The Stakes at Deus Ex Medicina
Newcomer PodSeptember 05, 202500:28:5526.48 MB

The Stakes at Deus Ex Medicina

Journalist Nayeema Raza—host of Smart Girl Dumb Questions—joins Eric Newcomer to preview Deus Ex Medicina, their AI–health–longevity summit happening Tuesday, Sept 9 (San Francisco). They discuss the big themes going into the conference: how longevity went mainstream, why precision medicine and novel bio are finally feeling real, and who wins the race to own the patient. Eric and Nayeema get into the policy whiplash in D.C., HIPAA’s fraying edges in a wearables world, and whether or not AI will actually discover something novel, like a new drug or cure for Alzheimer's? Plus, what they’re most excited to ask on stage at Deus Ex Medicina.


Timecodes:

  • 00:00 — The story behind the creation of Deus Ex Medicina
  • 08:39 — Longevity goes mainstream (the GLP-1 moment)
  • 12:42 — Precision medicine gets practical (targeted therapies & trials)
  • 17:11 — Bundles, frenemies, and who owns the patient
  • 22:31 — D.C. shake-ups, privacy stakes… and can AI invent a drug?

00:00:00
Welcome to the Newcomer podcast. I'm Eric newcomer, thrilled to

00:00:03
have Naima Raza, independent journalist, Co host of Smart

00:00:07
Girl Dumb Questions here with me.

00:00:10
We are about to together host Deus Ex Medicina, our brand new

00:00:15
AI health and longevity summit. Naima, welcome to the show.

00:00:18
Well, hi Eric, thank you for having me.

00:00:20
I feel like these are like our wedding vows or something.

00:00:23
You're the pro, so really you should be guiding us through

00:00:26
this podcast. Oh, I don't know.

00:00:29
I somehow it was like a long con.

00:00:30
I somehow got Eric to. I'm like, I would love if we can

00:00:33
collaborate on a conference. We tell people a story of why

00:00:37
we're doing this thing. So what is the story?

00:00:39
I remember we got coffee and I was like, wow, now you must

00:00:41
seems to really like know everybody excited, cool,

00:00:46
something I want to do stuff with and like we were kicking

00:00:48
around conference ideas. I don't know what.

00:00:51
What's the story in your mind or how did this all come together?

00:00:53
Yeah. So what happened was I remember

00:00:55
Eric, you had tweeted something or you actually wrote a, you

00:01:00
wrote a sub stack. It was like October of 2024.

00:01:03
And I get the sub stack from Eric.

00:01:05
And it's basically like, oh, you know, ever since I left the

00:01:08
media business, this dying media business, which I was covering

00:01:11
at the time because I was doing a show with Ben Smith at

00:01:13
Semaphore called Mixed Signals, which she still does with

00:01:15
Maktani. It's awesome.

00:01:16
You should check it out. But you know, you're like, I'm

00:01:18
leaving this dying. I've left this dying media,

00:01:20
legacy media business and I just made $4 million and I'm hiring

00:01:23
people. I don't think it was 4 million.

00:01:25
Yeah, yeah. How many millions went there?

00:01:28
Revenue on a million, 2 plus revenue on a million and

00:01:33
profit is basically what we said with ambitions to sort of

00:01:35
continue to grow it. Yeah, I really put out the bad

00:01:37
signal that we were a media business with money and wanted

00:01:41
more respect and, you know, wanted to work with fun, cool

00:01:45
people. Yeah, in Jay-Z language, that's

00:01:47
known as this for those watching on YouTube.

00:01:49
It's just that it's. Just everybody else brags about

00:01:53
how much money they raised, and here we're a business making

00:01:55
money. At some point, you just need to

00:01:57
say, well, here's here's what's going on.

00:01:59
Which is awesome. So congratulations, Eric.

00:02:01
And I was like, you know, we'd met each other before we'd met

00:02:03
at the code conference. We kind of had people in common

00:02:05
and I wrote, I reached out to you and I was like, hey, Eric,

00:02:08
you have this great business. You're looking to do more

00:02:11
events. I don't want a job, but I want

00:02:13
to go and host things because I love, I love, I love

00:02:17
interviewing people. That's my bread butter.

00:02:19
I love doing stage events. I'm a big believer in the return

00:02:22
to live in the age of AI and, and if you want to, if you have

00:02:26
the infrastructure to handle all this, like I would love to

00:02:28
partner with you editorially. That's what happened.

00:02:31
I think we're both spiritually similar and we love to host.

00:02:33
We're very, we're different people, obviously.

00:02:35
But I was saying to someone literally yesterday I was like,

00:02:38
you know, we hosted the first Ruble Valley AI Summit the same

00:02:41
year I got married. And it's like, oh, I love being

00:02:44
a groom. I love everybody so excited.

