Hard Fork Live, Part 2: Patrick Collison of Stripe + Kathryn Zealand of Skip + Listener Questions

What It Covers

Hard Fork hosts Kevin Roose and Casey Newton present their live show featuring Stripe CEO Patrick Collison on abundance agenda and building infrastructure, plus Skip CEO Catherine Zealand demonstrating exoskeleton pants technology.

Key Questions Answered

• •Scientific funding constraints: Survey reveals 79% of top scientists would significantly change their research agenda if freed from current funding restrictions and committee-based allocation systems, not requiring more money but fewer bureaucratic strictures on existing funds.
• •Construction velocity decline: California built Treasure Island to celebrate Golden Gate Bridge completion in the 1940s, but now takes 37-plus years for high-speed rail projects. Physical building faces most unnecessary self-imposed constraints compared to other technological progress areas.
• •Stablecoin dollar dominance: Majority of cryptocurrency transactions now occur in dollar-denominated stablecoins rather than Bitcoin, potentially strengthening dollar adoption globally by enabling people outside US to hold and transact in dollars where local currencies lose 75% value.
• •Complex disease research gap: Humanity has never cured a complex disease caused by genetic and environmental factors combined. New virtual cell models enable computational biology experiments in milliseconds versus months of physical lab work, potentially accelerating disease research dramatically.