The Peterman Pod

Venki Ramakrishnan (Molecular biologist, Nobel Prize): "The experimental part [of drug discovery] is always going to be the bottleneck."

Recent headlines about using AI to speed up drug discovery made me curious about what that looks like and where it is today. So I flew to the UK to interview Venki Ramakrishnan who is on the scientific advisory board of Demis Hassabis' Isomorphic Labs.

He has described himself as a "failed physicist" starting originally with a physics PhD who changed fields because he felt his work was incremental. After pivoting into molecular biology without a degree he discovered the field of work that eventually led to his Nobel prize.

So aside from drug discovery, I also asked him about how AI is impacting the field of biology, how biology compares to physics, and the politics behind the Nobel prize.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/
• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1q0zA21AkY
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835
• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/e074-venki-ramakrishnan

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro
(00:43) How drugs are designed
(04:54) Why drug testing remains difficult
(07:02) How AI will impact the field of biology
(10:35) Switching from physics to biology
(15:00) How to choose research problems that matter
(23:19) Did lacking a credential hurt his career
(26:50) Physics vs biology
(33:21) Why physicists succeed in other fields
(35:10) The politics of the Nobel Prize
(38:37) Top scientific book recommendations
(40:05) Advice for young people
(41:43) Outro

Where to find Venki:

• Personal website (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology): https://mrclmb.ac.uk/research-leaders/venki-ramakrishnan/
• Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=&user=oTI5BjIAAAAJ
• Royal Society: https://royalsociety.org/people/venki-ramakrishnan-12139/?page=43
• Nobel Prize: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2009/ramakrishnan/biographical/
• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venki_Ramakrishnan

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/
• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/
• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Isomorphic Labs: https://www.isomorphiclabs.com/
• AlphaFold: https://deepmind.google/science/alphafold/
• AlphaGenome: https://deepmind.google/blog/alphagenome-ai-for-better-understanding-the-genome/
• Neutron-Scattering Studies of the Ribosome (Scientific American, 1976): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neutron-scattering-studies-of-the-r/
• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: https://wwnorton.com/books/Surely-Youre-Joking-Mr-Feynman/
• The Double Helix: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Double-Helix/James-D-Watson/9780743216302

Stephen Toub is a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft who single-handledly rewrote the GitHub Copilot runtime (400,000-line codebase) in Rust. We talked about why/how he did it, how Rust compared with other languages, and everything he learned in the process.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/
• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLMOVlZC4eU
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835
• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/e073-stephen-toub

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro
(01:06) Why the Copilot runtime needed a Rust port
(05:38) Why he chose Rust
(11:28) Discussing rollout strategies
(21:57) How he caught regressions
(32:08) Guiding the agents
(42:11) Catching regressions before prod
(45:16) Which models he used
(50:03) The end benefit and costs
(01:03:24) When to do a full rewrite
(01:06:40) Career learnings on the way to Distinguished
(01:16:00) Top technical book recommendation
(01:17:49) Advice for young engineers
(01:21:00) Outro

Where to find Stephen:

• GitHub: https://github.com/stephentoub
• X: https://twitter.com/stephentoub
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-toub-75979745/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/
• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/
• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Stephen Toub’s post on porting the GitHub Copilot runtime to Rust: https://github.blog/ai-and-ml/generative-ai/migrating-the-github-copilot-runtime-to-rust-using-copilot/
• Jarred Sumner’s post on porting Bun to Rust: https://bun.com/blog/bun-in-rust
• Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software: https://www.charlespetzold.com/code/index.html

Brian Kernighan is a former Bell Labs member of technical staff, co-author of the original C book, and the one who popularized “Hello World.” We talked about what Bell Labs was like and the stories behind all the famous tools that were built there.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/
• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMllOlxVgD0
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835
• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/e072-brian-kernighan

