September 23, 2025 • 38 mins
On this week’s Sounds of Film, host Tom Needham speaks with award-winning filmmaker and biotech entrepreneur Bill Haney, director of Cracking the Code: Phil Sharp and the Biotech Revolution.
Narrated by Mark Ruffalo, the documentary traces the extraordinary journey of Phil Sharp, a Kentucky farm boy born in a one-room, dirt-floor house who overcame severe dyslexia to win the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking discovery of RNA splicing. Sharp went on to co-found biotech giants like Biogen and Alnylam, helping to spark a revolution in medicine that today touches billions of lives.
More than a biography, Cracking the Code is both a celebration of Sharp’s achievements and a call to imagine the future of science, innovation, and the American Dream. The conversation explores Sharp’s roots, his scientific discoveries, the birth of the biotech industry, and the broader cultural themes of resilience, entrepreneurship, and the importance of supporting scientific research.
Bill Haney is an award-winning filmmaker, inventor, and entrepreneur whose work has earned honors including the Gabriel Prize, Amnesty International Award, and the Pare Lorentz Award. He has founded or helped launch more than a dozen companies and is currently CEO of Dragonfly Therapeutics and Skyhawk Therapeutics, developing innovative drugs for cancer, autoimmune, and neurological diseases.
Audiences will also have a chance to experience Cracking the Code on the big screen at the Port Jefferson Documentary Film Series, where it will open the season on Thursday , September 25th at 7:00 PM. The screening promises to be an inspiring evening highlighting one of America’s most influential scientists and innovators.
The Sounds of Film is the nation’s longest-running program dedicated to the intersection of film and music. For over three decades, it has presented an engaging mix of in-depth interviews and cinematic music to audiences across Long Island, Connecticut, and online. Notable past guests include Cornel West, Billy Joel, Jimmy Webb, Chuck D., Michael Moore, Carter Burwell, Jim Messina, and members of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad Ensemble. The Sounds of Film is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Hi, this is Tom Needaman. You're listening to the sounds
of film and today we're very excited to have on the program
award-winning filmmaker and biotech entrepreneur Bill Haney,
the director of the film Cracking the Code, Phil Sharp
and the Biotech Revolution. Narrated by Mark Ruffalo, the
film traces Phil Sharp's remarkable journey from a
(00:23):
Kentucky tobacco farm to winningthe Nobel Prize and founding
groundbreaking biotech companiesthat transformed medicine.
More than a biography, Cracking the Code is a road map for the
future of science, innovation, and the enduring power of the
American Dream. The film is actually opening up
(00:44):
the Port Jefferson Documentary Film Series on September 25th at
7:00 PM locally. So, Bill, thank you so much for
joining us today on The Sounds of Film.
It's a privilege to be with you,Tom.
You know, as I mentioned as we chatted briefly, you know, I, I
love pioneers and you personallyare a great pioneer in this
(01:06):
space. So thank you for your work and
your leadership. Well, I appreciate that.
You know, I, I gave a little bitabout yourself, but but you're a
pioneer yourself. Tell us a little bit about the
work that you've done, not just in film, but in the biotech
space. Well, you know, I've been
(01:28):
interested in innovation for a long time, Tom, and, and to some
extent stories. You know, I grew up at a
monastery in Rhode Island, the Benedine monastery where I lived
from five years old till I was 18.
And I went to Harvard scrubbing toilets to pay for college.
And I Co invented the system producing air pollution from
(01:49):
power plants. That's on virtually every power
plant in the world. And the system producing and
nitrous oxide emissions from diesel engines that for example,
is what Volkswagen wasn't doing when they were cheating on
their, you know, air pollution control obligations.
So I've been working at technology innovation for a long
(02:09):
time. You know, I'm basically my work
life is innovation, including increasingly and and science and
innovation for public purpose. So initially environmental
issues for a long time, but increasingly on issues of
health, I do a lot of nonprofit work that's included teaching
and helping start nonprofits andvarious other things.
(02:32):
And I'm this is my 19th movie that I've, you know, written or
directed or produced. So that's kind of a precis of my
backdrop. In biotech specifically, you
know, we're trying to find ways to cure the most incurable
diseases. I run a company called
Dragonfly. It's been working in very
challenging oncology, autoimmuneand fibrosis indications and in
(02:56):
Skyhawk, where we're trying to find a way to drug RNA upstream
of proteins. And our specific focus is on
rare neurological diseases for which there are no existing
therapeutics. So think of Alzheimer's,
Parkinson's, Huntington disease,ALS, things like that.
Wow. So there's so much I want to get
(03:19):
into. I mean, with the work that
you're doing, I'm just curious with AI on the the foremost
minds of so many people, do you think that's going to be useful
in in helping people like yourself and other people in
your field to discover cures fora lot of the diseases that we
(03:40):
can't find cures for right now? Yes, but without any question,
you know, we we're at the leading edge of using what you
know, initiatives, computationalsystems and computational
biology and then machine learning tools and now AI to
help us understand and really discover the root causes
(04:00):
biologically of some of the mostpernicious human diseases first.
And we are discovering in Skyhawk novel biology, you know,
if not daily, certainly weekly. And then because we're trying to
find ways to drug these challenging things with pills
that are easy on patients and easy on healthcare systems and,
(04:21):
and frankly, globally available because, you know, $3,000,000
gene therapy treatments where you have a 12 hour brain
operation understandably concerna lot of patients.
They're a burden on the hospitals.
They're expensive and they're unlikely to be available to
patients around the world because most societies can't
(04:41):
afford them. So Skyock is pioneering the the
use of this, not this machine learning tools and and AI tools,
not only to discover the root cause of the disease, but to
build chemistry that will allow us to safely and therapeutically
drug these diseases. So to me, there's absolutely no
(05:03):
question that for us and others,AI is transformative and it will
change the face of human health in really exciting ways.
There there are obviously other issues with AI and because it's
so powerful, it could be misusedby people inclined to do that.
But in the world I work, it's it's unlocking the promise of
medicine. That's incredible, and we'll
(05:26):
have to have you back on just tokind of get into that a little
bit more. But today we want to speak about
your film, and I was curious what initially drew you to
Phil's sharp story. Well, I think there were two
things, Tom, you know, the firstwas, you know, this having made
(05:46):
films in a lot of areas before. I'll give you an example.
I made a film called The Price of Sugar where I live parts of
three years with the poorest people in the hemisphere who are
Haitians, taken across the border into the sugar cane
plantations and work to death, you know, a 1,000,000 plus of
them. And I followed a charismatic
(06:09):
Spanish priest who had, at 16 years old, had an epiphany.
And instead of going to the fancy beach town, you know, near
his family's house, he had gone to join Mother Teresa in
Calcutta and work with the poorest of the poor.
And when she passed, you know, he followed her request to love
(06:30):
the poor and be holy. And he moved to be a small time
parish priest in the Dominican Republic where he discovered
these horrific human rights violations taking place in his
parish. And I made a movie about, you
know, his struggle to protect these folks, the plantation
owners who were in opposition tohim.
(06:51):
And you can probably tell, you know, who the good guy and the
bad guy feels like if you end upcaring about, you know, people
who are dying at age 40 years old from overwork.
As as our society has become more polarized, you know, some
of the kind of traditional tropes of documentary filmmaking
(07:11):
have become less interesting to me and I think less valuable.
