After The Builders: On Musk and Thiel

Can quantum computing cure cancer? Charina Chou, Chief Operating Officer at Google Quantum AI, believes it just might. But what exactly is quantum computing, and how does it work? Charina breaks down the technology for Oz, from the real-world problems it could solve to why breakthroughs may be just five years away. Even though no one fully understands how quantum mechanics works…See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is Silicon Valley's political honeymoon over? Reed Albergotti (Semafor and Future Proof), Kyle Chayka (The New Yorker), and Julia Black (Vanity Fair) unpack the midterms… and how the tech right is taking the news. Julia fills us in on OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, and why we may still be seeing them at Mar-a-Lago. Then, Reed explains why California's billionaires managed to defeat a proposed wealth tax despite a growing backlash against the ultra-rich. And finally, Kyle investigates the rise of AI-generated political attack ads. It’s a look into what we may see more of on the next campaign trail.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're excited to share the fifth episode of The Builders.  In this series, bestselling biographer Walter Isaacson sits down with the most consequential names in AI and tech to understand the futures they're racing to build.  As the leader of Y Combinator, the startup accelerator behind Airbnb, Stripe and DoorDash, Garry Tan backs founders with the ambition to change how we live. Tan wants more billionaires, but he also believes big tech has too much power. So, how does he square that?  Garry and Walter discuss how a 10-minute interview is all you need to vet a transformative founder, why he fears a future controlled by five AI “kings,” and how personal AI could put your social media feed back in your hands. A chat about how to lift the gatekeeping in Silicon Valley and the responsibility that comes with choosing who gets through. Interview taped June 19, 2026. And be sure to pick up Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, wherever fine books are sold. ABOUT THE HOSTWalter Isaacson is the bestselling author of biographies of Elon Musk, Jennifer Doudna, Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, and Albert Einstein. He is a professor of history at Tulane University and previously served as CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair and CEO of CNN, and editor of Time. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2023. ABOUT GARRY TAN Garry is President & CEO at Y Combinator, which he rejoined in Fall 2023 after founding Initialized Capital. Garry was one of YC’s first partners and funded and advised iconic YC companies including Coinbase, Instacart, and many others. In YC’s early days, Garry also served as a designer and engineer. Before advising and investing in companies, Garry co-founded the blog platform Posterous (acquired by Twitter in 2012) and was an early employee at Palantir and designed its logo. IN THIS SEASONElon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, xAI)Peter Thiel (Founders Fund, PayPal, Palantir)Mustafa Suleyman (Microsoft AI, DeepMind)Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei (Anthropic)Garry Tan (Y Combinator, Initialized Capital)and more!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Can a small island nation own a slice of the AI race? Sebastian Bastian, the Bahamas’ Minister of Innovation and National Development, thinks so. Once dubbed the “Bahamian Bill Gates,” Bastian went from building computers as a teenager to becoming one of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs. Oz sits down with Bastian to discuss his plans to turn the Bahamas into a digital hub and why he warns against a new era of “digital colonialism.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episodes three and four of The Builders with Walter Isaacson explore two poles of the AI safety debate through interviews with Daniela and Dario Amodei, co-founders of Anthropic, and Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI. Joining Kaleidoscope co-founders Oz Woloshyn and Mangesh Hattikudur to unpack these interviews are two journalists who have spent countless hours trying to understand what drives those leading the AI revolution. Sebastian Mallaby is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind and the Quest for Superintelligence. Nitasha Tiku is a Silicon Valley culture and AI reporter for The Washington Post… and may have read every manifesto Dario Amodei has produced.  Listen to hear what they make of the Amodei siblings’ dynamic, Mustafa’s views on AI consciousness, and the competing visions shaping AI’s future.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're excited to share the fourth episode of The Builders.  In this series, bestselling biographer Walter Isaacson sits down with the most consequential names in AI and tech to understand the futures they're racing to build.  TechStuff listeners will want to tune in because on Friday, we'll discuss the 3rd and 4th episodes of The Builders and hear from journalists who've covered these personalities for years. As a co-founder of DeepMind, Mustafa Suleyman helped launch the modern AI race. Now, he’s challenging the way it’s being built. As CEO of Microsoft AI, Suleyman believes the technology needs to be harnessed to transform medicine, energy and education. But he also warns that believing in AI consciousness could pose a real threat to humanity. Recorded live at the 92NY, Suleyman explains his disagreement with Anthropic, identifies the red line that would make him call for an immediate pause on AI, and recounts Google co-founder Larry Page’s surprising vision of how he intends to use superintelligence to live forever and explore the galaxy. Interview taped October 12, 2026. And be sure to pick up Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, wherever fine books are sold. The Humanist Review of AI from Microsoft AI, discussed in the interview, can be found at: https://humanistreview.ai/  ABOUT THE HOST Walter Isaacson is the bestselling author of biographies of Elon Musk, Jennifer Doudna, Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, and Albert Einstein. He is a professor of history at Tulane University and previously served as CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair and CEO of CNN, and editor of Time. