After bacteria were discovered, it took scientists 200 years to figure out that they cause disease. If scientists had made the link sooner, hundreds of millions of lives could have been saved.

In his recent book So Very Small, Tom Levenson, a professor of science writing at MIT, tells the amazing story of germ theory, and argues that our worldview can prevent us from seeing what is right in front of us – even when lives are at stake.

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Evan Ratliff co-founded a publishing startup in 2011. Now he hosts a podcast called Shell Game. In the latest season of the show, Evan creates a company run by AI agents. The project is absurdly funny – Evan calls it an office satire – but it also illuminates the power and limits of AI agents.

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Patrick Hsu is the co-founder of Arc Institute, which is integrating AI models and biological research. Patrick’s problem is this: How can you use AI to make biological research more efficient – and ultimately to find cures for Alzheimer’s and other complex diseases?

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In recent decades, medical research has fundamentally changed how we think about heart disease. This fresh understanding has opened up new ways to prevent heart attacks. Eric Topol is a cardiologist and the founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego. Eric’s problem is this: How can doctors use recent technological developments to do a better job at preventing heart attacks?

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Samir Ibrahim is the co-founder and CEO of SunCulture. When he started the company, he thought he was solving a simple problem: How do you sell solar-powered pumps to help poor farmers irrigate their land? It turned out, he was working on something much bigger: How do you help poor farmers get richer, and create a giant new market from scratch?

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Nabiha Saklayen is the co-founder and CEO of Cellino. Nabiha’s problem is this: How can you make personalized stem cell therapies quickly and cheaply?

 Induced pluripotent stem cells, or IPSCs, have shown tremendous promise as treatments for illnesses like Parkinson’s, leukemia, and heart disease.

On today’s show, Nabiha explains why IPSC manufacturing is still mostly done by hand, how her background in physics and lasers led her into biology, and what it takes to try and build tiny, automated cell factories.

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Tim Bucher is a farmer, and the founder and CEO of Agtonomy. Tim's problem is this: How do you build an autonomous tractor that can work for specialty crops like grapes, olives, apples, and almonds?

On today’s show, Tim explains what makes certain farming processes so difficult to automate, and how autonomy may soon change how we eat.

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Mitch Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Arc Boats. Mitch's problem is this: How do you build competitively priced electric boats?

On today’s show, Mitch explains why water makes electrification so hard, the techno-economic puzzle of building giant battery packs, and how Arc’s high-end wake sport boat opened the door for a new generation of hybrid-electric tugboats.

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