Broken cities, fragile networks, and people building alternatives.
Anatomy of Next sets up its guests with a narrated case about something broken, from San Francisco's Board of Supervisors to a New York subway line under construction since the 1970s. The guests then argue for other routes: priced express lanes, neighborhood cameras, cities built from scratch and a more secure internet.
PRESS PLAY
Anatomy of Next works like a run of arguments, each handed to a guest to finish. Many episodes open with a narrated setup that names a problem and presses on it before anyone else speaks. The opening of 'Robert Poole // Gridlock' treats transit as a measure of a city's health, then points to New York's 2nd Avenue subway line, under construction since the 1970s. 'ASYLUM #3 — Trivial Pursuit' goes further, casting the listener as a newly elected San Francisco supervisor facing housing out of reach, property crime and people living on the streets, then turning to what the board chose to legislate instead. Its conversation asks how a supervisor can legislate on something he does not understand, with stock options as the case in point. Mike Solana signs it off from Founders Fund on a blunt note: after a months-long battle, supervisors had helped five people. Then the guests take over, and several look past city hall entirely. Patri Friedman, director of Pronomos Capital, takes up a question the narrator hears often from people in tech: why not build new cities from scratch? He recounts the Seasteading Institute's cooled relationship with French Polynesia, pitches 'shipsteading' as medical tourism aboard a cruise ship, and closes on land rezoned into small zones, each copying a different set of laws. In 'Garrett Langley // Standing Guard', the narrator admits to having thought cities mainly needed better local government. The guest's story starts elsewhere, with neighbors pooling a small yearly sum for a camera at the neighborhood entrance and police departments calling of their own accord. Poole's episode stays closer to policy, defending priced express lanes as 'everybody lanes' full of the same Toyotas and Nissans as the regular ones, and naming pricing as the fix for future gridlock. Dan Kaminsky's episode leaves cities behind. Its opening borrows the Lindy Effect, which ties a technology's life expectancy to how long it has already lasted, and turns it on the internet, where new things remain untested by time. Kaminsky, founder of White Ops, is introduced as best known for finding a critical flaw in the internet's domain name system and leading a synchronized fix to the internet's infrastructure. The Peter Thiel interview, filmed in Los Angeles in 2023, looks back at The Diversity Myth 30 years after he wrote it. Mike Solana asks the questions, and the talk moves through elite colleges and the college-application treadmill before arriving at AI, described as a future that needs no Manhattan Project, only not to be stopped. Despite a feed description aimed at Mars, the conversations described here stay on Earth, in its city halls, roads and networks. What ties them together is impatience with things that ought to work, matched by real enthusiasm for people trying another way. The show is openly opinionated about San Francisco, and it suits a listener who likes the case made before the interview begins.
Made for: Suits a listener impatient with stalled transit, city politics and tired institutions who wants the problem argued plainly before hearing from someone with an alternative, from a priced express lane to a city built from scratch.
What sets it apart: Episodes often open with a narrated, pointed case about what has broken before the guest speaks. That ties conversations on express lanes, seasteading, DNS security and San Francisco's supervisors into one running argument about progress and what blocks it.
In the second season of Anatomy of Next, explore every aspect of going to Mars, transforming it into a habitable world, and building a new branch of human civilization. How do we bring a cold, dead planet back to life? Can we build an atmosphere on Mars, thaw the frozen plains, and build an ocean? How do we seed a barren land with life, and make a red Mars green? Then, it’s everything from politics and education to money, music, and architecture. What does it mean to be human on an alien world?
Plastic straws get banned while housing stalls: your city hall frustration has found a microphone.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Peter Thiel revisits The Diversity Myth through elite colleges, union politics, and an AI future he thinks may only need room to proceed.
Thirty years after The Diversity Myth, Peter Thiel joins Mike Solana to look back at what the book got right, what it missed, and why he thinks social conflict keeps pulling attention from progress in science, technology, economics, religion, and politics.
A clear tour from seasteading to charter cities, where better laws are pitched as the engine of new urban experiments.
Anatomy of Next frames San Francisco's urban crisis as the entry point to Patri Friedman's broader case for building new cities instead of waiting years or decades for existing political systems to change.
A clear, focused look at why city transportation stalls, and how pricing fits into the future of self-driving cars.
Gridlock frames transportation as a kind of civic health check, moving from Los Angeles traffic to subway systems in New York, London, and Tokyo before turning to a harder question: why major infrastructure has become so difficult to build.
A practical look at community-funded cameras, public safety, and the civic questions that come with wider surveillance.
Property crime is framed here as an evidence problem, with Garrett Langley of Flock Safety laying out how community-funded security cameras can link neighborhood, business, and city systems.
A pointed San Francisco policy critique connects blocked housing, rushed tech taxation, and symbolic bans to weak public infrastructure.
"ASYLUM #3 - Trivial Pursuit" turns San Francisco's civic dysfunction into a tight political postmortem. Housing that remains out of reach sits alongside property crime, street disorder, sanitation, transit, schools, and strained small businesses, while supervisors are shown…
KBR engineers and experts unpack wind energy, Artemis imagery, and cybersecurity compliance.
Australian headlines, quickly made human.
Aruba's public square, live on mic.
Mike Solana interviews Peter Thiel in Los Angeles in 2023 about The Diversity Myth, 30 years after Thiel and David Sacks wrote it at Stanford.
Patry Friedman, director of Pronomos Capital and a board member of the Seasteading Institute and the Startup Societies Foundation, argues that San Francisco’s problems point toward a larger experiment in governance.
Robert Kuhl, Director of Transportation Policy at Reason Foundation, argues that California and New York have made transit and highway building far harder than they need to be.
Garrett Langley says Flock Safety started with a rash of car break-ins in Atlanta and a realization that police mainly needed one thing: a license plate.
Anatomy of Next: Asylum #3 — Trivial Pursuit focuses on San Francisco's 11-member Board of Supervisors, from a $12 billion budget to bans on straws, scooters, and workplace cafeterias.
Daniela Perdomo says Gotenna devices pair with phones over Bluetooth and use lower-frequency radio for long-range text, locations, and bursty voice.
Fnnch, a San Francisco street artist, uses honey bears to make public art approachable to people who may not visit galleries.
Nanotronics founder Matthew Putman describes AI-guided microscopes that detect defects in compound semiconductors and help factories correct them.
Dan Kaminski discusses internet vulnerabilities and the Lindy Effect, highlighting the fragility of modern digital infrastructure.
This episode explores the risks and challenges of a manned mission to Mars, from the journey to survival on the planet.
This episode explores the technologies and challenges of traveling to Mars and building a human colony on the red planet.
This episode explores the motivations and plans for building a human civilization on Mars, featuring insights from Elon Musk and the private space industry.
This episode explores the vision and challenges of transforming Mars into a habitable world for human civilization.
This episode explores the history and ethics of robotics, using Asimov's laws as a framework to discuss humanity's relationship with intelligent machines.