
The DeSci Podcast
Rethinking Science - Let's talk to the leaders of the decentralized science industry about the future of biotech. Brought to you by www.molecule.to
Want to join the stage? Apply as a speaker here: podcast@molecule.to
Latest episodes

Dec 14, 2022 • 48min
Rewarding Negative Findings: Fixing Research and the Future of Science I Patrick Malone
Welcome to episode Nr. 6 of "The DeSci Podcast"! In this episode, Patrick Malone, a physician-scientist turned investor at KDT Ventures where he invests in early-stage life science and healthcare, tells us about what drove his interest in investing in healthcare, what Tech-Bio is, and how it relates to the traditional understanding of Biotech.
He also explains, why machine learning is effective in drug discovery, the biggest problem facing scientific research and funding models today, the future of scientific research, and much more. Patrick Malone argued that rewarding negative findings which help to discover what doesn’t work or what isn’t true in a previous research publication will greatly reduce the problem of reproducibility.
Feel free to navigate through any of the topics discussed in the Podcast using the timestamps below.
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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:44 Background story of Patrick Malone
1:25 What drove your earlier interests in Academia?
5:53 Why was Investing of major interest to you?
8:36 What is TechBio and how does it compare to the traditional understanding of Biotech?
13:19 How can TechBio deliver up to the expectations of people towards it?
18:13 Which other fields can the principles of TechBio be applied to?
21:54 Why is there a lesser ROI in TechBio and Biotech compared to other technologies?
25:24 What drives you to write?
27:34 How was your experience with working with both Academia and Ventures?
30:04 What is the biggest problem facing scientific research and funding models today?
32:25 How would not having to apply for grants change the research focus of scientists?
34:25 What is your take on making research open source?
37:27 How can these new developments come into actualization?
39:52 What happens when scientific discoveries are no longer understandable by humans?
43:28 What do you think more people should be paying attention to?
46:11 Ending and outro.
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If you want to join us on the show as a speaker or have guest ideas, please shoot us a mail at podcast@molecule.to
Special thanks to:
Alex LaBossiere (Host): https://twitter.com/adlabossiere
(Check Alex his own podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/show/7lf0G6SBTArFlJYuHlPPoy?si=adcfa5f7a82d4708)
Patrick Malone: https://twitter.com/patricksmalone
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Let's connect:
Website: https://bit.ly/3d6nh2C
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Molecule_dao
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/moleculedao
Molecule - The future of medicine belongs to everyone

Oct 25, 2022 • 56min
A Futurist's Take on Longevity, Cryonics, Optimism & DeSci | Allison Duettmann
Welcome to Episode Nr. 5 of the DeSci Podcast! In this Episode, Allison Duettmann, President and CEO of Foresight Institute tells us how she got into futurism, why people are so pessimistic about the future, how Foresight chose the most important things to work on, Allison's positive visions of the future for humanity, what are Tech Trees and more! We hope you enjoy!
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Timestamps:
0:00 - Nanobots & Cryonics
0:27 - Allison & Foresight Intro
1:29 - How Allison got into futurism
4:36 - Positive visions of the future for humanity and raising reality to meet your expectations
8:16 - Optimism 11:52 - Why people are so pessimistic about the future
16:58 - Areas where people are too optimistic
19:12 - Foresight - how they found the most important things to work on (referring to decentralized computing, molecular machines, biotech for health extension, neurotech and space tech)
20:30 - Decentralized Computing
22:00 - Biotechnology for rejuvenation, longevity & cryonics
22:58 - Molecular and Nanotechnology
24:18 - Neurotechnology
26:01 - Spacetech
26:42 - What are Tech Trees?