00:02:46
So I meet you. It's like it's hard to network.

00:02:49
Any other way we provide. The taste.

00:02:51
Yes, yeah, that's true. I I, yeah, I love, see, I love

00:02:55
to host, but I think the actual infrastructure around it,

00:02:58
there's so much that goes into an event.

00:02:59
There's an amazing team, people like Riley, so many people have

00:03:02
been involved in helping boost and support this event.

00:03:06
And that's the stuff that even though I came up as a producer,

00:03:09
I'm like, I love, I love the stage stuff.

00:03:11
I love having the conversation, thinking about what we're going

00:03:13
to talk about. And I couldn't be more excited

00:03:15
because you have killed it in this AI event space.

00:03:19
And I, I just think we're ripe to have a conversation about

00:03:23
this next era in American healthcare in a way that really

00:03:26
bridges the technology, the AI, the consumer trends, the policy

00:03:30
shift. And I'm so excited to be doing

00:03:33
this on September 9th in San Francisco.

00:03:34
So Dave sex medicina we we agonized over the name.

00:03:38
I don't know if you've noticed whether Twitter is like auto

00:03:40
correcting it out of Latin because it's like it's

00:03:43
translating it for you. So AI is ruining our beautiful

00:03:47
name. I can only imagine Grok AI does

00:03:49
not like anybody else being called.

00:03:51
Or where? Or you're just off.

00:03:52
No I'm not. I just, I'm like, no, I like to

00:03:55
thirst trap with my pictures on Instagram like a real

00:03:58
millennial. I see just.

00:04:00
And you're super. Now you know.

00:04:02
Exactly. No, but I can, I can imagine

00:04:05
that that croc and X might not like anyone else being called

00:04:08
DX, you know, being called God and.

00:04:10
I see it's the X. They're they're sabotaging us.

00:04:12
But yeah, I mean, we really saw, you know, we've been hosting

00:04:15
Cerebral Valley since March 2023.

00:04:17
Obviously that's really focused on sort of foundation models and

00:04:21
people, you know, building software.

00:04:23
You know, we had anthropic CEO Alexander Wang at scale just in

00:04:28
London. We had, you know, Dart, Uber,

00:04:29
what we didn't have a lot of the health piece of it, but that was

00:04:32
clearly becoming a larger and larger piece of the AI story.

00:04:37
So there was that. There was sort of this longevity

00:04:40
thing that's been going on. And then there's sort of all the

00:04:43
change that's happening, whatever you think about it,

00:04:46
because of what's happening with Maha, RFK and the Trump

00:04:49
administration. So I just like, you know,

00:04:51
together we were like, oh, you know, there are these like 3

00:04:54
wild themes and it's a little, it's a little wild.

00:04:58
But I do think going into it, we are like, oh, there's a set of

00:05:01
Silicon Valley people that are going to get it.

00:05:03
Like this is just like the first cerebral Valley where if you're

00:05:06
paying attention, you're like, oh man, there are a lot of

00:05:09
interesting things going on at once that Silicon Valley loves

00:05:12
because that means things are investable.

00:05:14
I mean. You're, you're a technology

00:05:16
journalist as, as your build, but I have often thought, I

00:05:19
mean, technologies like infrastructure, it's kind of

00:05:21
like being like I am, I work in Rd. because like I happened to

00:05:24
take one on the way to my office, you know, but I think

00:05:27
that there is a, it's, it is AI just had a conversation with one

00:05:30
legacy media outlet that's very concerned about like how, how do

00:05:34
its audience understand technology, etcetera.

00:05:36
And we're talking about it. And I'm like, it's kind of just

00:05:38
everything now. But Healthcare is a great way

00:05:40
into the topic because everybody cares so much about healthcare.

00:05:43
I mean, we're in a moment where obviously, you know, we saw in

00:05:46
New York City the killing of the United Healthcare CEO last year,

00:05:50
us all even this recent shooting that happened on Park Ave. with

00:05:54
NFLI mean there was a concussion background to it.

00:05:57
I think Healthcare is just such a human and real.

00:06:00
I mean, everything I say right now is going to sound so dumb

00:06:02
and earnest, but like it is it is the thing that touches all of

00:06:05
our lives and all of our parents lives from the moment we're

00:06:07
born. And when I started Smart Girl

00:06:08
Down questions, the first episode I did was Can

00:06:10
Billionaire Save us with Mark Cuban talking about capitalism

00:06:13
in healthcare. And he outlined this vision for

00:06:16
how private Healthcare is going to be the only way to get to a

00:06:19
kind of national single payer, single payer system over time.

00:06:23
So I just think it is the best place to talk about some of

00:06:27
these themes, including AI and including policy.