So I've been interested in telling stories that unite us
and finding ways to put, you know, as many of us on the same
side as possible. And and that's led me to issues
like the running cracking the code.
So, you know, I I gave a speak to talk last week to and there
(07:31):
were 1000 people at the screening and I asked the
beginning, please put your hand up if you're pro cancer.
And of course nobody does because there are many things
that divide Americans, but we'reall unalterably opposed to
Alzheimer's. You know, nobody wants
Parkinson's disease, Nobody wants pancreatic cancer.
(07:54):
And so I thought that by tellingstories about how we actually
solve these, you know, society wide bedeviling subjects and
where the bad guy is the disease, not one another, that
that it might be enlightening tohow we thought about other
issues. So that was, let's say
thematically my interest specifically, I think that we're
(08:19):
in the middle of the greatest revolution in the history of
man. I mean, the French Revolution,
the Chinese Revolution, the American Revolution are all
amazing. The move from the steam engine
to electric power, you know, computational power is certainly
an amazing thing, But right now we're re engineering life.
We literally understand increasingly enough of about
(08:42):
human biology and biology of other species to be able to re
engineer it. And and that it's hard to think
of what is more important than re engineering life.
And The Pioneers of this revolution are with us still.
And it's changed everybody, essentially everybody on earth.
You know, The Pioneers of this revolution include Phil Sharp,
(09:05):
who on the one hand has had this, you know, magical personal
journey. You know, he's born in A1 room,
dirt floor, house, no water, no power to parents who haven't
been to high school. He is so dyslexic he still can't
read fully today. His journey from that to winning
(09:30):
the Nobel Prize in medicine by unlocking understanding the
human biology that is transcendently important is by
itself an astonishing journey and a very encouraging
reflection of the American dream.
But that he also in this sort ofbeautiful pared tale helps is
(09:56):
the sole scientific review for the first biotech company, which
when started nobody believed waspossible to work Genentech and
then started himself with other scientists.
The second Biogen. And we go on in Sirius to found,
you know, a global industry thatwhen he began had no employees
(10:17):
and helped no patients and had no approved drugs.
And last year, 4.2 million people worked in the industry
and 7.6 billion people on Earth took a biotech medicine,
including, I suspect, most of your listeners and you and me.
That revolution that took place in a single, you know, lifetime,
(10:41):
this personal kind of extraordinary journey and the
creation of this industry, whichI think tells something very
important about America because this is this is a story that
when it happened, could never and would never have happened in
any other country on earth. And created great economic
wealth to the United States, butalso much more importantly, real
(11:04):
health for the for America. And had us reaching out to the
world with cures for multiple sclerosis and rare neurological
diseases and cancer, you know, and reflecting in a way the best
generosity of the American spirit and the American
experiment. So and that he personally and of
(11:27):
course you'll have your own conclusions about this time, but
that I find him such a honorable, humble, focused, hard
working example, not self aggrandizing, not not greedy for
attention, just kind of a quiet,personal, family, religious guy
(11:49):
with a with a love of science and a desire to help the world.
You used the term re engineeringlife.
Can you explain to our listenerswhat you mean by that?
Yeah. I mean, I think now that it
doesn't have to be in a human oranother species, mammalian
(12:09):
species. It can also be in the corn.
You know, we're able to take to understand the genetic structure
of a species and we're able to go in and change it with long
term consequences, ideally beneficial long term, You know,
the goal should be and, and I think almost always is long term
beneficial consequences. And these are this is a level of
(12:33):
understanding that we never had before.
And the revolution that feels sharp, particularly is important
in the RNA revolution, you know,the, the central dogma of
biology, which is that we all have DNA and it's kind of, it's
the full architectural drawings for how to construct us as
(12:55):
individuals. And then a temporary copy, as
if, you know, the architect senta photocopy of the blueprint to
the job site to build the house.The, the temporary copy is RNA
and the result, the completed house is the protein.
And you and I and everyone listening to this are built of
(13:16):
proteins. The the history of medicine for
the last depending on how you count Egyptian cave paintings,
thousands of years, but certainly in our modern views
hundreds of years has all been trying to drug fix a protein
that was misconstructed or is insome way misfiring.
(13:37):
What Phil Sharp's innovation didwas said instead of
misconstructing the kitchen and then trying to tear it apart, to
fix it in the way you wanted it to be, which we all know is a
tiresome process unlikely to be without consequence, Phil Sharp
said, well, why don't you just change the temporary drawing?
Just get their drawing right? And that that is, is opening up
(14:03):
a whole new wave of therapeutics.
And companies have begun doing this with gene therapy or ASOS,
which are, you know, in some sense really magical.
They are expensive and a bit of a burden on a patient, but
they're still better than having, in many cases, the
underlying disease. And now we're figuring out how
(14:24):
to do this with a pill. So it it opens up the landscape
of what you can treat and how. And the set of tools generally
can be applied to genetically engineered mice or genetically
engineered crops or modifications in a family that
has a genetic disorder that's inherited, you know,
(14:44):
grandparents to grandchild to grandchild, great grandchild.
You know, we have the possibilities of addressing that
now. And and we, we never did 25
years ago or 50 years ago or 100years ago.
As you mentioned, I mean, who's against fighting cancer?
But you alluded to the the spiritual aspects of, you know,
(15:11):
of people who are doing some of this work and, you know,
wouldn't some people who come from a religious background
might have issues regarding messing around with life.
What what is that? What is that controversy that
(15:31):
that some see with some of this?Work, I think there's a couple
types of controversy, you know, and it's all very
understandable. And I the 1st is it's this is
very you know, this is a lot of power we're talking about, you
know we understood nuclear forces and you can use those in
(15:53):
nuclear medicine, which we do all the time and you can use
them for nuclear weapons and youcan use them for nuclear power.
You know, it's the Prometheus story that computers, you know,
folks have had reservations about computers.
They might change the job opportunities for people that
existed prior to computers. They can be used to spread
(16:17):
hatred around the world or to draft painful manifestos or to
share rapidly globally blueprints for things that we
would prefer, you know, were protected.
But they also can share medicines and connect
grandparents to grandchildren. And they'll let teams build
around the world to do extraordinary things from bridge
(16:40):
building to clean energy. Biotech is in that same category
by itself. It's an extraordinary force and
it needs to be directed for human wealth and human welfare.
So I think one form of reservation, understandably, and
we and people have reservations about AI for the same reasons.
And quite understandably, AI is a very powerful and growing the
(17:00):
powerful set of tools that can be used for good or for ill.
And, and in a well governed society, you know, we would
prioritize governing them for good.
And we've done that with biotech.
They've been series over the last 50 years of, of tales.
And you know, some of this wherepeople came together and wrote
guidelines with public participation for how they would
(17:22):
be these tools, these powerful tools would be used for good.
And they look almost entirely have been in terms of the
specific, you know, religious views of various folks.
