There's a version of the AI conversation that's all market caps and job displacement and whether your company has a roadmap. That’s fine, but Dr. Maya Ackerman and her entrancing book take a much more nuanced perspective.

The author of last winter’s Creative Machines: AI, Art & Us, Maya is a generative AI pioneer, computational creativity researcher, Associate Professor at Santa Clara University, and co-founder and CEO of musical GenAI startup WaveAI. The book is gripping, tracing the history of creative AI from a 1970s Bach-imitating computer program to the generative free-for-all of today. She came on Re/Pod, and within minutes it was clear this was going to be a different kind of conversation.

The Great Pyramids of Giza were already ancient history when Cleopatra was born. They watched the entire Roman Empire rise and collapse like a slow afternoon. They predate the founding of Rome by more than two thousand years. For most of that staggering timeline, you had one option: go there. Make the pilgrimage. Stand in the shadow and feel appropriately small.

Then came the computer, and a magical plan of Harvard’s Dr. Peter Der Manuelian.

Know what NASA rocket factory digital twins, Broadway, the largest National Science Foundation grant ever, Heisman trophy winner and NFL quarterback Jayden Daniels, video games, kids’ movies, and trailblazing agriculture companies have in common?

They’ve been the focus, of the mastery, of Jason Jamerson and LSU’s XR Studio, of which he is Director. A 20-year veteran of the entertainment industry, he is also Director of Virtual Production at LSU, thriving at the intersection of technology, science, art, and entertainment.

Ellis Malmgren explains how one of the most innovative 3D rendering techniques ties back to one of history’s most accomplished mathematicians - Carl Friedrich Gauss. Plus, a breakdown of today’s “world models” (Marble, JEPA, Google Genie 3) and the competition around them.

Rogers “Caldwell” Buntin is a researcher, lecturer, and drone pilot who received his Ph.D. in Ocean & Earth Sciences from Old Dominion University. He specializes in interpreting subtle fossilized traces that reveal how dinosaurs interacted with their environments.

He joins Ellis Malmgren to explain his recent discovery at Dinosaur Ridge in Colorado; an apparent 100-million-year-old “dinosaur dance floor,” a site covered in intricate scrape marks and depressions made by theropods performing courtship displays. Using drones and high-resolution imaging, Buntin and his team interpreted these features as evidence of mating rituals, offering a rare glimpse into dinosaur social behavior and reshaping how scientists think about life in the Cretaceous.