00:06:30
We went through some bad names. I for a second thought we should

00:06:32
call it Maha Valley. Eric was like, no.

00:06:34
Yeah, we got very close to that, but I think we clearly want to

00:06:38
reflect a couple different themes.

00:06:41
There was there was something with blood too that we like

00:06:43
really agonized over. Do you remember?

00:06:45
What it was, yeah. You wanted to call it something?

00:06:47
I was like, what is that? That sounds so.

00:06:49
Terrible. You wanted a video game.

00:06:50
So then I was like, I don't, I don't know if it was that or

00:06:53
there was some random summit, I can't remember.

00:06:55
I don't know. It was like, it was like finger

00:06:56
prick or something. I was like, OK, Elizabeth

00:06:58
Holmes, calm down. We're not going to.

00:06:59
We're not going to call it that. It's like.

00:07:01
Anyway, did you come up with? The one sort of the technology,

00:07:04
the sort of creation, you know, it's a little bit sci-fi.

00:07:08
If you're a regular listener to this podcast, you know that

00:07:11
ahead of Cerebral Valley, I'll have my coast.

00:07:14
Max and James, you actually I think are friends or you went to

00:07:17
Business School with Max, right? I did Max Style, dropped out of

00:07:19
Business School. He took his excellent voice.

00:07:21
He's too. You're always like, he's too

00:07:22
cool for school. Yeah.

00:07:23
So Max and James and I, you know, do an episode or two

00:07:27
before the conference just sort of like, you know, talking about

00:07:30
what's going to come. And I thought one of my favorite

00:07:33
pieces from those conversations is often they're just like, what

00:07:36
themes do you think are going to emerge?

00:07:38
So we don't want to, like, spoil everything.

00:07:39
Obviously, the joy of these events is like the unexpected.

00:07:43
And the answer is we don't know. But we're obviously diligent

00:07:46
journalists, so we've done prep calls.

00:07:48
So I wanted to play this game with Naima of just coming up,

00:07:52
each of us taking turns with three themes that we think will

00:07:56
emerge and that we're excited to sort of interrogate during Deus

00:08:00
Ex Medicina. OK, Are you ready?

00:08:03
Yeah. I mean, I didn't do my homework

00:08:04
because I'm like, oh, podcast, I do this.

00:08:06
We'll. Figure it out.

00:08:07
Yeah, yeah, but I love it. Why don't you go 1st and then

00:08:10
I'll be like you stole all my great ideas.

00:08:12
Now I I want to do better than next child.

00:08:15
Well, yeah, we all love a little.

00:08:17
This is very competitive, I think podcast, I mean.

00:08:20
Max already won because the like the trick is leaving but like

00:08:24
the most successful people leave.

00:08:25
Drop out of school. I think that's literally, I

00:08:27
think biology or I don't know, somebody gave a speech, I think

00:08:30
while he was a Business School. It was like, you need to drop

00:08:33
out. You know, it's classic Stanford,

00:08:34
everybody. Yeah, Max Child disciple of

00:08:36
biology. Yeah, that makes sense.

00:08:38
OK. The OK longevity is everywhere.

00:08:42
So longevity is nowhere. I think that with the rise of

00:08:48
GLP ones, it's like, yeah, duh, longevity.

00:08:51
It's like between statins and GLP ones.

00:08:53
Everyone clearly sees that helping pretty healthy people

00:08:58
have higher quality of life, longer life is is a big money

00:09:03
maker is a good idea, something that people want, something that

00:09:06
maybe consumers will even spend money on out of pocket.

00:09:09
And I think longevity has been this term.

00:09:12
That said, the medical world you don't embrace like life

00:09:15
extension. So we need to give it a

00:09:17
different name. But now with, you know, with

00:09:20
Govi and everything else, it's just clear that like this is a

00:09:23
big opportunity. And I think the questions will

00:09:25
be much more when does like sort of big pharma and everybody else

00:09:28
sort of explicitly say we're going after like anti ageing and

00:09:31
just embrace it themselves? But I think it's a matter of

00:09:34
when. OK, I love that.

00:09:36
Longevity is everywhere, so longevity the word is.

00:09:40
Nowhere or do I agree with that. The way I think about this in my

00:09:43
kind of smart call dumb questions framework is like, why

00:09:45
are millennials so optimistic that we want to live forever,

00:09:48
but so pessimistic that we don't want to procreate like what is

00:09:51
happening to our generation? But do I agree?

00:09:54
I think that longevity is very much in the zeitgeist and and

00:09:58
very much in our culture, but it is Americanized and commercial.

00:10:02
I think the experience of longevity in America is so

00:10:05
specific to the United States that even if you like go across

00:10:08
the pond to Europe, you do not see this obsession.