I, I don't want to speak to it because I don't understand all
of it. I think for people who have
reservations about these tools, they shouldn't use them and they
should be free to to use with, if they're doing no harm to
(17:43):
anybody else, they should be free to use whichever tools they
feel good about. And an example of this is
genetically engineered crops. There are countries in the world
that ban genetically engineered crops. the United States has not
done that. United States has embraced
genetically engineered crops, but there are people who have
reservations about it. And I think the government
fairly and wisely, you know, could label the food that was
(18:06):
genetically engineered and then let the public choose whether it
wanted to eat it or not. You know, I personally, I'm a
I'm a favor in favor of transparency and empowering
adults to make whatever decisions fit their own personal
circumstances, including their own personal ethical framework.
Do you think we are moving more towards a a future where people
(18:26):
are going to start engineering their their children?
I mean, I know that there are certain things that can be done
already. Is this where we're heading in
terms of picking what traits that their kids should have or
should not have? Well, at least for myself, I, I
think the tools exist to do someof this.
(18:46):
And then you've got to ask yourself what the intention is.
So if the intention is a healthychild where you would otherwise
have a very unhealthy child, youknow, then I then I personally
applaud developments that offer parents through that choice.
I, I'm not suggesting I know theanswer to what a parent should
choose, but I like the notion that a parent gets choices and
(19:09):
that they make decisions that fit their own ethical standards.
And if there's, and if they feelas voters that they want to
evolve the standards of the society, they should speak to
the public leaders. And I work hard to change them.
There's a very different thing for me if folks are essentially
designing the human beings. And of course, there's been a
(19:29):
more global moratorium essentially on cloning humans
for a long time. And with the exception of one
scientist in China who did it and was promptly locked up by
the Chinese, these guidelines have been, you know,
extraordinarily well adhered to.So I, you know, I do think that
then you get to medicines that are taken daily that are not
(19:52):
germline modifying. So they don't change you
permanently. They don't change your children
permanently. But you take a pill because you
have multiple sclerosis and you take a pill every day.
And, you know, at the end of theday, if you don't want to take
it the next day, you don't have to.
And it leaves your body and you're done with it.
Your children don't inherit it. It's not inheritable.
You know, I think most of us would think that giving.
(20:15):
Patients, the choice of taking advanced medicine, you know, is
one of the things that we as a society should be doing so that
we can care for one another. Yeah, you mentioned the very
famous book Brave New World in the film.
What was Huxley warning us aboutand how close are we to some of
(20:38):
the things that he was concernedabout?
You know, I think that the, you know, there is always a concern.
You know, I, I was a privilege to go to the Vatican last week.
And in this case, the Catholic Church is convening folks who
were concerned about the effect on the individuality and
soulfulness of humanity if we come to rely too heavily on
(21:02):
advanced computational tools. I think, you know.
Huxley warned that all forms of power can be dehumanizing if
they're mishandled. That, by the way, includes
scientific power. That includes political power.
You know, politicians who shut down debate, don't respect
alternative voices, are against free speech or the wise and fair
(21:30):
sharing of ideas. You know, that's a, that's a
threat to our individuality. Technology can be such a threat.
Capitalism can be such a threat.And on the other hand, all of
these things, you know, the political leadership,
sophisticated a science, thoughtful religious leaders can
(21:51):
all enhance our humanity and give us more choice to find out
who we uniquely are and to express it in a in a thoughtful
harmony, you know, thoughtful and ideally peace loving away.
I don't see science as unique. I just see science as one of the
tools, and it can be a concern for folks, you know, because not
(22:13):
everybody understands, you know,every political issue, every
religious issue or every scienceissue.
And so to some extent, we have to hope for enlightened leaders
you know who you know, who use wisdom and grace and composure
when dealing with complicated issues on our common behalf.
Near the end of the film, the issue of COVID is brought up,
(22:37):
and did you ever see it coming in in your lifetime, that that
science and the treatment of something like COVID could
actually end up being one of thethings that divided people so,
so much politically? It's really I'm afraid I.
It's interesting. It's a puzzle.
(22:58):
It's a puzzle. Let me start by saying, and I
think, you know, you can attest to this having seen the film, I
don't have a political agenda interms of one party or the other
with any of this. And in fact, you know, the, the
great wellspring of scientific innovation in the United States,
(23:18):
it, it, it is rooted in our Constitution and in the the
history of the country. You know, there were five
drafters of the Declaration of Independence, for example, and
two of them were inventors. Both Thomas Jefferson and Ben
Franklin were celebrated, indeedstill are celebrated inventors.
And the Constitution itself, youknow, it doesn't guarantee in
(23:41):
its initial forms the freedom ofspeech or freedom of religion or
freedom of assembly or haven't helped us the right to bear
arms. It it doesn't, all of those
things are later in the Bill of Rights, but the Constitution
does because the founders thought it was important to
protect the creative output of individual and the imagination
(24:04):
made manifest of an individual copyright and patent is in the
Constitution itself. So the United States has a long
history of believing that innovation is at the center of
our economic, political and civic well-being.
But the the kind of extraordinary flowering of our
innovation really happens after 1950, really after World War 2,
(24:26):
when Dwight Eisenhower endorses worked on by Harry Truman and
initiated by Franklin Roosevelt,something called the Endless
Frontier program, which is they see how important technology is
in World War 2 and they see how close it came that Germany got
nuclear weapons, the Hitler and the Nazis got nuclear weapons
(24:46):
before we did. And they wonder what the world
would have been like. And they begin supporting
science and innovation in the United States in a very
thoughtful way. It accelerates when the Russians
launched Sputnik and we're behind in the space rates and
Dwight Eisenhower, another Republican president, you know,
really and, and a two time war hero.
(25:07):
I mean a war hero and a two timepresident supports innovation.
Richard Nixon, you know, the waron cancer is announced by
Richard Nixon and the funding ofthe National Cancer Institute
and the and National Science Foundation growth all
accelerates under Republicans. So Democrats and Republicans,
you know, have done a fantastic job and they built the
legislative base with great universities, welcoming,
(25:29):
welcoming smart people from around the world, publishing
really powerful innovation, licensing it to technology
startups who grow into the Appleor computers of tomorrow.
You know, that was constructed by wise political leadership
from both parties over a long period of time.
So I think it's a centerpiece towhat it is to be an American,
(25:52):
starting with the, you know, theDeclaration of Independence and
all the way through to today. I don't think it's guaranteed to
continue if if we don't care forit.
And the COVID vaccine revolution, you know, to me,
let's we have viruses like AIDS.We don't have a vaccine for now.
It's more than 30 years later, we still have never figured out
(26:13):
a vaccine. The folks at Gilead are doing
some amazing work and they may be close, but it's been 30
years. The fastest anybody had ever
come up with a vaccine ever was four years.
And the fact that we had a vaccine for COVID in nine months
was a testimony to the world of science, to American scientists
(26:33):
and and other scientists to be put biotech, but also, frankly,
to the Trump administration. Operation Warp Speed, you know,
was a enlightened idea that helped us accelerate the COVID
vaccine. So it's a bit of a surprise that
they don't take more credit for their fantastic work.
But I will say, you know, powerful science is often
(26:57):
controversial. And the COVID vaccine
specifically, there's sort of the two pieces.
There's the drug and how you feel about the drug.
And I myself am very grateful that I got vaccinated.
And my mother, who's now 88, gotvaccinated, and we could live a
full life again. But then there's a question of
choice. You know, were there adults who
(27:19):
felt pressured into taking a vaccine they didn't meet their
personal standards? That's a, that's a slightly
different question. And perhaps some of the
controversy lies there. One of the things that you've
touched on both in your film andin this discussion is that there
(27:41):
is a major connection between science and business that exists
and that America is a unique place or has been a unique place
in terms of the relationship between business and medicine
and, and science and, and also the university system.
