Thinking On Paper: Technology, Considered
Conversations with founders, CEOs, writers and outliers on how AI and emerging technology are reshaping business, society and human life. Thinking On Paper is a weekly technology podcast hosted by writers and systems thinkers Mark Fielding and Jeremy Gilbertson. It covers the convergence of AI, quantum computing, robotics and space infrastructure. The show is for professionals, parents, creators and curious minds who want to think for themselves about AI and technology. All original. All human.
Episodes
Bruce Lee, AI & The Making of Asian America | Jeff Chang
Bruce Lee’s ghost influences us like very few others. Bob Marley, Muhammad Ali: these are the icons his legend walks with. In Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America, Jeff Chang takes us inside kung fu, mindset and movies. In the second part of the show we get into AI and the creative act. Does Chang use AI? How about his friend DJ Shadow? (00:00) Bruce Lee, AI and the first d
Quantum Computer Video Games | Harry Kumar, Moth
What would a gamer do with a quantum computer? Or a musician? Harry Kumar, co-founder of Moth Quantum, thinks quantum computing needs creativity to push quantum forwards, so we're going to find out.Moth built Quantum Backrooms, a video game where a quantum computer builds the maze. Each tile on the map is a qubit. The correlation between two neighbouring qubits decides whether a wall stands betwee
AI Data Centers Could Use Far Less Water │ Simon Jesenko, Iceotope
Data centers use water to cool air, not chips. The water chills the air that gets blown across the racks, and that is where it evaporates. Remove the air and you remove most of the water.Simon Jesenko runs Iceotope, which builds cooling with no fans and no air at all. Fifteen to twenty litres of refined oil circulating inside a sealed chassis, touching every component. His point about the headline
You Can Now Build Your House From Grass │ Nathan Silvernail, Plantd
Nathan Silvernail quit SpaceX to make wood from grass.Building the first part of a rocket SpaceX ever reused - the nose cone - wasn’t enough. After a decade working for Elon Musk, he quit. Took everything he had learnt.And started Plantd. The plan? Make carbon-negative engineered lumber from fast-growing perennial grass. Climate tech meets space tech. Wood, without trees. Plantd's panels replace
National Space Transportation Policy - America Demands 1,000 Launches a Year
We read the National Space Transportation Policy in full. Signed 20 August 2026, it shreds the 2013 directive and rewrites how the US gets into space, moves around up there, and comes back down.The War Department is all over it. Launch ranges, reentry infrastructure, a clause about accommodating launches within 48 hours of need. You don't build a 48-hour capability to do science. Somebody expects
The Question Philosopher - Why Did You Stop Asking Questions? │ Pia Lauritzen
Why do we stop asking questions as adults? Philosopher Pia Lauritzen has analysed 30,000 of them, and says nothing was ever lost.The ability stays. What changes is the price. Every question admits you don't know something, and nobody gets promoted for ignorance. Ask in the wrong room and curiosity starts to feel like an interrogation, which is why most of us learn to keep the question to ourselves
Do You Really Want Personalized AI Music? I Sure Don't
Nicholas Ponari says AI music makes live performance more valuable, not less. Mark Fielding calls the same future a hellscape.Ponari's scenario: by 2045 his son types a script into a generator, gets a feature film in the style of Kubrick crossed with Tarantino, and hits publish. Everyone becomes a creator in every medium. Nobody can consume a fraction of it, so AI becomes the largest curator in hi
How To Stop AI Killing Us All │ The Blueprint
The US and China are racing to build AI systems that could lead to superintelligence before any of us even know what it is. The consequences could be global meltdown and the end of humanity. Not on our watch!Mark and Jeremy Think On Paper about The Hard Question of AI, an essay by Planet CEO Will Marshall. Marshall argues that AI governance now needs the same kind of verification, trust and global
Cut The GPU AI Waste Bill by Billions | Moshe Tanach
AI companies are splashing billions on more GPUs before they use the ones they already have. Many sit idle, others use a fraction of their potential. For the hyperscalers, cloud providers and AI companies, buying more GPUs does not solve much if the GPUs already in the rack spend too much time waiting for the rest of the system.The next battle in the AI infrastructure wars is efficiency: GPU utili
Does Lab-Grown Meat Finally Taste Like Real Meat? - Bruce Friedrich, Good Food Institute
