Bill Paloski, former director of the Human Research Program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, explores the idea of artificial gravity within a spacecraft for long-duration missions and explains how it may affect the human body from what we have learned through Earth-based studies. HWHAP Episode 188.
Original broadcast date: December 4, 2020. Last year’s election saw historic voter turnout. But in a divided democracy, how else can we commit to our civic duties? This hour, Baratunde Thurston joins Manoush with ideas on how to citizen.
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Last Acquired left the plucky Rec Room crew in our 2018 “Part I” episode, they were a seed stage startup making a VR game that users loved but grew slowly and barely monetized. Fast forward to today, and they’re now a multi-platform social “place” with millions of active users, 500%+ YoY growth and hosting a robust creator economy that’s rivaled only by their oft-compared metaverse cousin Roblox in dynamics and efficiency. And oh yeah, they’re now a $1B+ company after a new $100m fundraise from existing investors Sequoia and Index, which they’re announcing today. We figured it was high time to revisit Nick & crew for a Part II…
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The Rec Room Playbook is available on our website at https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/rec-room-part-ii-with-ceo-nick-fajt
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Experts of NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston recount what it has taken to support 20 years of continuous presence on the International Space Station. HWHAP Episode 187.
Cherie Oubre, Steve Platts, and Nikki Schwanbeck, expert human researchers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, discuss CIPHER, a complement of research protocols that investigates multiple aspects of the human body over varied durations of human space missions. HWHAP Episode 186.
We dive into the history behind Meituan, the juggernaut Chinese “super-app” which dominates China’s services economy, offering consumers everything from food delivery, restaurant reviews, travel booking, bike-sharing, movie ticketing, and countless other entertainment and lifestyle services all at the touch of a button. Already China’s 3rd largest tech company by market cap (behind just Tencent and Alibaba), Meituan did $15 billion in net revenue in FY2019 and continues to grow rapidly. What makes it so special, and how were they able to become the market leader in such a competitive space? This story is packed with lessons that apply equally beyond China tech to high-growth company building and investing everywhere.
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Experts from NASA’s Mars Architecture Team gather to discuss the mechanics of returning the first astronauts from the surface of Mars back home to Earth on the final episode of our Mars Monthly series. HWHAP Episode 185.
George Abbey, former center director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, former Expedition 1 training integrator Ginger Kerrick, and Expedition 1 crew members Bill Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko, and Sergei Krikalev gather to relive the first long-duration mission aboard the International Space Center. HWHAP Episode 184.
Mark Fernandez, principal investigator for the Spaceborne Computer-2, details the experiment on the International Space Station that will further test the capabilities of in-space computing which may help humans explore deeper into space. HWHAP Episode 183.
For the entire 20th Century, you’d be hard pressed to find a better business than an American newspaper — Warren Buffett famously described them as “franchises” — and no American newspaper stood taller than the New York Times. Controlled by a single family bound by a legal oath “to maintain the editorial independence and integrity of The New York Times and to continue it as an independent newspaper, entirely fearless, free of ulterior influence and unselfishly devoted to the public welfare”, the Times served as the paper of record for generations of Americans and people around the world. But no good thing lasts forever, and the dawn of the 21st Century saw both the Times and this once-mighty industry devastated by the dual disruptive forces of the internet and the 2008 financial crisis. And yet by 2021, The Times, essentially alone of its former peers, has reemerged from the American newspaper wreckage and transformed itself into a thriving digital business with an order of magnitude more subscribers than its print heyday. Curious how it all happened? We dive into 170 years of history to find out!
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The New York Times Company Playbook is available on our website at https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/the-new-york-times-company
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