(28:01):
Can you explain to our listenersjust a little bit about like
what they'll learn about this process in your movie and, and
just in general, like what is itimportant for us to understand
in terms of that relationship? Well, you know, first I think I
hope that they find the movie inspiring and enjoyful and, you
(28:21):
know, and enjoyable. It is.
It is, yeah. And so 'cause I think
unfortunately, if you talk too much about what people will
learn, they start thinking it's going to be all spinach all the
time. And I don't think that's the
case. But it is true that part of the
inspiration is the ability to beeffective.
So it is at some level, at leastfor me, an amazing story of
entrepreneurship, you know, and there are very few high quality
(28:46):
documentaries on entrepreneurs, but it's you know, there's
millions and millions of American entrepreneurs and
entrepreneurs are the world overare obviously about vast
multiple of that and many of them in technological fields.
And I think Phil Sharp and his colleagues ability and courage
to pioneer a whole new field with all the going into the
(29:07):
darkness and hoping to find light that that involves, I
think is also kind of astonishing.
And and it's true that part of what makes America extraordinary
is our tolerance for risk and the financial markets here.
And the fact that we have sophisticated investors in
(29:28):
venture capitalists and private equity in the public markets
means that, you know, you know, in the United States, things
that are almost anywhere on the risk reward curve, you know, are
possible. There are people right now
working to build build whole newlevels of energy in fusion
reactors. It's going to cost $5 billion
and it may well not work. And Americans are up for that
(29:50):
investment. You know when when Tesla starts
the market for, you know, US made cars at $100,000 is 0.
The market for electric cars is 0.
The history of the car industry hadn't started and, you know, a
new company hadn't gone public in 50 or 60 years.
You know, the theory that somehow Tesla would be a
(30:11):
groundbreaking transformational business was really in the
spirit of the Americans who invested and supported and, you
know, the entrepreneurial visionof the entrepreneurs and the
technologists never happened anywhere else in the world.
You know, what happened with Genentech as it pioneered
biotechnology and Biogen as it as it followed on to do it, you
(30:32):
know, takes place for a long time only in America.
The first company, the second company, the third company, the
4th company. So these are now the world's
changing pretty fast. You know, we invented the
semiconductor, but Taiwan and Taiwan semiconductor took over
the vast bulk of the industry, Much of speciality chemicals and
(30:53):
a lot of advanced consumer electronics moved manufacturing
to Korea or China. And right now there are public
policy decisions being made that, you know, are putting a
lot of pressure on the biotech industry.
And we may see an awful lot of those jobs head abroad, You
know, if we're not able to welcome the smartest people from
around the world to work on the science and have regulatory
(31:14):
stability and financial markets predictability so people can
invest. And, you know, I hope the folks
in Washington are thinking aboutthat.
I, I went to meet a Republican senator named Todd Young, who
understands very, very well the opportunity for America to get
this right and the challenges ifwe don't.
And he and his Democratic colleague, Maggie Hassan from
(31:37):
New Hampshire, you know, workinghard to help create this
industry and protect it to the next, to its next stage.
So, you know, sometimes the newspapers would suggest it's
only combat in Washington. But, you know, I've met a lot of
enlightened leaders from both parties who are really trying to
do the right thing for the country and the industry, but
also, you know, for patients, many of them are in their
(31:58):
families. So, you know, I think that
because we've gotten it right inthe past, there's no guarantee
we'll get it right now. So as an example, today there's
when when in the film talks about the first biotech company
and then the second. There's not 20,000 biotech
companies and 6000 are in China.And, you know, ideally they will
(32:22):
compete fairly and equitably. And, but I will tell you, 'cause
I, you know, I, I know many of them, they work very hard.
They are very focused. They are in a very stable
society, if not a fully liberated one.
They are formidable competitors.And if we, I personally believe
America will win, if we are wiseand thoughtful and stay
(32:44):
together, and if we're not, thenwhat will happen to biotech is
what happened to semiconductors.Wow.
And what can we learn, do you feel, from Phil Sharp's personal
story that's so important for moviegoers to to to find out?
Well, I think the first piece isthat there's a life of
(33:06):
creativity and dynamism in the world of sciences.
And so for for people who are scientists themselves or
engineers or who family members are, who have children who are
trying to find soulful creative work in the future, you know,
it's a it's a guidepost for that.
The second is, you know, and youknow so much about this because
you've done work in this field for so long.
Storytelling, Tom. But you know, the classic hero
(33:29):
journey is about somebody who takes increasingly big risks on
behalf of something more important than themselves.
It's not heroic to be focused onself-interest.
Phil Sharp in in with, by these definitions, you know, is an
extraordinary hero. And he and his colleagues are
(33:52):
living the American dream in that through their own hard work
and creativity and determinationand resilience, just this sheer
ability to take a punch, you know, they are able to change
their lives and their lives, thefamily, but their families, but
also the lives of their neighbors and the country.
And, you know, so it's true thata superhero where you're bitten
(34:17):
by a radioactive spider and a magical things can be
entertaining, but it's not something you can take into your
daily life. But Phil Sharp's journey, you
most assuredly can. And you know, I asked, as, you
know, of course, Tom Walter Isaacson's in this movie.
And Walter is the foremost chronicler of genius in the
(34:38):
world. He wrote the definitive
biographies on Leonardo da Vinciand on Benjamin Franklin and on,
of course, on Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and Henry Kissinger
and Jennifer Dudno. And I asked him, you know, is is
genius born or made? And he looked at me and said,
(35:01):
well, of course it's made. And I said from what he said,
well, curiosity, undying curiosity, the ability to
simultaneously and paradoxicallycompete and collaborate,
sometimes with the same people. The ability to be an outsider,
(35:25):
not not to seek to be an outsider, but to be willing if
your ideas are different than others and you've challenged
them and you hold to them, to stick with them and to keep
working on them. Phil Sharp is a spectacular
example of having to do that again and again and again.
And so is Moderna, you know, these companies fail and fail
and fail and fail, but they staywith it.
(35:47):
So and of course, resilience, you know, just the sheer
attitude where you stick with stuff over a long period of time
so you can make a difference like you've done with your show
really. I mean, I said, you know, we
talked privately at the beginning and I was crediting
you that because it's, it's easyto start something interesting
and then pivot to something else.
And to your great credit, you'vestayed with us a long time and
(36:08):
and I think made an increasing difference.
So, so I think it's some level, you know, films like mine don't
have, I'm lucky to have Mark Ruffalo and he was, he was
fantastic. And we got to work with some
very gifted guys. There's four or five Nobel Prize
winners in the film. And the music is, I think,
fantastic. And I think it's a Great
American story. But, but part of what it is, is
(36:29):
a story where if you watch it, it can change how you think
about things that you're doing yourself.
And not every movie does that. Sometimes they're entertaining
and sometimes they're inspiring,but they're not always
personally empowering and I I like to believe that cracking
the code can be. And it is, and I want to highly
recommend it. Bill, where can people go online
(36:51):
to learn more about your movie and upcoming screenings?