00:10:11
There's something uniquely American that is happening here

00:10:15
and I feel like the capitalist movement into the longevity

00:10:17
space is is an example of that. The use cases for GLP ones are

00:10:22
very particular in the United States as well.

00:10:25
You're seeing this commercialization and this

00:10:29
visualization of longevity in the United States.

00:10:31
Do I think it's everywhere? No, because I think it's like.

00:10:33
Because. It can take you see the.

00:10:35
World, it's like once capitalism has embraced it, it is

00:10:38
everywhere and you're like, oh, there's more than just whether

00:10:41
like every company in healthcare sees like, oh, this is a way to

00:10:44
make money That's like there's more to that, Eric, but.

00:10:46
But yeah, yeah. But but I do think it's a

00:10:49
profound moment because Americans are really

00:10:52
reconsidering like longevity and health and buying into that.

00:10:56
However, we know from the health data that we pay more than most

00:10:59
other countries. We have worse health care comes

00:11:01
than most other countries. You know, consternation around

00:11:04
what's in our food supply, what, you know, the what do we use

00:11:07
plastics in our ecosystem, whatever it is.

00:11:08
Like people are very concerned about their health, but it's all

00:11:11
happening in a relatively unregulated, highly capitalistic

00:11:16
and commercialized world. So I agree with you.

00:11:18
In the United States, longevity is now everywhere and therefore

00:11:21
it's nowhere. But I think in the rest of the

00:11:22
world it's nowhere and somehow it's everywhere.

00:11:25
No, there's a couple. Beats behind everybody else I

00:11:27
guess. No, but.

00:11:28
I I think actually what I'm saying is different.

00:11:30
Like the rest of the world, longevity is nowhere to be

00:11:33
discussed and everywhere to be had.

00:11:35
People are living. Yeah, I guess.

00:11:36
America needs the to meet, Yeah, match the lifespans of some

00:11:40
other countries. Exactly.

00:11:42
OK, I like that. Unpack there.

00:11:44
All right, now you're up. Should I?

00:11:46
Do 1. So I think that the future of

00:11:48
medicine is N of one. It is.

00:11:51
Expound I think I know what you're I learn the health lingo

00:11:54
a little bit, enough to know what you're saying, but explain,

00:11:57
explain it a little bit more like.

00:11:59
Even if you think about a concept like longevity that

00:12:01
we're talking about, it's no longer going to be about, oh,

00:12:03
you know, the average lifespan in the United States in the mid

00:12:05
70s and I'm going to live to the 90s.

00:12:06
It's like I based on my own biometric information, the

00:12:11
genetic data that I have, everything I know about myself,

00:12:14
you know, should be expected to live based on my parents

00:12:17
history, everything should be expected to live to, I don't

00:12:19
know, 87, but I believe that I can extend that to 100 and B and

00:12:24
I believe that I can be, you know, at age 39, feel like I'm

00:12:29
age 27. You know, that is what I mean.

00:12:32
It's so personalized and everything that you're seeing

00:12:35
and. There's obviously this big

00:12:36
movement in health around drugs that are like specifically

00:12:40
targeted to you in treatments and like, yes.

00:12:42
Exactly. That's where I was going to go.

00:12:43
For example, we're doing this one panel at at DS that's going

00:12:46
to be around Novel Biosciences and Therapeutics and we're going

00:12:49
to have a Janice Chen from Mammoth Biosciences as well as

00:12:53
Jacob Mccraft from Strand Therapeutics.

00:12:56
And if you look at what's happening in healthcare, like

00:12:58
the idea that you can find out what particular cancer somebody

00:13:02
has, what cells, what bad cells are replicating, how we go into

00:13:06
their genetic code to create individualized medicine,

00:13:09
individualized therapies. You know, some of this is

00:13:12
preclinical, but that is the future of medicine.

00:13:14
It is all going to be against yourself.

00:13:16
It is a very different world to operate in.

00:13:19
I don't know what it means for clinical care, et cetera, which

00:13:22
gets to my second theme, which I will not scoop myself on.

00:13:25
I my. My my one response to that,

00:13:27
Yeah. Tell me I definitely.

00:13:28
Think it's a trend, but I'm of two minds.

00:13:30
I think 11 pushback is just like if AI is really one of the

00:13:34
transformational forces, like it's desperate for data and in

00:13:38
some of the things people already want to do, like improve

00:13:41
drug discovery, their questions of like, does it have all the

00:13:44
data it needs to improve? How?

00:13:46
Like somebody was literally just telling me today, it's like, if

00:13:50
we're using AI to improve trials, we don't actually know

00:13:53
what occurring Alzheimer looks like.

00:13:56
So how does AI model that, right?

00:13:58
Because we don't even have the data.

00:14:00
And so then if you're saying, or are we going to make leaps with

00:14:02
the individual, it's like even harder for AI just to know, you

00:14:05
know, even on a system wide, let alone an individual.

