PopTech Debrief: FetusGPT, De-extinction, Shade-as-a-Service, and Other Crazy, but Real Ventures

Here’s a jaunty debrief from PopTech, a notoriously hard conference to describe, that always features obscenely talented entrepreneurs and changemakers.

In this episode, Kwaku Aning, Sarah Rose Siskind, and I share some of the great stories and great vibes from this year's conference, including:

• FetusGPT, Sarah’s madcap experiment to train an AI on everything her soon-to-be-born baby is hearing from inside the womb
• Why Colossal Biosciences is de-extincting the dire wolf and other “charismatic animals” (dodos and woolly mammoths are in the works) — and why de-extinction is an important goal that will help us solve lots of other problems along the way
• “Shade-as-a-Service”, a new idea from climate champion and mushroom farmer Eben Bayer, the founder of MyForest Foods (maker of MyBacon, the top-selling non-meat bacon). The idea is to launch giant parasols into the atmosphere to cool the Earth below
• Why Tibet and Taiwan are so key to the tech industry (not to mention global stability)
• An exercise, from inventor and investor Pablos Holman, that could help you focus on what matters most to you — and could help you ignore the junk that’s clawing for your attention

Featured voices:

• Sarah Rose Siskind, science and comedy writer and the founder of Hello SciCom, a STEM communications agency
• Kwaku Aning, professional connector, founder/principal of RetroFuturism Consulting, and, according to Sarah, “homecoming king of PopTech”
• Me (Dan Blumberg) — I’m the host of CRAFTED. and the founder of Modern Product Minds. HMU if you want to build something great. I love building from zero to one.

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