Many don’t realize we even need to think about the possibility of security hacks when it comes to things like pacemakers, insulin pumps, and more. But when bits and bytes meet flesh and blood,…
The way we deliver healthcare has changed enormously over the last century, shifting from house calls by doctors to your own to institutionalized settings like hospitals and clinics. But now that…
Our understanding of the human brain and its disorders has always been limited by our lack of access to living, human, developing brain tissue. For the first time, that's changing. In this episode,…
In this episode of the a16z Podcast, we take a deep dive into the world of drug development—specifically "undruggable drugs": a category of protein, protein family or even piece of RNA that’s so…
with @JorgeCondeBio, @julesyoo, and @omnivorousread In some ways, the coronavirus feels like it came out of nowhere—a kind of Black Swan event. But at the same time, it's been exposing a lot of the…
with @vintweeta @pbcancerdoc @sumitshahmd @omnivorousread Coronavirus is now disrupting the entire health care system, not just because of the burden of dealing with the actual disease itself, but…
Descriptions of the mental illness we today call schizophrenia are as old as humankind itself. And more than likely, we are are all familiar with this disease in some way, as it touches 1% of…
We’re at a moment where we are now seeing medicine go virtual faster, and at a scale that it has never done before. In this conversation, a16z bio general partners Vijay Pande and Julie Yoo, who come…
A lot's going on in the world of healthcare right now, and one topic that's especially relevant is how diagnostic labs work. In this episode with Dave King, Executive Chairman of Lab Corp (one of the…
with @OzAzamTmunity1, @JorgeCondeBio, and @omnivorousread CAR T therapy, the groundbreaking new medicines that uses engineered T-cells to attack cancer, has been so effective in childhood leukemias…
When we think about rebellious behavior in the context of organizations and companies, we tend to think of rebels as trouble-makers, rabble-rousers; in other words, people who make decisions and…
This podcast rerun -- first recorded over two and a half years ago, now being rerun as one of our evergreen classics on the tails of the world's largest designated shopping days (Black Friday,…
"Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon”, diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld once observed -- and that may be more true today than ever before. For most…
What is the nature of physical pain? Why do we even experience it? Is there one type, or many? Do people experience pain differently? What is happening in our brains and our bodies when we experience…
There's been a lot of talk about the need for our healthcare system to shift away from volume and fee-for-service, where you pay by appointment, procedure, etc, to value-based care, where you pay for…
with Kurt House (@kurtzhouse), John Thompson, Connie Chan (@conniechan) and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) The exploration for and mining of certain metals has driven huge epochs of human…
Two recent scientific journal papers show what's possible when CRISPR moves from cutting DNA tool to a full-fledged platform -- expanding its toolkit for medicine across R&D, therapeutics, and…
Synthetic fraud—yes, it's a thing: a new evolution of consumer fraud that’s been emerging in financial services, to the tune of $1-$2B a year. In this episode of the a16z Podcast, Naftali Harris,…
with Emily Oster (@ProfEmilyOster) and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) Are chia seeds actually that good for you? Will Vitamin E keep you healthy? Will breastfeeding babies make them smarter? There’s…
with Jorge Conde (@JorgeCondeBio), Julie Yoo (@julesyoo), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) Building a software company in healthcare is hard -- and comes along with unique challenges no other…
with Kate Darling (@grok_) and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) We already know that we have an innate tendency to anthropomorphize robots. But beyond just projecting human qualities onto them, as we…
with Peter Levine, Bob Tinker, and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) For consumer companies, often when the holy grail of product-market fit is achieved, the company takes off: magic happens, growth…
with Joel de la Garza, Jonathan Lusthaus, and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) The idea of the cybercriminal as lone wolf or hobby hacker is no longer much of a reality. Instead, the business of…
with James J. Collins, Vijay Pande (@vijaypande), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) The idea of 'designing biology' -- once science fiction -- has over the last 20 years become just... science. In…
with Boris Sofman (@bsofman), Dave Touretzky (@DaveTouretzky), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) We're just now beginning to truly see the the first 'real' robots in the home, from Roombas to toys…
with Adrienne Mayor (@amayor) and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) Is it possible that ancient Greeks and Romans dreamed of technological innovations like robots and artificial intelligence millennia…