00:14:08
And I get there are lots of different pieces of technology

00:14:11
happening at once, but I probably lean a little bit more

00:14:13
on the like there's a lot of work on like the big side on

00:14:16
the. General meta though, even there

00:14:17
are a lot of. People doing exactly what you're

00:14:18
saying, no. And I think there's probably

00:14:20
like some income distribution to this thing, which is like there

00:14:24
is going to be a group of people who, and you already hear about

00:14:27
people who are coming up with unique PCR tests and and funding

00:14:31
development of their own personalized mRNA vaccines for

00:14:34
their own type of cancer in their whatever it is.

00:14:37
So you're hearing stories about that happening.

00:14:39
Meanwhile, you're right, the big push is going to be on raw data,

00:14:44
but that I mean you in healthcare are an anecdote.

00:14:46
I just wore CGM for a couple of weeks because I'm seeing this

00:14:49
longevity doctor right now as a part of CGM continuous glucose

00:14:54
monitoring like levels. Remember the means.

00:14:57
Yeah, get what there be live forever.

00:15:00
What are you doing? I'm I, I, I think, I don't know

00:15:04
if I've said this on the podcast, I'm going to be open

00:15:05
about this, the event. I I've started taking Wigovi so

00:15:08
I'm deep in one of the. 1. Thing so at least on that front,

00:15:12
I'm I'm not the full medical dose.

00:15:14
I'm like the one before that. So it's an ongoing experiment.

00:15:17
So I'm I'm certainly in and I use like one medical or

00:15:20
whatever, but I'm not deep in I I wouldn't say, hey, I'm a super

00:15:24
health hacker. I'm always asking these health

00:15:25
people and I I'm sure I'll ask them at the event on Tuesday.

00:15:29
Some of them like do you do anything different?

00:15:31
And honestly, some of the more medical people, they're like,

00:15:33
no, I don't. I don't do anything weird like,

00:15:36
man. So it'll be interesting to see

00:15:37
if we can get anyone to say like, Oh yeah, I, I'm doing

00:15:40
something, no. I'm I'm super curious when I'm

00:15:43
speaking to Celine from loyal and Saju.

00:15:46
No, no, I just talked to her. I just talked to her spoil.

00:15:48
She doesn't do anything weird. She is like, hopefully.

00:15:51
Sage from Noom is doing some stuff.

00:15:53
She's like, no, you need to see studies and everything.

00:15:56
Like even sort of a big believer in longevity.

00:15:59
She's doing life extension for dogs which I'm super excited

00:16:02
Anyway going. To be so excited and Noom has

00:16:05
just gotten into a micro dosing GLP 1.

00:16:07
So one very cool. Thank you for sharing with us

00:16:10
about the Vicovia. I'm I'm so curious what you'll

00:16:12
learn from it. I've thought about it as well.

00:16:13
Like I've definitely talked to doctors about micro dosing.

00:16:16
I'm very worried about it because I'm worried about losing

00:16:18
any muscle mass. It was so important for, for

00:16:21
women to retain muscle mass and becomes harder in your mid to

00:16:25
late 30s and beyond. And so I something that I think

00:16:28
a lot about, Oh, I was going to say the CGM thing.

00:16:29
I just want to say one thing on CGM.

00:16:31
I was wearing the CGM and for example, like everyone will tell

00:16:34
you, oh, carbs, rice, whatever. Like I don't spike.

00:16:37
I don't spike with ice cream. I didn't spike with cookies.

00:16:39
I'm not saying it's not it's good.

00:16:40
I. Should try this.

00:16:41
I hate blood. You know, I'm like a big fainter

00:16:43
about blood, but you. Won't see any.

00:16:45
It just like it goes into your arm.

00:16:46
I know. And I take the shots with Govi

00:16:48
so and I gave, you know, my wife, I think I can say this,

00:16:51
all these IVF shots. So, you know, I'm used to, yes.

00:16:54
Well, I mean, now I'm doubly confused about why you wanted to

00:16:57
call it like blood point or whatever bad name you wanted to

00:17:00
give to our conference that I'm afraid of.

00:17:02
Blood. Well, it's just you got to lean

00:17:03
into your weaknesses. All right?

00:17:04
All right, Yeah, OK. Confront.

00:17:05
Your fears OK, second trend whether you got this is?

00:17:08
A big, big idea, but I'm just calling it friends to enemies.

00:17:14
Like I think there are a lot of these companies that are just

00:17:17
going to collide. You know, like certainly at all

00:17:20
our AI events, you know, Open AI, Anthropic, Loom large and

00:17:24
some of these companies build on top of them.