I think cracking the code.com will tell you and our movie
production company is called Uncommon Productions and a lot
of the stuff it will be there and, and you know, you can just
write to info at Uncommon Productions and we'll, and we'll
give you an update. We're very lucky.
You know, we will do about 100 screenings between now and the
(37:12):
end of the year. And it's growing, you know, as
as it goes around the country and other countries.
And then PBS is doing a screening October 6th that is
nationwide on Itvs. And at least they tell me they
expect 3 to 5 million householdsto, to get to see the film, you
know, from that initial launch and then with subsequent
(37:34):
screenings on public television and on public television's
YouTube channel and, and other venues.
So hopefully some of your listeners will get a chance to
see it and and hopefully they'llenjoy it.
Well, thank you very much, Bill.Again, I do want to highly
recommend the film and it's going to be playing at the Port
Jefferson Documentary film screening on September 25th at
(37:58):
7:00 PM Thanks again, Bill. What a privilege being with you,
Tom. Thank you for your time.
Hi, this is Tom Needaman. You're listening to the sounds
of film and today we're very excited to have on the program
award-winning filmmaker and biotech entrepreneur Bill Haney,
the director of the film Cracking the Code, Phil Sharp
and the Biotech Revolution. Narrated by Mark Ruffalo, the
film traces Phil Sharp's remarkable journey from a
(00:23):
Kentucky tobacco farm to winningthe Nobel Prize and founding
groundbreaking biotech companiesthat transformed medicine.
More than a biography, Cracking the Code is a road map for the
future of science, innovation, and the enduring power of the
American Dream. The film is actually opening up
(00:44):
the Port Jefferson Documentary Film Series on September 25th at
7:00 PM locally. So, Bill, thank you so much for
joining us today on The Sounds of Film.
It's a privilege to be with you,Tom.
You know, as I mentioned as we chatted briefly, you know, I, I
love pioneers and you personallyare a great pioneer in this
(01:06):
space. So thank you for your work and
your leadership. Well, I appreciate that.
You know, I, I gave a little bitabout yourself, but but you're a
pioneer yourself. Tell us a little bit about the
work that you've done, not just in film, but in the biotech
space. Well, you know, I've been
(01:28):
interested in innovation for a long time, Tom, and, and to some
extent stories. You know, I grew up at a
monastery in Rhode Island, the Benedine monastery where I lived
from five years old till I was 18.
And I went to Harvard scrubbing toilets to pay for college.
And I Co invented the system producing air pollution from
(01:49):
power plants. That's on virtually every power
plant in the world. And the system producing and
nitrous oxide emissions from diesel engines that for example,
is what Volkswagen wasn't doing when they were cheating on
their, you know, air pollution control obligations.
So I've been working at technology innovation for a long
(02:09):
time. You know, I'm basically my work
life is innovation, including increasingly and and science and
innovation for public purpose. So initially environmental
issues for a long time, but increasingly on issues of
health, I do a lot of nonprofit work that's included teaching
and helping start nonprofits andvarious other things.
(02:32):
And I'm this is my 19th movie that I've, you know, written or
directed or produced. So that's kind of a precis of my
backdrop. In biotech specifically, you
know, we're trying to find ways to cure the most incurable
diseases. I run a company called
Dragonfly. It's been working in very
challenging oncology, autoimmuneand fibrosis indications and in
(02:56):
Skyhawk, where we're trying to find a way to drug RNA upstream
of proteins. And our specific focus is on
rare neurological diseases for which there are no existing
therapeutics. So think of Alzheimer's,
Parkinson's, Huntington disease,ALS, things like that.
Wow. So there's so much I want to get
(03:19):
into. I mean, with the work that
you're doing, I'm just curious with AI on the the foremost
minds of so many people, do you think that's going to be useful
in in helping people like yourself and other people in
your field to discover cures fora lot of the diseases that we
(03:40):
can't find cures for right now? Yes, but without any question,
you know, we we're at the leading edge of using what you
know, initiatives, computationalsystems and computational
biology and then machine learning tools and now AI to
help us understand and really discover the root causes
(04:00):
biologically of some of the mostpernicious human diseases first.
And we are discovering in Skyhawk novel biology, you know,
if not daily, certainly weekly. And then because we're trying to
find ways to drug these challenging things with pills
that are easy on patients and easy on healthcare systems and,
(04:21):
and frankly, globally available because, you know, $3,000,000
gene therapy treatments where you have a 12 hour brain
operation understandably concerna lot of patients.
They're a burden on the hospitals.
They're expensive and they're unlikely to be available to
patients around the world because most societies can't
(04:41):
afford them. So Skyock is pioneering the the
use of this, not this machine learning tools and and AI tools,
not only to discover the root cause of the disease, but to
build chemistry that will allow us to safely and therapeutically
drug these diseases. So to me, there's absolutely no
(05:03):
question that for us and others,AI is transformative and it will
change the face of human health in really exciting ways.
There there are obviously other issues with AI and because it's
so powerful, it could be misusedby people inclined to do that.
But in the world I work, it's it's unlocking the promise of
medicine. That's incredible, and we'll
(05:26):
have to have you back on just tokind of get into that a little
bit more. But today we want to speak about
your film, and I was curious what initially drew you to
Phil's sharp story. Well, I think there were two
things, Tom, you know, the firstwas, you know, this having made
(05:46):
films in a lot of areas before. I'll give you an example.
I made a film called The Price of Sugar where I live parts of
three years with the poorest people in the hemisphere who are
Haitians, taken across the border into the sugar cane
plantations and work to death, you know, a 1,000,000 plus of
them. And I followed a charismatic
(06:09):
Spanish priest who had, at 16 years old, had an epiphany.
And instead of going to the fancy beach town, you know, near
his family's house, he had gone to join Mother Teresa in
Calcutta and work with the poorest of the poor.
And when she passed, you know, he followed her request to love
(06:30):
the poor and be holy. And he moved to be a small time
parish priest in the Dominican Republic where he discovered
these horrific human rights violations taking place in his
parish. And I made a movie about, you
know, his struggle to protect these folks, the plantation
owners who were in opposition tohim.
(06:51):
And you can probably tell, you know, who the good guy and the
bad guy feels like if you end upcaring about, you know, people
who are dying at age 40 years old from overwork.
As as our society has become more polarized, you know, some
of the kind of traditional tropes of documentary filmmaking
(07:11):
have become less interesting to me and I think less valuable.
So I've been interested in telling stories that unite us
and finding ways to put, you know, as many of us on the same
side as possible. And and that's led me to issues
like the running cracking the code.
So, you know, I I gave a speak to talk last week to and there
(07:31):
were 1000 people at the screening and I asked the
beginning, please put your hand up if you're pro cancer.
And of course nobody does because there are many things
that divide Americans, but we'reall unalterably opposed to
Alzheimer's. You know, nobody wants
Parkinson's disease, Nobody wants pancreatic cancer.
(07:54):
And so I thought that by tellingstories about how we actually
solve these, you know, society wide bedeviling subjects and
where the bad guy is the disease, not one another, that
that it might be enlightening tohow we thought about other
issues. So that was, let's say
thematically my interest specifically, I think that we're
(08:19):
in the middle of the greatest revolution in the history of
man. I mean, the French Revolution,
the Chinese Revolution, the American Revolution are all
amazing. The move from the steam engine
to electric power, you know, computational power is certainly
an amazing thing, But right now we're re engineering life.