Bruce Friedrich, founder of the Good Food Institute and author of Meat, explains why the future of food may depend less on changing human behaviour and more on changing how meat is produced.For more than 12,000 years, humans have relied on animal agriculture to produce meat. Bruce argues that this system is reaching its limits. We explore how cultivated meat is made, why it is attracting support f
Asteroid Mining Is Not As Mad As It Sounds │ Matthew Gialich
Asteroid mining sounds insane until you speak to AstroForge CEO Matthew Gialich. Then it makes perfect sense.Matthew’s team at AstroForge builds spacecraft to mine metallic M-type asteroids for platinum group metals, the unglamorous but essential metals inside phones, cars, chips, electronics and much more.AstroForge is one of the few companies trying to make space mining real, targeting metal-ric
Stop The Quantum Computing Hype Train │ Dr. Robert Sutor
Quantum computers could change medicine, material science and AI. Unfortunately, it's impossible to know how because the industry is buried under hype. Dr. Bob Sutor takes us on a masterclass through the conflicting headlines to the reality of quantum technology today. By the end of the show you’ll know what’s fact and fiction, where the industry is heading and how to protect yourself from AI
GEO: Google Is Dead, Good.
Awad Sayeed, co-founder and CTO of Parsnipp AI, joins Thinking on Paper to explain generative engine optimisation, or GEO, and how companies can become more visible inside LLMs.In this episode, we discuss:How generative engine optimisation differs from SEOWhy context matters more than keywords in AI searchHow ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini use information differentlyWhat persona-based agents reveal ab
Can The UK Compete On The Technology World Stage? techUK
Rory Daniels, Head of Emerging Technology and Innovation at techUK, joins Thinking on Paper to discuss whether the United Kingdom can remain competitive as quantum computing, robotics, photonics, AI and advanced computing begin to converge.The UK has strong research institutions, deep technical talent and globally significant companies. Its recurring problem is scale. Promising technologies are of
AI Is Automating Engineers Out Of A Job
The Vij brothers join Thinking on Paper to discuss Neo, an autonomous machine learning engineer designed to automate parts of the AI development process.As demand for AI systems grows, companies and governments are competing for a limited pool of experienced machine learning engineers. The challenge isn’t only access to data or computing power. Many organisations also lack the technical expertise
The NASA Moon Base Users Guide
We read NASA’s Moon Base User’s Guide and ask what it would take to establish a sustained human presence on the Moon.A permanent lunar base requires far more than rockets, landers and astronauts. NASA and its partners would need to build an integrated infrastructure system covering power generation, communications, navigation, habitats, transportation, logistics, robotics and resource extraction.I
Space Based Solar Power Starts In Portugal │ Sanjay Vijendran
Sanjay Vijendran of TerraSpark joins Thinking on Paper to explain how space-based solar power could become a practical source of clean energy.TerraSpark is developing wireless power-transmission systems that could eventually collect solar energy in orbit and beam it to receivers on Earth. The company plans to demonstrate the concept by powering a live music event in Portugal and by testing radio-f
Lithium Mining And The Hidden Cost Of Green Energy │ Jennifer Dunn
Jennifer Dunn, professor of chemical engineering at Northwestern University, joins Thinking on Paper to explain how lithium and copper mining affect water, ecosystems, local communities and the wider energy transition.Lithium and copper are essential to electric vehicles, grid storage, renewable energy, drones and data centres. But the environmental consequences of extracting these minerals vary s
No Humans In The Loop - AGI Will Run The World Economy Far Better Without Us
Anders Sandberg examines whether artificial general intelligence could manage the global economy more effectively than human institutions.A sufficiently capable AI system might coordinate markets, allocate resources, interpret legal rules and respond to complex global problems faster than governments or companies. Greater efficiency, however, wouldn’t necessarily mean greater freedom.In this short
Lunar Landing Becomes Harder as the Moon Gets Busier │ Philip Metzger
NASA scientist Philip Metzger joins Thinking on Paper to explain why Moon dust and rocket exhaust create a major engineering problem for future lunar missions.When a spacecraft lands on the Moon, its engines can accelerate dust and rocks across the surface at high speed. That material can damage nearby equipment, including solar panels, telescopes, antennas, sensors and thermal-control systems.The
