Best Simplified Science News Podcasts (2025)

1
CTIBench: Evaluating LLMs in Cyber Threat Intelligence with Nidhi Rastogi - #729 56:18

4d ago56:18

56:18

Today, we're joined by Nidhi Rastogi, assistant professor at Rochester Institute of Technology to discuss Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI), focusing on her recent project CTIBench—a benchmark for evaluating LLMs on real-world CTI tasks. Nidhi explains the evolution of AI in cybersecurity, from rule-based systems to LLMs that accelerate analysis by p…

1
Generative Benchmarking with Kelly Hong - #728 54:17

11d ago54:17

54:17

In this episode, Kelly Hong, a researcher at Chroma, joins us to discuss "Generative Benchmarking," a novel approach to evaluating retrieval systems, like RAG applications, using synthetic data. Kelly explains how traditional benchmarks like MTEB fail to represent real-world query patterns and how embedding models that perform well on public benchm…

1
The scrappy beginning of Tesla’s energy business 35:40

10d ago35:40

35:40

In 2014, Drew Baglino was helping build Tesla's energy division with a passionate, scrappy team. Using parts from Tesla's vehicles, they created the first Powerwall home battery. But as demand grew, they hit a critical bottleneck: cell shortages. Customers across multiple markets were already excited about the new product, but Drew’s team struggled…

1
Exploring the Biology of LLMs with Circuit Tracing with Emmanuel Ameisen - #727 1:34:06

20d ago1:34:06

1:34:06

In this episode, Emmanuel Ameisen, a research engineer at Anthropic, returns to discuss two recent papers: "Circuit Tracing: Revealing Language Model Computational Graphs" and "On the Biology of a Large Language Model." Emmanuel explains how his team developed mechanistic interpretability methods to understand the internal workings of Claude by rep…

1
LineVision's quest to win over utilities 29:16

24d ago29:16

29:16

In 2018, LineVision was a young company with revolutionary technology for electric transmission lines. Its dynamic line rating sensors and software could increase the capacity of existing power lines by up to 40% without building new infrastructure — a critical solution for integrating renewables and meeting growing electricity demand. But to prove…

1
Teaching LLMs to Self-Reflect with Reinforcement Learning with Maohao Shen - #726 51:45

26d ago51:45

51:45

Today, we're joined by Maohao Shen, PhD student at MIT to discuss his paper, “Satori: Reinforcement Learning with Chain-of-Action-Thought Enhances LLM Reasoning via Autoregressive Search.” We dig into how Satori leverages reinforcement learning to improve language model reasoning—enabling model self-reflection, self-correction, and exploration of a…

1
US firm unveils 350MW stellarator design; CFS hits key machine construction milestone; Marvel Fusion secures €113 million; Germany plans 1 GW fusion facility; Thea Energy simplifies fusion 11:04

1M ago11:04

11:04

Dr. Cyd Cowley, working at the intersection of fusion and AI at FIA affiliate member digiLab, gives today's global fusion news update. Links to all of the stories mentioned are included below. 1. US firm unveils world’s largest 350MW stellarator fusion power design basishttps://interestingengineering.com/energy/us-stellarator-fusion-power-design-ba…

1
Waymo's Foundation Model for Autonomous Driving with Drago Anguelov - #725 1:09:07

1M ago1:09:07

1:09:07

Today, we're joined by Drago Anguelov, head of AI foundations at Waymo, for a deep dive into the role of foundation models in autonomous driving. Drago shares how Waymo is leveraging large-scale machine learning, including vision-language models and generative AI techniques to improve perception, planning, and simulation for its self-driving vehicl…

1
Nextracker's blueprint for 100 gigawatts of solar trackers 32:14

1M ago32:14

32:14

Dan Shugar has been trying to move solar panels around since the 1980s. What started with a few experiments as a young engineer has turned into one of the biggest solar tracker companies in the world. In 2012 he founded Nextracker with a single product. Since then, Nextracker has revolutionized tracking technology through an array of innovative pro…

1
Dynamic Token Merging for Efficient Byte-level Language Models with Julie Kallini - #724 50:32

1M ago50:32

50:32

Today, we're joined by Julie Kallini, PhD student at Stanford University to discuss her recent papers, “MrT5: Dynamic Token Merging for Efficient Byte-level Language Models” and “Mission: Impossible Language Models.” For the MrT5 paper, we explore the importance and failings of tokenization in large language models—including inefficient compression…