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro
(00:42) What Bell Labs was and how he got hired
(06:34) Why so many inventions came from Bell Labs
(14:15) A day in the life at Bell Labs
(27:55) The most impressive people he worked with
(33:50) The AT&T film explaining Unix
(39:46) Why C was so influential
(43:25) How awk was created
(48:40) What he misses most about Bell Labs
(54:10) Are LLMs bad for computer science education
(01:01:46) His 1972 commit in the Go repo
(01:03:43) Grace Emlen, the fake Bell Labs employee
(01:07:39) Why he writes so many books
(01:19:58) His favorite and least favorite languages
(01:24:28) Advice for students and young people
(01:27:42) Outro

Where to find Brian:

• Personal website: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/
• Princeton University faculty profile: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/people/profile/bwk
• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Kernighan

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/
• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/
• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• UNIX: Making Computers Easier to Use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvDZLjaCJuw
• Brian Kernighan’s first Harvard CS50 lecture (1996): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ba1XFVy7qw
• A Beautiful Mind: https://www.universalpicturesathome.com/movies/a-beautiful-mind
• Shifts: Important Ideas in Computing: https://www.amazon.com/Shifts-Nine-Ideas-Revolutionized-Computing/dp/0262064294/
• Labscam (Penn & Teller at Bell Labs, 1989): https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/labscam.html
• Labscam video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnsmDNamd2g
• Understanding the Digital World (new edition): https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Digital-World-Computers-Internet/dp/0691288879

This interview is with Paul Mockapetris, the creator of the internet's Domain Name System (DNS). I talked to him about the story behind building it and certain design choices he made.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/
• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT4iVeUoL18
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835
• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/e071-paul-mockapetris

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro
(00:40) What computing was like before DNS
(09:02) Why URLs are inverted
(16:33) How DNS works
(20:27) How he migrated the internet to DNS
(25:17) Why do companies host DNS servers
(33:17) What is an RFC
(35:07) How he got into computing
(46:39) Advice for his younger self
(52:56) Outro

Where to find Paul:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mockapetris

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/
• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/
• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Original DNS RFC 882: https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc882/
• Original DNS RFC 883: https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc883/

Scott Aaronson is one of the world's leading quantum computing researchers and spent two years at OpenAI working on AI safety.

We talked about why he thinks the singularity has already begun for math, who gets credit when AI writes the proof, and whether intelligence will still matter once machines do the thinking.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/
• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORlscppGGh4
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835
• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/e070-scott-aaronson

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro
(00:34) Why he updated so hard on AI
(01:14) The people still denying AI progress
(03:53) The singularity has already begun for math
(08:30) Will human-driven math research survive
(13:12) Who gets credit for AI-written papers
(15:55) OpenAI's $15M Navier-Stokes proof
(19:20) What if AI proved P = NP
(23:07) Why AI is so good at finding counterexamples
(26:13) The goalposts keep moving
(28:52) Why AI disclosure matters in research
(32:59) The fake Monet experiment
(35:23) Why he blogs instead of getting rich
(39:45) Are AI labs racing too fast
(42:01) Will intelligence still matter
(47:12) Book recommendations
(52:27) Advice for students today
(57:23) Reacting live to a new AI result
(59:58) Outro

Where to find Scott:

• Personal website: https://www.scottaaronson.com/
• Blog — Shtetl-Optimized: https://scottaaronson.blog/
• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Aaronson

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/
• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/
• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• OpenAI's Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize solution: https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/32d9f210-8b73-45e0-91bc-82a30aef8a9a/navier-stokes.pdf
• Rebecca Goldstein's The Mind-Body Problem: https://rebeccagoldstein.com/the-mind-body-problem-contemporary-american-fiction/
• Andrew Hodges's Alan Turing: The Enigma: https://www.turing.org.uk/book/
• The Man Who Knew Infinity: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Man-Who-Knew-Infinity/Robert-Kanigel/9781476763491
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76
• Anthropic's subquadratic 3SUM result: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.06783