language Models, or as it's more commonly known, Chinchilla. Prior to Chinchilla, the best way to improve the performance of LLMs was thought to be by scaling up the size of the model. As a result, the largest models now have over 500 billion parameters. But there are only so many GPUs in the world, and throwing compute at the problem is expensive and energy intensive. In this paper, Deepmind found that the optimal way to scale an LLM is actually by scaling size (parameters) and training (data) proportionally. Given the race for size, today's models are plenty big but need a lot more data. In this conversation, we go deep on the paper itself, but we also zoom out to talk about the politics of AI, when AGI is going to hit, where to get more data, and why AI won't take our jobs. This one gets a lot more philosophical than our first episode as we explore the implications of Chinchilla and LLMs more generally. If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe for more. We're going to try to release one episode per week, and we want to make this the best way to get a deeper understanding of the mind-blowing progress happening in AI and what it means for everything we do as humans. LINKS: Training Compute-Optimal Large Language Models: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.15556 chinchilla's wild implications: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6Fpvc... Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models (Kaplan et al): https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.08361 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Anton Teaches Packy AI is Not Boring's attempt at making AI more accessible to our audience. It's become increasingly obvious that we're in the Golden Age of AI, so we think it's important to demystify what's going on and how it all actually works. Anton Troynikov is the founder of Chroma, former Meta Reality Labs Research Engineer and Roboticist. Packy McCormick is the author of the popular tech and buinsess strategy newsletter, Not Boring. Anton Teaches Packy AI is exactly what it sounds like -- each video, Anton breaks down AI to a level that Packy (your average above average smart person) can understand. In Episode 1, Anton and Packy discuss the groundbreaking "Attention is All You Need" research paper which kicked off the entire Transformer generative AI wave. LINKS: - Attention is All You Need: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762 - The Bitter Lesson: http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html - Training Compute-Optimal Large Language Models: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.15556 - Explain Paper: https://www.explainpaper.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Odyssey (formerly Agora) fully believes in the power of technology to provide families with opportunity to choose the educational environment and services that help them best meet their unique learning needs. In order to help parents do that, we have partnered with the best K-12 providers and vendors in order to create a robust marketplace for our families. Joe Connor is the founder and CEO of Odyssey, and brings with him years of experience in education & law. Packy and Joe have been friends for 23 years, so it was especially special to have Joe come on the podcast to talk about his work at Odyssey. This episode was sponsored by Hyper. Hyper is a different kind of startup accelerator back by a16z and Sequoia Capital. Hyper supports participating startups with access to deep networks, media presence, and now hands-on support from unicorn founders. You can learn more about Hyper and apply here. Tell them Not Boring sent you! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Capital & Taste audio essay. Capital is banking built for founders. If that sounds like you, sign up for a Capital account today, whether you're just raising your first million or doing millions in ARR. Capital expands Party Round's offering from fundraising to a full suite of financial services focused on startups. Today, that's banking – so you can hold, spend, and send the money you've raised with their flagship fundraising tool (fka Party Round). In the future, it might be treasury management, payroll, credit, software, and services. Capital is a big name for a small company. It hints at big ambitions. There's a very long way between here and there, and myriad well-funded competitors lurking on the path, but if Capital lives up to its name, it will be because of its taste. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Formic delivers Robots by the Hour to manufacturers. It's making small and medium American businesses stronger, fighting inflation, and creating abundance Link to full essay here. -------------------------- The goal is abundance. We want more and better things, more cheaply. We want those things to be made closer to home. We want less fragile supply chains, so that those things are always available when we need them. We want more good jobs, and more time unlocked to maximize our human potential. Over the long-term, there are a lot of things we can do to create abundance. Generate clean, cheap, renewable electricity. Improve the education system. Build more houses. Change laws. In the immediate term, the answer is robots. Formic is creating the largest workforce of robots in the country -- and delivering Robots by the Hour to its customers, so that they can increase productivity and generate abundance. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

John Andrew Entwistle is the founder and CEO of Wander. Wander is a fully-integrated platform for experiencing magnificent short-term rental homes. Wander owns the customer experience end-to-end: the homes, the booking platform, and the value-added services. Over 100,000 people have joined the Wander waitlist. In this episode, John Andrew announces, for the first time, Wander's newest product: Wander Atlas - the world's first and only vacation rental REIT. Through Atlas, you can earn passive income, diversify your portfolio, and own a piece of Wander's magical network of homes. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Social vs. Science Experiments: We talk a lot about progress here in Not Boring. Progress can be difficult and messy and winding, and importantly, progress moves at different speeds and follows different paths for different kinds of products. Today's essay is my thinking on two types: science experiments and social experiments. Successful science experiment products clearly move the world forward; social experiment products are less obviously beneficial and messier in the short-run, but I think they're every bit as important in the long run, especially in combination with science experiment products. Sponsored by Secureframe: Secureframe is the leading, all-in-one platform for security and privacy compliance. Secureframe makes it fast and easy to get and stay compliant so you can focus on what matters: Scaling your business, customers, and revenue. With Secureframe, hypergrowth organizations can: Get SOC 2 audit ready in weeks, not months Stay compliant with the latest regulations Scale compliance with your business to meet ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI, and other requirements Plus, Secureframe helps sales teams respond to RFPs and security questionnaires quickly and easily with AI so they can close more deals, faster. Click here to set up a demo. Mention “Not Boring” during your demo to get 20% off your first year of Secureframe. Promotion available through October 31, 2022. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