We literally understand increasingly enough of about
(08:42):
human biology and biology of other species to be able to re
engineer it. And and that it's hard to think
of what is more important than re engineering life.
And The Pioneers of this revolution are with us still.
And it's changed everybody, essentially everybody on earth.
You know, The Pioneers of this revolution include Phil Sharp,
(09:05):
who on the one hand has had this, you know, magical personal
journey. You know, he's born in A1 room,
dirt floor, house, no water, no power to parents who haven't
been to high school. He is so dyslexic he still can't
read fully today. His journey from that to winning
(09:30):
the Nobel Prize in medicine by unlocking understanding the
human biology that is transcendently important is by
itself an astonishing journey and a very encouraging
reflection of the American dream.
But that he also in this sort ofbeautiful pared tale helps is
(09:56):
the sole scientific review for the first biotech company, which
when started nobody believed waspossible to work Genentech and
then started himself with other scientists.
The second Biogen. And we go on in Sirius to found,
you know, a global industry thatwhen he began had no employees
(10:17):
and helped no patients and had no approved drugs.
And last year, 4.2 million people worked in the industry
and 7.6 billion people on Earth took a biotech medicine,
including, I suspect, most of your listeners and you and me.
That revolution that took place in a single, you know, lifetime,
(10:41):
this personal kind of extraordinary journey and the
creation of this industry, whichI think tells something very
important about America because this is this is a story that
when it happened, could never and would never have happened in
any other country on earth. And created great economic
wealth to the United States, butalso much more importantly, real
(11:04):
health for the for America. And had us reaching out to the
world with cures for multiple sclerosis and rare neurological
diseases and cancer, you know, and reflecting in a way the best
generosity of the American spirit and the American
experiment. So and that he personally and of
(11:27):
course you'll have your own conclusions about this time, but
that I find him such a honorable, humble, focused, hard
working example, not self aggrandizing, not not greedy for
attention, just kind of a quiet,personal, family, religious guy
(11:49):
with a with a love of science and a desire to help the world.
You used the term re engineeringlife.
Can you explain to our listenerswhat you mean by that?
Yeah. I mean, I think now that it
doesn't have to be in a human oranother species, mammalian
(12:09):
species. It can also be in the corn.
You know, we're able to take to understand the genetic structure
of a species and we're able to go in and change it with long
term consequences, ideally beneficial long term, You know,
the goal should be and, and I think almost always is long term
beneficial consequences. And these are this is a level of
(12:33):
understanding that we never had before.
And the revolution that feels sharp, particularly is important
in the RNA revolution, you know,the, the central dogma of
biology, which is that we all have DNA and it's kind of, it's
the full architectural drawings for how to construct us as
(12:55):
individuals. And then a temporary copy, as
if, you know, the architect senta photocopy of the blueprint to
the job site to build the house.The, the temporary copy is RNA
and the result, the completed house is the protein.
And you and I and everyone listening to this are built of
(13:16):
proteins. The the history of medicine for
the last depending on how you count Egyptian cave paintings,
thousands of years, but certainly in our modern views
hundreds of years has all been trying to drug fix a protein
that was misconstructed or is insome way misfiring.
(13:37):
What Phil Sharp's innovation didwas said instead of
misconstructing the kitchen and then trying to tear it apart, to
fix it in the way you wanted it to be, which we all know is a
tiresome process unlikely to be without consequence, Phil Sharp
said, well, why don't you just change the temporary drawing?
Just get their drawing right? And that that is, is opening up
(14:03):
a whole new wave of therapeutics.
And companies have begun doing this with gene therapy or ASOS,
which are, you know, in some sense really magical.
They are expensive and a bit of a burden on a patient, but
they're still better than having, in many cases, the
underlying disease. And now we're figuring out how
(14:24):
to do this with a pill. So it it opens up the landscape
of what you can treat and how. And the set of tools generally
can be applied to genetically engineered mice or genetically
engineered crops or modifications in a family that
has a genetic disorder that's inherited, you know,
(14:44):
grandparents to grandchild to grandchild, great grandchild.
You know, we have the possibilities of addressing that
now. And and we, we never did 25
years ago or 50 years ago or 100years ago.
As you mentioned, I mean, who's against fighting cancer?
But you alluded to the the spiritual aspects of, you know,
(15:11):
of people who are doing some of this work and, you know,
wouldn't some people who come from a religious background
might have issues regarding messing around with life.
What what is that? What is that controversy that
(15:31):
that some see with some of this?Work, I think there's a couple
types of controversy, you know, and it's all very
understandable. And I the 1st is it's this is
very you know, this is a lot of power we're talking about, you
know we understood nuclear forces and you can use those in
(15:53):
nuclear medicine, which we do all the time and you can use
them for nuclear weapons and youcan use them for nuclear power.
You know, it's the Prometheus story that computers, you know,
folks have had reservations about computers.
They might change the job opportunities for people that
existed prior to computers. They can be used to spread
(16:17):
hatred around the world or to draft painful manifestos or to
share rapidly globally blueprints for things that we
would prefer, you know, were protected.
But they also can share medicines and connect
grandparents to grandchildren. And they'll let teams build
around the world to do extraordinary things from bridge
(16:40):
building to clean energy. Biotech is in that same category
by itself. It's an extraordinary force and
it needs to be directed for human wealth and human welfare.
So I think one form of reservation, understandably, and
we and people have reservations about AI for the same reasons.
And quite understandably, AI is a very powerful and growing the
(17:00):
powerful set of tools that can be used for good or for ill.
And, and in a well governed society, you know, we would
prioritize governing them for good.
And we've done that with biotech.
They've been series over the last 50 years of, of tales.
And you know, some of this wherepeople came together and wrote
guidelines with public participation for how they would
(17:22):
be these tools, these powerful tools would be used for good.
And they look almost entirely have been in terms of the
specific, you know, religious views of various folks.
I, I don't want to speak to it because I don't understand all
of it. I think for people who have
reservations about these tools, they shouldn't use them and they
should be free to to use with, if they're doing no harm to
(17:43):
anybody else, they should be free to use whichever tools they
feel good about. And an example of this is
genetically engineered crops. There are countries in the world
that ban genetically engineered crops. the United States has not
done that. United States has embraced
genetically engineered crops, but there are people who have
reservations about it. And I think the government
fairly and wisely, you know, could label the food that was
(18:06):
genetically engineered and then let the public choose whether it
wanted to eat it or not. You know, I personally, I'm a
I'm a favor in favor of transparency and empowering
adults to make whatever decisions fit their own personal
circumstances, including their own personal ethical framework.
Do you think we are moving more towards a a future where people
(18:26):
are going to start engineering their their children?
I mean, I know that there are certain things that can be done
already. Is this where we're heading in
terms of picking what traits that their kids should have or
should not have? Well, at least for myself, I, I
think the tools exist to do someof this.
(18:46):
And then you've got to ask yourself what the intention is.
So if the intention is a healthychild where you would otherwise
have a very unhealthy child, youknow, then I then I personally
applaud developments that offer parents through that choice.
I, I'm not suggesting I know theanswer to what a parent should
choose, but I like the notion that a parent gets choices and
(19:09):
that they make decisions that fit their own ethical standards.
