🧠 Neuralink expert reveals the future

It’s impossible for Ryan Tanaka, host of Neura Pod, not to be inspired.

It’s impossible for Ryan Tanaka, host of Neura Pod, not to be inspired. It’s all in this subscriber-only edition of Musk Reads+ #107.

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Just like it is for Elon Musk, the core of Ryan Tanaka’s story is engineering. The Neuralink podcast Neura Pod host spent his undergrad and graduate days in the field, earning himself two Tesla internships that sparked his love of “all things Elon Musk.” 

But what solidified his interest — enough to eventually start a podcast, anyway — was one single tweet. 

“Really exciting @TeslaMotors announcement coming on Thursday,” Musk tweeted on March 25, 2013. “Am going to put my money where my mouth is in v major way.” Tesla soon announced that they were officially profitable, beefing up stock and Tanaka’s belief in Musk. 

After that, he started “majorly paying attention” to Musk’s growing empire, eventually honing in on arguably one of Musk’s most infant companies, the brain-machine interface producer Neuralink.

Tech to reckon with

“Neuralink's mission is extremely inspiring,” Tanaka tells Inverse. “[The company wants] to solve brain and spine problems like memory loss, hearing loss, blindness, paralysis, strokes, etc.”

Neuralink plans to accomplish this with brain-machine interfaces (BMIs), systems usually intended to take over tasks that a patient can no longer complete on their own.