Podcasts

China has been a tough market to crack for U.S. internet companies. One of the key reasons is China has its own crop of hugely successful and highly innovative companies. Andreessen Horowitz’s Chris Dixon, Connie Chan and Benedict Evans highlight the key players in China, and what non-Chinese companies can learn from them. Where Chinese companies and money are headed next.

a16z Podcast: China and Tech

On today’s show and thanks to one of our loyal listeners, I was able to finally meet up with Elizabeth Rossiello. Elizabeth is an American living and working in Kenya. She has worked as a microfinance analyst and investment associate since 2009. She is an expert in East African financial product development and she is the CEO and Co-Founder of BitPesa. BitPesa is the next logical step after mpesa and if you have no idea what I’m talking about, then stay tuned because this is a great interview.


CREDITS:

Links for the charities:
Tunapanda Institute
Contact: Jay Larson Jay@tunapanda.org

R.O.C.K
Contact Jason Lee  JLee1782@gmail.com

Heshima Kenya
Contact Tracey Hagman tracey@heshima.org

To get in touch with BitPesa:  info@bitpesa.co

Ode To Satoshi

Ode to Satoshi lyrics & melody by John Barrett
Copyright 2014 RJM Publishing - BMI Nashville. 

Lead Vocal, Harmony Vocals, Harmonica, Snare Drum: John Barrett
Harmony vocals: John Barrett, Connie Sinclair and Lij Shaw
Guitar: Jonathan Brown
Mandolin: Ben Miller
Bass Guitar: Michael Rinne

Initial tracks recorded by Mark Thornton of Sidekick Sound Studios, Madison, TN.  All other tracks Recorded, Mixed and Mastered at The Toy Box Studio, Nashville, Tennessee
Engineer: Lij Shaw. Assistant to engineer: Don “The Don” Bates
Produced by John Barrett & Elijah “Lij” Shaw
 
Special thanks to Alex Munoz Guijarro for his excellent pedal steel playing on many of our shows.

Interviews for this episode were edited and produced by John Barrett at The Tree House Studio - East Nashville, Tennessee.

Theme song “Gravy” by the band, Eleanor Roosevelt with Lij on fiddle.

Special thanks to Alex Munõz Guijarro for his excellent pedal steel playing on many of our shows.

Interviews for this episode were recorded and edited by John Barrett at The Tree House Studio - East Nashville, Tennessee. All shows are produced by John Barrett with the moral support of his trusty sidekick Maxwell Rascalnikov CoyoTe Rex, aka Max.

Theme song “Gravy” by the band, Eleanor Roosevelt with Elijah “Lij” Shaw on fiddle.

And a big thank you for moral support from my good friends at The Tennessee Bitcoin Alliance:
TennesseeBitcoin.org
 
Questions or Comments?

Bitcoins and Gravy Hotline: (615) 208-5198
Listeners . . . listen up! Call this number and say something funny, sing a song, read a poem or just rant! Or if you’d rather you can ask me a question, leave a comment, make a suggestion or record a complaint! If I like what you say I’ll put it on the next show!

Email me to say Howdy!: howdy@bitcoinsandgravy.com

Visit theWebsite: BitcoinsAndGravy.com

Bitcoins and Gravy Tipping Addresses:

Bitcoin: 1ByqQXLTm9JZGSwnfqCCakaifBt3grQkXS
Litecoin: LgqYgxLTBPgr8C1JGLLJVLK4ZN1fveprAp

And if you don’t feel like contacting me, just kick back, relax and enjoy the show. 
I hope you enjoy listening to my guests as much as I enjoy talking with them!


Bitcoins and Gravy Episode #46 BitPesa for Remittances and Spending!

There are a couple of seemingly contradictory memes rolling around the deep learning field. One is that you need a truly epic amount of data to do interesting work. The other is that in many subject areas there is a ton of data but it's not just laying around for data scientists to snarf up.

On this week's Structure Show podcast, Enlitic Founder and CEO Jeremy Howard and Senior Data Scientist Ahna Girshick address those topics and more.

Girshick, who is our first guest who's worked with Philip Glass and Björk on creating music visualizations, said while there may be scads of MRIs, CAT scans, x-rays created -- they're typically used for their primary purpose -- to diagnose your bum knee, and are then squirreled away in some PACS system never to see the light of day again.

All of that data is useful for machine learning algorithms, or would be, if it were accessible, she said.

Girshick and  Howard agreed that while deep learning -- the process of a computer teaching itself how to solve a problem -- gets better with more data, there's no reason to hold off working with it for data become available.

"While more data can be better I think this is stopping people from trying to use big data inappropriately," Howard said. He cited a recent Kaggle competition on facial key point recognition that's  using 7,000 images and "the top algorithms are nearly perfectly accurate."

