Ashlee Vance: Stories from Elon, Palmer Luckey, Bryan Johnson & Priscilla Chan

Ashlee Vance, best known as Elon Musk’s biographer, and now the creator of Core Memory, a frontier podcast and video series exploring space, science, and technology, joins Sourcery for a fun behind-the-scenes (BTS) on his most high profile guests. We talk about why Ashlee shifted from journalist to founder, his vision for Core Memory, and the guests who have defined the show — including Palmer Luckey, Bryan Johnson, and Priscilla Chan. Ashlee also reflects on his relationship with Elon Musk and the lessons he’s learned from him on persistence, prioritization, and relentless focus. Notable Guests: • Palmer Luckey (Anduril founder) • Bryan Johnson (Kernel, Blueprint, Don’t Die) • Priscilla Chan (Chan Zuckerberg Initiative) Connect with us: 1. Ashlee Vance: https://x.com/ashleevance 2. Molly O’Shea: ⁠https://x.com/MollySOShea⁠ 3. Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryvc⁠ Brought to you by: • Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. As a Sourcery Listener you get: 75,000 points after spending $3,000 on Brex card(s), white-glove onboarding, $5,000 in AWS credits, $2,500 in OpenAI credits, & access to $180k+ in SaaS discounts. On top of $500 toward Brex travel, $300 in cashback, plus exclusive perks (like billboards..) visit → https://brex.com/sourcery • Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. Visit: https://turing.com/sourcery • Kalshi—The largest prediction market and the only legal platform in the US where people can trade directly on the outcomes of future events: https://kalshi.com/sourcery Follow Sourcery for the latest updates! https://www.sourcery.vc/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Molly O'Shea?

  What's the biggest lesson you've learned from Elon?

• 0:02Speaker 01

  You know, he's a complicated dude, obviously, for many, many, many, many reasons. But I think there was like that simple lesson to take away.

• 0:10Molly O'Shea?

  Are you gonna get Elon on?

• 0:11Speaker 01

  I'm trying. Pretty dramatic. We were at Neuralink filming something for a movie I'm making, and we were there until 1:00 in the morning, and then he went straight from there back to SAI. And then I had a friend who had a meeting with him at like 4:00 a.m. And I just figured he lives life constantly like that, plus the flying.

• 0:29Molly O'Shea?

  Why do you think people think he's evil?

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, he is quite polarizing.

• 0:34Molly O'Shea?

  Someone you also cover really, really in depth. You love polarizing people. It's Brian Johnson.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:40Molly O'Shea?

  So what have you learned from him?

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Not enough health things.

• 0:43Molly O'Shea?

  How much radiation have you been exposed to? What were the biggest sources?

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Can I, I'm gonna grab a drink.

• 0:48Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 0:50Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, no, I just scared Ashley Vance.

• 1:03Molly O'Shea?

  Welcome back to Core Memory. I'm your host, Ashley Vance. Today, we have a very special guest. Her name is Molly O'Shea. Welcome to the show.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Hi. I, uh, this is the first time, it's like the name works. I'm happy.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  I love your show. It's probably the best podcast, except for mine.

• 1:25Molly O'Shea?

  What's yours?

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Well, sorcery.

• 1:28Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, you recently had-

• 1:29Speaker 01

  You don't know my show?

• 1:31Molly O'Shea?

  You recently had Sam Altman on the pod, right? Or no, it was Jack Altman.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  It was an, it was Ann Altman.

• 1:36Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  There's so many. I mean, you just walk around San Francisco, you get yourself an Altman.

• 1:44Molly O'Shea?

  So I came across you because we share something in common.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  What is that?

• 1:50Molly O'Shea?

  Brex.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  The intelligent finance platform.

• 1:53Molly O'Shea?

  The modern finance platform built for performance.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. Well, I run my business on Brex. Do you?

• 2:05Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's just the right thing to do.

• 2:08Molly O'Shea?

