Lab-Grown Meat Laws

Delian Asparouhov calls himself the 'world's first space drugs and arms dealer' and we're here to find out why. We talk about lab grown meat, drugs in space, crazy new tech projects and a prank he pulled at MIT that ended in his arrest.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
When we were talking about the labgrown meat stuff. Yes, and I
said, we got to figure outmore about this. We got to find
out what's going on. And Italked to a couple of people. I
kept getting pointed in the same direction, and we got we've got a big
brain level up here. We've gotsomebody who can help us out with a
bunch of different things. And Ihave lots of questions. So let's welcome
Delian asparahoff to the show. Hello, there is Can you hear us?

(00:24):
Okay, yeah, I can hearyou, guys, great things. So
much for having me perfect. Okay, first question I have for you,
kind of unrelated to what I wasjust talking about. But in looking you
up, I saw a fairly epicstory about your time at MI I T.
That is that is this true?So this guy, he's not gonna
brag on him, Celf, Idon't think. But Delian is a very

(00:46):
smart man who's done a bunch ofbig things. And he went to m
I T and he went for awhile, you guys, but Delian got
in trouble at MI I T.Tell everybody what you did at MI T.
That kind of see it probably seemedat the time, like it was
a really bad thing, but Ithink really worked out for you. Huh.
Yeah, I admit, like inthe moment it was very stressful,

(01:07):
but I remember even thinking in themoment, I was like, I think
this will be funny. All right, Bud, we still have FCC guidelines
on the radio, so sorry,sorry still And also, don't be alarmed
by our reactions. It's just ourjobs on the line. Yeah, don't

(01:32):
worry, we got rid of that. But to go back for the people
who didn't hear what you just said, he said, it's pretty funny thinking
about this. Tell people what happenedwith this story of you at M I
t Yeah. So I was drunkin my fraternity one evening and basically,
like there's the MIT has this reallybig like email list culture, and so
in the fraternity we had a bunchof like you know, the main email

(01:53):
list, but a bunch of likesub email lists, and there was this
one called like red pants, andyou basically were only allowed on that list
if you had red pants, andpeople would send emails as the list to
the main frat list, basically makinglike the jokes about red pants, and
I came up with a joke onenight and I was like, hey,
can I like log into the listand like send one of these jokes?
And my frat brother was basically no, like you don't own red pants.

(02:13):
I was like, okay, well, like email is not that hard to
like spoof. I can just spoofan email from the red Pants thing and
send it to the main frat listand you know, make my joke.
And he's like, you can't spooflike red pants, and I was like,
man, I can spoof the presidentof my t if I wanted to
and like send an email to theentire campus saying please cancel, and he
was like, okay, go doit. It was like two o'clock in
the morning, and I was kindof drunk, and I was like,
okay, I will go do it. And so, you know, sat

(02:36):
there for like argument, but Iliked the dedication to it. He's sent
an email pretending to be the headof MIT and said school is canceled tomorrow.
Not It turns out when you sendan email pretending to be the president
of VIT saying school is canceled,school gets canceled because everybody gets it and
it's the middle of finals week andthey're like, oh, great, my

(02:58):
final tomorrow, I'm going to bed. And so people like purposely didn't set
alarm clocks and they like you know, didn't choke to their finals and things
like that, and so the schoolwas to actually cancel school. There's like
fifteen news trucks. Like president ofMIT was on this like trip to India.
He had to like fly back earlyto like deal with this. I
got arrested about an hour and ahalf after sending me what what was the

(03:19):
chance? At the time, MITwas going through this like Aaron Schwartz scandal.
It was basically like this like hackerguy that had snuck into MIT and
basically had like published all the likescientific journal publications, and MIT sued him,
but then he ended up committing suicideand so they were going through this
huge investigation like didn't like yeah,and so they basically like were like,
are you a like political activist youknow that's trying to basically like protest what

(03:43):
MIT did and this is like apart of this, and you're like a
hacker activist. And I had tolike tell the FBI. I was like
no, I was just like Iwas drunk in my fraternity and like just
took a joke a little too far. We probably didn't realize how people would
react put you on the map though, I mean, I know, I
think that's one of the things thatended up acting you with Peter Teal.
And now you're a partner at FoundersFun and you're you're involved in a lot
of stuff. This is like themovie War Games where he's he was just

(04:08):
like trying to to show off tothe girl and have a little fun and
play a video game, and they'relike, what are you trying to do?
Why are you going to France?And he was like, just trying
to have a little fun and playa video game. Guys, really,
we're really overreacting here. Well,one of those things that Delian does,
he's a co founder and president ofVarda Space Industries, which is next level