1
UKAEA and Eni unite for worlds largest fusion fuel facility; US to test 'fusion blanket'; General Fusion's first plasma in cutting edge fusion machine; Virginia governor urges US fusion development 9:47

2M ago9:47

9:47

Kyra Jorgensen, working at FIA member Helion, gives today's global fusion news update. Links to all of the stories mentioned are included below. 1.UKAEA and Eni Unite to Construct the World's Largest Fusion Fuel Facility https://www.sustainabletimes.co.uk/post/ukaea-and-eni-unite-to-construct-the-world-s-largest-fusion-fuel-facility 2. US to test c…

1
Scaling Up Test-Time Compute with Latent Reasoning with Jonas Geiping - #723 58:38

2M ago58:38

58:38

Today, we're joined by Jonas Geiping, research group leader at Ellis Institute and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems to discuss his recent paper, “Scaling up Test-Time Compute with Latent Reasoning: A Recurrent Depth Approach.” This paper proposes a novel language model architecture which uses recurrent depth to enable “thinking in l…

1
Electric Hydrogen’s bet on supersized electrolyzers 35:53

2M ago35:53

35:53

When Raffi Garabedian co-founded Electric Hydrogen in 2020, he saw existing electrolyzers as too small and expensive to make green hydrogen economically viable. Instead of building standard sub-megawatt units, his team aimed for 100-megawatt systems at half the industry cost. Initial market enthusiasm brought millions in capacity reservations, fuel…

1
Imagine while Reasoning in Space: Multimodal Visualization-of-Thought with Chengzu Li - #722 42:11

2M ago42:11

42:11

Today, we're joined by Chengzu Li, PhD student at the University of Cambridge to discuss his recent paper, “Imagine while Reasoning in Space: Multimodal Visualization-of-Thought.” We explore the motivations behind MVoT, its connection to prior work like TopViewRS, and its relation to cognitive science principles such as dual coding theory. We dig i…

1
Proxima Fusion publishes plans for fusion power plant, WEST machine beats world record, Fusion doctoral trainings to begin this fall in the UK 9:22

2M ago9:22

9:22

Dr. Cyd Cowley, working at the intersection of fusion and AI at FIA affiliate member digiLab, gives today's global fusion news update. Links to all of the stories mentioned are included below.1. German Startup Publishes Open-Source Plans for Fusion Power Planthttps://www.wsj.com/articles/german-startup-publishes-open-source-plans-for-nuclear-fusion…

1
Saurabh Nigam, author of People-Powered Startups: Building a Culture of Collaboration, Innovation, and High Performance. 35:51

2M ago35:51

35:51

In this episode, I sit down with Saurabh Nigam—HR leader, angel investor, and author of People-Powered Startups: Building a Culture of Collaboration, Innovation, and High Performance. With over two decades of experience, Saurabh shares actionable insights on building a thriving startup culture, avoiding common HR mistakes, and hiring the right peop…

1
Inside s1: An o1-Style Reasoning Model That Cost Under $50 to Train with Niklas Muennighoff - #721 49:29

2M ago49:29

49:29

Today, we're joined by Niklas Muennighoff, a PhD student at Stanford University, to discuss his paper, “S1: Simple Test-Time Scaling.” We explore the motivations behind S1, as well as how it compares to OpenAI's O1 and DeepSeek's R1 models. We dig into the different approaches to test-time scaling, including parallel and sequential scaling, as well…

1
From Mumbai to NYC: Leia Tyebjee on Building Pylot Studios, a global platform empowering emerging artists 30:22

2M ago30:22

30:22

Showcasing emerging artists—today, my guest is Leia Tyebjee, co-founder of Pylot Studios, an interdisciplinary creative platform dedicated to artistic design, curation, and community engagement. In this episode, we discuss the challenges of creating spaces for artists, breaking barriers in a male-dominated industry, and how Pylot Studios is redefin…

1
How supply chain chaos sank Sunfolding 42:41

2M ago42:41

42:41

Leila Madrone founded Sunfolding in 2012 with an innovative idea – build a solar tracker using pneumatic "airbags" instead of motors and torque tubes. By 2015, the company was deploying the technology in a field test in Davis, California. Over the next six years, Sunfolding iterated on the technology’s design, built out the supply chain, and tried …