How Do You Build an Economy in Space? │ Matthew Weinzierl and Brendan Rosseau
Matthew Weinzierl and Brendan Rosseau, authors of Space to Grow, explain the commercial space economy and the role of NASA, Artemis and commercial space stations.From space-based data centers, Starlink and GPS to China’s space program, national security, and space governance, we get into the economics, politics and human story of space.The conversation covers how governments, private companies, an
Quantum Computing Is Finally Solving Real Problems │ Scott Crowder, IBM
Scott Crowder, Vice President of IBM Quantum Adoption, joins Thinking on Paper to explain IBM’s approach to quantum-centric supercomputing.Rather than replacing classical computers, IBM expects quantum processors to work alongside CPUs, GPUs and high-performance computing systems. Each type of hardware handles the parts of a problem it’s best suited to solve.In this episode, we discuss:What quantu
AI Can't Escape Human Behaviour: An Interview With Anders Sandberg
World famous Oxford futurist and philosopher Anders Sandberg joins Thinking on Paper to discuss transhumanism, mind uploading, artificial general intelligence and the technologies humans use to extend their capabilities.Human augmentation doesn’t begin with brain implants or uploaded minds. Memory systems, smartphones, language models and AI agents already allow people to outsource parts of thinki
Silicon Valley Will Sell You Their Future: An Interview With Carissa Veliz
Carissa Véliz joins Thinking on Paper to examine how AI forecasts, platform algorithms and prediction markets can influence the future they claim only to predict.Predictions aren’t always neutral descriptions. When they come from powerful technology companies, executives, platforms or financial markets, they can change investment, policy and public behaviour. A forecast may become a self-fulfillin
Lego Becomes The Front Line Of The AI Propaganda War
The AI meme war between the US and Iran has evolved into an absolute shit show. If you thought it was awful a few weeks ago, you ain't seen nothing yet.AI-generated Lego propaganda videos were a curiosity. Sometimes funny, often violent, always troublesome and never diplomatic, they quickly gained millions of views across social media... because social media. The White House Twitter (X) account wa
Is Space Doomed To The Same Failures Of Earth? - Space To Grow Book Club
This episode of Thinking on Paper uses Space to Grow to examine who has the right to mine the Moon, extract resources from asteroids and build commercial activity beyond Earth.The Outer Space Treaty prohibits national sovereignty over celestial bodies, but it leaves important questions unresolved. Can companies own the resources they extract? Who grants mining rights? What happens when commercial
The Biggest Space Tech Funding Rounds Of 2026
This episode of Thinking on Paper examines the largest space technology funding rounds of 2026 and what they reveal about the direction of the commercial space economy.Investment is moving beyond satellite launches and communications. Companies are now raising capital for orbital data centres, private space stations, reusable rockets, alternative navigation systems, weather intelligence, secure co
Can A Rule From 125 Years Ago Control An AI War?
The Martens Clause says that when written law runs out of steam, humanity still has obligations under the laws of humanity. This episode asks whether that old idea from the 1899 Hague Peace Conference can help govern new technologies that move faster than law: AI, autonomous weapons, military AI, space mining, space governance, and the race to build beyond Earth. The conversation moves from Nuremb
AI Is Going To War
This episode of Thinking on Paper, we look at how artificial intelligence is moving from military planning into intelligence analysis, targeting and battlefield operations.Using a White House memorandum on America’s military AI strategy, Mark and Jeremy explore the push to build an AI-first warfighting force. The objective is to process information, identify threats and execute decisions faster th
Iran Show America How To Use AI For Propaganda
Iran made an AI Lego propaganda video about the United States. It was kind of funny. The US replied with Grand Theft Auto, Wii Sports, and Call of Duty. It wasn't. Children's toys and video games to push a distorted view of war at kids and morons on Twitter. Oh how they'll laugh. This is our first reaction video. Probably be our last.--🎧 Listen to every podcast📺 Follow us on Instagram🏠 Follow u
Space Is Filling With Junk. Who Cleans It Up?