with Jeff Jordan (@Jeff_Jordan), Yogi Roth (@YogiRoth), Zack Weiner and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) For decades, the increasing value of sports teams, rights, licenses and more have been fueled by…
with Michael Ovitz (@michaelovitz), Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) When Michael Ovitz co-founded the Hollywood talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA), he turned a…
with Jeff Jordan (@Jeff_Jordan), Cal Turner Jr., and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) The "death of retail" in the face of e-commerce and tech disruption is a very real phenomenon, but what about the…
with Martin Casado (@martin_casado), Andrew Chen (@andrewchen), Russ Heddleston (@rheddleston), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) What happens when the bottoms up, organic growth usually associated…
with Jorge Conde (@jorgecondebio), David Reich, and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) Trying to reconstruct the deep past of ancient humans out of present-day people has until now been like trying to…
with Martin Fischer (@fischermartin), Saurabh Ladha (@ladhasaurabh), Chris Rippingham, and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) Continuing our series on how tech is changing construction -- one of the…
with Greg Lynn (@greglynnform), Gina Neff (@ginasue), Tracy Young (@Tracy_Young), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) Construction has been one of the industries most resistant to innovation and…
with Gregory Allen (@Gregory_C_Allen), Gayle Lemmon (@gaylelemmon), Ryan Tseng, and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) We now live in a world where connecting the dots between intel and modeling threats…
with Kristen Fortney (@kpfortney), Jeff Kaditz (@jeffkaditz), David Sinclair (@davidasinclair), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) Even without a mythical fountain of youth, scientific advances have…
with Adam Bry (@adampbry), Chris Dixon (@cdixon), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) Now that we've finally reached the age of the truly autonomous commercial small drone -- and in this case, a…
with Lee Kleinman (@LeeForDallas), Joshua Schank (@joshuaschank), Andrew Savage, and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) There's a new wave of bike-sharing in town. But this wave looks a little different…
with Brandon Ballinger (@bballinger), Mintu Turakhia (@leftbundle), Vijay Pande (@vijaypande), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) There’s been a lot of talk about technology -- and AI, deep learning,…
Author and professor at George Mason University, Peter Leeson describes himself as not just an economist but as a "collector of curiosa." In his latest book, WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird,…
Head of the largest bioengineering lab in the world, former chairman of the FDA and one of the few recipients of the National Medals of Science and of Technology and Innovation, Bob Langer's work has…
with Wei Luo, David Rumsey (@davidrumseymaps), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) In this episode, Wei Luo, founding COO of DeepMap -- who build HD maps for autonomous vehicles -- and David Rumsey,…
with Michael Dearing (@mcgd), Bob Sutton (@work_matters), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) Bob Sutton's book The No Asshole Rule was all about how to foster company cultures that don't tolerate…
We tend to talk about tech and parenting through devices and artifacts -- screen time, to code or not to code -- but actually, there's a bigger, macro picture at play there: game theory, economic…
Here’s what we know: There’s a pair (father and son) of Russian scientists trying to resurrect (or rather, "rewild") an Ice Age (aka Pleistocene era) biome (grassland) complete with (gene edited,…
In the age of virality, what does it actually mean to be popular? When does popularity -- or good product design, for that matter -- cross over from desire and engagement... to addiction? Journalist…
This episode of the a16z Podcast takes us on a quick tour through the themes of economics/historian/journalist Marc Levinson's books -- from An Extraordinary Time, on the end of the postwar boom and…
What is lobbying, really? Is it “white", "heavy-set" men "playing golf" and making arrangements in "smoke-filled back rooms”? It's not like that anymore, according to two lobbyists who join this…
Rules, guidelines, regulations, and “laws” are all sometimes used interchangeably — but what’s legal and what isn’t is far more complex when it comes to policy, especially when politics (and…
Every industry (for-profit, non-profit, government, private-sector) has been touched by tech, with most trying to lead the charge in order to stay ahead. But museums and memorials, by definition, lag…
When it comes to spycraft — or rather, “tradecraft,” as they say in the biz — what do the movies get right, and what do they get wrong? In this episode of the a16z Podcast, Michael Morell — former…
Your brand, says head of a16z marketing and Outcast Agency co-founder Margit Wennmachers, is what people say about you when you're not in the room. And it's going to happen, whether you choose to…
Once upon a time, Robert Stromberg got a phone call from "Jim" Cameron (aka James Francis Cameron of Terminator and Titanic fame) about a little project called Avatar. Before he knew it, he was…