The reason companies like Baidu and Google say you need mountains of data is because they have mountains of data available, he said.  "I don't think people should be put off trying to use deep learing just because they don't have a lot of data."

Enlitic is using deep learning to provide medical diagnoses faster and help provide better medical and outcomes for millions of underserved people.

It's a fascinating discussion so please check it out -- Girshick will speak more on what Enlitic is doing at Structure Data next month.

And, if you want to hear what's going on with Pivotal's big data portfolio, Derrick Harris has the latest. Oh and Microsoft makes a bold play for startups by ponying up $500K in Azure cloud credits starting with the Y Combinator Winter 2015 class. That ups the ante pretty significantly compared to what Amazon Web Services, Google and IBM offer. Your move boys.

No, you don't need a ton of data to do deep learning

A social media mistake for the record books, and a quiet saint of Wikipedia. 

Reply All from Gimlet Media

#14 The Art of Making and Fixing Mistakes

The 2025 hurricane season is underway, and the U.S. is likely to see higher than average activity. The past couple of years, extremely warm water in the Gulf of Mexico helped storms rapidly intensify to major hurricanes. But cuts to federal weather monitoring and hurricane modeling could leave the U.S. underprepared for strengthening storms.
Also, record-breaking heat in the oceans has led to the most widespread coral bleaching event ever documented, ongoing since January 2023. Bleaching weakens the corals and many end up dying, but others can recover and researchers are finding ways to help corals survive and thrive. 
And poor air quality from wildfire smoke and other pollutants can harm cardiovascular health and also make farmworkers more prone to work injuries, according to researchers. But in California, requirements for employers to hand out face masks are often too late to prevent farmworkers from experiencing impacts. We talk about proposals to better protect the people who grow our food from air pollution.	


Hurricane Forecasting in 2025, Saving Corals Amid Record Bleaching, Protecting Farmworkers from Wildfire Smoke and more.

Just as the enslavement of people was driven by commercial interests, today the enslavement of nature for profit violates a morality that sees value in all living things, according to the Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, pastor of New Roots AME Church in Dorchester, Massachusetts and former Chief of Environment, Energy and Open Spaces for the City of Boston. She joins us to reflect on how overcoming slavery, which is celebrated on Juneteenth, can inspire us to find ways to depend on each other so we can thrive in a world of ecological justice. 

Juneteenth and Striving for Ecological Justice

As the climate crisis brings ever more devastating floods, storms, heat waves and fires, the Republican-led Congress and President Trump have slashed around half a trillion dollars in clean energy tax credits that would have reduced climate pollution and helped America to better adapt to climate change. 
Also, catastrophic floods like the one that claimed at least 100 lives in Texas this July are becoming more likely because of climate disruption. A meteorologist joins us to talk about the atmospheric and climate conditions that contribute to flood disasters, and the growing need to be weather aware.
Plus, about a quarter of US homes use private septic systems, which can run you thousands of dollars. And more than a million people in America today are living without indoor plumbing, too often in appalling, unhealthy conditions. Catherine Coleman Flowers is working to change that, and she talks about her work to help rural families across America lead healthier and wealthier lives by improving sanitation. 

Congress Busts Carbon Budget, Climate Disruption Worsens Flood Risks, and America’s Rural Sanitation Crisis.

Weather forecasting, climate research and climate resilience are being hit with major budget and staffing cuts by the Trump administration, impacting emergency preparedness for floods such as the one that devastated the Texas hill country. 
Also, research has long shown that the top two coffee species, Arabica and Robusta, are vulnerable to climate impacts like increased drought and heat. And by 2050 as much as half of coffee producing land could no longer be suitable for these top species. But excitement is brewing over a climate resilient bean called excelsa. 
And residents of Reserve, Louisiana in “Cancer Alley” recently received stunning news that Denka Performance Elastomer, which has for years emitted high levels of cancer-causing air pollutants, would indefinitely suspend its operations. Tish Taylor of Concerned Citizens of St. John speaks about illnesses her family has endured, her community’s cautious celebration of the decision and cleaner air, and how her fight against environmental racism continues.

Weaker Disaster Prep, Climate-Resilient Coffee, Clearing Air in Cancer Alley, and more.

Eels play an important ecological role in many rivers and streams, but they’re so eel-usive that even eel scientists have been challenged to observe them mating in the wild. Ellen Ruppel Shell is author of the 2024 book Slippery Beast: A True Crime Natural History, with Eels, and she sheds light on the eel’s murky ecology and path through the seafood industry.

And the relentless heating of the Earth is prompting people to move after climate-related catastrophes and amid more gradual changes. Journalist Abrahm Lustgarten is the author of On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America, about the northward migration he anticipates as Americans seek to escape punishing heat, fire, and drought.