(04:31):
crazy to me. Can you tellpeople what you're up to over there at
Varda Space Industries. Yeah. Webasically help improve pharmaceuticals in the microgravity environment
of space. So I think,like you know, sort of cancer drugs
or things that you would like takefor neurological compounds, and we basically help
improve them in a way where youknow, for example, rather than having
to go to an IV clinic everyday for chemo for three to four hours

(04:54):
a day. We can actually sortof change the structure of the drug up
in microgravity so that instead you cango to a pharmace once a week,
pick up some syringers you basically takein the comfort of your own home,
and so we basically improve the patient, you know, sort of experience because
up in you know, space,basically gravity doesn't work, and so it
just changes every chemical system. Soif you think about like a you know,

(05:15):
ice cube and a glass of waterdown here on Earth, it floats
to the top because the ice isbasically lighter than the water around it.
If you go up to space andbasically put an ice cube and water,
it'll just float around basically in themiddle of the water because there is no
up, there is no down,and so that sort of that's enough to
change how a drug works. Whathappens when you bring it back to Earth
and the gravity is back. Yeah, the way you can think about it

(05:38):
is what we actually do up thereis we take like the liquid drug and
turn it into the like solid state, like crystalline drug. Think of what
comes out on the other side isbasically like table salt and normal table salt
only has like one sort of youknow, sort of structure typically you know
the example that it provides. Ifyou've ever gone to the pharmacy and seen
ibuprofen, they have the like fastrelease ibuprofen for headaches and the like slow

(05:59):
release be Profen for arthritis. It'sstill the same like liquid drug if you
were to melt it down. Butif you look at the like sheep of
the crystals in the fast release versusslow release, that's what actually makes it
basically change. Is one of thecrystals is made to break down more easily
versus one breakdown more slowly in yourblood stream. The same science they use
for dippin' dots. Yeah, exactlyexactly. They freed bent a little balls.

(06:21):
It lasts longer, and yeah,I totally know what you're talking about.
Sun Stream goal here the sun stage. John on YouTube says his brain
is same for the rest of theinterview. Thinks his brain's too bad.
He doesn't have brain fog like me. Mine slowed down these days, So
let's get to put his podcast onhalf speed. Delian aspar Hoffice who we're

(06:41):
talking too. He's a partner ofFounder's Fund. He knows a lot about
the lab grown meat world. Iguess that ties into space travel in the
future in many ways. But let'sget to the basic points here. One
of the things that I said was, I said, if we could get
to a point where lab grown meatis the same and every measurable way as
a regular cheeseburger that's from a cowthat you slaughtered, that and we know

(07:06):
that they're both the same in termsof health and all taste, everything about
them, texture, everything is justabsolutely the same, then I can't see
people choosing the option that kills thecow over the lab grown meat option in
the long run, because I've nevermet a farmer. Well, I think
that most people would go, we'regetting the same exact thing and taking the

(07:28):
death of the cow out of it. That seems like a better thing.
I'm not sure how that would pullout. A lot of the people that
I've talked to on the show Delianhave said, well, I'm worried about
long term effects and blah blah blah. So there's there's some like hesitancy,
but how does this work, Like, how does lab grown need work?
And maybe a better place to startis I know that in Florida, they've

(07:49):
tried to push for They did pushfor some bands. I think another state
just did this, maybe it wasAlabama, And I had the first question
of does this stuff exist in aplace where you can even buy it right
now for them to ban it.Yeah, So Florida obviously, you know,
sort of passed the bill on forgettingthe name SB one three oh one
or something like that that does banthe basically production and sale of lab grown

(08:13):
meat in Florida. It was verymuch so a you know, sort of
preemptive ban. If you look ata lot of the top companies that are
working in this space, they onlyrecently got federal approval and they're still at
very you know, sort of subscaleand definitely not available you know, sort
of for retail. And so,you know, I'd made my frustration with
this is less about you know,I in some ways could care less about
the like quote unquote ethics or moralityof like slaughtering cows, about the like

(08:35):
you know sort of climate, youknow, sort of change effects. You
know, most of this stuff islike sort of total you know, sort
of fake news. The reason I'vebecome so passionate about, you know,
sort of this topic is and youknow, maybe to clarify some bias I
founders on we have like you know, sort of fifteen billion or something like
that asset under management. We maybeinvested like ten million dollars in lab grown
meat. So you know, Ido have some slight economic advice, but

(08:56):
it's extremely you know, sort ofslight to we invest in far more.
And a lot of other categories.Frustration around this is, you know,
I moved to you know, sitof Florida about three and a half years
ago now with the express intention toactually build South Florida into significant technology up
and I think when you ban asort of piece of technology like this,
you just don't understand what the unforeseensort of future effects will be of this.

