Media Coverage
08 August 2019
Five big ideas from Nathan Myhrvold, the original ‘mad scientist’ from Microsoft
In a talk to Hacker News Seattle and Cofounders Connect, Myhrvold shared five big ideas on using AI to diagnose disease, quantum metamaterials, the challenges of robotic pizza, open-source furniture, and the future of television.
26 July 2019
All the Gear the Most-Advanced Kitchen in the World Uses
From a blow torch to a custom-built 3-D pizza scanner, here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the gear that goes into the most cutting-edge recipe research on the planet.
14 July 2019
The Best Cookbooks of the Century So Far
“Modernist Cuisine” strapped turbo boosters to the slow, iterative experiments that had been happening in restaurant kitchens, delivering hundreds of ideas, models, and scientific answers on a scale that had been previously unthinkable. (For those of more modest culinary means, there’s also the companion volume “Modernist Cuisine at Home.”)
12 July 2019
Nathan Myhrvold’s Food For Thought
The art and science behind the photography of ‘Modernist Cuisine'
11 July 2019
Why the Stodgy Old World of Bread Is Ripe for Innovation
Myhrvold’s latest tome, Modernist Bread, digs not into the modernist world of fog and foams, but the uber-traditional world of bread. Though it may not seem like the logical next step, Myhrvold is passionate about the idea of taking something so rooted in the old and finding a way to innovate. We sat down with him to talk about embarking on his love of cooking, how words like artisanal get stripped of all meaning and what it costs to take on such a massive project.
28 June 2019
Wine-Spilling Robots Provide a New Way to Look at Food
Nathan Myhrvold takes pictures of food, just like the rest of us. But with robots, microscopes, and a machine shop.
16 April 2019
Nathan Myhrvold on the Transformative Powers of Metamaterials
Metamaterials have patterns that can be programmed to interact with light in ways that normal materials can't. Nathan Myhrvold explains the uses for metamaterials in areas such as 5G and autonomous vehicles, and discusses the different tech startups that Intellectual Ventures is investing in.
22 February 2019
Nuclear goes retro — with a much greener outlook
Returning to designs abandoned in the 1970s, start-ups are developing a new kind of reactor that promises to be much safer and cleaner than current ones. “The nuclear industry was not in an innovation frame of mind for 30 years,” says TerraPower’s Myhrvold. That has been changing.
16 January 2019
Washington state’s tech billionaires pour cash into global health
Gifts from pioneering philanthropists have equipped the US state for a frontline battle against some of the world’s deadliest diseases. Myhrvold says that the state has a range of specialist enterprises that make it particularly attractive to those involved in this sort of work. “The Seattle area is the Silicon Valley of saving the world,” he says.
19 December 2018
“Modernist Breadcrumbs” podcast dives into the history, science, and art of bread making
All 16 episodes, which aired from Oct. 4 2017 to Dec. 19, 2018, are now available free online.