Also stargazing has profoundly shaped who we are as human beings, and gave rise to science, religion, and origin stories from diverse traditions. Roberto Trotta, the author of the new book Starborn: How the Stars Made Us (And Who We Would Be Without Them) joins us to discuss how studying the night sky shaped science and why satellites now threaten our connection to the stars.


Slippery Beast: A True Crime Natural History, with Eels, Uprooted By Climate, Starborn: How the Stars Made Us and more.

A study from Johns Hopkins researchers found that residents near or on the fence line of polluting enterprises are at higher risk for multiple health problems because of the toxic mix of air they breathe. The lead researcher explains the study.

Also, astronomer Phil Plait wondered what it would be like to walk on Mars, fall into a black hole, or fly through a nebula, so he wrote a book, Under Alien Skies: A Sightseer’s Guide to the Universe. He reveals the strange colors of a sunset on Mars, what it’s like on a planet orbiting binary stars, the unique challenges of landing on an asteroid, and more.

And a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports describes the case study of an orangutan who treated and healed his own wound. Zoologists have long seen behaviors of self-medicating in the animal kingdom, but until now it has rarely if ever been documented in scientific literature.

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We rely on support from listeners like you to keep our journalism strong. You can donate at loe.org – any amount is appreciated! – and thank you for your support.

Complex Air Pollution and Public Health, Under Alien Skies: A Sightseer’s Guide to the Universe, Animal Self-Medicating

Sounds like the overlapping songs of birds can speak volumes about the biodiversity in an ecosystem, and now scientists are looking to use the tiny sounds made by earthworms, ants, and voles to study the health of soils. 
Also, "depaving parties" of volunteers with sledgehammers are turning paved yards into pollinator havens and green space. That can help reduce climate impacts from extreme heat and flooding.
Plus -- a scientist who rappels down cliffs to hand-pollinate endangered plants. A vine that mimics the leaves of nearby species. Rice that crowds out strangers but leaves room for the roots of relatives. The book “The Light Eaters” tackles big questions of plant intelligence, consciousness, and communication. 
-- 
Know someone who might be interested in a Living on Earth internship this fall? Visit loe.org/about/jobs to learn more. Apply by August 22nd.  


Sounds of Soil, “Depaving” the Way to Greener Neighborhoods, The Light Eaters and more.

New Jersey officials are calling its $2 billion settlement with major manufacturers of PFAS “forever chemicals” the largest environmental settlement ever won by a state. We discuss the legacy of industrial contamination in the state and how the settlement is expected to pay for cleanup as well as restoration of degraded ecosystems. 
Also, scientists in the UK were able to use genetically modified bacteria to turn plastic bottles into the common pain reliever acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol and Tylenol. The lead researcher speaks with us about the potential applications of this biotech breakthrough. 
And with an unusually short period for public comments the Trump administration is moving to repeal the “Roadless Rule,” which currently protects over 45 million pristine acres of national forests from access roads for logging. A public lands advocate explains the potential consequences for critical habitat, watersheds, carbon storage and recreation if the Roadless Rule is repealed.
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PFAS Polluters Pay Up, Tylenol Upcycled from Plastic, Roadless Rule Under Fire, and more.

New research finds that since 2010 killer heat waves have become 200 times more likely, thanks to greenhouse gas emissions, and the scientists say about half of the increase in heatwaves can be attributed to big coal, big oil, big gas and cement. 
Also, while the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season has been relatively quiet, last year damages from three major hurricanes ran to over 200 billion dollars and claims have stressed homeowners and insurance companies alike. We hear about Florida homeowners facing rising premiums and the cancellation of their insurance policies.
And as the air turns crisp in the northern U.S., many of us are heading out for the autumn tradition of apple picking. The fascinating and complex science and history behind the iconic apple.
--- 
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Heat Waves Linked to Company Emissions, Insurance and Homeowners Underwater, The Light Between Apple Trees and more.

China has for the first time committed to an absolute target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, by 7 to 10 percent by 2035. We discuss China’s growing dominance in the global clean energy transition while the current US administration doubles down on fossil fuels.
Also, compared to traditional rooftop solar, “balcony solar” offers renters, apartment dwellers and folks on a tighter budget a much less expensive solar energy starter kit.
Balcony solar is already common in Europe and Asia, and now it’s getting a boost from state legislation in the US.
And members of the late conservationist Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots youth organization and the Living on Earth crew share memories of her and gratitude for her enduring gifts to the world.
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China’s Climate Pledge, Balcony Solar, Remembering Jane Goodall and more.

A weekly podcast from GigaOM providing the latest news, analysis and interviews about the cloud, infrastructure and big data spaces. 

No, you don't need a ton of data to do deep learning

Gigaom Structure

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