Space junk is becoming one of the biggest risks in low Earth orbit, from satellite collisions and Kessler syndrome to the millions of debris fragments already moving above Earth. This episode looks at how we got here, why deorbit rules have struggled, and whether active debris removal companies like Astroscale can turn space cleanup into a real market. The second half asks what happens when the sa
The Quantum Chip That Looks Like Silicon
Conductor Quantum founder Brandon Severin joins Thinking on Paper to explain Google’s latest quantum breakthrough, the race to scale beyond today’s experimental systems, and why the future of computing may depend on controlling individual electrons. From spin qubits and trapped ions to semiconductor manufacturing, AI driven quantum control, drug discovery, and cryptography, the conversation maps t
Give Quantum Computers These Jobs First
Quantum computing for materials is moving closer to practical use because quantum computers, GPUs, CPUs, and AI coding tools are beginning to work together. Pranav Gokhale explains how future battery design could depend on simulating electrons, splitting materials problems between GPU workflows and quantum subroutines, and using Hamiltonian simulation where classical computers fall short. The conv
Space Startups Promised The Moon. Then Went Bankrupt
Space SPACs promised to turn early space startups into public-market winners, but many collapsed before proving they had real products or real markets. This episode looks at the space investment boom through Virgin Orbit, Astra, Planet, SPAC redemptions, failed rockets, and the danger of valuing space companies on fantasy revenue projections. It then moves from speculation to coordination: the sta
The Quantum Clock That Could Replace GPS
Infleqtion CEO Matt Kinsella joins Thinking on Paper to explain neutral atom quantum computing, quantum clocks, and why the future of computing may depend on synchronisation as much as raw processing power. The conversation moves from GPS spoofing and UK submarine navigation to Nvidia’s hybrid quantum AI stack, quantum sensing, edge computing, quantum error correction, and the growing race to buil
Nvidia Is Building The AI-Quantum Supercomputer
Nvidia is treating quantum computing as the next stage of accelerated computing, not as a separate machine sitting apart from AI supercomputers. Sam Stanwyck from Nvidia and Pranav Gokhale from Infleqtion explain how NVQLink connects QPUs and GPUs with low-latency, high-bandwidth communication, allowing quantum computers, GPU supercomputers, CPUs, CUDA-Q, and AI software to work inside the same co
The Rare Fuel That Could Make Us Mine the Moon
There are about 100 kilograms of helium-3 on planet Earth. The current US reserve is 29 kilograms. Global production runs around 20 kilograms per year. And early estimates put quantum computing demand alone at 300 to 400 kilograms per year. The math doesn't work, which is why people are starting to look at moon mining. On this episode of Thinking on Paper, we talk with Glen Martin, CEO of the Extr
Carissa Veliz: Your Privacy Is Power
Carissa Véliz is associate professor at the Oxford Institute for Ethics in AI and author of Privacy Is Power. She joins us to speak about the risks of sharing data, why Big Tech knows more about you than you do, and how you can protect yourself. And Democracy. Carissa explains what privacy actually is (a right, a duty, and a piece of social infrastructure all at once), why your music taste reveals
The Tech Startup Trying To Open A Hotel On The Moon
A hotel on the Moon sounds like science fiction, but Skyler Chan argues it is really a test case for lunar habitats and off-world surface habitation. His company Gru wants to prove two basic things first: inflatable structures can hold pressure and temperature on the lunar surface, and lunar regolith can be turned into Moon bricks for radiation protection, landing pads, roads, warehouses, habitats
Why AI Data Centers Might Leave Earth
Philip Johnston is the CEO of Starcloud and launched an Nvidia H100 chip in space and gave a TED talk about it. As you do if you're responsible for building the infrastructure for space-based data centers. Elon Musk was not the first. He follows in the footsteps of Mr Johnston. And so, rather than Mr SpaceX, our first technology reaction video is this TED talk from San Francisco. We watched it f