And if there's, and if they feelas voters that they want to
evolve the standards of the society, they should speak to
the public leaders. And I work hard to change them.
There's a very different thing for me if folks are essentially
designing the human beings. And of course, there's been a
(19:29):
more global moratorium essentially on cloning humans
for a long time. And with the exception of one
scientist in China who did it and was promptly locked up by
the Chinese, these guidelines have been, you know,
extraordinarily well adhered to.So I, you know, I do think that
then you get to medicines that are taken daily that are not
(19:52):
germline modifying. So they don't change you
permanently. They don't change your children
permanently. But you take a pill because you
have multiple sclerosis and you take a pill every day.
And, you know, at the end of theday, if you don't want to take
it the next day, you don't have to.
And it leaves your body and you're done with it.
Your children don't inherit it. It's not inheritable.
You know, I think most of us would think that giving.
(20:15):
Patients, the choice of taking advanced medicine, you know, is
one of the things that we as a society should be doing so that
we can care for one another. Yeah, you mentioned the very
famous book Brave New World in the film.
What was Huxley warning us aboutand how close are we to some of
(20:38):
the things that he was concernedabout?
You know, I think that the, you know, there is always a concern.
You know, I, I was a privilege to go to the Vatican last week.
And in this case, the Catholic Church is convening folks who
were concerned about the effect on the individuality and
soulfulness of humanity if we come to rely too heavily on
(21:02):
advanced computational tools. I think, you know.
Huxley warned that all forms of power can be dehumanizing if
they're mishandled. That, by the way, includes
scientific power. That includes political power.
You know, politicians who shut down debate, don't respect
alternative voices, are against free speech or the wise and fair
(21:30):
sharing of ideas. You know, that's a, that's a
threat to our individuality. Technology can be such a threat.
Capitalism can be such a threat.And on the other hand, all of
these things, you know, the political leadership,
sophisticated a science, thoughtful religious leaders can
(21:51):
all enhance our humanity and give us more choice to find out
who we uniquely are and to express it in a in a thoughtful
harmony, you know, thoughtful and ideally peace loving away.
I don't see science as unique. I just see science as one of the
tools, and it can be a concern for folks, you know, because not
(22:13):
everybody understands, you know,every political issue, every
religious issue or every scienceissue.
And so to some extent, we have to hope for enlightened leaders
you know who you know, who use wisdom and grace and composure
when dealing with complicated issues on our common behalf.
Near the end of the film, the issue of COVID is brought up,
(22:37):
and did you ever see it coming in in your lifetime, that that
science and the treatment of something like COVID could
actually end up being one of thethings that divided people so,
so much politically? It's really I'm afraid I.
It's interesting. It's a puzzle.
(22:58):
It's a puzzle. Let me start by saying, and I
think, you know, you can attest to this having seen the film, I
don't have a political agenda interms of one party or the other
with any of this. And in fact, you know, the, the
great wellspring of scientific innovation in the United States,
(23:18):
it, it, it is rooted in our Constitution and in the the
history of the country. You know, there were five
drafters of the Declaration of Independence, for example, and
two of them were inventors. Both Thomas Jefferson and Ben
Franklin were celebrated, indeedstill are celebrated inventors.
And the Constitution itself, youknow, it doesn't guarantee in
(23:41):
its initial forms the freedom ofspeech or freedom of religion or
freedom of assembly or haven't helped us the right to bear
arms. It it doesn't, all of those
things are later in the Bill of Rights, but the Constitution
does because the founders thought it was important to
protect the creative output of individual and the imagination
(24:04):
made manifest of an individual copyright and patent is in the
Constitution itself. So the United States has a long
history of believing that innovation is at the center of
our economic, political and civic well-being.
But the the kind of extraordinary flowering of our
innovation really happens after 1950, really after World War 2,
(24:26):
when Dwight Eisenhower endorses worked on by Harry Truman and
initiated by Franklin Roosevelt,something called the Endless
Frontier program, which is they see how important technology is
in World War 2 and they see how close it came that Germany got
nuclear weapons, the Hitler and the Nazis got nuclear weapons
(24:46):
before we did. And they wonder what the world
would have been like. And they begin supporting
science and innovation in the United States in a very
thoughtful way. It accelerates when the Russians
launched Sputnik and we're behind in the space rates and
Dwight Eisenhower, another Republican president, you know,
really and, and a two time war hero.
(25:07):
I mean a war hero and a two timepresident supports innovation.
Richard Nixon, you know, the waron cancer is announced by
Richard Nixon and the funding ofthe National Cancer Institute
and the and National Science Foundation growth all
accelerates under Republicans. So Democrats and Republicans,
you know, have done a fantastic job and they built the
legislative base with great universities, welcoming,
(25:29):
welcoming smart people from around the world, publishing
really powerful innovation, licensing it to technology
startups who grow into the Appleor computers of tomorrow.
You know, that was constructed by wise political leadership
from both parties over a long period of time.
So I think it's a centerpiece towhat it is to be an American,
(25:52):
starting with the, you know, theDeclaration of Independence and
all the way through to today. I don't think it's guaranteed to
continue if if we don't care forit.
And the COVID vaccine revolution, you know, to me,
let's we have viruses like AIDS.We don't have a vaccine for now.
It's more than 30 years later, we still have never figured out
(26:13):
a vaccine. The folks at Gilead are doing
some amazing work and they may be close, but it's been 30
years. The fastest anybody had ever
come up with a vaccine ever was four years.
And the fact that we had a vaccine for COVID in nine months
was a testimony to the world of science, to American scientists
(26:33):
and and other scientists to be put biotech, but also, frankly,
to the Trump administration. Operation Warp Speed, you know,
was a enlightened idea that helped us accelerate the COVID
vaccine. So it's a bit of a surprise that
they don't take more credit for their fantastic work.
But I will say, you know, powerful science is often
(26:57):
controversial. And the COVID vaccine
specifically, there's sort of the two pieces.
There's the drug and how you feel about the drug.
And I myself am very grateful that I got vaccinated.
And my mother, who's now 88, gotvaccinated, and we could live a
full life again. But then there's a question of
choice. You know, were there adults who
(27:19):
felt pressured into taking a vaccine they didn't meet their
personal standards? That's a, that's a slightly
different question. And perhaps some of the
controversy lies there. One of the things that you've
touched on both in your film andin this discussion is that there
(27:41):
is a major connection between science and business that exists
and that America is a unique place or has been a unique place
in terms of the relationship between business and medicine
and, and science and, and also the university system.
(28:01):
Can you explain to our listenersjust a little bit about like
what they'll learn about this process in your movie and, and
just in general, like what is itimportant for us to understand
in terms of that relationship? Well, you know, first I think I
hope that they find the movie inspiring and enjoyful and, you
(28:21):
know, and enjoyable. It is.
It is, yeah. And so 'cause I think
unfortunately, if you talk too much about what people will
learn, they start thinking it's going to be all spinach all the
time. And I don't think that's the
case. But it is true that part of the
inspiration is the ability to beeffective.
So it is at some level, at leastfor me, an amazing story of
entrepreneurship, you know, and there are very few high quality
(28:46):
documentaries on entrepreneurs, but it's you know, there's
millions and millions of American entrepreneurs and
entrepreneurs are the world overare obviously about vast
multiple of that and many of them in technological fields.