32:27 - Surprising/Technological Bottlenecks
34:38 - Areas of Overlap between Tech Trees
38:40 - The unlock that DeSci Provides for Allison's work at Foresight
43:24 - Vetting people for domain expertise to participate in DeSci
46:52 - The Longevity Prize
50:00 - What excites Allison the most in DeSci and the technologies Foresight covers
52:55 - How to get involved at Foresight
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Links mentioned:
Balaji on Tech Trees: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1456163613857570821?s=20&t=XP1sJ8gBEKNw-V7fPHsNpw
Starships & Tokens (The Map) by Trent McConaghy https://medium.com/@trentmc0/starships-and-tokens-d8c32728a24b
Aaron King: Longevity Tech Tree: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg9Jpk2dLQM&t=164s
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Notable quotes from Allison:
"I got interested in Technologies through a wish for a longer happier life for myself and for civilization."
"Despite the fact that life has been improving pretty steadily over the last hundreds of thousands of years, our realization that it has been has not been steadily adjusting. Most of the time if you ask around people think that things are getting worse, that violence is increasing, and pretty substantial societal flaws are increasing and so I think it doesn't often match with the actual improvement in living conditions that many of us were fortunate enough to receive over the past few hundred thousand years."
"A positive outlook I think starts with a gratitude for how far we've come and just realizing what our ancestors put forth and how much they paid forward for us to get to where we are."
"Rather than having this more default vision on the future of what would the path be in which we all self-destruct (which is certainly a morbid fantasy) which is easier to think about and somehow weirdly more attractive to our human minds actually, rather asking the other question of what would it mean to actively put a foundation in place in which we could build wonderful worlds."
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If you prefer listening to podcasts on audio apps, feel free to search for "The DeSci Podcast" on Spotify, Google Podcasts & Apple Podcasts. You'll also find all links to the podcast apps below. If you want to join us on the show as a speaker or have guest ideas, please shoot us a mail at podcast@molecule.to
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Let's connect:
Website: https://bit.ly/3d6nh2C
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Molecule_dao
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/moleculedao
Molecule - The future of medicine belongs to everyone

8 snips
Oct 17, 2022 • 1h 33min
How We Can Do Better Drug Discovery | Jack Scannell
Welcome to Episode Nr. 4 of the DeSci Podcast - Today we're exploring the decentralized science space together with Jack Scannell! Jack coined the term Eroom's Law, which notes that the cost of new drug approvals is rising exponentially, in contrast to Moore's law, which notes that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles about every two years, though the cost of computers is halved.
In this podcast, Jack talks about how we can do better drug discovery, specifically, the tools and frameworks we can use to choose the right drug discovery model and feed that into investment decisions. His new paper in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery addresses exactly that: https://rdcu.be/cWTtO
In this podcast, Jack argues that quality beats quantity when it comes to assays, but actually the best thing is quality AND quantity. So it's better to test a small number of therapeutic candidates in a really good model than it is to test a very large number of computer candidates selected from the same universe in a model of low validity - the best example of this is in antimicrobials discovered around 1930 by Gerhard Domagk. Jacks says that the model validity used in Germany in the 1930's is better than the model validity used in the early 90's.
The technological barrier in drug R&D has shifted from chemistry to effectively the tools that tell you whether or not that chemistry is useful. It's not that we can't make compounds, we probably can in many cases make those compounds but what we can't do is we can't distinguish the ones that do something useful from the ones that don't. It's not that we can't identify targets, we can, but we can't tell the good ones from the bad ones - so the critical resource in drug R&D is probably the models, which Jack's paper calls "decision tools" that let you sift the good stuff from the bad stuff.
Jack on what interested him about VitaDAO and Molecule: You create value not by making current markets a little bit more efficient, you create value by making markets exist where none existed before. Outside of a few well-ventured universities, universities are terribly under-ventured and also the people at those universities don't have the right tools to present their material in such a way that it could be ventured so it struck him that providing a low transaction cost, standardized platform to make an eBay for IP might be an extremely valuable thing to do because you could create markets where none existed before.
Important links mentioned in the episode:
The new Nature Reviews Drug Discovery paper.