  I'm trying to get up to about $100 billion in annual card spend. That's my goal. I know they just recently surpassed that, so I'm trying to double it for them.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Wow. I know when you were at Bloomberg, you were notorious for the highest expense reports the company has ever seen. So you might get there.

• 2:27Molly O'Shea?

  Is that true? Do you remember what, what kind of numbers I was pulling?

• 2:31Speaker 01

  They were significant and...

• 2:33Molly O'Shea?

  You're talking six, six figures, nine figures?

• 2:36Speaker 01

  It was six, possibly bordering on seven sometimes.

• 2:42Molly O'Shea?

  What's, what's the most expensive thing there?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Like, oh, no. Well, Bloomberg, God bless them. Wait, now who am I?

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, now I'm confused.

• 2:58Molly O'Shea?

  Freaky Friday, let's switch it back. Ashley Vance, welcome to Sorcery. How are you?

• 3:03Speaker 01

  I'm good. Thank you so much for having me. I did, I did a flight one time. Well, so Bloomberg has this tremendous expense policy.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  They, I don't feel like I'm revealing anything too horrible. I mean, they, they fly people business class, even the journalists who make, make no money for the, for the company.

• 3:25Molly O'Shea?

  They get paid more in flights than they do salaries.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, well, you know.

• 3:29Molly O'Shea?

  Let's work on that one, Bloomberg.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  There's the, the terminal people who make all the money for the company and then the journalists get to, like, okay, first of all, I don't want to, this to sound too bad. Bloomberg has very good journalists. They're doing, doing good stuff, but you know, it's not like the media side makes tons of money for the company compared to the terminal. And then the journalists get to run around the world, reporting their stories. And so I always appreciated that. But one time I was in Shenzhen and...

• 3:59Speaker 01

  I had, my flight was canceled and I got stuck in this weird China air limbo where it was like they cancel your flight, but there's no, you could call a number. I called Bloomberg's travel support. They're like, yeah, nobody's ever answered the China air customer support number in like, like 20 years. And so, and I had to get to Ukraine like the next day. And, and it was, it was like, I couldn't book my ticket until it was officially canceled by China air, but they didn't want to cancel it.

• 4:28Molly O'Shea?

  You had to take the train instead?

• 4:29Speaker 01

  No. So then Bloomberg was like, well, we gotta get you out. So we'll just buy immediately a business class ticket from Shenzhen to Ukraine. I have no idea how much that ticket cost, but it was substantial. That's, that was where my story was going.

• 4:44Molly O'Shea?

  Next time, make sure that they just charter you a jet.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  That would be, that would be nice. I would take that.

• 4:50Molly O'Shea?

  That's how you get the real travel points.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Well, I had, we actually had like a guy who watched my video show, worked in the airport air traffic control. And so he was texting me, he's like, you're never getting this flight.

• 5:03Molly O'Shea?

  No.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. He's like, it's not happening. They're just, they're just lying. It's not, it's not there.

• 5:09Molly O'Shea?

  Okay. So I prepared a couple of really critical questions, actually. Who is your favorite nerd?

• 5:16Speaker 01

  I'll just go with what jumped to my head, but I don't even know if it's gonna be the most exciting answer you're looking for. There's a guy named Carver Mead.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  This is how old I am. I mean, he's kind of like previous generation tech. He was around like forming the semiconductor industry. He was a professor at Caltech and he's like one of these dudes, people say he's got ideas as big as Einstein and things like this. And he helped, he coined, I'm pretty sure he's the one who coined the phrase Moore's Law. When he was hanging out with Gordon Moore and he was just always my favorite guy to talk to. I mean, he had sort of this, he was from California, but he had like, almost like a southern, like foghorn, leghorn sort of voice to the way he would talk. And I remember I went with him to dinner to this, the Village Pub. It's this fancy restaurant in Silicon

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Valley and.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  I was at the New York Times and we had very tight expense reports back then and he ordered this. All my stories are about expense reports.

• 6:20Molly O'Shea?

