Weekly Dose of Optimism #164

Hi friends 👋,

Happy Friday, happy Fall in New York to those who celebrate, and welcome to our 164th Weekly Dose of Optimism.

Big, big week for the optimists. We’ve got optimistic sci-fi, space deliveries, delivery robots, AI scientists, bioelectricity, and bone glue.

We didn’t even have to talk about Sora 2, which does seem better than Vibes but does not meet this week’s high bar. A story on TrumpRx also landed on the cutting room floor; cheap drugs are great, but the grift was enough to drop it out of the Top 5. We did, however, sneak in an extra little story about super stem cells improving monkey longevity. What a world.

Let’s get to it.

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(1) Jason Carman and StoryCo Release Planet

Packy here. Long time readers of the Dose will know that we are big Jason Carman fans. We’ve shared a ton of his S3 videos and collabs with the Abundance Institute on many of the most compelling startups in the physical world.

But Jason has been saying from the first time I spoke with him that the plan was to use those videos to learn, and that the real goal was to turn those learnings into realistic, optimistic sci-fi films. And by god, he pulled it off.

Last weekend, Jason and the Story team premiered their first sci-fi short film, Planet, in San Francisco and then dropped it on YouTube. I watched it this week and it’s shockingly good, and they apparently made it on a small budget. Patrick O’Shaughnessy tweeted, “I asked Jason what this cost him to make and could not believe the answer. Incredible visuals per $ spent.” I honestly don’t know how they did it. It’s crazy that someone I’ve hung out with can make something that looks like this.

The story is great too. Surprisingly beautiful. I won’t spoil it. It’s only 38 minutes and you should watch it this weekend.

Congrats Jason!