00:17:25
But they're trying to make sure it's like we need you, but we

00:17:28
can do our own thing. And then even all the companies

00:17:30
in the space they're raising, it's such high valuations that

00:17:34
they need to be everything. And so I think it's a small

00:17:37
world. Everybody knows each other, they

00:17:39
try to be friendly, but they also have these enormous

00:17:42
valuations that they need to justify.

00:17:44
And so I think there's going to be this, are we partners or are

00:17:47
we competitors? And.

00:17:49
I like it, yeah. I I kind of feel the frenemy

00:17:52
frenemy ship that's that's evolving even as we're, you

00:17:55
know, kind of prepping for this because partnerships are always

00:17:58
an interesting reality in the healthcare space.

00:18:01
I have a related one to this, which is race to the bundle.

00:18:05
Race to the bundles. I think this is like, you know,

00:18:07
I came up and kind of documentary film.

00:18:10
I worked briefly at Jason Kyler's vessel had phrase $125

00:18:13
million for like a short format video service that was going to

00:18:17
window YouTube content for three days.

00:18:19
I mean, I won't. I.

00:18:22
Know, you know, I turned down an offer to be like employee number

00:18:24
120 at Stripe to do that. It's on my list of interesting

00:18:31
decisions. Yeah.

00:18:33
But but what I will say is, you know, what you, what you've seen

00:18:37
in the streaming wars, I think is, is really interesting

00:18:41
because of this push, because of the trends that are happening,

00:18:43
which is consumers as payers and increasingly subscription fees

00:18:47
versus fee for service, which has been the historical model of

00:18:50
healthcare delivery. You have data at your fingertips

00:18:52
and subscription pay versus, you know, data in the hand of the

00:18:56
clinician and fee for service. That's been on a huge shift.

00:18:59
And as a result of that, I think it's like, OK, consumers are

00:19:01
going to be like, well, how many, you know, I don't want to

00:19:03
pay for Peacock and Netflix and Hulu and whatever.

00:19:05
I love all you guys, Peacock and Netflix, Hulu, we love you guys

00:19:08
of my pod, some of you. But I do think that there's

00:19:11
going to be kind of a reckoning where not everyone can.

00:19:15
Who are the big IPO? That's a big question I have.

00:19:17
Who do you think are the big IP OS?

00:19:18
Because I think we have some big IP OS coming to our conference

00:19:21
future. Interesting.

00:19:22
I mean, it's going to take a while.

00:19:24
The funny thing is that this space has extreme hype and

00:19:27
extreme pessimism in that biotech has been in a terrible

00:19:31
downturn. But obviously computational AI

00:19:34
based companies are raising a massive valuations and biotech

00:19:38
companies are traditionally the ones that like go public early

00:19:41
on. Where is the highly valued AI

00:19:44
startups are like, I'll just raise from the private market.

00:19:47
So I honestly, I don't have a great read on who's like about

00:19:50
to go out. It's sort of a mixed.

00:19:52
It's like, who can frame themselves which way?

00:19:55
Yeah. I'll be curious to see, but I do

00:19:56
think that some of these, you know, you have these companies

00:19:58
that are all of a sudden, I think, you know, Aura did a

00:20:01
partnership with, I'm going to forget the name, but Aura did a

00:20:04
partnership with the CGM company.

00:20:06
Now you know what CGMS are. So, you know, and it's not wear

00:20:08
it all the time and it's something that the ring can't

00:20:10
do, but it is, you know, how do you integrate that data around?

00:20:15
They've always had this idea of experimentation at Aura.

00:20:17
So like, can you not? Drink coffee for a couple weeks,

00:20:19
can you not? And so this is a kind of in the

00:20:21
model of experimentation, they can have these partnerships that

00:20:24
are going to teach their consumers so much.

00:20:26
The question is over time, do you develop a bundle?

00:20:29
Do you acquire these companies you vertically integrate?

00:20:31
Are you doing everything or does some strategic just come in and

00:20:34
buy the thing? All right.

00:20:36
So that was about bundling. Bundling.

00:20:39
Services and companies. My third and final theme is

00:20:43
drama blinders. It's like there have been major

00:20:47
changes at the, you know, CDC obviously Maha is, you know,

00:20:52
proposing a lot of things. Some people in the medical

00:20:54
community will have, you know, are certainly more Dem aligned,

00:20:58
I think. But I think that honestly, more

00:21:00
than I think people sort of, I don't, I'm really interested to

00:21:02
see, but I think a lot of people are going to be like doing my

00:21:05
thing. I'm happy to work with the

00:21:07
government where it's possible, like excited that they're taking

00:21:10
swings. I don't know.

00:21:11
I think there will be a lot of, there's so much going on.

00:21:13
There's so much opportunity. I I think that there's going to

00:21:16
be some desire to avoid. Confrontation not.