  They all go back to Brex. You know Brex automates that?

• 6:24Speaker 01

  If only I'd had Brex to help me navigate these horrible expense situations I got myself into. Yeah, he ordered like a, you know, it's like a fifteen hundred dollar Paul Meyer bottle of wine and all this. And anyway, we just sit there talking semiconductors. He's like this southern gentleman. I just, I like him a lot. Was it my favorite nerd? There was a guy. His name is Danila, or Danil. He's in Moscow and he, you know how there's like the cryonics, the freezing your head situation? And they have like, I think it's called Alcor in the United States that does this in Arizona.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Well, this dude was like the Russian knockoff, cheap version of cryonics. And we went to like the Moscow suburbs and this dude was like a full on transhumanist cult leader in Moscow. And we're driving out for a couple hours to the edge of Moscow. We get to like, it's like a suburban neighborhood, but it's almost like rural. It's just like tiny houses with like shacks in the back. And we get there and he's got, he's got full on heads in these.

• 7:35Molly O'Shea?

  What?

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, like Home Depot style.

• 7:37Molly O'Shea?

  You went to like a freezer with heads in it?

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, there were like parakeets, dogs, cats, and then human heads in there at Chinchilla.

• 7:45Molly O'Shea?

  Oh my god.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  But I love this dude. He was wild. He was really weird and he had like a cult and like people would be at his lab and they would like cut their wrists and put their, their Russian subway, like their little tap, tap and go sort of RFID thing under their skin. And he was a character. Yeah, he's one of my favorites.

• 8:05Molly O'Shea?

  And he's not in jail for that?

• 8:07Speaker 01

  No, he can do stuff in Russia. That's cool. Yeah.

• 8:10Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, I got it, I got it, got it. Okay. No laws.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  It's all good. All good.

• 8:16Molly O'Shea?

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• 8:59Molly O'Shea?

  access your funds anytime. Companies like Scale AI, DoorDash, ServiceTitan, Hims, Anthropic, Flexport, Robinhood, and Plaid. Trust and use Brex. Start today at brex.com/sorcery. That's B-R-E-X dot com slash sorcery. In terms of core memory, who have been some of your favorite guests?

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Palmer Lucky was a good one. He kind of like helped rev up the show, I think. Brian Johnson is always a favorite of mine.

• 9:32Molly O'Shea?

  Great episode.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Yes, he was fun to interview. And then, well Palmer was, he was very good because he was in fine form. He was relaxed and he was just chatting away. Yeah, I think those two. Priscilla Chan was really cool. She was like, has done a ton of interviews and she was paying attention to what we were doing around science and everything and was cool enough to kind of come on the show. I'm trying. You know, Elon's always super short on, I don't know. Well, Elon's super short on texts. Yeah.

• 10:06Molly O'Shea?

  I've seen his tweets.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, you ask like these big, complicated questions and he's either like, sure, or no.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  And then we did, actually, we had a day, he was gonna come in to the studio, sit where I'm sitting now, and then he kind of flaked, and so we'll see, we'll get him.

• 10:23Molly O'Shea?

  Maybe you can interview him on one of his flights.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  On a flight?

• 10:28Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  On the plane?

• 10:29Molly O'Shea?

  I feel like he's on a plane more than he is on ground. I wonder what percentage of his year is spent in the air versus on land.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  It's pretty dramatic. And then like, he has no, I figure he has like, no time zone, anything, you know? We were at Neuralink, filming something for a movie, a making, and we were there until like, 1:00 in the morning, and then he went straight from there back to XAI. And then I had a friend who had a meeting with him at like, 4:00 AM, I think. And I just figure he lives life constantly like that, plus the flying.

• 11:08Speaker 02

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• 11:44Molly O'Shea?

  What's the biggest lesson you've learned from Elon?

• 11:46Speaker 01

  We have a super complicated relationship. I'd say when I was doing the book, sort of like, this persistence thing. It sounds like simplistic, and then I don't even know if everybody should live like this, but it was like...