“Predictive validity in drug discovery: what it is, why it matters, and how to improve it”: https://rdcu.be/cWTtOThe
Emulate (organ chip) pre-print: “Qualifying a human Liver-Chip for predictive toxicology”: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.14.472674v4
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A huge thanks again to Sebastian and Jack for taking the time and for the valuable input - We hope you all can take something away from this episode on your DeSci journey. If you want to join us on the show as a speaker or have guest ideas, please shoot us a mail at podcast@molecule.to
You'll also find all links to YouTube, Discord, Twitter and our website via the following link - https://linktr.ee/thedescipodcast
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Special thanks to:
Sebastian Brunemeier (Host): https://twitter.com/sebastian_gero
Jack Scannell: https://twitter.com/JackScannell13
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Let's connect:
Website: https://bit.ly/3d6nh2C
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Molecule_dao
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/moleculedao
Molecule - The future of medicine belongs to everyone

Oct 6, 2022 • 1h 4min
Paul Kohlhaas & Vincent Weisser on bio.xyz and the Future of Biotech DAOs
Welcome to Episode Nr. 3 of the DeSci Podcast - Today we're exploring the decentralized science space together with our CEO of Molecule and Vincent Weisser, our Chief Ecosystem Officer!
We're incredibly proud to finally speak in depth about our new project bio.xyz - Next to that, we are also digging into a lot of other interesting decentralized science topics. You can find all of them below, so you can skip around to find your favorite ones!
Topics & Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
01:31 - Background Story of Paul
09:27 - Background Story of Vincent
13:43 - Why DeSci makes sense? (Valley of Death)
18:09 - How can BioDAOs solve current bottlenecks in science?
21:29 - How does a BioDAO work internally and what part plays Molecule here?
31:41 - What is bio.xyz and how does it relate to Molecule?
35:10 - bio.xyz cohort; PsyDAO
39:48 - bio.xyz cohort; AthenaDAO
42:30 - bio.xyz cohort; ValleyDAO
46:05 - bio.xyz cohort; HairDAO
50:00 - Structure of bio.xyz
51:13 - How can one apply for bio.xyz and advice for people who are interested to join
54:52 - How does the future of BiotechDAOs look like? (Vincent)
57:50 - How does the future of BiotechDAOs look like? (Paul)
01:02:52 - Ending & Outro
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A huge thanks again to Vincent & Paul for taking the time and for the valuable input - We hope you all can take something away from this episode on your DeSci journey. Feel free to skip around the timestamps to find your favorite topics and thanks again for tuning in!
If you want to join us on the show as a speaker or have guest ideas, please shoot us a mail at podcast@molecule.to
You'll also find all links to YouTube, Discord, Twitter and our website on linktree here - https://linktr.ee/thedescipodcast
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Special thanks to:
Alex LaBossiere (Host): https://twitter.com/adlabossiere
(Check Alex his own podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/show/7lf0G6SBTArFlJYuHlPPoy?si=adcfa5f7a82d4708)
Vincent Weisser (Chief Ecosystem Development Officer of Molecule): https://twitter.com/vincentweisser
Paul Kohlhaas (CEO Molecule): https://twitter.com/paulkhls
Find out more about bio.xyz here:
Website: https://www.bio.xyz/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bio_xyz
Discord: https://discord.gg/6ZeDSjhM2g
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Let's connect:
Website: https://bit.ly/3d6nh2C
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Molecule_dao
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/moleculedao
Molecule - The future of medicine belongs to everyone

27 snips
Aug 4, 2022 • 1h 7min
Balaji Srinivasan - Exploring the Decentralized Science Reformation
Welcome to Episode Nr. 2 of the DeSci Podcast - Today we're exploring the decentralized science reformation together with no other than Balaji Srinivasan! We're incredibly proud to be joined by such a smart and well-known mind as a second guest on "The DeSci Podcast" show!
Topics of this episode:
→ Key factors holding back scientific progress and how to change it (also via DeSci). 🧪
→ What role does AI play here?
→ The future of human optimalism.
→ How to make predictions in technology?
(+ many more & some great advice for DeSci builders at the end from Balaji)
Due to his nature, we're slipping in many other interesting topics while tackling those above! 💙
A huge thanks again to Balaji for taking the time and for the valuable input - We hope you all can take something away from this episode on your DeSci journey.
