Can AI Talk To Whales? | Project CETI Founder David Gruber
Season 2 · Episode 2
Thursday, October 1, 2026 • Duration 52:42
The real reason AI was given to humans is to communicate with animals, according to David Gruber. A marine biologist and National Geographic Explorer, he is the founder of Project CETI, a global effort of more than 50 scientists across eight disciplines working to decode the communication of sperm whales. In this episode of Forecast 2050, I sit down with David to discuss the prospect of an interspecies dialogue and the seismic implications it will have for all of us, whales included.
Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/can-ai-talk-to-whales-project-ceti
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:48 David's Journey
12:30 An Interspecies Dialogue
17:14 Sperm Whale Language & Culture
23:48 The Breakthroughs Yet to Come
27:49 The Whales Are Yappers
31:03 Sperm Whales Have Accents
39:47 Verifying a Whale Translation
42:13 What Success Looks Like
47:32 Saving the Whales
David Gruber is a marine biologist and National Geographic Explorer who founded Project CETI, a team of more than 50 scientists using AI to decode how sperm whales communicate.
David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-gruber-b003871/
Project CETI on X: https://x.com/ProjectCETI
Project CETI on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/projectceti/
Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.
Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12
Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/
Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.
Head to nebular.vc for more info.
'Claude's Priest': Fr. Brendan McGuire on Shaping AI for the Common Good
Season 2 · Episode 1
Thursday, September 24, 2026 • Duration 01:09:19
Fr. Brendan McGuire believes that we still have an opportunity to align AI for the common good, though time is running out. A Silicon Valley executive turned Catholic priest, Fr. Brendan has spent decades as a confidant to the people building frontier technology, and was one of the external contributors to Anthropic’s Claude Constitution.
In this episode of Forecast 2050, Nebular General Partner Finn Murphy sits down with Fr. Brendan to discuss Pope Leo XIV's encyclical about AI, Magnifica Humanitas, why AI needs to learn forgiveness, whether AIs have souls, and why we probably have less than a year before recursive self-improvement to ensure these models benefit humanity.
Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/father-brendan-mcguire-claudes-priest
01:45 Silicon Valley Tech Exec to Man of the Cloth
08:10 We Need Smart AI Regulation
11:46 The Pope's Warning: Don't Build a New AI Tower of Babel
19:10 Why AI Needs to Learn Forgiveness
27:26 What Hugging Face Shows About AI Morality
31:56 Do AIs Have Souls? Would We Baptise An Alien?
40:06 Watching Others Die Puts the AI Doomers In Perspective
44:20 Why Anthropic Asked the Church for Help 53:39 AI Doesn't Have to Be Winner-Takes-All
58:23 We Have Less Than a Year to Shape AI's Morality before RSI
01:02:23 Tolkien Morality vs Game of Thrones Brutality
Forecast 2050 Season 2 Trailer
Season 2
Tuesday, September 22, 2026 • Duration 02:22
Forecast 2050 Season 2 has arrived with a brand new set of conversations with the thinkers, founders, and investors shaping the next 25 years.
Hosted by Nebular General Partner Finn Murphy.
Guests:
Fr. Brendan McGuire
David Gruber
Gen. David Petraeus
Walter Goodwin & Sir Robin Saxby
Yi-Ling Liu
Laura Kreidberg
Patrick McGee
Francesco Sciortino
Adrian Woolfson
Francis Fukuyama
Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12
Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/
Forecast 2050 on X: https://x.com/forecast2050
Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.
Head to nebular.vc for more info.
Enveda's Radical Vision for the Future of Medicine | Viswa Colluru & Pablo Lubroth
Season 1 · Episode 10
Wednesday, May 6, 2026 • Duration 56:17
Enveda Founder and CEO Viswa Colluru believes we have been looking for new medicines in the wrong places for decades.
In the Season 1 finale of Forecast 2050, I sat down with Viswa and Pablo Lubroth, VP of Special Projects at Enveda, to discuss why 9 in 10 drugs fail in clinical trials despite Big Pharma spending $276 billion in annual R&D, how AI is finally unlocking 99% of nature's chemistry that we've haven't been able to read, why the incentive structure of biotech capital markets is actively bad for patients, why insisting on understanding how a drug works actually slows down drug discovery, why aging may not be inevitable, and why mental health is going to be the defining medical crisis of the next 25 years.
Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/3dc95f79-4a7e-4c80-9630-970c1e6e2117
01:09 The Quintessential Problem With Drug Discovery
04:57 Pablo’s Journey to Enveda
06:29 Insisting on Understanding Biological Mechanisms Slows Down Drug Discovery
09:39 Science Has Been Divorced From Human Experience
12:22 Scientific Reductionism Has Not Led to Better Drugs
19:31 Lessons Learned From Big Pharma Missing Out On GLP-1s
22:11 Capital Markets Disinventivize Risk-Taking and Harm Patients
28:12 How to Prioritize Which Illnesses to Cure
33:38 Prediction and Prevention is a Better Strategy Than Treatment
38:27 Drugs to Make Us Limitless Like Bradley Cooper
Building the Next Great American City | Esmeralda CEO Devon Zuegel
Season 1 · Episode 9
Wednesday, April 29, 2026 • Duration 41:33
Devon Zuegel believes America has been building cities wrong for decades. She grew up spending summers in Chautauqua, an intellectual community in western New York where four generations of her family shared a household and she knew her neighbors better than the ones at home in California. Now she's building a village called Esmeralda 90 minutes north of San Francisco to prove that formula can be replicated.
I sat down with Devon in San Francisco to talk about harnessing urban planning as a powerful technological force for good, age-segregation in America and the impending population crisis, and why we need more incredible cities popping up across the country over the next 25 years.
Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/8bcb1293-d2f5-4c6c-a133-8a6d0826b839
13:29 American Colleges Make the Economy Dynamic, but Break Up Families
17:39 Remote Work and the Expansion of the Metropolis
19:55 A Real Alternative to the Suburb/City Dilemma
22:21 Real Life Is The Classroom
26:04 Esmeralda’s Open Door Policy
27:59 Making Cities Worth Living In
32:51 The NIMBY Problem
Rule Britannia? How the UK Wins the AI Era | Matt Clifford & Ian Hogarth
Season 1 · Episode 8
Wednesday, April 22, 2026 • Duration 41:10
Matt Clifford and Ian Hogarth believe Europe is roughly a decade behind the United States in building the technology companies that will define the next era. But they also believe that the gap can be closed, and that the UK and Europe could even leapfrog America, if political leaders and the public make fundamentally different choices.
I sat down with Matt, co-founder of Entrepreneurs First and architect of the UK Government's AI strategy, and Ian, co-founder of Plural and Chair of the UK's AI Foundation Model Taskforce, to talk about what Europe needs to do to save itself from stagnation. We get into why Europe's risk aversion is a bigger threat than American superiority, why career politicians won't survive in the new multipolar world, and why the pro-growth movement is losing the culture war — and how to win it back.
Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/2dc713af-826a-43dc-a2ad-91ad00ee6134
01:01 The Compounding Effect: Why the US Is Winning
03:50 Jumpstarting European Growth
06:48 We Must Risk Failure to Succeed
09:30 Crisis as Catalyst
12:21 The Multipolar Moment
14:31 AI Nationalism
18:41 Career Politicians Won’t Survive the New Global Order
21:32 The Apollo Moonshot for the UK
25:26 The UK Has a De-Growth Cultural Problem
28:32 Growth ≠ Good
33:55 Prediction Markets as Gambling Companies
Dimming the Sun to Save the World | Stardust CEO Yanai Yedvab on Solving Climate Change by 2050
Season 1 · Episode 7
Wednesday, April 15, 2026 • Duration 48:19
Yanai Yedvab thinks we need to completely overhaul the infrastructure of humanity to avoid a climate disaster, and we can't afford to wait the 70 years it’ll take to wean off fossil fuels. Before founding Stardust, Yanai spent nearly three decades in Israeli nuclear research, ending up as deputy chief scientist at the Israel Atomic Energy Commission.
Stardust is developing reflective particles to disperse into the upper atmosphere that will buy us the several decades we need to transition into a low-carbon economy. We sat down in New York to talk about how the technology works, the dangers at stake if we do nothing, and Yanai's radical optimism in spite of everything.
