Progress, Potential, and Possibilities Podcast / Show

Send us Fan Mail We spend enormous amounts of time trying to extend life - but almost no time learning how to deal with the fact that it ends. And that gap is creating enormous suffering for families. Dr. Marianne Matzo, Ph. D., FAAN is a nationally recognized gerontologist, hospice nurse, educator, researcher, and advocate whose career has been devoted to one of the most universal - and often avo...

Send us Fan Mail What if we could recreate the inside of a star - not in theory, but inside a laboratory on Earth using the world’s most powerful lasers? Dr. Mario Manuel, Ph. D. is a plasma physicist and laser-science researcher at whose work sits at the frontier of fusion energy, laboratory astrophysics, high-energy-density physics, and advanced laser diagnostics. Trained in applied plasma physi...

Send us Fan Mail Over the last several years, artificial intelligence has transformed from a speculative concept in healthcare into one of the most heavily funded movements in pharmaceutical and biotech history. But in 2026, the conversation is changing. The question is no longer whether AI can generate molecules, analyze pathology slides, or identify patterns in clinical data. The real question i...

Send us Fan Mail What if modern medicine has become incredibly good at saving children’s lives…but society still hasn’t figured out how to help many of those children truly live afterward? Dr. Nicholas Holekamp, MD is the Chief Health Transformation Officer at Ranken Jordan Pediatric Bridge Hospital in St. Louis ( https://rankenjordan.org/about-us/leadership/nicholas-holekamp-md/ ), one of only a...

Send us Fan Mail For decades, agriculture and energy were treated as separate worlds. But what happens when farms become part of the global energy infrastructure? Ofer Haviv joins us to discuss the rise of castor as a next-generation industrial crop, the future of sustainable aviation fuel, and how AI-driven biology is transforming agriculture itself. Ofer Haviv is CEO of Casterra ( https://caster...

Send us Fan Mail Every once in a while, a simple question changes medicine forever. For decades, chronic and traumatic wounds were among the most frustrating problems in healthcare. Doctors could clean wounds, dress wounds, and hope for healing - but many patients remained trapped in cycles of infection, inflammation, and failed recovery. Then came one deceptively simple idea:  What happens if you...

Send us Fan Mail For years, T cell therapies have transformed blood cancers - but solid tumors have remained one of the hardest problems in medicine. Now a new company called Deck Bio believes the issue isn’t just finding a better target...it’s that cancer may never have been a single-target disease in the first place. Dr. Jack Silberstein, Ph. D. is the Founder and CEO of Deck Bio ( https://deck....

Send us Fan Mail Most people assume national security delays are about technology. They’re not.  They’re about paperwork - and it can take up to two years just to deploy software the government already wants. Andrew Black is a national security entrepreneur, cybersecurity executive, and emerging technology strategist whose career has sat at the intersection of AI, defense, cyber risk, and global s...

Send us Fan Mail What if the next pandemic could be identified, diagnosed, and targeted with programmable CRISPR therapeutics before it spreads globally? That’s exactly what Seek Labs is trying to build. Jared Bauer is CEO of Seek Labs ( https://seeklabs.com/ ), a clinical-stage TechBio company developing an integrated platform that combines AI-driven genomic intelligence, rapid field diagnostics,...

Send us Fan Mail Every product you buy has a journey - but for most companies, that journey is basically invisible until something goes wrong. Today we are diving into one of the most overlooked - yet absolutely essential - pieces of global commerce: the pallet. Every year, billions of products move across the world sitting on these simple platforms, but despite the rise of AI, IoT, robotics, and...

Send us Fan Mail What if medicines could actually “decide” when and where to activate inside the body? MIT-trained synthetic biologist Dr. Jacob Becraft, Ph. D. is building programmable therapies that behave less like traditional drugs…and more like biological software. Dr. Becraft is Co-Founder and CEO of Strand Therapeutics ( https://www.strandtx.com/ ), a company pioneering what may become one...

Send us Fan Mail Bladder cancer treatment is entering a new era. From gene therapy and bladder preservation to AI-assisted diagnostics and the challenge of detecting “hidden” CIS, Dr. Ravi Chauhan, MD, FACS breaks down the technologies and clinical decisions reshaping urology in 2026. Dr. Ravi Chauhan, MD, FACS ( https://conradpearson.com/our-specialists/ravi-d-chauhan-m-d-facs/ ) is a board-certi...