Feel free to skip around the timestamps to find your favorite topics and thanks again for tuning in! Also, if you prefer listening to podcasts on audio apps, feel free to search for "How To DeSci" on Spotify, Google Podcasts & Apple Podcasts. You'll also find all links to the podcast apps and the show-notes below.
If you want to join us on the show as a speaker or have guest ideas, please shoot us a mail at podcast@molecule.to
You'll also find all links to Spotify, Discord, Twitter and our website via the link below - https://linktr.ee/thedescipodcast
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Special thanks to:
Alex LaBossiere (Host): https://twitter.com/adlabossiere
Vincent Weisser (Chief Ecosystem Development Officer of Molecule): https://twitter.com/vincentweisser
Balaji Srinivasan: https://twitter.com/balajis
https://balajis.com/
https://balajis.com/the-purpose-of-technology/
https://thenetworkstate.com/
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Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
01:30 - Introduction of Balaji & The Network State
06:45 - Key factors holding back scientific progress
14:17 - How to change the research & funding structure
21:00 - Commonalities between New York Times and the nature of the Scientific Journals
38:00 - How does scientific progress unfold?
44:50 - Can AI be a dominant driver here?
49:10 - How to make predictions in technology
54:40 - The cyclical approach of history
01:02:48 - Advice for builders in the DeSci space
01:04:29 - Last words, book advice & outro
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Show-notes of the episode:
https://twitter.com/balajis https://balajis.com/
https://balajis.com/the-purpose-of-technology/ https://thenetworkstate.com/
https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2021/11/18/long-term-trends-in-the-age-of-principal-investigators-supported-for-the-first-time-on-nih-r01-awards/ https://newscience.org/nih/
https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1544067890403389441
https://project-evidence.github.io/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-new-math-proofs-artificial-intelligence-plays-to-win-20220307/ https://github.com/camoverride/lit/blob/master/The-Princeton-Companion-to-Mathematics.pdf
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Let's connect:
Website: https://bit.ly/3BXtFUn
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Molecule_dao
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/moleculedao
Molecule - The future of medicine belongs to everyone

Jul 7, 2022 • 1h 5min
The First Year of VitaDAO I Tim Peterson, Sebastian Brunemeier & Laurence Ion
Welcome to the very first episode of "The DeSci Podcast" - On this show, we talk to the leaders of the decentralized science world about the future of biotech. Thanks for being here and enjoy the very first episode of this new podcast, brought to you by Molecule.
In this first episode, we talk to Tim Peterson, Sebastian Brunemeier & Laurence Ion from @VitaDAO - VitaDAO is the first ever created BioDAO and just recently celebrated its first year anniversary. So we wanted to know - What where the challenges and learnings of this year? How does the future look like in this space and what even is VitaDAO and DeSci?
Feel free to skip around the timestamps to find your favorite topic and thanks again for tuning in! Also, if you prefer listening to podcasts on audio apps, feel free to search for "How To DeSci" on Spotify, Google Podcasts & Apple Podcasts. You'll also find all links below.
If you want to join us on the show as a speaker or have guest ideas, please shoot us a mail at podcast@molecule.to
You'll also find all links to Spotify, Discord, Twitter and our website via the link below - https://linktr.ee/thedescipodcast
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Thanks to today guests of todays show:
Alex LaBossiere (Host): https://twitter.com/adlabossiere
Tim Peterson: https://twitter.com/timrpeterson
Sebastian Brunemeier: https://twitter.com/sebastian_gero
Laurence Ion: https://twitter.com/longevion
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Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
02:32 - Introductions
07:25 - What is Decentralized Science (DeSci)
09:57 - What got you interested in this space?
17:30 - What is "longevity escape velocity"?
21:48 - What is VitaDAO and how is Molecule related?
32:54 - What problems are DAO structures solving in research
41:18 - Highlights, Learnings and Challenges of the first year with VitaDAO
47:16 - How does the future of BioDAOs look like?
58:33 - How can people get involved?
01:04:16 - Outro
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Let's connect:
Website: https://www.molecule.to/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Molecule_dao
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/moleculedao
Molecule - The future of medicine belongs to everyone