# Remembering Craig Venter With Jamie Shreeve, Author of 'The Genome War'

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/ion-genomics-podcast-7831901/remembering-craig-venter-with-jamie-shreeve-author-of-the-genome-war
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/ion-genomics-podcast-7831901/remembering-craig-venter-with-jamie-shreeve-author-of-the-genome-war.md
Podcast: [Ion Genomics Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/ion-genomics-podcast-7831901)
Published: 2026-05-08T09:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://api.riverside.com/hosting-analytics/media/95cf0ad6b75fad58a8b73d8c9b02f9848cc17879d8047589dc0e5b4748d3faa9/eyJlcGlzb2RlSWQiOiI3MzFkZWQ4Yi1lYzJkLTQwZGEtODdhYy1jOTM5YTQ0YmQ1OTQiLCJwb2RjYXN0SWQiOiIzM2E1YjY3MC1lOTgyLTQ0ZTgtOWQ5ZS05ODYxZmYxYmFkNmIiLCJhY2NvdW50SWQiOiI2OWIzMTk0ZDExZTc3MTlhNjFmZmRmNTYiLCJwYXRoIjoibWVkaWEvY2xpcHMvNjlmZDY5MDAyMTg2MTEzM2Q4YzdkNDQzL2FuZHJldy1oYW5zLXN0dWRpby1HZ25NUy1jb21wb3Nlci0yMDI2LTUtOF9fNi0zOS0yOC5tcDMifQ==.mp3
Audio file: https://api.riverside.com/hosting-analytics/media/95cf0ad6b75fad58a8b73d8c9b02f9848cc17879d8047589dc0e5b4748d3faa9/eyJlcGlzb2RlSWQiOiI3MzFkZWQ4Yi1lYzJkLTQwZGEtODdhYy1jOTM5YTQ0YmQ1OTQiLCJwb2RjYXN0SWQiOiIzM2E1YjY3MC1lOTgyLTQ0ZTgtOWQ5ZS05ODYxZmYxYmFkNmIiLCJhY2NvdW50SWQiOiI2OWIzMTk0ZDExZTc3MTlhNjFmZmRmNTYiLCJwYXRoIjoibWVkaWEvY2xpcHMvNjlmZDY5MDAyMTg2MTEzM2Q4YzdkNDQzL2FuZHJldy1oYW5zLXN0dWRpby1HZ25NUy1jb21wb3Nlci0yMDI2LTUtOF9fNi0zOS0yOC5tcDMifQ==.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/ion-genomics-podcast-7831901/episodes/remembering-craig-venter-with-jamie-shreeve-author-of-the-genome-war
Duration seconds: 3903

## Resource

Craig Venter, the renegade scientist who tried to beat the publicly-funded Human Genome Project with a private company — and nearly succeeded — died last week at 79. My guest this week, Jamie Shreeve, shadowed Venter for two years as part of his research for The Genome War , a book about the saga that captured not only the best and the worst aspects of Venter, but of human nature itself. Shreeve and I evaluated Venter’s legacy while also reminiscing about the man who will be remembered both as a good friend and as an “asshole” in equal measure. We also remembered Venter’s longtime colleague and Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith, who died in October. Shreeve is also revealing, for the first time, a James Watson take on Venter so brutal that Shreeve left it out of the book. I never met Venter, so my conception of him has always been and will forever be based on Shreeve’s portrait of him. The Genome War is one of my all-time favorite books and provides an even fuller picture. Please consider buying a copy through your local bookstore: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-genome-war-how-craig-venter-tried-to-capture-the-code-of-life-and-save-the-world-james-shreeve/e018f9700a01fcd0?ean=9780345433749&next=t Shreeve is also the author of The Neandertal Enigma and co-author of Lucy’s Child: The Discovery of a Human Ancestor . A note: In the interview I say that sequencing-by-synthesis, the dominant method for analyzing whole human genomes today, is similar to the shotgun sequencing method used by Venter at Celera. As I was informed by Adam Phillippy, a leading computational biologist, this is not correct. “Performing de novo genome assembly, as was required for the first genome project, is nearly impossible from short (~100 bp) reads,” he said in an email. “During the entire shor…

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/ion-genomics-podcast-7831901/episodes/remembering-craig-venter-with-jamie-shreeve-author-of-the-genome-war/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/ion-genomics-podcast-7831901/remembering-craig-venter-with-jamie-shreeve-author-of-the-genome-war.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.