Stardust Publication on Safety: https://www.stardustsolutions.com/science
Stardust Publication on Ethics: https://www.stardustsolutions.com/guiding-principles
Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/191c8d8c-50a1-42d4-a44e-03e618b9d359
12:01 The Montreal Protocol and How to Negotiate in a World at War
16:03 Buying Time: Weaning off Fossil Fuels Will Take 50-70 Years
18:55 Data Centers, Fission, and Fusion
The Technologies That Will Remake Civilization by 2050 | Casey Handmer
Season 1 · Episode 6
Wednesday, April 8, 2026 • Duration 52:56
Casey Handmer thinks we're living through the most consequential 25 years in human history, and that human civilization is just getting started.
I sat down with Casey in Los Angeles to discuss how China's dominance in solar energy deployment should be a wake-up call for the West, why antimatter is the only rocket fuel that makes interstellar travel possible, and how slowing down aging may be the best solution to plummeting birthrates across the planet. For Casey, the balrog in the deep isn’t demographic decline, but a climate catastrophe that swallows every coastline on Earth.
Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/6c52cb7a-572b-4f5f-8bf9-70fdaf14cf98
12:03 The $40 Trillion Ticket to Space: Antimatter
20:57 Space Exploration by 2050
22:09 Mitigating The Climate Catastrophe
27:53 Terraforming Mars vs Terraforming Venus
35:00 Solving the Birthrate Crisis: Humans Will Become Like The Elves in LOTR and Live Indefinitely
42:07 China Is Losing Sleep Over Their Problems As Much as We Are
44:46 Governments Are Lying About Their Population Sizes
46:11 The 2050 Moonshots That Will Save The World
Space AI, Moon Resorts, and Interstellar Calamity | Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston on 2050
Season 1 · Episode 5
Monday, March 30, 2026 • Duration 41:11
Starcloud Founder and CEO Philip Johnston believes data centers in space are the first step to becoming a Kardashev level civilization. I caught up with Philip at Starcloud’s HQ to talk about his vision for the next 25 years. The conversation covers everything from luxury space tourism, whether Tesla’s Optimus robot will become a self-replicating galactic probe, the hard problem of consciousness, whether the world is a simulation, Mars becoming the next America, and Philip’s greatest concern for our long-term future.
Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/data-centers-in-space-moon-resorts
03:12 Elon Will Bring Launch Costs Down with Starship
06:50 The 2050 Space Economy: Moon Hotels, Asteroid Mining and Manufacturing
16:37 The 2050 Martian Colony: A Stepping Stone for Exploring the Universe
26:32 The Kardashev Scale of Civilization
28:44 We Live in a Simulation: The Fermi Paradox & The Great Filter
34:52 Cracking the Hard Problem of Consciousness
37:46 There is a Calamitous Event Waiting for Us
39:04 Mars is the Next America
Philip Johnston is the co-founder and CEO of Starcloud, a space technology company building orbital data centers powered by solar energy to run AI and compute infrastructure in space.
Philip on X: https://x.com/PhilipJohnston
Conflict and Diplomacy in an Era of Recklessness | Sir Malcolm Rifkind on 2050
Season 1 · Episode 4
Wednesday, March 25, 2026 • Duration 01:02:28
Sir Malcolm Rifkind served as Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom from 1995 to 1997 and as Defence Secretary before that. He has sat across from Soviet ministers while a KGB double agent secretly briefed both sides, watched the Berlin Wall fall when nobody saw it coming, and has been banished from Russia by Putin personally for his criticism of the invasion of Crimea. I sat down with Sir Malcolm in London this January to talk about the next 25 years of conflict and diplomacy, and how to navigate a world where nobody cares about the old rules anymore.
Extended Show Notes: https://substack.com/home/post/p-192033568
27:43 Technological Innovation Will Hurt Old People
30:58 The Chinese Will Eat Their Rich
38:11 Meeting Gorbachev and His Philosopher Wife
44:32 There Are No Good Guys and Bad Guys
46:46 Ukraine will Freeze Up like Korea, Kashmir, and Cyprus
47:55 Taiwan is More Important than Iran
53:23 How Smaller Countries Operate without Pax Americana
55:09 “The Chinese and the Russians Cannot Believe Their Luck” - on NATO Collapse
Fr. Brendan McGuire is an engineer turned Silicon Valley executive turned Catholic priest at St. Simon Parish in Los Altos, CA. He is an external contributor to Anthropic's Claude Constitution.