And I think Phil Sharp and his colleagues ability and courage
to pioneer a whole new field with all the going into the
(29:07):
darkness and hoping to find light that that involves, I
think is also kind of astonishing.
And and it's true that part of what makes America extraordinary
is our tolerance for risk and the financial markets here.
And the fact that we have sophisticated investors in
(29:28):
venture capitalists and private equity in the public markets
means that, you know, you know, in the United States, things
that are almost anywhere on the risk reward curve, you know, are
possible. There are people right now
working to build build whole newlevels of energy in fusion
reactors. It's going to cost $5 billion
and it may well not work. And Americans are up for that
(29:50):
investment. You know when when Tesla starts
the market for, you know, US made cars at $100,000 is 0.
The market for electric cars is 0.
The history of the car industry hadn't started and, you know, a
new company hadn't gone public in 50 or 60 years.
You know, the theory that somehow Tesla would be a
(30:11):
groundbreaking transformational business was really in the
spirit of the Americans who invested and supported and, you
know, the entrepreneurial visionof the entrepreneurs and the
technologists never happened anywhere else in the world.
You know, what happened with Genentech as it pioneered
biotechnology and Biogen as it as it followed on to do it, you
(30:32):
know, takes place for a long time only in America.
The first company, the second company, the third company, the
4th company. So these are now the world's
changing pretty fast. You know, we invented the
semiconductor, but Taiwan and Taiwan semiconductor took over
the vast bulk of the industry, Much of speciality chemicals and
(30:53):
a lot of advanced consumer electronics moved manufacturing
to Korea or China. And right now there are public
policy decisions being made that, you know, are putting a
lot of pressure on the biotech industry.
And we may see an awful lot of those jobs head abroad, You
know, if we're not able to welcome the smartest people from
around the world to work on the science and have regulatory
(31:14):
stability and financial markets predictability so people can
invest. And, you know, I hope the folks
in Washington are thinking aboutthat.
I, I went to meet a Republican senator named Todd Young, who
understands very, very well the opportunity for America to get
this right and the challenges ifwe don't.
And he and his Democratic colleague, Maggie Hassan from
(31:37):
New Hampshire, you know, workinghard to help create this
industry and protect it to the next, to its next stage.
So, you know, sometimes the newspapers would suggest it's
only combat in Washington. But, you know, I've met a lot of
enlightened leaders from both parties who are really trying to
do the right thing for the country and the industry, but
also, you know, for patients, many of them are in their
(31:58):
families. So, you know, I think that
because we've gotten it right inthe past, there's no guarantee
we'll get it right now. So as an example, today there's
when when in the film talks about the first biotech company
and then the second. There's not 20,000 biotech
companies and 6000 are in China.And, you know, ideally they will
(32:22):
compete fairly and equitably. And, but I will tell you, 'cause
I, you know, I, I know many of them, they work very hard.
They are very focused. They are in a very stable
society, if not a fully liberated one.
They are formidable competitors.And if we, I personally believe
America will win, if we are wiseand thoughtful and stay
(32:44):
together, and if we're not, thenwhat will happen to biotech is
what happened to semiconductors.Wow.
And what can we learn, do you feel, from Phil Sharp's personal
story that's so important for moviegoers to to to find out?
Well, I think the first piece isthat there's a life of
(33:06):
creativity and dynamism in the world of sciences.
And so for for people who are scientists themselves or
engineers or who family members are, who have children who are
trying to find soulful creative work in the future, you know,
it's a it's a guidepost for that.
The second is, you know, and youknow so much about this because
you've done work in this field for so long.
Storytelling, Tom. But you know, the classic hero
(33:29):
journey is about somebody who takes increasingly big risks on
behalf of something more important than themselves.
It's not heroic to be focused onself-interest.
Phil Sharp in in with, by these definitions, you know, is an
extraordinary hero. And he and his colleagues are
(33:52):
living the American dream in that through their own hard work
and creativity and determinationand resilience, just this sheer
ability to take a punch, you know, they are able to change
their lives and their lives, thefamily, but their families, but
also the lives of their neighbors and the country.
And, you know, so it's true thata superhero where you're bitten
(34:17):
by a radioactive spider and a magical things can be
entertaining, but it's not something you can take into your
daily life. But Phil Sharp's journey, you
most assuredly can. And you know, I asked, as, you
know, of course, Tom Walter Isaacson's in this movie.
And Walter is the foremost chronicler of genius in the
(34:38):
world. He wrote the definitive
biographies on Leonardo da Vinciand on Benjamin Franklin and on,
of course, on Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and Henry Kissinger
and Jennifer Dudno. And I asked him, you know, is is
genius born or made? And he looked at me and said,
(35:01):
well, of course it's made. And I said from what he said,
well, curiosity, undying curiosity, the ability to
simultaneously and paradoxicallycompete and collaborate,
sometimes with the same people. The ability to be an outsider,
(35:25):
not not to seek to be an outsider, but to be willing if
your ideas are different than others and you've challenged
them and you hold to them, to stick with them and to keep
working on them. Phil Sharp is a spectacular
example of having to do that again and again and again.
And so is Moderna, you know, these companies fail and fail
and fail and fail, but they staywith it.
(35:47):
So and of course, resilience, you know, just the sheer
attitude where you stick with stuff over a long period of time
so you can make a difference like you've done with your show
really. I mean, I said, you know, we
talked privately at the beginning and I was crediting
you that because it's, it's easyto start something interesting
and then pivot to something else.
And to your great credit, you'vestayed with us a long time and
(36:08):
and I think made an increasing difference.
So, so I think it's some level, you know, films like mine don't
have, I'm lucky to have Mark Ruffalo and he was, he was
fantastic. And we got to work with some
very gifted guys. There's four or five Nobel Prize
winners in the film. And the music is, I think,
fantastic. And I think it's a Great
American story. But, but part of what it is, is
(36:29):
a story where if you watch it, it can change how you think
about things that you're doing yourself.
And not every movie does that. Sometimes they're entertaining
and sometimes they're inspiring,but they're not always
personally empowering and I I like to believe that cracking
the code can be. And it is, and I want to highly
recommend it. Bill, where can people go online
(36:51):
to learn more about your movie and upcoming screenings?
I think cracking the code.com will tell you and our movie
production company is called Uncommon Productions and a lot
of the stuff it will be there and, and you know, you can just
write to info at Uncommon Productions and we'll, and we'll
give you an update. We're very lucky.
You know, we will do about 100 screenings between now and the
(37:12):
end of the year. And it's growing, you know, as
as it goes around the country and other countries.
And then PBS is doing a screening October 6th that is
nationwide on Itvs. And at least they tell me they
expect 3 to 5 million householdsto, to get to see the film, you
know, from that initial launch and then with subsequent
(37:34):
screenings on public television and on public television's
YouTube channel and, and other venues.
So hopefully some of your listeners will get a chance to
see it and and hopefully they'llenjoy it.
Well, thank you very much, Bill.Again, I do want to highly
recommend the film and it's going to be playing at the Port
Jefferson Documentary film screening on September 25th at
(37:58):
7:00 PM Thanks again, Bill. What a privilege being with you,
Tom. Thank you for your time.
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