• 12:06Speaker 01

  He's just very good at prioritizing the things that really matter to him. I think when I was doing the book on him, I started to like marinate in the way he goes about life. And I was like, oh,

• 12:21Speaker 01

  there's all these things I'm chasing all the time, but some of them don't really matter. And you should just put like

• 12:28Speaker 01

  most of your energy into the, the stuff you really think is gonna, is gonna matter. And so, you know, he's a complicated dude, obviously, for many, many, many, many reasons. But I think, I do think there's like, there was like that simple lesson to take away. It was just to be a bit more focused and like, if you actually care about something to like, go after it. He's, he's like, there's like persistent and then I still think most people understand, you know? I mean, that's like, when I think about the difference between SpaceX and something like Blue Origin that started about the same time. You know, I think Blue Origin's like coming on now, but they've had 20 years where SpaceX has just been lapping them.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  It's like taken over the entire rocket business and

• 13:14Molly O'Shea?

  I mean, he built a data center in 19 days.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 13:17Molly O'Shea?

  That's insane.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  You know, like,

• 13:22Speaker 01

  people can hate him for all his politics stuff and everything like that. I get it. But the, the reason those things work is because like, even when he's the richest dude in the world and he's in his 50s and all that, he's like sleeping there, doing all this stuff. You know what I mean? So there's just like, I still think there's many people that would do that. And it's sort of, I think that just like oozes into the companies and makes it work.

• 13:46Molly O'Shea?

  Why do you think people think he's evil?

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Quite polarizing.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  His tweets and his opinions. I've like covered him so long that I've gone through, he was like hated by Republicans, you know, and then now he's like hated by the left. It's hard to keep track. And then, there's sort of, I always think of it as like, when the Model 3 was total disaster, and you could tell it was like, taking a toll on him. That was sort of when bad Elon started to emerge on Twitter.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  And it kind of stuck and he just, I don't know, he, you know, and he got He used to not be that into politics and everything. He just got so, so into it. And um, yeah, I mean, there's a bunch of reasons some people hate him. I think it's, I find it all sort of uh stupid, really. Cause he's either idolized or hated. He's either a hero or the scoundrel. And I think like all people are more complicated than that. And to me, so it's kind of sad. It like undermines a lot of the good things I think he's done, especially for the United States. So um, yeah, I wish there was a little less baggage, really.

• 15:05Molly O'Shea?

  It's always a weird dynamic because people, uh, majority of people. I wouldn't say a majority. I it's, it's just like an interesting, like psychological experiment, like for human behavior of envy and jealousy, and then, you know, also feeling insecure. But then, you know, some people like idolize that. And so you will always with very polarizing success, get both ends of the spectrum. And so like another person who has that effect is someone you also covered really, really in depth. You love polarizing people. Uh, it's Brian Johnson.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:45Molly O'Shea?

  So what have you learned from him?

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Not enough health things. I'm like the only person who like hangs out with him all the time and somehow has got like less healthy. Um, uh, I mean, Brian's interesting, I think, because there's not usually, you know, he sort of like had this big life transformation when he was 35 ish. And I don't think a lot of people like really wholesale change um at that stage in life. And then he's kind of like, keeps doing it a little bit. Like people think he's, I don't think they knew Brian before. And so they think he's like this, um, maybe they think he's like this one note.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  You know, he's doing his whole toe tie his health thing and they they sort of associate that with his personality. But yeah, he used to be super different. He was actually, when I first met him, I mean, he was so, you know, the reputation was he was really sensitive to criticism and he was kind of like thin skinned and and

• 16:43Speaker 01

  since he got famous, he just like revels at all these people crapping on him. And I don't actually think, I don't think it's like an act, you know, I think he's he's he's sort of embraced all of this. And so, um, so I kind of like, I guess I would have taken away just

• 16:59Speaker 01

  that you actually can change and morph as you're getting older, you know?