The Missing Infrastructure For The Moon Economy
Philip Metzger spent 30 years working at NASA. He's knows a lot about the physical, economic, and political problems of building space stations and starting lunar economies.From rocket exhaust blasting moon dust across the lunar surface, NASA’s role as an anchor customer, lunar mining, asteroid mining and helium-3, to landing pads, microgravity manufacturing, and the economics of moving AI data ce
Where Drone Delivery Actually Makes Sense
Drone delivery is not about filling the sky with quadcopters, Etienne Louvet argues. It is about rebuilding light-cargo logistics for places where vans, ferries, roads, and traditional delivery networks struggle: islands, remote communities, rural routes, hospitals, offshore platforms, and hard-to-reach homes. The conversation explains how Iona Drones is building fixed-wing VTOL aircraft for auton
Prompting Is Not Thinking
Can you use AI to think better or think more critically? Philosopher Pia Lauritzen says no. The second we give up to the shortcut use AI, we are letting go of the very basic condition that forces us to think.When we ask if machines can think, the first question should be: why do humans think? Why do we think?For Pia, it is fairly simple. We think because we know there is something we do not know.
Can AI Make Music Without Stealing?
What if you could use AI to make your own music without stealing other people's beats, rhymes and melodies? Unlike platforms trained on scraped catalogs, Overtune’s AI is built on licensed music, starting with ~20,000 loops produced in-house. Producers can submit stems voluntarily, creating a clean foundation for ethical training and attribution.The platform uses vector-based audio embeddings to m
Your Customer Is Now OpenAI
Marketing funnels don't exist. They never did. The internet just convinced us they were real. Meta, Google, OpenAI and a supporting cast of billionaire sociopaths figured out they could control distribution and black-box your customers.Hurrah. Humanity forgot to read the small print. Now you're running a business where you don't even know who your customer is.Well here’s the AI-shaped healthcheck:
Quantum And AI Just Joined Forces
Matt Kinsella runs Infleqtion, a company building quantum computers. The biggest misconception about quantum computing is that it will replace classical computing. It won't. Quantum processors will sit above GPUs in data centers the same way GPUs sit above CPUs today. NVIDIA just built the bridge to make this work. It's called NVQ Link, and it changes how we think about the future of compute.NVIDI
Why The Next Space Station Might Be Inflatable
The International Space Station cost about $100 billion to build and runs another $4 billion a year to operate. For a long stretch, it absorbed roughly half of NASA's annual budget. Skylab, the first US space station, lasted six years before falling out of the sky. Carl Sagan thought space stations were a waste of money. Ronald Reagan thought they were the next clipper ship. The killer app for spa
One Wrong Button Can Take Down The World's Most Advanced Data Center
Two-thirds of data center outages are caused by someone pressing the wrong switch. Not a hacker, not a hardware failure. A person, in a room with thousands of switches, and their mind elsewhere.We talk with Shapol, CEO and co-founder of Entangl, about the engineering layer underneath everything we now call AI. Before Entangl, Shapol led a reusable rocket program and oversaw four launches. He hated
How NASA Created the Company That Replaced It
SpaceX reusable rockets and NASA’s commercial space economy are the focus of this Space to Grow book club episode, covering chapters one to three of Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier. We trace how NASA moved from Apollo and the Space Shuttle era into commercial partnerships, why COTS and fixed-price contracts changed the incentives around ISS cargo delivery, and how SpaceX used
Elon Musk Wants Mars. Gerard O’Neill Wanted Orbitals
John Bucknell made Raptor engines at SpaceX. He also designed a nuclear thermal turbo rocket. He now wants to solve energy. Ambitious young man. Virtus Solis puts solar panels in orbit, beams power to the ground via radio waves that pass through clouds and weather without loss, and delivers electricity at $30 to $40 per megawatt hour while the plant is being financed. Once the asset is paid off: 5