Fr. Brendan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frbrendanmcguire/
St. Simon Parish: https://stsimon.church/
Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.
Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12
Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/
Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.
Head to nebular.vc for more info.
42:53 Aging is Not Inevitable
43:34 Everyone Has a Chinese Peptide Guy
50:13 The Loon Shots for 2050
52:39 Mental Health Will be The Biggest Challenge for 2050
54:46 The AI Revolution in Medicine
Viswa Colluru is the Founder & CEO of Enveda, a clinical-stage biotech company using AI to discover new drugs from nature. He built Enveda from $55K of personal savings into a unicorn with over $500M raised and multiple assets in clinical trials. Before founding Enveda, Viswa was the first Innovation Scientist and Product Manager at Recursion Pharmaceuticals. He holds a PhD in immuno-oncology from UW-Madison.
Pablo Lubroth is a VP of Special Projects at Enveda and the Co-Founder & Editor of Decoding Bio. He previously built and led the biotech practice at Hummingbird Ventures and co-hosts the annual AI x Bio Summit at the NYSE. Pablo holds degrees in Neuropharmacology and Biochemical Engineering from UCL and an MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise from the University of Cambridge.
Viswa on X: https://x.com/viswacolluru
Pablo on X: https://x.com/pablolubroth
Enveda: https://enveda.com
Decoding Bio: https://www.decodingbio.com
Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.
Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12
Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/
Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.
Head to nebular.vc for more info.
35:10 The Digital-Physical Divergence
38:29 The Cities That Have Gotten It Right Before
Devon Zuegel is the founder and president of the Esmeralda Institute, where she is building Esmeralda, a village of the future just 90 minutes north of San Francisco envisioned as a Chautauqua for Silicon Valley.
Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.
Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12
Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/
Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.
Head to nebular.vc for more info.
36:23 Political Leaders Should Not Be Neutral About the Good Life
37:41 UK and Europe: Geography as Destiny
39:33 The Next Pendulum Swings for Europe
Matt Clifford is the co-founder and Chair of Entrepreneurs First, the world's leading talent investor, and Chair of ARIA, the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency. He authored the UK Government's AI Opportunities Action Plan and served as the Prime Minister's Adviser on AI. He was named to the TIME100 list of most influential people in AI and was awarded a CBE for services to AI in 2024.
Ian Hogarth is co-founder and partner at Plural, an early-stage venture capital firm, and served as Chair of the UK Government's AI Foundation Model Taskforce. He co-founded Songkick and was named to the TIME100 list of most influential people in AI in 2023.
Matt on X: https://x.com/matthewclifford
Ian on X: https://x.com/soundboy
Matt's Website: https://www.matthewclifford.com/
Ian's Website: https://www.ianhogarth.com/
Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.
Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12
Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/
Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.
Head to nebular.vc for more info.
19:59 Preparing for Emergencies the Israeli Way
23:40 Radical Transparency: The Only Way To Gain Trust
27:05 Persuading the Policymakers
33:05 Unlimited Ambition is What Will Save the World
35:10 Stardust Will Unlock Quantum Leaps in Weather Prediction
36:54 Stardust in 2050
40:20 Why Stardust Has to Be a Private Company
45:32 Optimism for the Future is Rational
Yanai Yedvab is a nuclear physicist, former deputy chief scientist at the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, and the co-founder and CEO of Stardust, a solar geoengineering company.
Stardust: https://www.stardustsolutions.com/
Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.
Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12
Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/
Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.
Head to nebular.vc for more info.
52:45 Easter Egg :)
Casey Handmer is a physicist, entrepreneur, and the founder of Terraform Industries, working on making cheap natural gas from sunlight and air.
Casey on X: https://x.com/CJHandmer
Casey's Website: https://www.caseyhandmer.com/
Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.
Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12
Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/
Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.
Head to nebular.vc for more info.
Philip on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-johnston/
Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.
Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12
Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/
Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.
Head to nebular.vc for more info.
59:59 America May Not Be the Main Character in the Future
Sir Malcolm Rifkind is a British statesman who served as Defence Secretary and then Foreign Secretary under Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and later chaired the UK Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee.
Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.
Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12
Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/
Nebular is venture capital firm based in New York City.
Head to nebular.vc for more info.
Related Shows Based on Content Similarities
Discover shows related to Forecast 2050, based on actual content similarities. Explore podcasts with similar topics, themes, and formats, backed by real data.
