The Sunday Times tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Brian Chesky, founder of Airbnb, to talk about the home-sharing giant’s tenth birthday (3:00) aiming for a billion guests (4:30), how he plans to grow without destroying communities (7:30), growing up in New York (13:30), convincing Y Combinator to invest $20,000 (16:00), doing 'an Amazon' (18:00), creating an airline (20:15), tech’s existential crisis (22:00), the limitations of algorithms (24:45), not floating on the stock market (26:15), bringing in $1bn each quarter (27:00), his worst day of work (28:45), giving away most of his money (32:15), stepping into controversies (35:00), the need for Silicon Valley to take responsibility (36:30), taxes (37:15), and fending off attacks from the hotel industry (39:30). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Aubrey de Grey, founder of the Sens Research Foundation, to talk the possibility of turning humans into a "multi-century species" (1:40), why rejuvenation is the key (4:40), aiming for “longevity escape velocity” (6:00), what’s wrong with the current approach to ageing, tackling the seven types of ageing damage (10:20), why the Google guys are wasting their money (11:30), getting funding from Peter Thiel and Vitalik Buterin (13:35), why cryptocurrency millionaires are enthused by living forever (15:25), why eternal life is the next step in evolution (18:45), what rejuvenation looks like (23:25), why he has no time for dystopic predictions (27:00), the coming war on ageing (31:20), how he ended up in Silicon Valley (35:45), why ageing doesn’t get much funding (38:20), and treating the human body like a car (39:30). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Prerna Gupta and Parag Chordia to talk about remaking reading for millennials (4:00), on reaching 40m people in a year (5:10) creating “chat fiction” (6:20), finding writers (8:10), how mobile reading is like film was at its outset (11:00), creating their first music-making apps (12:30), creating an antidote to social media addiction (19:30), trying to write a fantasy novel (22:00), translating the novel into mobile phone form (25:00), finding readers through Facebook ads (26:30), luring Snoop Dogg, Mariah Carey and Stephen Curry as investors (28:15), creating a “next generation” film studio (32:30), trying to create the next Harry Potter on the mobile (35:30), the power of teenage girls as early adopters (37:15). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Mike Selden, founder of Finless Foods, to talk about growing fish flesh without the fish (3:15) how it works (4:30), turning mush into fillets (7:00), why he started the company (8:50), the scourge of sea lice (10:40), blind tuna (12:05), how to avoid the public relations mistakes made by the GMO industry (13:35), leaving a medical career for a startup (16:10), why banana candy tastes terrible (17:10), being an environmental activist (18:20), the nascent ‘clean meat’ industry (19:40), the synthetic biology revolution (22:00), the ingredients (23:50), vegetable “scaffolding’ (25:45), taking on Big Fish (26:40) why Europe will be a challenge (28:00), being transparent in marketing (30:00), fish brewery tours (31:45), why cost is key (33:10), the beginning of the end of industrial livestock (36:05), and banishing vegetarianism (38:00). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Tim O’Reilly, oracle of the tech industry, to talk about why 2017 may go down as a watershed year (3:00), how Facebook is like Microsoft (4:25), what’s wrong with tech’s “master algorithm” (7:15), exploding the myth of the rise of the machines (9:50), the era of surveillance (12:25), the danger of bad laws (15:20), creating the world’s first website and formalising the open-source movement (17:40), coining the term “Web 2.0” (19:35), what World War II can tell us about tech (21:50), the need to rebuild society as we know it (24:35), why we may need to get rid of advertising altogether (25:25), why he doesn’t buy the blockchain hype (28:00), why the marriage of AI and biotech is the next big revolution (31:00), the beginning of the end of the Internet duopoly (31:55), data as the point of control (36:00), and why the 21st will be China’s (37:00). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, to talk about his plan to save the news industry with his latest startup Wikitribune (3:15), what’s wrong with ad-driven media (4:35), crowdsourcing journalism (6:35), charity as a business model (11:20), why a pay wall won’t work (13:05), ‘disrupting’ the encyclopedia (14:50), growing up in an entrepreneurial family (16:30), why Wikipedia’s predecessor failed (19:30), not being a billionaire (24:40), being a pathological optimist (26:10), how blockchain could change everything (28:40), why it won’t work for Wikipedia (30:25), living in London (31:25) and why Brexit is the “dumbest thing ever” (32:35). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson takes a deep dive into the world of robots to chart the the beginnings of the machine age (2:30), the creation of the now-ubiquitous (ROS) robot operating system (5:00), the rise of artificial intelligence (7:45), machines leaving the factory floor into the real world (9:40), and into the fields (12:00), the end of work for humans (14:25), why Bill Gates called for a “robot tax” (17:20), how to flummox the machines (19:00), the importance of self-driving cars (22:05), giant killer robots (24:00), why looks matter (28:25), machines that drop blood from the sky (30:20), invisible robots (35:35), and what the future holds (36:20). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Pete Flint, founder of Trulia and partner at NFX, to talk about his plans to remake the venture capital industry (3:15), growing up in Essex (6:00), his brief investment banking experiment (8:00), helping lastminute.com get off the ground (9:45), surviving the dotcom bubble (11:00), decamping for California (12:45), starting Trulia (13:45), getting his first investors (16:05), being hit by the financial crisis (19:10), the famous ‘RIP Good Times’ memo (20:35), making the most out of a crisis (22:15), desperation cold-calling (24:40), floating in New York (25:45), selling his business for $3.5bn (27:15), celebrating a $150m payday (30:30), becoming an angel investor (32:00), being pitched a cyborg startup (33:45), starting at NFX (35:40), how the UK is catching up to Silicon Valley (36:30) why he will be staying in California (38:40), and his worst day of work (40:00). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on George Hotz, founder of Comma.ai to talk about how he plans to "win" the race to develop self-driving cars (2:45), improving autonomy (5:30), hacking the cars already on the road (7:10), developing the Android operating system of autmoobiles (9:00), why laser-based systems are "dumb" (10:35), why he doesn't plan to raise money (11:45), how self-driving will become a subscription service (13:00), trying to explain the unexplainable (15:10), Comma's army of DIY self-driving enthusiasts (18:30), why government should stay out out of the way (21:30), and creating a system based on human driving patterns (23:20).  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Baroness Beeban Kidron talk about her crusade against Big Tech, “age appropriate” design (1:40), turning 50 pages of terms and conditions into a couple sentences (2:50), the industry’s “category error” (4:30), why kids are considered kids online at 13 (7:50), how the smartphone changed everything (9:50), making the digital world look more like the real world (11:50), why the tech ‘nation-states’ need to assume more responsibilities (14:45), the turning tide of public opinion (16:00), industry being its own worst enemy (18:45), the tech ‘cartel’ (23:05), the “lost generation” (27:15), behaviour manipulation (29:30), and why tech isn’t like jazz or the novel (32:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.