00:21:20
Just with the administration, but just sort of like, you know,

00:21:23
exact like this fitting with my first theme, like the longevity.

00:21:27
It's like these are not the Brian Johnson's types.

00:21:29
Like I I didn't extend, we didn't extend an invitation to

00:21:32
Brian Johnson here partially because I wanted sort of like

00:21:35
the real like a builder class of people here.

00:21:39
And I do think a lot of the people who are going to be

00:21:41
speaking are like, not necessarily trying to, you know,

00:21:43
they're not selling like what some, you know, I don't know,

00:21:47
like what what are they even called supplement or whatever.

00:21:49
You know, I, I just think we're not going to have sort of the

00:21:52
grifter class here, which you can often see in longevity.

00:21:54
And we're not going to see people looking to like, fight

00:21:58
with the administration. And so drama blinders maybe

00:22:01
doesn't even fully capture it. It's sort of like, yeah, hard at

00:22:04
work. Focus on their thing.

00:22:06
I don't know. You know, since the pandemic,

00:22:07
there has been this real politicization of healthcare.

00:22:10
We have seen for sure. And it is even through this last

00:22:14
week when we have seen the CDC appointee from the Trump

00:22:18
administration is no longer holding the job.

00:22:21
All of a sudden, there's been a, you know, acting CDC director

00:22:25
appointment for Deputy Health Secretary Jim O'Neill.

00:22:27
I mean it makes. Sense I mean this is these are

00:22:29
his people he was in Silicon Valley.

00:22:31
Like, I think for the Trump administration to have a super

00:22:34
positive health agenda besides, you know, maybe something like

00:22:37
the food quality stuff, having us sort of work around what's

00:22:41
happening in AI makes a lot of sense.

00:22:42
So yeah. So it's it's a natural place for

00:22:45
him to be. Yeah.

00:22:46
So. Jim O'Neill's has roots in

00:22:47
Silicon Valley, had worked in HHS under, you know, Bush 43

00:22:50
administration, had been the CEO of the Teal Foundation, worked

00:22:54
at various investment firms in the Valley for a long time.

00:22:57
But there is a really interesting shake up happening

00:23:00
in American healthcare. There is a lot of media coverage

00:23:04
about that. I think that there is a real

00:23:06
question around future of science, the role of private

00:23:09
sector companies, role of the public sector.

00:23:11
You're seeing and the big beautiful bill cuts to you know,

00:23:15
health provision programs, particularly Medicaid.

00:23:18
You're also seeing these big off branches extended to private

00:23:20
companies. New more companies are actually

00:23:23
working with CMS and HHS on this great data collection.

00:23:27
I'm really interested to hear about what what is the future of

00:23:31
healthcare? What is the conversation that's

00:23:33
happening in Washington, What it what is the role of Silicon

00:23:35
Valley, what is the role of science, etcetera.

00:23:37
We have a lot to discuss, but my last theme, the end of privacy.

00:23:41
Oh, interesting. That's a good difference like.

00:23:43
What even is HIPAA anymore? Right?

00:23:45
Like HIPAA who? Wants it, you know.

00:23:48
Like all of a sudden silicon. Valley alive on it.

00:23:50
But it's just like for all of us.

00:23:51
You're taking, you're putting devices to yourself.

00:23:54
It's just like, yeah, I feel like, by the way.

00:23:56
I am like somebody who doesn't have my memory on on Chachi PT

00:23:59
and I'm like, let me give you my minute to minute blood glucose

00:24:02
data. You know, I never have been a

00:24:05
big privacy person I want. These companies have the.

00:24:08
Information, yeah. And that's where I think the

00:24:10
integration is really interesting.

00:24:12
And that's actually where, I think, you know, there's been

00:24:14
some surprising moves out of DC, including, you know, the stake

00:24:18
and Intel, right? We did not expect a Republican

00:24:21
Party to be doing, you know, joint stock ventures in the mode

00:24:25
of, you know, percentage stakes in private companies.

00:24:27
I used to see that when I worked in Vietnam in my past 100 lives.

00:24:31
But they are the ones that they're pushing for this great

00:24:33
data integration across all these streams.

00:24:35
Now, there's also a lot of, you know, concerns about that you

00:24:37
hear, particularly for women and their fertility.

00:24:39
I'm curious to talk to Maven and Nora about this.

00:24:41
Like, there's a lot happening unfolding in the world of

00:24:44
privacy and data. And what does your private

00:24:47
health data mean? And can it save other people's

00:24:49
lives as you know, mission to actually sharing?

00:24:52
I'm interviewing Han Pack, you know, Samsung's top health

00:24:54
executive and obviously they take data very seriously.

