Welcome to the After-On podcast. I'm your host, Rob Reed.

And this is a series of conversations with thinkers, founders, and scientists.

Take a little time and stretch out because these talks are unhurry and meant to bring you

to a top percentile understanding of something important.

So whether you're ready to start up score ideas, a techie or a lit major, take your time,

engage your mind, and you'll be glad you did it.

Especially this week when we'll be talking to...

Stuart Brand. Stuart is often equated to the mythical world's most interesting man who

was featured for years in those Dosekis commercials. Often enough that the comparison is a bit

of a cliche. But like many clichés, there's something to it.

Stuart was among the most culturally catalytic people in the turbulent years of the late 1960s,

although back then he did a lot of his catalyzing behind the scenes. He went on to become a

founding figure of the environmental movement of the early 70s. Later he created one of

the earliest and most influential online communities which he named the Well. He also convened

History's first Packers Conference. He co-founded one of the world's premier centers of truly

long-term thinking in these days. In addition to running that, he's helping the renowned

bioengineer and genomicist George Church resurrect extinct species like the Wollimameth.

If this makes you think Stuart might be something of an historic figure, you're not alone.

He showed up for his interview at my apartment with a production crew who were filming a documentary

about his life. Meanwhile, John Markoff, who for decades at the New York Times was among the world's

most influential and well-regarded tech journalists, is writing the biography about Stuart.

For the same reasons that Stuart attracts this sort of attention, I'm taking an unusual

...