Identity & Humanity
What it means to be human when machines can do almost everything.
EP 09Neil Gawande
Building AI for Human Connection: Neil Gawande on Belonging, Perception, and Five Companies by 20
Neil Gawande started five companies by 20 — from a GPS tracker for seniors to The Block, a personal AI assistant he calls 'ClaudeBot for regular people.' A Still Human conversation about building AI for human connection, belonging as a computational problem, being a third culture kid who belongs nowhere, and what we quietly lose by building too fast.
EP 08William Norden
William Norden: Building Neural Networks from Scratch in C and What Most AI Engineers Skip
A Still Human conversation with William Norden — Research Engineer at Santa Clara University, neuromorphic computing researcher, and the rare builder who writes neural networks in C from scratch. We get into the intelligence augmentation argument, the high-dimensional tapestry of global problems, and why Russian piano pedagogy and USTA tennis show up in his backpropagation.
EP 05Andrey Marey
Build Before You’re Ready: Andrey Marey on High-Agency, Discipline, and Refusing to Use AI With Friends
A 20-year-old serial founder on high-agency, why discipline beats motivation, and the one thing he refuses to ever let AI touch — covering NVIDIA, Vivora, FR8 Finland, and the framework that runs his career.
EP 04Bailley Georgieva
AI Is the Ultimate People Pleaser: Bailley Georgieva on Hypersonics, Critical Thinking, and What Stays Human at Mach 10
A 21-year-old hypersonic researcher on why AI is the ultimate people pleaser, the cost of complacency, and what stays human at Mach 10.
EP 03Krish Jajoo
We Are the Product: Krish Jajoo on Social Media, Silicon Valley Pressure, and Why Human Connection Still Wins
A Santa Clara sophomore on growing up in Silicon Valley, why social media made us the product, and where being human still beats every algorithm.
EP 02Michael Iwashima
Why AI Can’t Reason Over Time: Michael Iwashima on Brain-Computer Interfaces, Biosensors, and Building From Nothing
A bioengineer on why AI still can’t reason over time, what a soccer injury taught him about building from nothing, and where humans still matter most — brain-computer interfaces, biosensors, and accessibility tech.