Stranded Technologies Podcast

Holly Fernandez Lynch is is Associate Professor of Medical Ethics and Law at the University of Pennsylvania, and one of the most influential voices in US bioethics on questions of clinical trial ethics, patient access, and research participant compensation. Holly was an opponent of the 2017 federal right-to-try act, joined Niklas to debate the problems with right-to-try vs. expanded access, and the potential merits and risks of Montana’s approach.

Montana goes beyond federal right-to-try by dropping the life-threatening-disease requirement and lifting the ban on profit. Is a passed phase 1 trial enough protection against snake oil, how is paying a patient to access an unapproved treatment different from paying a research participant to accept risk, and can the data this generates might count as real evidence, or would it be just used as an excuse to skip the FDA process?

More about Holly Fernandez Lynch’s work:

* Holly on LinkedIn

John Cochrane, economist and professor of finance at Stanford Graduate School of Business and fellow at the Hoover Institution, joins the podcast to discuss the first principles of healthcare regulation. John debunks three arguments most commonly used to justify heavy healthcare regulation: that the poor need protection, that patients lack the information to choose well, and that people in a health crisis can’t shop around. Instead under a free market solutions such as private certification and insurance would price in the risk for consumers, bundle and unbundle better options up like in airlines, retail and other consumer industries.

More about John Cochrane’s work:

* After the ACA: Freeing the Market for Health Care

* “Free Market Vaccines” on Cochrane’s blog

* John on X

Niklas sits down with Dr. Anish Koka, a practicing cardiologist, and Dr. Anthony DiGiorgio, a neurosurgeon and academic, co-hosts of The Doctor’s Lounge. It’s a dense conversation about why the US healthcare system is structurally built to favor consolidation, bureaucracy, and large hospital systems, rather than independent doctors or patients.

They break down specific rules working against independent practice, like Stark Law, which bars doctors from referring patients to equipment they own while hospitals face no such restriction, and Certificate of Need laws in over 35 states, which require government approval to open a new healthcare facility, often granted by boards run by existing competitors.

The conversation traces how these incentives, not bad intentions, produced the consolidation defining American healthcare today, and looks at early state-level experiments, including Montana’s rollback of Certificate of Need, as a possible blueprint for reform.

→ Listen to their podcast episode with Niklas on The Doctor’s Lounge

More about Anish Koka’s work:

* Anish on X

* Anish’s Substack

More about Anthony DiGiorgio’s work:

* Anthony on X

* Anthony’s website

Soham is the founder of PopVax, a company building vaccines faster and cheaper using AI, mRNA platforms, and a radically efficient preclinical pipeline based in India.

Crémieux is a pseudonymous writer and researcher known for data-driven essays on genetics, drug regulation, and biotech policy.In this episode, we break down how vaccines actually work, why they may be one of the most powerful longevity medical interventions ever created, and how new approaches could prevent not just infections — but cancer, neurodegeneration, and chronic disease.

We also explore why biotech innovation is shifting toward countries like China and India, how regulatory systems slow down progress, and what it would take to radically accelerate drug development worldwide.

This is a conversation about science, institutions, and the future of human health.

More about Soham’s work:

* PopVax

* Soham on X

More about Crémieux’s work:

* Cremieux Substack

* Crémieux on X

In this episode, Niklas Anzinger sits down with Stephen Martin, U.S. Lead at Infinita and Operations Lead of the Montana Experimental Treatment Review Board (ETRB), to explore what could become a new model for biotech development and patient access in the United States.

Montana SB 535, is a new framework allowing eligible post-Phase 1 experimental treatments to reach patients under regulated oversight with special clinic licenses and an expert review board. Stephen explains why traditional Right-to-Try and expanded access programs have struggled to scale, and how Montana could change the economics by allowing biotechs to generate real-world evidence, treat patients, and create revenue earlier in the development process.

They discuss how the pathway works in practice, who qualifies, opportunities for biotech companies and physicians, the relationship between state and federal regulation, the FDA’s role, and whether Montana could ultimately provide a blueprint for accelerating drug development across the United States.

More on this topic:

* Scott Alexander on the Aduhelm Approval

* Jared Rhoads on X

Reason, co-founder and CEO of Repair Biotechnologies and a longevity industry veteran with a background in astrophysics, joins us to talk about what it actually takes to test a therapy on humans, and why the system built to protect patients often keeps the best evidence hidden.

He breaks down why investors backing gene and cell therapies care more about a drug’s earning potential than whether it works, and why treatments already in use could be quietly adding years to human lifespan without anyone confirming it. Drawing on his own experience as a trial participant in Roatán, he also explains why Australia has become a faster, cheaper alternative for clinical trials, and how much of that gap comes down to culture rather than actual safety.

More about Reason’s work:

* Fight Aging!

Tim Urban, creator of Wait But Why and the mind behind one of the most-watched TED Talks of all time, joins us to talk about why progress does not happen automatically.

In this episode, he discusses the Space Race, longevity, AI safety, startup cities, and the social conditions that allow new ideas to survive. Tim explains why some technologies move fast while others stall for decades, why the best communities treat ideas like experiments, and why the future may depend less on prediction and more on building better environments for progress.

More about Tim Urban’s work:

* Tim Urban’s X

* What’s Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies

Antonio Garcia Martinez is a writer, entrepreneur, and director at Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum L2. Before that he sold a startup to Twitter, worked on ads at Facebook, and wrote Chaos Monkeys, his memoir about the early ad-tech world.

This session was recorded live in the Infinity Dome in Prospera. Antonio explains why crypto is not just a new financial system. It is a direct challenge to one of the oldest powers of the state: controlling money and deciding who owns what. If you can send USDC on Base to anyone in the room in less than a second for less than a cent, and no bank or government can stop it, the foundations of the current world start to shift.

From there, we move into the friction between digital freedom and physical geography. Antonio, Niklas and Eric talk about Próspera as a real world network state, why San Francisco stays a magnet even when it fails on the basics, and which places have the energy to become new tech hubs. Miami, Dubai, Singapore, and the American West all come up as examples. They also look at the hard questions: how to build a business model for charter cities, how the US might allow Prospera-style zones through interstate compacts, and what needs to change in education and citizenship to attract long-term residents.

This is a conversation about the future of crypto, but also about the future of how people live, build, and move. It is one of the clearest snapshots of where the network state movement is heading.

More about Antonio’s work:

* Website

* Books

* Linkedin

Explore Infinita City:

* Explore the Archive: The Infinita City Times

* Visit Infinita City

* Join the Builders’ Hub on Telegram

* Follow Infinita City on X

In this episode, the famous blogger Tomas Pueyo (Uncharted Territories) interviews Trey Goff (Chief of Staff & Head of Public Policy at Prospera) & Niklas Anzinger (Founder & CEO of Infinita City). The interview is part of the research that Tomas did for a deep piece on “The Cold Start Problem of New Cities”, as Niklas & Trey are two of the most experienced practitioners in this emerging industry. This ends up in a fascinating conversation about how new governance applied to time & place, culminating in new cities, could unlock entirely new models of human progress.

More about Tomas Pueyo’s work:

* 20 Ideas to Grow New Communities

* Tomas Pueyo’s X

More about Trey Goff’s work:

* Trey Goff’s X

In this episode, Jonathan Anomaly joins us to discuss the collapse of trust in modern institutions, the rise of tribal politics, and why liberty increasingly depends on exit rather than persuasion.We explore embryo selection, genetics, rational irrationality, startup societies, academia, media manipulation, and the future of liberalism in an age of polarization.From controversial ideas to practical entrepreneurship, this conversation dives into what happens when people stop asking permission and start building alternatives.