1
Accelerating AI Training and Inference with AWS Trainium2 with Ron Diamant - #720 1:07:05

2M ago1:07:05

1:07:05

Today, we're joined by Ron Diamant, chief architect for Trainium at Amazon Web Services, to discuss hardware acceleration for generative AI and the design and role of the recently released Trainium2 chip. We explore the architectural differences between Trainium and GPUs, highlighting its systolic array-based compute design, and how it balances per…

1
Open Circuit: Jigar, Katherine, and Stephen are back 51:52

2M ago51:52

51:52

This week, we’re featuring an episode of Open Circuit, a new show from Latitude Media that reunites Jigar Shah, Katherine Hamilton, and Stephen Lacey. Many listeners may remember them from The Energy Gang, a show they co-hosted for eight years. They are back together, co-hosting a weekly roundtable that will cover the latest news – to explain what'…

1
Retired coal plant to become fusion facility, shared-flow-stabilized z pinches for stable thermal fusion, CNL expands clean energy siting to include fusion 8:22

2M ago8:22

8:22

Mechanical design engineer Jasmine Mund gives this week's global fusion news update, summarizing behind all of the major headlines. Links to all of the stories mentioned are included below. 1. A retired coal plant to become a 350MW stellarator fusion power facilityhttps://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/tva-signs-up-for-type-one-energy-fusion-p…

1
π0: A Foundation Model for Robotics with Sergey Levine - #719 52:30

3M ago52:30

52:30

Today, we're joined by Sergey Levine, associate professor at UC Berkeley and co-founder of Physical Intelligence, to discuss π0 (pi-zero), a general-purpose robotic foundation model. We dig into the model architecture, which pairs a vision language model (VLM) with a diffusion-based action expert, and the model training "recipe," emphasizing the ro…

1
AI Trends 2025: AI Agents and Multi-Agent Systems with Victor Dibia - #718 1:44:59

3M ago1:44:59

1:44:59

Today we’re joined by Victor Dibia, principal research software engineer at Microsoft Research, to explore the key trends and advancements in AI agents and multi-agent systems shaping 2025 and beyond. In this episode, we discuss the unique abilities that set AI agents apart from traditional software systems–reasoning, acting, communicating, and ada…

1
Helion raises $425m for fusion machine, UKAEA invests £200m in fusion development, SMART tokamak advancement 10:00

3M ago10:00

10:00

Jeff Peachman, PhD student at the University of Washington, gives today's Fusion News update - summarizing the major recent headlines in fusion energy. Links to all of the stories mentioned are included below. 1. Helion raises $425M to help build a fusion reactor for Microsoft https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/28/helion-raises-425m-to-help-build-a-fus…

1
The first commercial construction project for low-carbon cement 33:28

3M ago33:28

33:28

In May 2024, Yanni Tsipis was watching as his team prepared to pour a low-carbon version of concrete — one that had never been used in a commercial project. As senior vice president of WS Development, he was in charge of the team building Boston’s largest net-zero office building for operating emissions (not embodied emissions), and he had spearhea…

1
Speculative Decoding and Efficient LLM Inference with Chris Lott - #717 1:16:30

3M ago1:16:30

1:16:30

Today, we're joined by Chris Lott, senior director of engineering at Qualcomm AI Research to discuss accelerating large language model inference. We explore the challenges presented by the LLM encoding and decoding (aka generation) and how these interact with various hardware constraints such as FLOPS, memory footprint and memory bandwidth to limit…

1
Ensuring Privacy for Any LLM with Patricia Thaine - #716 51:33

3M ago51:33

51:33

Today, we're joined by Patricia Thaine, co-founder and CEO of Private AI to discuss techniques for ensuring privacy, data minimization, and compliance when using 3rd-party large language models (LLMs) and other AI services. We explore the risks of data leakage from LLMs and embeddings, the complexities of identifying and redacting personal informat…

1
Pioneering one of the first IRA tax credit transfers 32:30

3M ago32:30

32:30

When Chris Taylor and his team at GridStor were building Santa Barbara county's largest battery storage project in Goleta, CA they saw an opportunity: become one of the first companies to transfer tax credits under the newly passed Inflation Reduction Act. But there was no playbook to follow. Instead of working with smaller, specialized investors, …

1
Commonwealth Fusion Systems plans to build its first power plant in Virginia; UK funds fusion; production of fusion-grade steel at scale 8:42

