The Times Tech Podcast

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...

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...

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 Co...

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...

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 c...

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 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 no...

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 (...

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 revolutio...

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 (3...

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 c...

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...

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 (...

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 (39:2...

The Sunday Times; tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Diego Saez GIl, founder of Pachama, to talk about carbon reduction (4:00), hist first startups (6:10), Pachama’s start (12:00), building tools to catalyse climate projects (16:00), how it works (19:10), net zero pledges (22:00), when his house burned down (24:50), the carbon market (27:40), raising $90 million (32:00), and his worst day...

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on David Barrett, founder of Expensify, to talk about creating a “remote-first” company (3:15), the lounge (6:45), the return-to-office movement (14:15), going public and then getting its shares smashed (17:15), why venture capital is a scam (23:30), why he likes public market investors (30:25), keeping people happy when shares lose 95% of their value (3...

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Raj Kapoor, co-founder of Climactic, to talk about growing up in Pennsylvania (3:10), his early days in Silicon Valley (8:00), making himself president of the Internet (club) (10:30), his first startup (16:30), Cleantech 1.0 (22:00), joining Lyft (25:00), self-driving cars (28:30), raising a first fund at Climactic (32:15), using softwar...

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Fergus Hay, founder of The Hacking Games, to talk about why he started the company (5:00), the difference between the real and online worlds (9:30), why everyone gets caught (15:15), his plan for a documentary and television series (21:00), the Hollywood angle (25:45), making hacking sexy (30:30), the cybersecurity industry’s stance on h...

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Dmitri Mehlhorn to talk about Investing in Us (4:45), what it invests in (7:30), funneling cash into election groups (13:20), why America’s election will be decided by the finest of margins (16:50), how artificial intelligence fits with democracy (21:15), the dangers (26:05), Silicon Valley’s attitude to politics (32:50), what works when...

A throwback conversation with Bryan Johnson, a billionaire techie turned longevity enthusiast who goes to extreme measures to "reverse" his age. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, to talk about how he started tutoring family members (4:30), doing startups in the dotcom boom (5:50), starting to do videos in 2006 (10:15), building a business from his closet (14:15), linking up with openAI (16:30), building an AI tutor (19:40), dealing with hallucinations (22:30), moving from text t...

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Martin Adams of Metaphysic to talk about using artificial intelligence in entertainment (3:20), the Tom Cruise moment (5:50), how the technology is accelerating (9:20), what it means for Hollywood (13:10), scaling humans (17:35), how much data is needed (22:40), copyrighting people (25:20), the election (30:10), his early days running ra...

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Jim Steyer, founder of Common Sense Media, the leading online advocacy group, to talk about 2024 as a pivotal year for democracy (4:20), whether Facebook is ready (8:30), Tiktok (10:10), AI-powered misinformation (12:30), why he’s more worried than ever for democracy (17:10), why he thinks regulation will come, but not from Washingt...

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on David Stein, chief executive of Babson Diagnostics, to talk about the importance of blood testing (4:49), why Babson is not Theranos (6:47), trying to compete with that idea (9:26), why they succeeded where Theranos failed (14:34), using a tiny amount of blood (18:23), fighting against the Theranos effect (24:37), being owned by a compan...

The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Christian Angermayer, founder of Apeiron Investments, to talk about psychedelics in Oregon (4:15), the spiritual experience of a “trip” (11:30), progressing toward the first FDA approval (15:30), how this will be introduced into the market (21:10), why having a qualified guide/therapist is critical (25:30), gaining societal acceptan...