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2023. ABOUT MUSTAFA SULEYMAN Mustafa Suleyman is the CEO of Microsoft AI. Before leading Microsoft AI he was CEO and cofounder of Inflection AI, and before that, he cofounded DeepMind where he led applied research and commercialization efforts. He is the author of bestselling book The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma. IN THIS SEASON Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, xAI)Peter Thiel (Founders Fund, PayPal, Palantir)Mustafa Suleyman (Microsoft AI, DeepMind)Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei (Anthropic)and more!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're excited to share the third episode of The Builders.  In this series, bestselling biographer Walter Isaacson sits down with the most consequential names in AI and tech to understand the futures they're racing to build.  TechStuff listeners will want to tune in because on Friday, we'll discuss the 3rd and 4th episodes of The Builders and hear from journalists who've covered these personalities for years. Dario and Daniela Amodei, the siblings behind Anthropic, left OpenAI to pursue a different, “more human” approach to the technology. Their promise is to put safety and ethics at the center of the tech race… but with an IPO around the corner, can those principles survive the pressure to win?  Walter invites the co-founders to explain how they teach Claude right from wrong, what they’ve discovered about AI’s capacity for deception and self-preservation, and why they drew red lines with the Pentagon. Plus, the co-founders talk about Neuralink and why they’re not interested in integrating AI into their minds.  Interview taped July 6, 2026. And be sure to pick up Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, wherever fine books are sold.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

AI is changing cybersecurity and raising hard questions about how fast organizations canrespond. Earlier this year, IBM and Red Hat launched Lightwell, a $5 billion initiative backed by a force of20,000 engineers with the goal of securing the open source software that powers a great deal ofmodern life — from banks and payment systems to transportation and critical infrastructure.Malcolm Gladwell speaks with cybersecurity leader Jen Easterly, Wells Fargo Chief InformationSecurity Officer Munish Sharma, and Red Hat’s Gunnar Hellekson about how AI is transformingvulnerability discovery, how open source software can introduce risk, and what it will take tosecure the shared digital infrastructure much of the world depends on.If this episode sparks a question you’d like to ask an IBM technical expert, submit your questionat ibm.com/smarttalksThis is a paid advertisement from IBM. The conversations on this podcast don't necessarilyrepresent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You’ve probably seen a few episodes of The Builders with Walter Isaacson in the TechStuff feed… today, we’re going to talk about them. Oz Woloshyn is joined by his Kaleidoscope co-founder Mangesh Hattikudur to talk about how this podcast… and all the high-profile interviews featured in that series came together. Joining us to break down the interviews are two chroniclers of Musk and Thiel: Max Chafkin, a Bloomberg Businessweek columnist and author of "The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and the Rise of the Silicon Valley Oligarchs," and Faiz Siddiqui, a technology reporter for The Washington Post and author of "Hubris Maximus: The Shattering of Elon Musk."  Listen to hear what they make of Musk’s DOGE regrets and Thiel’s musings on the Antichrist.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Not too long ago we gave TechStuff listeners a sneak peek at a new podcast called The Builders, and today we're excited to share the second episode. In this series, bestselling biographer Walter Isaacson sits down with the most consequential names in AI and tech to understand the futures they're racing to build.  TechStuff listeners will want to tune in because on Friday, we'll discuss the first two episodes of The Builders and hear from some journalists who've covered these personalities for years. Peter Thiel has become one of the most mysterious and controversial figures in tech. He’s a visionary investor who recognizes transformative ideas before everyone else. But he’s also seen as a shadowy figure whose network has accumulated extraordinary influence across Silicon Valley, national security and politics proven by his bets on people like Elon Musk, Alex Karp, Sam Altman, and even Vice-President JD Vance. Walter invites the “builder of builders” and co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, to explain his warnings about the Antichrist, discuss the current moment of AI co-founders speaking out about safety, and to ask Thiel his philosophy on preferring evil founders to incompetent ones. An illuminating conversation with the man whose bets are reimagining tomorrow’s tech and politics. Interview taped September 16, 2026. And be sure to pick up Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, wherever fine books are sold.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.