{"podcast":{"title":"Galaxy Balance","slug":"galaxy-balance-7619530","podcast_index_feed_id":7619530,"rss_url":"https://api.riverside.fm/hosting/TsNBRv3G.rss","website_url":"https://riverside.com","image_url":"https://hosting-media.riverside.com/media/podcasts/c0a4b47b-b2c9-4c68-88b5-1baa3a352c83/logos/0081482a-5241-4cdc-aa4f-c89d3aca95e7.png","author":"Cory Smith","episode_count":20,"summary":"Galaxy Balance explores the frontier where biology, technology and consciousness meet. Each episode brings together pioneers shaping our collective future, from genome engineers and AI builders to longevity researchers, space explorers, and mindfulness practitioners. Hosted by Cory Smith, the conversations dive deep into how these seemingly distant fields form an interconnected ecosystem, one that balance innovation with introspection, science with spirit, and ambition with awareness. At its core, Galaxy Balance is about integration; the idea that our greatest leaps forward happen when disciplines collide. The same algorithms that decode galaxies can help us understand genomes; the same principles that govern consciousness can illuminate AI. Through long-form, unscripted dialogue, the show invites listeners to zoom out from the silos of specialization and see the larger pattern: a living system of intelligence evolving across scales – molecular, planetary, and cosmic.","last_synced_at":null,"page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/galaxy-balance-7619530"},"episode":{"title":"Pranam Chatterjee: Programming Life with AI","slug":"pranam-chatterjee-programming-life-with-ai","published_at":"2026-03-30T21:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/galaxy-balance-7619530/pranam-chatterjee-programming-life-with-ai","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/galaxy-balance-7619530","url":"https://api.riverside.com/hosting-analytics/media/7221712e90328c7db23acf0c367a794f2ff54248292d270e870168ca8ec4f104/eyJlcGlzb2RlSWQiOiIyYWNjMGNlMi1hMWE2LTRmOGMtOTI0ZC1iNTEwZDM4MWE2ODkiLCJwb2RjYXN0SWQiOiJjMGE0YjQ3Yi1iMmM5LTRjNjgtODhiNS0xYmFhM2EzNTJjODMiLCJhY2NvdW50SWQiOiI2OTBiYjRiMzM2NjY3MWFlZGQwZTZhMTEiLCJwYXRoIjoibWVkaWEvY2xpcHMvNjliMjBlZThlMjgzZWVlYWJiZTVjOGIzL2Nvcnktc21pdGhzLXN0dWRpby1sTktuWC1jb21wb3Nlci0yMDI2LTMtMTJfXzEtNTUtNC5tcDMifQ==.mp3","audio_url":"https://api.riverside.com/hosting-analytics/media/7221712e90328c7db23acf0c367a794f2ff54248292d270e870168ca8ec4f104/eyJlcGlzb2RlSWQiOiIyYWNjMGNlMi1hMWE2LTRmOGMtOTI0ZC1iNTEwZDM4MWE2ODkiLCJwb2RjYXN0SWQiOiJjMGE0YjQ3Yi1iMmM5LTRjNjgtODhiNS0xYmFhM2EzNTJjODMiLCJhY2NvdW50SWQiOiI2OTBiYjRiMzM2NjY3MWFlZGQwZTZhMTEiLCJwYXRoIjoibWVkaWEvY2xpcHMvNjliMjBlZThlMjgzZWVlYWJiZTVjOGIzL2Nvcnktc21pdGhzLXN0dWRpby1sTktuWC1jb21wb3Nlci0yMDI2LTMtMTJfXzEtNTUtNC5tcDMifQ==.mp3","summary":"What if biology could be engineered the way we engineer software? In this episode of Galaxy Balance, I'm joined by Pranam Chatterjee, Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and leader of the Programmable Biology Group, working at the intersection of AI, synthetic biology, and next-generation therapeutics. Pranam's work is shaping a future where generative models can design peptides and biologics from sequence data alone, enabling a new era of programmable medicine. We explore how Pranam went from studying religion and philosophy to transferring into MIT and building cutting-edge computational tools for biology. We dive into his time in George Church's lab, where early computational strategies helped spark the origins of Gameto, and how that work evolved into today's iPSC-derived ovarian support cell technologies now entering clinical trials. From there, we go deep into the frontier of AI-driven molecular design: • Do we actually need protein structure to design effective therapeutics? • How do we optimize binding, toxicity, permeability, and immunogenicity simultaneously? • What does \"virtual cell\" really mean, and why does mapping cell states matter? • How close are we to \"vibe coding biology,\" where natural language becomes the interface to biological engineering? We also discuss the future of automation, robotics, and agentic AI in biology, as well as the ethical risks of democratized generative models in biotech. This conversation is a window into the net phase of human capability: not just ready biology, but designing it. 00:00 - Introduction to AI-driven therapeutic peptide design 01:05 - Background of Pranam Chatterjee's journey from religion to science 02:50 - The evolution of AI models in synthetic biology 05:17 - Key milestones: from modeling t…","meta_description":"What if biology could be engineered the way we engineer software? In this episode of Galaxy Balance, I'm joined by Pranam Chatterjee, Assistant Professor…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3660,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/galaxy-balance-7619530/episodes/pranam-chatterjee-programming-life-with-ai/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/galaxy-balance-7619530/pranam-chatterjee-programming-life-with-ai.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}