In "How Do I Teach These Kids?!" Packy confronts the challenge of how to properly educate his two young children in a rapidly evolving world. "Dev and Maya get a blank educational slate to start with. Puja and I are responsible for figuring out how to give them the best education possible, one that helps them love learning, have fun, and get prepared for life beyond school. I don't think the answer is as simple as “Get them into the best schools possible.” I think it's a lot more complicated than that, and will only get more complicated as things move faster. This isn't meant to be a complete survey and analysis of the modern educational system, it's more of an exploration of how I'm thinking about it personally in the very specific context of Dev and Maya's education. What's the best way to prepare my two kids?" --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Tegus is building the modern investment research platform for fundamental private and public market investors, starting with a novel twist on the classic expert call model, and expanding into adjacent opportunities by listening intently to customers. This audio essay covers: The Course to Tegus Modernizing Investment Research The Tegus Business Model The Outsiders: Fundraising, Buybacks, and Acquisitions Read the full newsletter here --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Peter Johnston is the founder of Polywork. Polywork is a place to discover opportunities to collaborate with other professionals. Existing networks like LinkedIn focus on connecting us to 9-5 opportunities — but where do you go to find opportunities to speak on podcasts? Or discover partners for your side project? Check out who at Google or Netflix is open to angel investing or starting a company? If LinkedIn is built for the 9-5 generation, Polywork is built for the collaboration generation. It's been in private beta for just over a year, but this week it publicly launched for everyone, was #1 on Product Hunt, and announced its Series B funding. So what's its magic? Polywork understands that as professionals, our list of job titles don't do a good job of telling our full stories. Furthermore, it's purpose built for professionals who want to connect with one another beyond their 9-5. There's a growing network of amazing professionals from places like Figma, Snapchat, and Github all sharing what they want to do — making it incredibly easy to collaborate with anyone, on anything. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

The Enchanted Notebook: on the real and growing power of writing down the future you want to see exist. In the context of a recent Lex Fridman and Ray Kurzweil podcast conversation, Packy explores where we are with AI today and what the future may hold. This essay and audio essay were sponsored by Secureframe. If you're starting a software company or getting up-to-speed on enterprise, schedule a demo with Secureframe. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Monday Audio Essay: "Indistinguishable from Magic" Packy explores "magic" in tech and how it impacts the startup lifecycle: "It's the Magical Startup Circle of Life. A startup, if it's lucky, creates magic, turns that magic into dollars, and transitions to life as a successful Big Muggle Company, capable of enormous profits and power but no longer able to conjure magic. Then a new Magician comes along, using sufficiently advanced technology to build something indistinguishable from magic, and uses that magic as a wedge to challenge the Big Muggle Company." To read the full essay with graphics, head over to notboring.co. Thanks to Polywork for sponsoring this Monday's essay! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Mike Saunders is the co-founder and CEO of Captain. Captain powers restaurants and their communities through a mix of web2 and web3 technologies. Mike is an experienced food delivery entrepreneur, having previously started campusfood.com, which subsequently sold to Grub Hub where Mike served as an exec for a number of years. Captain, in many ways, is a response to many of the problems that Mike contributed to creating while building web2 food delivery platforms. One of Captain's first products is Supper Club: the digital wallet for the future of dining. Customers can find restaurants and earn rewards through fun games. In the process, restaurants gain access to a community of loyal customers. Food delivery is a massive industry and increasingly dominated by a handful of middlemen that extract a high-take rate, disconnect restaurants from customers, and abstract away customer relationships. Captain is an attempt to empower restaurants to creatively engage with their community of customers. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Eli Wachs & Alex Grinman are the co-founders of Footprint. Footprint's mission is to bring back trust on the internet. The company wants to put people in control of their identity while solving KYC, IDV, and PII storage problems for enterprises. Footprint just announced a $6M Seed Round led by Index Ventures. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Brandon Arvanaghi is the co-founder and CEO of Meow. Meow is a startup that opens corporate treasurers up to crypto markets. This is Brandon's second time on the podcast -- and he's on to discuss raising Meow's Series A & navigating challenging times in the crypto markets. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message

Amplified Tribalism: Over the past few months, I've noticed a vibe shift online: the conversation seems to be getting more negative, aggressive, and polarized. Today's piece is an attempt to unpack why so many people are talking past each other, why it's so unproductive, and what to do about it. It's not as upbeat as a lot of Not Boring pieces, but I think addressing this issue is crucial to unlocking progress. Sponsored by Athletic Greens. Athletic Green's AG1 is foundational nutrition you can count on. Learn more at athleticgreens.com/notboring and when you use our link get a free 1 year supply of Vitamin D + 5 free AG1 travel packs. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/notboring/message