(09:16):
Where you've now taken a set ofcompanies that were very interested in potentially
operating in Florida. We have astrong, you know, sort of biotechnology
scene and medical device scene in SouthFlorida, and all of a sudden you
basically told all these entrepreneurs arbitrarily you'renot allowed to operate here, despite the
fact that if you look at thefundamental process that is used to create this
lab grown meat, it is notparticularly dissimilar than how cancer pharmaceuticals you know

(09:37):
are made, or things like babyformula are made. Like I really struggle
with, you know, the samereactors that are used to you mix powder
with standard water to make lab grownmeat. Well, the process that use
you used to make the powder.So if you look at the actual facilities
that make the powder, they lookpretty similar to the facilities that make the

(09:58):
lab grown meat, and they areboth like food that are being ingested.
And so I guess I, youknow, I struggle to think if I'm
like a you know, founder that'sbuilding a next generation baby formula company,
I'm definitely not going to Florida.Like, if I look and squint at
the lab grown meat band definitely looksa whole lot like a baby formula band.
And so to me, I'm justextremely frustrated because it's a consumer I
want to eat cow meat for therest of my life. Probably I'm not

(10:20):
even saying that I'm even that interestedas a consumer in eating lab grown meat,
but I just think that that shouldchoice should be in the hands of
consumers. I find that interesting justfor the jobs reason alone, Like these
are these would be high dollar,great jobs that could be pulled in to
the state of Florida or any otherstate where they're trying to do this,
and instead it's used as sort oflike a strange culture war thing. We

(10:43):
ain't eating that lab grown meat andit's too wow, super weird, and
most people just don't even understand whatit is. Lab grown meat sounds bad
and they think weird, gross.We want we want to make sure our
meat is really from a cow.The process of doing this, from what
I could see, I guess theytake like a slice of a cow and

(11:05):
then they utilize the cells from thatto just replicate more and more, almost
add infinite And that makes sense.Does that mean so you could possibly grow
human meat? I mean in theory, there there are companies actually in New
York not working on a human meatper se, but they're actually working on,
you know, improving baby formula byactually using some of the you know,

(11:30):
proteins that breast naturally produces and introducingthose into basically pre existing basically your
sort of baby formula power to makeeven more basically you know, sort of
human like. So you know,yeah, you describe the you know sort
of process accurately. You effectively takecells from a you know sort of cow,
turn them into you know, effectivelywhat are known as sort of you

(11:52):
know, stem cells, which basicallyallows those cells to become any type of
cell. And then you know,the current work is basically trying to create
a mixture of and fat cells thatbasically replicate the equivalent you know, sort
of different parts of the cow thatyou could then you know, basically use
as meat. And again the reactorsthat they you know, sort of produce
this in are basically the exact samewhat I'm known as like bioreactors. Effectively

(12:13):
that everything from you know, sortof pharmaceutical product is created in. It's
pretty similar to how beer is created. It's pretty how baby formulas created.
It's like, you know, theidea of this is like some disgusting process.
To me, I find a littlelike sacilly. As consumers, I'm
like, do you know how manythings you consume, Like if you take
any type of like daily supplement,if you drink beer, if your baby
has baby formula, like these areall things that are pretty like if you

(12:33):
squint, a pretty similar process.And so I have a hard time seeing
like why this is some like disgustingthing. At the end of the day,
it should just be in the handsof the consumers. My sort of
major is a critique of his bills, Like I see this as a pretty
Marxist bill. I see this islike the state, you know, stepping
into private markets, and you knowit's basically, you know, banning a
competitor preemptively when you should just allowthe free market to do that if you

(12:54):
want it. You know, ifyou believe that there should be long term
safety data on this before allowed,then great. You to put a label
on the product so that consumers canbe aware of some of your concerns.
For I think the problem that you'reyou're not tackling here is that people are
dumb. There's a lot of peoplewho are just not that smartest thing,

(13:16):
are a lot slower. Even justwords that are being thrown at you,
well just stretched out. I thinka lot of people when they hear about
stuff like this, it's similar tothe mindset of somebody going through a grocery
store and seeing all the buzzwords likeorganic et cetera, et cetera, and
those being a trigger for a personto buy something. There's also things that

(13:39):
are negative and the lab grown stuffright now is in that territory until it's
not you know, like eventually it'llit'll escape from that. But slowing down
the industry getting further and further alongwith this is a bad thing in the
long run. Like you're working inthe space world with Varta Space Industries,
you know, as well as anybodyelse does that. If they want to

(14:01):
get food and proteins for astronauts whomight be traveling to live on the Moon
or live on Mars or any otherplanet, They're not going to be sending
cows and chickens out there. They'regoing to have to find a way to
do this with a lab grown meattype solution. Yeah. I mean,
I'm somebody who wants to, youknow, sort of move to the Moon
or spend a significant period of timethere, and I would still like to