Send us Fan Mail What if the biggest problem in nuclear energy isn’t reactor technology…but paperwork, regulation, and institutional bottlenecks? Today we explore how AI could compress nuclear deployment timelines from decades to years. Kevin Kong is founder and CEO of Everstar ( https://everstar.ai/ ), a company building advanced AI reasoning systems designed to accelerate the deployment of nucle...

Send us Fan Mail Drowning is the leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 4 in multiple countries - yet it receives only a fraction of the attention of other public health crises. Why? Acacia Landfield is Associate Director, Principal Investigator, and Director of Policy & Implementation Science at The Drowning Research & Injury Prevention Policy Institute ( DRIPPI - https://www.dripp...

Send us Fan Mail For decades, the beauty industry focused on creams, serums, and surface-level solutions. But what if aging skin is really a reflection of something much deeper happening inside our cells?  Today’s guest is François Vix, a longtime global beauty and wellness executive who has spent more than four decades at the intersection of skincare science, redox biology and oxidative stress re...

Send us Fan Mail Some of the most important cancer and autoimmune disease drugs in the world still require patients to sit in infusion chairs for hours - but that model may be about to change entirely. Matthew Huddleston is Chief Commercial Officer at Enable Injections ( https://enableinjections.com/ ), a medical device company focused on rethinking how large-volume biologic drugs are delivered to...

Send us Fan Mail Most autoimmune drugs suppress the immune system broadly - but what if you could selectively remove the antibodies actually causing disease? That’s exactly what VYVGART is doing, and it may fundamentally change how we treat conditions like myasthenia gravis and CIDP. Dr. Luc Truyen, M.D., Ph. D., is Chief Medical Officer at argenx ( https://argenx.com/ ), where he leads the compan...

Send us Fan Mail In the time it will take you watch this episode, over 2,000 people around the world will die from diseases driven by arterial plaque. But what if we could actually remove the toxic cholesterol already trapped inside arteries? Today we’re diving into one of the biggest unsolved problems in medicine and aging: how do you actually remove arterial plaque instead of merely slowing its...

Send us Fan Mail One of the biggest drivers of hospital admissions isn’t what most people think - it’s fluid. Not infection, not surgery…fluid overload. And when the body stops responding to diuretics, medicine runs into a wall. Today we’re exploring one of the most challenging and underappreciated frontiers in hospital medicine: fluid overload and the cardiorenal continuum - where heart failure a...

Send us Fan Mail Pharma has only explored a tiny fraction - less than one-tenth of one percent - of all possible drug-like molecules. So the question is: what happens when AI suddenly opens up the other 99.9%? Dr. Olga Nissan, Ph. D. is Vice President of Business Development at Evogene ( https://evogene.com/ ) where she leads pharmaceutical partnerships for the company’s ChemPass AI generative che...

Send us Fan Mail For decades, medicine focused on helping us live longer. Then came healthspan - helping us stay healthier longer. But what if the next frontier is something even deeper: joyspan… the quality, meaning, and fulfillment of the years we actually live? Today’s conversation sits at the intersection of healthcare delivery, aging science, and one of the most important - and perhaps least...

Send us Fan Mail What if saving a life isn’t a single moment…but the beginning of thousands of future moments that only exist because someone chose to act? Today’s guests are father-daughter duo Brad Newbury ( https://bradnewbury.com/ ) and Kiera Newbury ( https://kieranewbury.com/ ) - two voices at the intersection of emergency medicine, leadership, resilience, and human impact. Brad is a veteran...

Send us Fan Mail We used to think of DNA as something we read. Now we’re starting to treat it like something we write - and that changes everything about how medicine gets made. Dr. Patrick Finn, Ph. D. is President and COO of Twist Bioscience ( https://www.twistbioscience.com/ ), a company that’s helping turn biology into something you can engineer, iterate, and even industrialize.  Dr. Finn has...

Send us Fan Mail For more than 30 years, small cell lung cancer has remained one of the most aggressive and difficult-to-treat cancers - marked by rapid progression, high relapse rates, and very few meaningful advances. But that may finally be starting to change. Today, we’re joined by Dr. Angela Coxon, Ph. D., Vice President of Research and Development at Amgen ( https://www.amgen.com/ ), where s...

Send us Fan Mail What if the future of medicine isn’t about treating disease…but detecting it 20 years before symptoms ever appear? Dr. Julie Chen, MD is helping lead one of the newest precision-health companies trying to build that future. Dr. Julie Chen, MD is a physician operating at one of the most interesting intersections in modern medicine: rigorous clinical research, precision longevity me...