The Technology Everyone Uses But Nobody Knows They Do
Most people have no idea Snapchat is the biggest AR company on Earth, because nobody has ever called it that. We talk with Michael Guerin, founder and CEO of Imivisar, about where augmented reality is in 2026 and where it's going next. Guerin walks us through the history of AR from Ivan Sutherland's 1968 Sword of Damocles through Pokémon Go and IKEA, why the technology became enormous everywhere i
A Fusion Startup Just Turned Mercury Into Gold
Every year, Tom Whitwell—reformed journalist, reformed consultant, electronic instrument designer—publishes 52 surprising things he learned. This year's list reveals how the world actually works.Mark and Jeremy steal his homework (like OpenAI scraping the internet) and pick their favorites across AI, energy, labor, culture, psychology, and—yes—shrimp.Some findings are encouraging:- Deaths from air
Seemingly Conscious AI
The machines do not need to wake up. The risk is the illusion.When AI convincingly claims subjective experience—"I feel," "I understand," "I care about you"—humans have no reliable way to disprove it. We infer consciousness from behavior. We attach emotionally to what feels real.The danger isn't rogue superintelligence. It's a benign chatbot optimized for empathy, memory, and persuasion, interacti
Quantum Computing Is Not What You Think
Quantum computing doesn't make computers faster. It changes what's computable.Joe Fitzsimons, CEO of Horizon Quantum, explains why quantum progress is so hard to grasp: it's exponential in a way that breaks everyday intuition.Here's the math that matters:Each additional qubit doubles the difficulty of simulating the system on classical computers. Meanwhile, quantum processors are scaling faster th
AI Stole The Music. This Is How We Take It Back
Making music used to require heartbreak, bleeding fingers, and a thousand late nights. Now, with SUNO, you can write AI songs in 30 seconds.This changes everything about taste, credit, and what it means to be a musician.Nicholas Ponari—guitarist, investor, COO at Overtune—explains how musicians get paid when AI generates the music.The old model is dead. You used to need:- A guitarist- A bass playe
No China. No Electric Future
America has a Technological inferiority complex. China makes over half the world's lithium batteries. They produce 90% of neodymium magnets. They mine 70% of rare earths and process 85%.America makes burgers.This is the story of how China won the Electric Stack—and whether America can catch up.What's the Electric Stack?Everything that moves will eventually run on batteries and electric motors. Car
The Housing Market Was Built for a World That’s Gone
Median US income: $68,000.Median home price: $440,000.The math doesn't work.Only 13% of Americans earn a salary. Everyone else gets paid hourly or hustles in the gig economy. Yet housing policy assumes stable W-2 income, 20% down payments, and 30-year mortgages.The system is built to extract value, not create stability.Chris Moeller joins Mark and Jeremy to talk about an alternative: stable living
The Microchip Pioneer Who Says the Universe Is Conscious
What is consciousness?Federico Faggin—physicist, inventor of the microprocessor—says it's not created by brains. It's fundamental to reality. Everything is conscious: atoms, electrons, maybe even spacetime itself.This is panpsychism. And Faggin argues quantum physics proves it.We're reading his book, *Irreducible*, to figure out if we agree.Quantum conscious units called "Seities"? A universe that
Silicon Valley Is Selling You Religion
The internet decayed into AI slop. Marketing became manipulation. Trust disappeared.How do brands build real connections when platforms feed you lies, hide your customers, and optimize for extraction?Nick Richtsmeier—founder of CultureCraft, writer at Damns Given—says brands now live inside mirrored cages. You see what algorithms want you to see. Your customers see distorted versions of you. Nobod
The Question You Almost Never Ask
AI answers faster than any human. But can it help you think? Does it erode critical thinking, or augment it? Pia Lauritzen has analyzed 30,000 questions across languages and cultures. She's a philosopher of the question. And she says we're losing the muscle for real wonder.The problem: We ask "what" and "how." Rarely "why." ChatGPT answers instantly. We skip the struggle. The blank page—where thin