00:24:57
I mean, they have an interesting position that a lot of their

00:25:00
devices customers are not buying in necessarily with health as

00:25:03
the first and only thing. So you have to balance what do

00:25:06
people think about this devices for while providing value to

00:25:09
people who want health information.

00:25:11
And so I think they're interesting trade-offs there,

00:25:13
yeah. So we'll see.

00:25:14
End of privacy, maybe the end of longevity.

00:25:17
Frenemies galore. This is going to be so much fun.

00:25:20
Longevity in a in it's sort of gone mainstream moment.

00:25:24
Yeah, I'm I'm really excited. I think there's a lot we're not

00:25:26
even thinking about yet. I mean the potential, you know,

00:25:30
if any one of these companies that we talked to discovers, you

00:25:33
know, the next satin, the next GLP one, it'll be amazing.

00:25:37
You know, 1 discovery like that could be transfer informational.

00:25:40
I think, you know, on the flip side in AI, I think, you know,

00:25:43
while we've seen progress from people like Alphabet and there's

00:25:48
still like, you know, AI producing novelty is still in my

00:25:52
mind an open question as somebody who follows this.

00:25:55
Seriously. And.

00:25:56
There's nowhere we want it more than in health, right?

00:25:59
We want some novel thing that humans couldn't figure out.

00:26:03
And so I think taking the temperature on everybody on,

00:26:05
like, will AI be able to produce something new?

00:26:09
I'll be interested to hear. Yes, I, I mean, one thing I

00:26:11
didn't mention and it was part of my kind of end of 1 thesis is

00:26:16
this huge move into genomics and baby sequencing.

00:26:20
We have Robert Green coming from Harvard Medical School.

00:26:23
He's done the he's overseeing the greatest kind of genetic

00:26:25
sequencing project as it relates to babies and children.

00:26:28
That was done in the UK where there is a preponderance of

00:26:31
data. So I think like the unlocking of

00:26:32
data allows a ton of research, a lot, a lot of discovery.

00:26:36
It's a huge shift. But like, I think we should add

00:26:39
on a bit of a sci-fi future prediction of the.

00:26:42
But there is something in, you know, in the film Gattaca or, or

00:26:46
as my cousin in Pakistan, Omar called it when we went to rent

00:26:49
it from the movie store, Gattaca, Gattaca, the Ethan

00:26:51
Hawke film. You know what I'm talking about.

00:26:53
Gattaca. I've heard of it.

00:26:55
Yeah, yeah. I don't know.

00:26:55
I don't know if I've actually watched it it.

00:26:58
Was like, really? It's like from like, I'm like

00:27:00
sci-fi. Babies.

00:27:01
But this idea of like kind of choosing your baby and what

00:27:04
color eyes, etcetera, etcetera. I mean, we're in a world where

00:27:08
that is not, that is not necessarily where we're going,

00:27:12
but the idea that you can know from the, you know, from, from

00:27:17
the biology and the genetics of an embryo or a newly born child

00:27:24
what is likely to happen to them in the course of their life.

00:27:28
And that they could maybe have customized healthcare that

00:27:31
anticipates that, sees the signs of that early on and potentially

00:27:34
has customized drugs to deal with these interventions.

00:27:37
I mean, how we're going to do this at scale for everybody.

00:27:40
And this doesn't become like a great luxury, like the great

00:27:43
business class of Healthcare is going to be something to say,

00:27:46
but we've already seen so much real technological movement and

00:27:50
a lot of this is going to be unleashed through AI.

00:27:52
It's like the back end stuff. And a lot of these companies

00:27:55
that we're seeing of how using AI and clinical trials, how are

00:27:58
you seeing AI optimize A diagnosis?

00:28:01
Those companies are, yeah. I mean, my other, you know,

00:28:04
personal health journey is just, you know, my wife weeded out

00:28:07
Bracha from our child that is due soon after this conference.

00:28:12
So it'll be interesting. I'm obviously that's a deeply

00:28:15
personal theme. And then I'll be seeing this

00:28:17
whole conference just from the perspective of what what's my

00:28:20
kid going to get or like what's what's this kid going to benefit

00:28:23
from? And it definitely gives you, you

00:28:26
know, it'll give me a different perspective.

00:28:27
Wait, Naima. So excited to do this.

00:28:29
I think it's going to be a really fun event.

00:28:31
Obviously, not everybody listening to this is going to

00:28:33
get to go in person, but we will be publishing videos as always

00:28:38
from the event and writing up sort of the key takeaways in the

00:28:41
sub stack. So subscribe to Newcomer and go

00:28:44
listen to smart Girl dumb questions.

00:28:47
Naima Raza, thanks so much for doing this with me.

00:28:49
Thank. You so much Eric gives me fun.

00:28:51
See you on Tuesday. Sounds good.

00:28:53
All right. See ya.

00:28:54
Bye.