• 17:07Speaker 01

  I don't know if I sit back and think what I take away from these people. I feel like I just hop from one one person to the next. Yeah, maybe I should actually be more thoughtful about all this stuff.

• 17:18Molly O'Shea?

  I'll interview after every, a week after every interview and we can do a debrief on your podcast biographies.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I haven't actually, I've never, I've never kind of like fully thought about that. Yeah. I do know when I was filming the documentary, I mean, for sure, on Brian.

• 17:34Molly O'Shea?

  It was great.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 17:35Molly O'Shea?

  So good.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  You're super nice. We did that with Chris Smith, who's this great documentarian. I mean, he and I both had the same.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  I've seen this happen with like everyone who hangs out with Brian, which is like, it really does rub off on people. And Chris, Chris is sort of like a, he's a maniac. I mean, he's filming.

• 17:52Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, my God, it's past 11 a.m. I can't eat another piece of food.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But like Chris, Chris is kind of like, he's wired like in Elon or a Brian. He's filming five or six movies at the same time and he's running, you know, just at max, max speed. And then he met Brian and then, yeah, he started doing like his sleep tracker and everything. He used to be the kind of guy, you know, he's like calling you at 3 a.m. texting, blah, blah. Then near the end of the movie, he's like, it's 9:30. I'm not answering messages anymore. And, and so like I do, I have noticed that with everybody who hangs out with Brian for some substantial amount of time, which is probably just like healthy, you know? I remember when I first started reporting on him, like, most people kind of hated him and, um, thought it was just like, uh, there's been the

• 18:41Speaker 01

  There are obviously some people who still think this, that it's like, whatever, like a cult or silly. But when I first started reporting on Brian, like I would get a lot of pushback from editors at Bloomberg and other, you know, like sort of just, it's like, why are you spending so much time on this weirdo? He seems kind of fringe and, and then like over time.

• 19:00Molly O'Shea?

  Guess who's wrong?

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, like people took it a lot more seriously and, and in these, I mean, we get into it on the podcast, but it's so true. Like he used to come to Silicon Valley and nobody would meet with him and he could never raise money for everything. And then now I see him walk into these rooms and everyone's like, wants to talk to Brian, but they also, they're all trying to learn how to live a better life and all this stuff. I just, so it's all kind of funny. So he does, you know, I think net, net, if your thing in life is that you're like rubbing off on people that you're

• 19:30Speaker 01

  just kind of making them live better, then that's probably not the worst thing.

• 19:34Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, I remember specifically from your interview when I thought, I thought this was really revealing about him and like his true interests. But when you were interviewing him, he was talking about the transitions within Don't Die and then Blueprint and you know, and how he's like stepping back from Blueprint. What he created there was tremendous. Like he created a cult product and had like real success and in CPG, which is extremely hard, like even some celebrities can't break through that. But you know, he mixed it with the good storytelling, his brand, like the marketing and Kate, like all of it came together really, really well. And those breakouts are like, those are difficult, but I think like

• 20:21Molly O'Shea?

  hearing from him stepping back from that because you know, I mean, I think about this too, and maybe you have the same kind of feeling, but like deep down, I'm a nerd. Like, do I want to be posting on X all the time? Do I want to be marketing all the time? Like, no, like I don't. Sometimes I just want to like sit and research stuff, but like for him, like you kind of saw that within his stories, like, no, like I actually just want to focus on the frontier science.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, because he has to become like a character and then people.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  It's not like it's working in a coal mine or something, but like, like making all this stuff is relentless, you know, if, if you're gonna go full influencer. It's like, no joke, and you gotta think of something new all the time and, and it's a thing. Yeah.

• 21:05Molly O'Shea?

  I feel like within the process of making those products, probably making the products was most fun for him, you know, like the ingredients, like how it works scientifically with the body and all of that.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think it's funny, because Brian always says he was like, and I interviewed his family, I mean, it is true, you know, he kind of struggled in school, in high school, and he was not like some engineer at university and all that stuff. And so I think some people sometimes question like, does he know the science and all that? He like really does. I mean, he could like, it's impressive, he can talk at length about, about all this stuff. So I think you're probably right, that's probably where he would rather be.