The Star That Fooled Astronomers
What makes neutron stars so fascinating that they once fooled astronomers into thinking they were aliens?1967: PhD student Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovers repeating radio pulses from space using a homemade array of wooden poles and copper wire. Regular. Precise. Unnatural.They called it LGM-1. Little Green Men.It wasn't aliens. It was something stranger: neutron stars. The densest objects in the un
AI At The Wheel: Why You Shouldn't Be Driving
Everyone thinks they're a great driver. They're wrong.Most drivers think they can judge a safe overtake. They can't. And that's why we crash.Barry Lunn breaks down the sensor technology that sees eight cars ahead, detects velocity before brake lights appear, and intervenes when you're about to make a mistake.The tech: Radar. Not cameras. Not lidar. Millimeter-wave signals that bounce around traffi
Build Your Own Quantum Computer
What if someone handed you the recipe for a quantum computer?Coleman Collins of IonQ breaks down DiVincenzo's criteria—the five capabilities any system needs to be a quantum computer.Physicist David DiVincenzo created the checklist. Every major quantum architecture (superconducting circuits, trapped ions) follows it.The five requirements:1. A well-defined qubit (your basic unit of quantum informat
Your Laptop Would Die in Space
Radiation-hardened electronics don't get headlines. But nothing in orbit works without them.Starship, ISS, Starlink, Project Kuiper—all depend on hardware that survives what would kill your laptop in seconds.Danny Andreev, CEO of Sunburn Schematics, designs systems for real space missions. He explains what keeps spacecraft alive.The threats:- Radiation (particles flip bits, corrupt memory, fry cir
He Saved Humanity From Nuclear War
September 26, 1983. Soviet bunker. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov watches computers say US nuclear missiles are incoming.The data says: Launch.His intuition says: Wait.Petrov overrides the system. Saves the world.If AI had been in charge, everyone would be dead.Mark and Jeremy use the Petrov story to explore Federico Faggin's argument in *Irreducible*: information is not the same as conscious
Our Last Design Choice
We speak to Don Norman about humanity centered design. The godfather of design explains why we need Humanity-Centered Design—a shift from individual users to society, planet, and long-term impact.The problem: "What's wrong is what's left out."Every digital product relies on physical infrastructure. Power systems. Data centers. Electricity. Rare earth mining. You can't design a phone without design
Why Starcloud Wants To Put Data Centers In Space
Philip Johnston is CEO of Starcloud. They build data centers in space. Their first satellite just launched on SpaceX Falcon 9. You can track it orbiting Earth right now.This short covers humanoid robots, data centers in orbit, and whether the future includes dancing machines.We talk about:- Why Philip predicts 5 billion humanoids by 2035- What humanoid robots will actually do (not dance—work)- How
AI Agents Are Taking Over The Internet
AI agents can read feeds, make decisions, coordinate with other agents, and speak on your behalf, without you in the loop.Andrew Hill explains what agents actually are, why every company is racing to build them, and how close we are to personal agents that manage schedules, explain our thinking, and negotiate with other people's agents.We talk about:- What an AI agent actually is (beyond chatb
Why Mars Missions Need Musicians
To survive in space, you don't just need engineers. You need a musician. Preferably a guitarist.Jeremy asks physicist Danny Andreev (CEO, Sunburn Schematics): Could my 1969 Fender Vibrolux amp work in space?Answer: Yes. Analog gear shrugs off radiation.What starts as electrical engineering turns into human psychology and Mars survival.We talk about:- Why Jeremy's vintage guitar amp would work on t
AI Is Becoming A Franz Kafka Novel
Carissa Veliz joins us again to speak about AI Ethics, a mirage straight from a Kafka novel. Questions of justice, principles and the rule of law are incompatible with machine learning. Machine learning is statistical analysis of data that outputs responses human beings are likely to find attractive, not true or ethical. That is not a good way to design ethics.Carissa Veliz joins Makr & Jeremy
