Ground Truths

The science to advance our understanding of the aging process—and to potentially slow it down—has made important strides. One of the leading scientists responsible for this work is Professor Tony Wyss-Coray, whose work has particularly focused on brain aging but has implications for all organs. I believe his December 2023 Nature paper on blood proteins that can track aging for 11 of our organs is...

David Liu is an gifted molecular biologist and chemist who has pioneered major refinements in how we are and will be doing genome editing in the future, validating the methods in multiple experimental models, and establishing multiple companies to accelerate their progress. The interview that follows here highlights why those refinements beyond the CRISPR Cas9 nuclease (used for sickle cell diseas...

This is one of the most enthralling and fun interviews I’ve ever done (in 2 decades of doing them) and I hope that you’ll find it stimulating and provocative. If you did, please share with your network. And thanks for listening, reading, and subscribing to Ground Truths. Recorded 4 December 2023 Transcript below with external links to relevant material along with links to the audio ERIC TOPOL ( 00...

“A.I. is not the problem; it’s the solution.”—Andrew Ng at TED, 17 October 2023 Recorded 21 November 2023 Transcript with relevant links and links to audio file Eric Topol ( 00:00 ): Hello, it's Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and I'm really delighted to have with me Andrew Ng, who is a giant in AI who I've gotten to know over the years and have the highest regard. So Andrew, welcome. Andrew Ng ( 0...

If you care about what you eat, you won’t want to miss this conversation! Chris Van Tulleken is an infectious disease physician-scientist in the UK’s National Health Service who has written a deeply researched masterpiece book on food—ULTRA-PROCESSED PEOPLE. It’s not just about these synthetic and artificial UPF substances, that carry many health hazards, but also about our lifestyle and diet, cha...

In July, I reviewed Peter’s Outlive book here in Ground Truths and hoped I’d be able to interview him about my concerns. Here’s that conversation, recorded October 16th. I hope you’ll find it informative and stimulating! The AI generated transcript (unedited) below with links to the audio recording Eric Topol ( 00:01 ): Peter, it's really great to see you. I haven't been chance to visit since earl...

Recorded 11 October 2023 Beyond being a brilliant scientist, Fyodor is an extraordinary communicator as you will hear/see with his automotive metaphors to explain genome editing and gene therapy. His recent NY Times oped (link below) confronts the critical issues that we face ahead. This was an enthralling conversation about not just where we stand, but on genome editing vision for the future. I h...

Dr. Peter Hotez is a veritable force. He has been the tip of the spear among physicians and scientists for taking on anti-science and has put himself and his family at serious risk. Along with Dr. Maria Bottazzi, he developed the Corbevax Covid vaccine —without a patent— that has already been given to over 10 million people, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Here an uninhibited, casual...

Few, if any, physician researchers have done more to understand the long-term impact of Covid than Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a professor, nephrologist, and epidemiologist along with his team at Washington University, St. Louis. Here is the transcript (with links to the audio) of our conversation that was recorded one 7 September 2023. Eric Topol ( 00:00 ): Welcome to Ground Truths, and this podcast is a s...

Eric Topol ( 00:00 ): Hello, this is Eric Topol, and I'm thrilled to have a chance to have a conversation with Magdalena Skipper, who is the Editor-in-Chief of Nature . And a historic note. Back in 2018, she became the first woman editor of Nature in its 149 years, and only the eighth editor of all times. Having taken over for Philip Campbell, who had been previously the editor for 22 years, we're...

Transcript Eric Topol ( 00:00 ): This is a real great opportunity to speak to one of the most impressive medical informaticists and leaders in AI in the United States and worldwide. Dr. John Halamka, just by way of background, John, his baccalaureate in Stanford was at U C S F/Berkeley for combined MD PhD trained in emergency medicine at U C L A. He went on to Harvard where he, for 20 years was th...

Transcript with Links Eric Topol ( 00:00 ): This is Eric Topol, and I'm so excited to have the chance to speak to Melanie Mitchell. Melanie is the Davis Professor of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. And I look to her as one of the real, not just leaders, but one with balance and thoughtfulness in the high velocity AI world of large language models that we live in. And just by wa...

Transcript with some hyperlinks Eric Topol ( 00:00 ): Hello, Eric Topol here. And what a privilege to have as my guest Al Gore, as we discuss things that are considered existential threats. And that includes not just climate change but also recently the concern about A.I. No one has done more on the planet to bring to the fore the concerns about climate change. And many people think that the 2006...

TRANSCRIPT Eric Topol ( 00:00 ): Hello, this is Eric Topol, and it's really a delight for me to welcome Hannah Davis who was the primary author of our recent review on Long Covid and is a co-founder of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative. And we're going to get into some really important topics about citizen science, Long Covid and related matters. So, Hannah, welcome. Hannah Davis ( 00:27 ): T...

Link to the book: The AI Revolution in Medicine Link to my review of the book Link to the Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence preprint we discussed Link to Peter’s paper on GPT-4 in NEJM Transcript (with a few highlights in bold of many parts that could be bolded!) Eric Topol ( 00:00 ): Hello, I'm Eric Topol, and I'm really delighted to have with me Peter Lee, who's the director of Microsoft...

Transcript Eric ( 00:00 ): Okay. Hello, this is Eric Topol and this is a rare privilege for me to interview my favorite epidemiologist, Dr. Michael Osterholm. He is the Regents Professor of the University of Minnesota. He's director of CIDRAP, which is certainly one of the leading entities around the world for public health. And, we've been friends for the last few years, which we'll we'll talk ab...