Professor Alysson R. Muotri (geneticist and developmental biologist at UC San Diego) joins for a far out conversation about sending brain organoids to the International Space Station and what they're teaching us about aging, neurological disease, and a new kind of AI. One month in orbit ages an organoid the equivalent of 10 years on Earth, and Alysson's lab has already used that compressed timeline to unlock an FDA-approved clinical trial for a drug developed in space. In this episode, we dis...

Jonathan Sporn (CEO + Founder of Gilgamesh Pharma) joins for a deep dive into next-gen psychedelic medicines, why duration matters for real-world clinical use, and what it takes to build these therapies the way large pharma would—culminating in a partnership with AbbVie worth up to $1.2B. In this episode, we discuss: • Why Gilgamesh is building psychedelic medicines the way large pharma would • The thesis behind short-acting psychedelics and why long-duration trips are impractical...

Greg speaks with three leaders in mental health philanthropy: Alyson Nieman from Mindful Philanthropy, Sabrina Gracias from Ortus Foundation, and Christena Huntsman Durham from Huntsman Mental Health Foundation, each offering a distinct perspective on how funding decisions get made and where the biggest gaps remain. In this episode we discuss: Trends in mental health philanthropy, and the 10-year challenge: how the field moves from roughly $2B to $35B in annual funding.Funding the clinic of t...

Greg interviews Rick Perry, the former Governor of Texas and former U.S. Secretary of Energy and leading advocate for ibogaine, live at the Real Summit. In this episode, we discuss: How a former Texas governor moved from strict opposition to drugs to becoming a leading advocate for ibogaine after firsthand experience and veteran outcomes.Ibogaine’s impact on PTSD, opioid addiction, and traumatic brain injury, including Stanford-linked brain imaging data showing functional and structural impro...

Matias interviews James (Jim) Gorman MD PhD from the Wyss Institute. Jim is Principal Investigator on the Wyss Institute Brain Targeting Program (BTP). Jim leads a team developing new approaches to transport drugs through the blood brain barrier (BBB) into the CNS. In this episode, we discuss: Why the BBB blocks most modern drugs from entering the brain, creating the biggest bottleneck in neuroHow brain shuttles hijack natural transport pathways like the transferrin receptor to move drugs acr...

Greg and Matias interview Luis Voloch, CEO and Co-Founder of Jimini Health, an AI behavioral health company. He previously co-founded and served as CTO of Immunai, where he applied machine learning to immunology and drug discovery. In this episode, we discuss: How LLMs expand the scope of machine learning from rule-based tasks to open-ended reasoning and dialogueWhy healthcare adoption is tiered, beginning with clinician-facing AI scribes and moving toward patient-facing companies...

Matias interviews Rob Malenka. In this episode, we discuss: Why progress in psychiatry is slow because the brain is the most complex organ and many disorders are highly heterogeneousThe bottlenecks including weak replicability in research, academic politics, perverse incentives, and pharma’s avoidance of neuropsychiatryHow breakthroughs require early detection, rigorous science, and bridging academia with biotech through venture philanthropyHow success depends on mission-driven, ethical peopl...

Greg and Matias interview Brendon Boot of Skin2Neuron. Brendon is a neurologist at Harvard and Mayo Clinic with prior experience as Medical Director at Biogen overseeing their Phase 1b Alzheimer’s trials. In this episode, we discuss: How skin-derived cells can be turned into neurons to repair the brain.Why replacing lost neurons may succeed where drugs have failed in Alzheimer’s.What makes autologous (self-derived) cell therapy safer and more effective.How testing in dogs brought stronger pro...

Greg and Matias interview Natalie Yivgi-Ohana of Minovia. Natalie is a life science entrepreneur with twenty years’ experience in mitochondrial research and received her PhD in Biochemistry at The Hebrew University in 2007, after which she performed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Weizmann Institute of Science until 2010. In this episode, we discuss: How mitochondria impacts health by not just regulating energy, but also hormones, cell survival, and overall cellular functionWhy mitoc...

Matias and Greg interview Ying-Hui Fu, PhD, is a Professor of Neurology at UCSF and a world leader in the genetics of sleep. Her lab has discovered the first-known genes behind “natural short sleepers”. Her work bridges human genetics and neuroscience to uncover how to modulate sleep for brain health, aging, and neurodegenerative diseases. In this episode, we discuss: How some people thrive on 4–6 hours of sleep with rare genetic mutationsWhy sleep efficiency is more important than total hour...