AI Is Digging Up Fossil Fuels
Exxon and Chevron are using Microsoft AI to extract more oil. Faster. Cheaper. The goal: every last drop.Holly and Will Alpine (Enabled Emissions) paint a stark picture with Microsoft's own numbers:Exxon deal: 50,000 barrels/day = 6.4 million tonnes CO₂/yearChevron deal: 400,000 barrels/day = 51 million tonnes CO₂/yearMicrosoft's entire FY23 footprint: 17 million tonnes.Carbon removal booked over
The Quantum Circus
Brandon Severin (CEO, Conductor Quantum) explains spin qubits and the complex nature of quantum computing. With a lion.Take one electron. Put it in a magnetic field. It acts like a tiny compass needle with two orientations—spin-up and spin-down.Those are your 0 and 1.Isolate that electron on a gated silicon device. Hit it with precise pulses. You can flip, hold, and combine those states (superposi
Banks Don't Want You To Have Crypto
Stablecoins already move more volume than Visa and Mastercard combined. There's a financial revolution in the air, and the banks don't want you involved.Robby Yung, CEO of Animoca Brands, shows how people move dollars across borders in minutes with near-flat fees, from market traders in Nigeria to institutions shifting tens or hundreds of millions. This is a short from our full length deep dive in
Blocking China From Space May Have Backfired
China built its space station Tiangong in three years after being excluded from the ISS. It landed on the Moon twice—2020 and 2024—returning samples from high helium-3 areas. Now the race is for resources and rules.Glen Martin (aerospace designer, ISS contributor) explains how China's space program connects: high-speed rail expertise at home translates to orbital infrastructure. Grid power systems
Remove The Beatles From The AI Training Data
You're listening to AI-generated music and don't realize it. The musicians whose work trained those models know. They check their empty bank accounts daily.99,000 new songs upload to streaming platforms every day. One in five are AI-generated (Deezer). You wouldn't play a single one at your funeral.59% of musicians use AI in some aspect of their music (Ditto Music). The question: How do real music
Kevin Kelly Asks
Kevin Kelly, one of the great technological philosophers of our time, joined Mark & Jeremy to Think on Paper. Before he left, he asked a question. A question about the future and technology: What should humans be? At the end of every show, we ask every guest this question. And the answers always resonate on an emotional, human level. They land on something universal. The same words, the same i
How To Make Money Investing In Space
The space economy is set to reach $1.8 trillion by 2035. Everyone talks about rockets. Almost no one talks about the infrastructure that connects orbit to Earth. This is where billions of dollars of that space investment are being increasingly allocated. Mark Boggett runs Seraphim Investments, a London-based fund that backs the companies building the foundations of the space economy. In this conve
How Do Kids Use ChatGPT In School?
A quarter of British 8 to 12 year olds have used generative AI. ChatGPT is the most popular tool, Snapchat AI is second. Half of teachers say they've already received homework that was clearly written by AI. And 58 percent of private school kids have used AI compared to just 18 percent at state schools, which is a gap so large it's reshaping the next generation's relationship with this technology
When Will Quantum Computers Be Able To Steal Your Bitcoin?
IBM's Lory Thorpe warns that quantum computers could soon crack the encryption protecting our banks, health records, and personal data, enabling "harvest now, decrypt later" attacks that threaten global security. Through IBM's collaboration with NIST and major institutions, she's racing to develop quantum-resistant algorithms before current encryption systems become obsolete. Join hosts Mark Field
D-Wave Quantum Computing - Behind The Scenes
Murray Thom, VP of Quantum Technology Evangelism at D-Wave, joins us to break down how D-Wave’s quantum computing technology (as used by NASA, VW, Lockheed Martin) is tackling complex, high-stakes problems across industries. Learn how D-Wave’s unique use of quantum annealing helps solve real-world challenges, from logistics optimization to drug discovery and traffic management.Murray explains how
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