Sitting down with legendary publisher Tim O’Reilly (2018)
Ars on your lunch break: Sitting down with legendary publisher Tim O’Reilly

          
          
We go on to discuss the early days of Tim’s company and then the early days of the Web itself. Then we slip into some of the analogous thinking Tim is renowned for. He asks if we (humans) aren’t basically Google’s microbiome (I was delighted when he voiced this, as similar thinking plays a part in my last novel). We encounter a beast of a word (endosymbiosis), which will make you look brilliant when you next play Scrabble (and also like a cheater, given all those letters. Unless someone first throws down “sis,” then someone else builds it to “symbiosis,” and then you come in with E-N-D-O, while also landing on Triple Word Score, and then you stand up while flipping the table over because you are now the God of Scrabble).
If you enjoy my interview with Tim, a full archive of my episodes can be found on my site, or via your favorite podcast app, by searching under the words “After On.” The broader series is built around deep-dive interviews with world-class thinkers, founders, and scientists, and tends to be very tech- and science-heavy.
Finally, if you’re curious about the latest episode in the main After On podcast feed, this week it’s an interview with Harvard’s David Reich—a top pioneer in the emerging field of ancient DNA. Specifically, the genetic code of Neanderthals, Denisovans, archaic Homo sapiens, and other elders. In just a few years, this field came out of nowhere to reconfigure much of our understanding of human history. More electrifying, it could well save hundreds of thousands of modern human lives per year.
This special edition of the Ars Technicast podcast can be accessed in the following places:
iTunes:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ars-technicast/id522504024?mt=2 (Might take several hours after publication to appear.)
RSS:
http://arstechnica.libsyn.com/rss
Stitcher
http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ars-technicast/the-ars-technicast
Libsyn:
http://directory.libsyn.com/shows/view/id/arstechnica


          
                  