• 21:47Molly O'Shea?

  All right, so to get to a more serious conversation, I need to ask you a very difficult question. I don't want to scare you too much, but this is gonna be a hard one. How much radiation?

• 22:01Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, serious. How much radiation have you been exposed to?

• 22:06Speaker 01

  It's hard to say.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Probably like a decent amount, yeah.

• 22:13Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, what, what were the biggest sources?

• 22:16Speaker 01

  I've been to places where they're like processing uranium. I went to Siberia to like a old fusion, like, like the heart of like the Soviet, you know, fusion program. I went to Ukraine to where they made all the ICBMs for the Soviets for decades and decades. And then lord knows from like all these random labs over the years. Yeah, I mean, I think the worst thing I probably ever done is like the experimental vehicles. I seem to end up in like planes that are flying for near the first time. I was in, I was with George Hots.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  If people remember, George Hart's built like a self-driving car on his own in like a month. And I just called him randomly one day.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Just to see what he was up to. And he's like, oh, I'm so glad you called. I just built a self-driving car in my garage in the last month by myself. And I was like, oh, that sounds like a story. Let's come like film that. And he's like, okay, yeah, that'd be great. And then we show up with my film crew and everything, and I'm doing like a written story. And then we go out on the freeway with George in his car. And then we're going along and he had like, he'd, you know, like ripped out the whole console. It was like a video, it was just running, like streaming Linux from a command line interface through the dashboard and he had put like a video game joystick as like the thing to launch in a self-driving mode. And so he like grabs the joystick and he puts it in self-driving.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  We're like on the 280 freeway and it's like kind of hugging the lanes like pretty aggressively. You know, and I was like, this is incredible. What was it like? The, you know, the first time you got this to work is like, this is the first time.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  And you're just, you're like, okay. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, I think that those things are maybe worse than the radiation.

• 24:15Molly O'Shea?

  I hope you never get into the Titanic. What was it called? The Titan Explorer? Oh, my gosh.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  That is like the kind of story I would do. I did think about that.

• 24:25Molly O'Shea?

  Don't do it. Don't do a submersible.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  I know, I'm like, I get claustrophobic, so I try to avoid those.

• 24:33Molly O'Shea?

  Would you do a, um, one of the Blue Origin flights or anything like that? Would you go up there?

• 24:38Speaker 01

  I don't think I'd be afraid of that one. I always wanted to do like the more than the six-minute flight. I feel like if you're gonna go on the rocket.

• 24:46Molly O'Shea?

  Go to the ISS?

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I want, if you're gonna put your life on the line.

• 24:51Molly O'Shea?

  Make it count.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  I mean, the Blue Origin one seems quite safe because there's lots of, they got backup plans. But yeah, that's what I always wanted to do. I wanted to do like-

• 25:00Molly O'Shea?

  They don't really have that. I mean, I I talked to some of the crew. There was an event around Milken in L A. And there were a couple of their astronauts there. And I asked, I mean, I've obviously asked like a lot of curious, like, child questions. And one of them was like, okay, so what if all the parachutes don't deploy? There's like three or four parachutes. So they have backup systems, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so if like, none of them deploy, there's an emergency hatch. You get launched out of that, out of the top. Guess what? You're hitting 12 Gs. What happens to your body when you hit 12 Gs? You become a noodle. Your brain flattens. Like, you, you probably won't even survive that. It's like, what's really the, I don't know. But yeah, that's how I thought of it.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  It's like, oh. You're changing my mind.

• 25:45Molly O'Shea?

  There are some edge cases here.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, but yeah, I just always wanted to do like the week.

• 25:51Molly O'Shea?

  You should do it.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  I would like to, I think. Yeah, I would do that, especially on a SpaceX rocket.