(14:22):
be able to maintain a high proteindiet. And I prefers that's not just
a bunch of like soilent milkshakes.I would like that to be like Ribbi
steaks. And I think those Ribbystaks are a lot easier to produce some
good moon eating let me tell youI do. Yeah exactly. You know,
you're working on all kinds of stuff, Delian, and you have passion
to it. It's not someone who'sjust like I know the process and this

(14:43):
is a good job for me.It seems like you you do want to
change the world. Uh huh yeah, principle, the you know sort of
argument, Like so many people,a lot of the Florida GOP definitely got
a little frustrated with me with suchlike he sort of open critiques of this
particular bill and I don't think they'reexpecting pushback, and ultimately, to me,
this is like it's just like amatter of principle, like I just
think this party should be the partyof free market technological progress. That's what

(15:05):
they say, right, you know, That's what I guess if you push
Ron de Santas on this, youwould say that he's for free markets.
But until he's not. Right,he signed this bill anyways, Working in
this world and in all of thissort of stuff on the forefront of technology,
Delian, what are some of theprojects that you've seen that people are
working on that most excite you rightnow? Like is there some pretty cutting

(15:26):
edge stuff that we might not knowabout? Yeah, I mean, you
know, maybe I've even talk aboutthe some of our South Florida you know
sort of companies that we've invested in. There's a company called Extronics that's a
you know sort of kid that grewup in South Florida basically building these like
automated drone bases in battery swapping thatbasically you can have a drone that,
rather than having to pilot anywhere nearby, can be entirely piloted remotely and the

(15:48):
drone basically can go off do It'slike he does het a task of like,
you know, if somebody's trying tobreak into your house and go fly
over, you know, play aloudspeaker, phone, flash some lights at
like, man, I get outof my house and like fly back to
the base, have its battery swappedif it's like running out of charge,
and then go back to wherever theintruder is and like keep chasing them down.
So, wow, really cool aerospacethings happening. You know. One

(16:11):
of the other you know sort ofthings that the South Florida or what the
Florida Legislator is working on is actuallyyou know, turning more of the Homestead
Air Base into like a potential spaceport. And so I think you'll start to
see, you know that more andmore of Florida is used for space activity.
You know, rockets now have beenlaunching this year every two and a
half days. By the end ofthis year, we'll probably be at a
rate where it's every like day anda half or potentially every single day.

(16:33):
And with the fundamental basically physics ofrocket launches, it's actually really advantageous to
be on an eastern coast and asclose to the equator basically as possible.
The closer the equator, the moreyou benefit from like having to need less
rocket fuel because you just rely onlike the basically the Earth spin and the
Earth basically just spins faster closer tothe equator, And so if you think
about it, like Homestead and reallyfar south Florida actually just gets you more

(16:56):
and more of a performance boost.And so I think over time all of
the biggest space sports in the UnitedStates are just gonna stretch all the way
from like Homestead all the way upto it, you know, sort of
good bye. Yeah, yeah,I don't know if we can do that,
but that would be good. That'sgood for us, that'd be great,
great for the economy. Pushing forward. Our last question I have for
you, Delian, and we appreciateyou hanging out with us today. We've

(17:18):
heard all this stuff about chat,GPT and the Voice AI announcement and all
that. Uh, Sam, SamAltman, hero or villain? You think
we'll say Maltman. You know,he's a close friend and we've been you
know, groom's been at the sameyou know, said wedding. So are
you backing him on this Scarlett Johanssonthing because she's coming after him hard right

(17:41):
now? You know. I thinkthat you know, Sam has been you
know, sort of propelled to theyou know, sort of forefront of the
world very rapidly, and so he'sprobably learning about a bit of the techniques
that may have worked really well inSilicon Valley but maybe don't work as well
where you're on the global stage.And so I'm sure he'll figure this stuff
out or maybe he'll just be likeElon and you know sort of you know,
constantly, you know, stepping inthe right or wrong direction. But

(18:03):
at the end of the day,I think this stuff is all, you
know, sort of you know,it's a cool place to be in when
you're on the world stage and youknow everybody watching every move. All right,
Well, we appreciate you joining ustoday and Delian, thanks for the
time, looking for love, grownmeat in the future, all right,
Delian and basically everything. Delian Asprohoffand he's a partner at Founders Fun.

(18:26):
Hopefully we could talk to him abouttech stuff moving forwar. Would you be
willing to join us in the futurewhen some of this stuff comes up?
Man, anytime, anything Florida andtech related. Happy to love it,
all right, cool, all right, you have a great day. We'll
talk to you next time. Cheersabout there it goes.