PJ Vogt

First things first, can you just introduce yourself?

AI and Silicon Valley culture.

That's how you describe your beat?

I really enjoy your writing.

As somebody who's on the East Coast and feels like strange ideas are moving through San Francisco very quickly, sometimes they make it here, sometimes they don't, but it feels like a laboratory for weird shit.

Like not just technology, but just like ways to live.

Why are you drawn to that?

Like why do you like being there for that?

So you're running around here talking to all these people far from the emperor's view.

One of the stories that has, I feel like it's been percolating for the past couple of years.

I had an awareness of it, but anything that involves science or medicine, I'm always like, how long can I wait before I have to actually understand this?

You've been covering it really well.

It's peptides.

Like what is just at the generic sort of sixth grade science class level, like what is a peptide?

Wait, and so when you say it's a mimetic super weapon, you mean that it's like there are certain topics that

depending on what community you're in.

But if you raise them at a party, it's just like everyone just sort of summons to the conversation, whether they have opinions, whether they have questions.

And it sounds like it's like the combination of everyone's always looking for a fountain of youth.

There's something risky and naughty about Chinese gray market chemicals.

But in a world where you have a culture of people who risk taking an optimization, this is just like catnip in a way that maybe it wouldn't even be in New York.