3M ago8:42

8:42

Dr. Cyd Cowley, working at the intersection of fusion and AI at FIA affiliate member digiLab, gives today's global fusion news update. Links to all of the stories mentioned are included below. 1. Fusion Start-Up Plans to Build Its First Power Plant in Virginia https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/climate/commonwealth-fusion-power-plant.html 2. Minist…

1
AI Engineering Pitfalls with Chip Huyen - #715 57:37

3M ago57:37

57:37

Today, we're joined by Chip Huyen, independent researcher and writer to discuss her new book, “AI Engineering.” We dig into the definition of AI engineering, its key differences from traditional machine learning engineering, the common pitfalls encountered in engineering AI systems, and strategies to overcome them. We also explore how Chip defines …

1
Evolving MLOps Platforms for Generative AI and Agents with Abhijit Bose - #714 58:08

4M ago58:08

58:08

Today, we're joined by Abhijit Bose, head of enterprise AI and ML platforms at Capital One to discuss the evolution of the company’s approach and insights on Generative AI and platform best practices. In this episode, we dig into the company’s platform-centric approach to AI, and how they’ve been evolving their existing MLOps and data platforms to …

1
Building the world’s biggest DAC facility 35:10

4M ago35:10

35:10

On Christmas Eve 2023, Doug Chan wasn't celebrating with family. Instead, he was in Hellisheiði, Iceland with his team, preparing to commission Mammoth — what would become the world's largest operational direct air capture facility. Getting there wasn't easy. After building two successful smaller plants, Climeworks faced its biggest challenge yet i…

1
Happy new year! 2024 recap 10:53

4M ago10:53

10:53

In this special edition of Fusion News, Fusion Industry Association CEO Andrew Holland summarizes fusion's progress in 2024 and introduces some of the major headlines from the year. Links to news stories are included below. Wishing you and your loved ones a happy and healthy 2025! 1. Nuclear Startup Pacific Fusion Nabs $900 Million in Funding https…

1
Why Agents Are Stupid & What We Can Do About It with Dan Jeffries - #713 1:08:49

5M ago1:08:49

1:08:49

Today, we're joined by Dan Jeffries, founder and CEO of Kentauros AI to discuss the challenges currently faced by those developing advanced AI agents. We dig into how Dan defines agents and distinguishes them from other similar uses of LLM, explore various use cases for them, and dig into ways to create smarter agentic systems. Dan shared his “big …

1
General Fusion achievement; China ships ITER modules; Researchers reveal mechanism of runaway electron generation; Tokamak Energy partners with UK and US governments 10:20

5M ago10:20

10:20

December 11, 2024 Mechanical engineer Jasmine Mund gives today's Fusion News episode, summarizing the major fusion news headlines from the past two weeks. Links to all of the stories mentioned are included below.1. General Fusion confirms significant fusion neutron yield and plasma stability during MTF compression experiment series with new peer-re…

1
A complex path for building heat batteries 34:25

5M ago34:25

34:25

In 2022, John O’Donnell and Peter von Behrens figured out how to design a heat battery that would deliver heat at very high, constant temperatures. The breakthrough came on the heels of two years of research and development, some of which took place in Peter’s garage. Now, John and Peter were ready to prove their technology at commercial scale. So …

1
Automated Reasoning to Prevent LLM Hallucination with Byron Cook - #712 56:48

5M ago56:48

56:48

Today, we're joined by Byron Cook, VP and distinguished scientist in the Automated Reasoning Group at AWS to dig into the underlying technology behind the newly announced Automated Reasoning Checks feature of Amazon Bedrock Guardrails. Automated Reasoning Checks uses mathematical proofs to help LLM users safeguard against hallucinations. We explore…

1
The ‘third inning’ of the energy transition [partner content] 35:19

5M ago35:19

35:19

In the aftermath of the presidential election, the clean energy industry is scrambling to figure out what a second Trump administration would mean for their companies and projects. But Tom Burton isn't just looking at the next four years. After 25 years serving the industry with the law firm Mintz, he's thinking about the growth of the industry ove…

1
AI at the Edge: Qualcomm AI Research at NeurIPS 2024 with Arash Behboodi - #711 54:47

5M ago54:47

54:47

Today, we're joined by Arash Behboodi, director of engineering at Qualcomm AI Research to discuss the papers and workshops Qualcomm will be presenting at this year’s NeurIPS conference. We dig into the challenges and opportunities presented by differentiable simulation in wireless systems, the sciences, and beyond. We also explore recent work that …