• 25:57Molly O'Shea?

  They need to put like Aman's in Leo. You know, Aman, the hotel?

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 26:03Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  They sponsored Novak Djokovic. I just, I saw, yeah, he was playing last night and I started Googling it.

• 26:10Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, there you go. It worked.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  It worked.

• 26:12Molly O'Shea?

  It worked. Aman, if you want to sponsor sorcery, reach out. We have a very high value audience.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  It did work. Yeah.

• 26:23Molly O'Shea?

  So as we shift, um, quantum and fusion, they're pretty much in like the same leg race. They've been around for a while, but it hasn't had its inflection moment.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:34Molly O'Shea?

  How do you think about those two pacings? Like, what do you think about those conceptually?

• 26:39Speaker 01

  I think you're right. Similar buckets, right? Yeah, all this promise. I feel like, like, uh,

• 26:45Speaker 01

  I've been covering quantum computing for so, so very long. Um, it's always hard to tell. Like you could, you know, there's stuff that's just made up, right? And, and, and quantum has never really felt like that to me. It's like there's some- semblance of an interesting thing out there that people are chasing. It just feels like it's taken so long. I think I, oh God, I can't remember when D-Wave came out, like maybe like 2012? I want to say 2014, something like that. That was the first big quantum computer story I wrote. And it was like, oh, we've done it. We've built a quantum computer, you know? And D-Wave is still kind of around, but obviously people don't consider this like a solved problem by any stretch.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  And so, um, yeah, it's always that thing where it's like science project that has to become real and it's hard. And, and so, yeah, I kind of think of, um, they're probably like the two areas where I feel the least comfortable trying to tell what's real from what's not real because everybody's raised a ton of money and it seems like serious people that are doing it and they're smart people. Then you just can't tell if they've all convinced them. You can't tell like who's shady versus who's super smart, but have kind of like convinced themselves that their life's pursuit science project is probably like realer than it actually is. Yeah.

• 28:08Molly O'Shea?

  We should get a lie detector test.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  That's the thing though. I think they'd probably pass.

• 28:12Molly O'Shea?

  They've already convinced themselves.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  That would be amazing though.

• 28:15Molly O'Shea?

  It would be so good.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  The CEOs of all the quantum.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  And you know, the, the, when you, they all have different approaches. It's kind of like in the, it's vaguely like in the fusion area. And then they just talk so convincingly about why there's, is right, the other one's wrong and is never going to work. And, and then you have to be like a quantum physicist to even begin to try to, um, have some like assessment of all this, you know? So, yeah, no, it's really hard. It's, it's like, I, sort of like areas I prefer not to cover.

• 28:54Molly O'Shea?

  So what's next for Core Memory?

• 28:57Speaker 01

  For Core Memory? Oh, so much stuff. Where's Megan? Got the podcast going. Love to do like kind of a mix of well-known people and then and then people who are a little more off the beaten path. I just like to go down rabbit holes with folks and where you get to learn about something like quantum computing or some crazy biotech thing, whatever.

• 29:21Molly O'Shea?

  Keeping heads in freezers.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, exactly. Those are my kind of people. And then we've got a video series on YouTube, which is awesome. And we're kind of, we have more and more and more things coming.

• 29:33Molly O'Shea?

  I love the YouTube. The YouTube's my favorite.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Thank you. We have these big, kind of like hour-long episodes coming. We went, we shot a big episode in Tennessee. We shot a big episode in Detroit. We're heading off to Boston, Washington State, all kinds of fun stuff. So and then we've got, yeah, I mean, those are, that is where I would send people to go check out what we're doing.

• 29:54Molly O'Shea?

  Check out Core Memory. You did a great job. This was all improv.

• 30:02Molly O'Shea?

  Ashley Vance, thank you for coming on Sorcery.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Thank you. It was nice. I'm in the guest chair. I like it.

• 30:08Molly O'Shea?

  Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, sorcery.vc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen. Link in description to sign up.