Fixing American Science Funding

**Ashlee Vance** (0:00)
Do you mind, just because I haven't fully tested that mic for it, do you mind just telling me what you did yesterday in a semi?

**Adam Marblestone** (0:08)
Yesterday, I was in Healdsburg, California, and I was having some meetings and drinking some coffee and walking.

**Anastasia Gamick** (0:15)
You did not drink coffee.

**Adam Marblestone** (0:18)
Seeing beautiful California landscape.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:20)
So you guys were doing the Edge as Meralda.

**Adam Marblestone** (0:24)
That's right.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:26)
Tell me.

**Adam Marblestone** (0:28)
Can you scoot in a little bit?

**Ashlee Vance** (0:30)
Is that okay? Yeah. Then, yeah, sorry, and tell me what you had for breakfast.

**Adam Marblestone** (0:36)
I had delicious hash browns at the place next door. I wanted to have a gluten-free crepe, but Anastasia had some orange juice.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:50)
What was your first car?

**Adam Marblestone** (0:53)
Gray Volvo.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:56)
How long did you drive it?

**Adam Marblestone** (0:57)
Only a couple of years because it broke down on the highway.

**Anastasia Gamick** (1:01)
We could switch too if that would make that easier.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:04)
If that's okay. Sorry, guys.

**Anastasia Gamick** (1:05)
Nope.

**Adam Marblestone** (1:05)
We're all good. Let's see. Okay.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:09)
All right. We've done it.

**Adam Marblestone** (1:10)
Do you like my Gray Volvo too?

**Anastasia Gamick** (1:12)
I've never seen your Gray Volvo.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:16)
Okay. You guys feel good?

**Anastasia Gamick** (1:18)
That sounds great.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:18)
All right. I'm going to do like a little bit of an intro and make it awkward. So you have to sit there listening to me for a second. Okay, here we go.
Adam Marblestone, Anastasia Gamick, thank you for joining me. How are you guys?

**Anastasia Gamick** (1:53)
I'm great.

**Adam Marblestone** (1:54)
Doing really well.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:55)
Doing well. You've been at Edge Esmeralda. For people who have no idea what that is, could you give us like the one minute rundown?

**Anastasia Gamick** (2:03)
It's a pop-up village in which they did not actually build a village. It's just a normal city where a bunch of highly agentic tech weirdos moved to be each other's neighbors and hang out for a month.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:18)
And like do projects and-

**Anastasia Gamick** (2:21)
Everything from, we just did normal meetings there. People built solar water filtration systems, someone built a solar A-frame, talks, Ader Tang was there, which is really exciting. Mostly, I think the point is that you're walking down the street and you run into these other people who are building and doing very cool things.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:42)
Yeah. I've been hearing about this for a couple of years and now I need to go, I think. I will try to make it this year if I can. To give people some context, you both co-founded and run Convergent Research. We will get into what it does, but people are going to be hearing a lot about the concept of a FRO, a Focused Research Organization and what that means to science. I am going to take you out of FRO land at different times as well.
Adam, I learned things about you last night that I know. You were a gymnast, I think, as a young person.

**Adam Marblestone** (3:18)
You found that out.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:19)
Yes, found that out. Became a scientist, worked at Ed Boyden's lab for a while, worked at Google DeepMind, worked at Kernel with Brian Johnson, a little sort of neurolink, sort of consulting stint or something in there, I think. Very early, yeah. And then now have gone into, well, you're just always a super fascinating person to talk to about all things science.

**Adam Marblestone** (3:43)
Looking forward to that, yeah.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:44)
And are pursuing it. Now, Anastasia studied at UCLA and was not like directly neuroscience or something at the beginning, I don't think.

**Anastasia Gamick** (3:53)
No, I studied astrophysics.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:55)
Right.

**Anastasia Gamick** (3:55)
And then I learned I don't like math.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:57)
Okay. And you were very early at Neuralink and helped them kind of set up, get going. And then you worked at a company that I covered, I'm pretty sure I wrote the first story on ever, which was Momentum Machines, which became-

**Anastasia Gamick** (4:14)
Creator.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:15)
Creator, and they were making a robot for like burger making.

**Anastasia Gamick** (4:19)
We made robots that make cheeseburgers.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:21)
Yeah.

**Anastasia Gamick** (4:21)
Highly impactful work.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:23)
It was actually awesome.

**Anastasia Gamick** (4:24)
I loved-

**Ashlee Vance** (4:24)
I love cheeseburgers. Who doesn't love cheeseburgers? I mean, it was cool and it worked, but it sort of flamed out, I think, in the end. And then very famously, I think for a lot of people during the COVID, when COVID was just first kicking off, we're at Curative, which became really well known for actually like figuring out testing in a hurry and doing it at a massive, massive scale. And I think you were- my sense, what I was doing by research is I've known you, but like just digging in. I mean, you seem like a operations whiz because you seem to get things off the ground.