1
The risk of scaling 100x 29:41

5M ago29:41

29:41

In 2022, Via Separations was getting ready to build its commercial-scale filtration system, a technology that could help cut emissions and costs for a wide range of industries like paper, chemicals, and food processing. And when the company faced two paths — scale up 10x or 100x — CEO and co-founder Shreya Dave decided to scale faster by building a…

1
Fusion startup lands $900M in funding; Japan launches FAST fusion project; NYT covers why fusion is moving fast; Tokamak Energy raises $125M; OpenStar achieves first plasma 9:21

5M ago9:21

9:21

November 27, 2024 Fusion News Dr. Cyd Cowley, working at the intersection of fusion and AI at FIA affiliate member digiLab, gives today's global fusion news update. Links to all of the stories mentioned are included below.1. Nuclear Startup Pacific Fusion Nabs $900 Million in Fundinghttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-25/nuclear-startup…

1
Indie Hacker Special: Piyush Patel founder of AmplifyX Labs on Building Micro-SaaS, Bootstrapping, and Scaling. 41:41

5M ago41:41

41:41

Indie Hacker Special! I speak to Piyush Patel, the founder of AmplifyX Labs and a prominent voice in the micro-SaaS and indie hacking space. From bootstrapping projects to building in public and exploring AI-powered tools, Piyush shares invaluable insights into his personal journey, product development strategies, getting your first customers and t…

1
AI for Network Management with Shirley Wu - #710 53:44

6M ago53:44

53:44

Today, we're joined by Shirley Wu, senior director of software engineering at Juniper Networks to discuss how machine learning and artificial intelligence are transforming network management. We explore various use cases where AI and ML are applied to enhance the quality, performance, and efficiency of networks across Juniper’s customers, including…

1
From Spicy Dreams to Market Domination: Mikhel Rajani co-founder of Naagin Sauce on building India’s No.1 hot sauce brand. 34:14

6M ago34:14

34:14

Chicken and hot sauce are a match made in heaven! In this episode, II’m joined by Mikhel Rajani, co-founder of Naagin Sauce, India’s first and favourite hot sauce brand. Mikhel and his team spotted a gap in the market about five years ago and have since transformed Naagin Sauce into a household name, now partnering with KFC India and reaching both …

1
Why concentrated solar couldn’t compete 33:38

6M ago33:38

33:38

In 2009, John Woolard’s team flipped the switch on a first-of-a-kind concentrated solar power project. The pilot paved the way for BrightSource Energy, where John was CEO, to build its first commercial CSP plant, a 440-megawatt project in the Mojave Desert called Ivanpah. John and his team believed they were far ahead of the competition, including …

1
Why Your RAG System Is Broken, and How to Fix It with Jason Liu - #709 58:03

6M ago58:03

58:03

Today, we're joined by Jason Liu, freelance AI consultant, advisor, and creator of the Instructor library to discuss all things retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). We dig into the tactical and strategic challenges companies face with their RAG system, the different signs Jason looks for to identify looming problems, the issues he most commonly en…

1
Building Strength for Everyday People: Adarsh Gopalakrishnan founder of Move101 on Making Fitness Accessible. 45:40

6M ago45:40

45:40

The world is getting fatter! In this episode, we dive deep into fitness and nutrition with Adarsh Gopalakrishnan, founder of Move101 in Chennai. Move101 is a unique strength and conditioning gym tailored for regular folks with little to no training background, and it also offers online coaching. Adarsh’s journey into fitness began in an unexpected …

1
An Agentic Mixture of Experts for DevOps with Sunil Mallya - #708 1:15:09

6M ago1:15:09

1:15:09

Today we're joined by Sunil Mallya, CTO and co-founder of Flip AI. We discuss Flip’s incident debugging system for DevOps, which was built using a custom mixture of experts (MoE) large language model (LLM) trained on a novel "CoMELT" observability dataset which combines traditional MELT data—metrics, events, logs, and traces—with code to efficientl…

1
Introducing: The Green Blueprint 2:44

6M ago2:44

2:44

We’ve already invented many of the solutions needed to decarbonize the global economy. But a big chunk of emission reductions will come from technologies that are not yet commercial. We don’t have decades to get these commercialized – we have years. So what can we learn from the people who are bringing new technologies from the lab to the market, c…

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