A FreakTakes interview with Jano Costard, Head of Challenges at SPRIN-D — known to some as “a German ARPA.” The interview will give listeners a peak inside the SPRIN-D experiment, from the perspective of one of its leaders.

An in-depth interview with ARIA CEO Ilan Gur. The interview unpacks the exciting metascience experiment that is ARIA, as well as some of the personalities, inspirations, and modes of thinking driving their work.

This video is a recording of an interview done with Chuck Thorpe for the FreakTakes Substack. Chuck was a long-time researcher and PI at Carnegie Mellon. He primarily engaged in computer vision research that would go into the earliest driverless vehicles. By the late 1980s, CMU's vehicles were able to autonomously make short trips around the Pittsburgh area. By 1995, a CMU vehicle drove cross country 98.5% autonomously. This all happened in a period when most universities were becoming worse at managing complex systems projects. This interview dives into how exactly CMU pushed against the grain and turned itself into an autonomous vehicle research powerhouse.

Many have strong opinions on Thomas Edison. From great inventor to great fraud, the opinions run the gamut. But few truly understand what life was like in Edison's lab, how he viewed himself, and what his goals really were. This episode recounts tales from the icon's one true place of comfort: his lab.

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