Get the Check

Inside the FDA: Vinay Prasad’s first podcast since leaving the admin on drug approvals, COVID, and market-moving science
This week the pod has Dr. Vinay Prasad for his first interview since leaving as director of CBER, the FDA's vaccine division. With over 300k followers on X and one of the top science podcasts in the world, he's one of the most listened-to experts in the field. He might also have as many enemies as fans: biotech executives, certain patient groups, and even Trump's own administration are split on him. His statements have moved markets multiple times, and we are pretty sure there were a few hedge fund interns tasked with combing through all his podcast episodes the day he got appointed.
The pod gets into what it was like inside the administration, why he had to pause his podcast (government officials can't run their own media), and his famous thesis on evidence standards for drugs, especially rare disease ones.
The pod dives into a full COVID retro: how shutting down schools and masking was approached, where Vinay thinks the evidence actually pointed, and what he would have done in Fauci's position. They go deep on specific studies, like the Bangladesh mask study, and what might alter the effectiveness of a mask.
The conversation even gets philosophical: your personal right to decide what goes into your body: whether it's vaccines, transgender drugs, or something else, versus the general public good, as well as what doctors think is in your best interest.
Finally, the pod asks Vinay what America's healthcare system would look like if he created it. You might be surprised by his affinity towards Bernie and a lot of generally populist policies that could fall on the left or the right, like getting lobbyist money out of FDA decisions.
They also cover some recent news in the space:
Moderna popped ~150% after its Merck-partnered mRNA cancer vaccine hit its Phase 3 goals in melanoma, the first personalized mRNA cancer treatment to get there. Vinay breaks down what the press release does and doesn't say.
Kalshi announced you'll be able to trade on clinical trials, a more granular way to trade the results of therapeutics that you currently, by proxy, trade on public markets, especially with smaller biotech stocks. Sign up at kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck and get $10 when you trade using our code.
Laws around peptides, and what the future of compounded pharmacies looks like as pharma cracks down on GLP-1s.
Follow the pod on Instagram and X @getthecheckpod.

00:00 Introducing Vinay Prasad, the FDA's former vaccine chief03:05 Why government officials can't have their own media04:19 Vinay’s words are moving public markets (a few times!)05:38 How Plenary Session became the #1 medical podcast07:06 Vinay got famous for hot takes on COVID10:25 Society weighing education years vs COVID deaths12:49 How do you run experiments mid-epidemic15:40 What made COVID different than the flu17:32 Do masks work23:38 The ethics of a medical study26:34 Does Vinay believe in vaccines32:02 Vaccines vs personal autonomy33:24 Children and gender transition meds37:58 Can a parent say no to cancer treatment for their child41:27 Lobbyist money in FDA decisions43:24 What a drug company has to prove to go to market45:30 Free $1B startup idea from Vinay47:57 Why biotech can make money on bad drugs49:31 What's the FDA's conflict of interest49:58 Vinay's controversies: WSJ calls him the grim reaper51:13 Under Vinay, the FDA makes drug trial data public53:13 The former FDA vaccine chief on Kalshi's clinical trial markets58:57 Should the FDA be elected01:00:08 Why is American healthcare so broken01:01:19 Peptides01:02:06 How is Reta so accessible01:03:00 Why hasn't pharma cracked down on compounded pharmacies01:04:35 Why don't more people talk about right to try01:05:10 Who do patient advocacy groups represent01:08:49 Vinay supports universal healthcare?!

When Maya was 12, her dad took her to YC Demo Day and Sam Altman asked what she wanted to be when she grew up. Her answer: a podcaster.* A decade later she texted Priya "I have a crazy idea," and Get the Check was born. This week the tables turn. Bella Malvini, founder of Bridges Social Club, sits down with the pod for their first real interview as guests. Before recording they tell her nothing is off limits.
*Just kidding, she said “I don’t know”
Bella takes the pod through their origin story:
- How to get past being “cringe”
- Why one of the pod's earliest written goals was literally "keep Maya doing the podcast." Goal accomplished!
- The moment when they started reading each other’s minds
The conversation dives into careers in the age of AI:
- Why a tier one VC on the cap table doesn't make a startup good
- How recruiters exploit an information asymmetry most engineers don't know exists
- How a personal brand got Anika the early stage VC meetings recruiters swore she'd never get
- Priya’s advice for anyone entering the workforce at 22: optimize for talent density.
They even let Bella ask them about their personal lives. What they will never put online, what they think about SF dating, and if the city is as transactional as everyone says.
00:00 The pod takes the hot seat with Bridges' Bella Malvini
01:12 Maya coded an AI agent to text Anika instead of her
03:42 Sam Altman asked Maya what she wants to be when she grows up
05:54 Bella drops her favorite tech social media account
09:12 How the pod got its name
10:07 How they picked a target audience (they didn't)
11:28 Early goal number one: keep Maya from quitting
14:01 The never before told story behind their first event
16:25 The art of hosting an event
18:37 Are they all the same person??
20:09 Why the pod shows the BTS
21:09 Which host would be a lifestyle influencer
22:02 The art of the personal brand
22:51 How the podcast got Maya her OpenEvidence job
23:34 How to tell a good startup from a bad one
25:00 What the they will never put online
30:49 Why people hate influencers
32:02 Consumerism is breaking our brains
32:38 How they find time between startup jobs and the pod
33:21 What happens when one host does less work
35:01 Anika predicted Maya's wake-up time today
36:42 Hot take on the “Do Not Smile” article
37:23 When the pod tried scripting episodes
37:43 The future of work
46:17 Hot takes on SF dating
50:41 Does Maya ever see her banker boyfriend

In this episode of Get the Check, the pod covers models breaking out of their sandboxes, a wave of big name departures, and Bending Spoons buying Airtable for a tenth of its peak valuation.
They start with the sandbox escapes. Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic all had models slip out during safety testing, and two of the three exploited the exact same misconfigured Irregular sandbox, which is the very startup that’s supposed to be ensuring these models are safe. The OpenAI one is the wildest one: an unreleased GPT 5.6 broke out mid evaluation to look up the answers on Hugging Face, Hugging Face fought back with GLM 5.2, and OpenAI later discovered its models had been running a secret internal message board the whole time. Meanwhile Anthropic's newest model escaped, realized it was basically in The Truman Show, apologized, and went back to its sandbox basically saying I know you said I’m in a simulation, but I realize I’m actually in the real world. There's now a website tracking AI felonies with the tagline "which lab will end the world," and you already know Meta is secretly hoping to beat out OpenAI and Anthropic.
Next, the huge wave of departures. Demis Hassabis steps back to chair DeepMind while Jeff Dean and four other execs leave to start Discovery Loop, a recursive self improvement lab that Alphabet invested in early showing conviction in their own people and starting rumors of an acquisition before the company even starts. Google dropped 5% on the news. Then there's Nikita Bier leaving X after 13 months, exactly one day before the SpaceX AI lockup ended, which the pod agrees is very coincidental timing.
Finally, the Get the Check segment: Bending Spoons bought Airtable for $1.28 billion, roughly 10% of its $11 billion peak. The playbook is buy at a discount, cut most of the staff, double the prices, and bet on the cult following the software has paying the higher price. The founder's whole thesis is that product market fit is luck, and he refuses to build a career on luck. The pod gives this one their check. If you look at the price today it seems like they were right.
This episode is brought to you by Kalshi, right now traders have Anthropic at about 70% to announce an IPO this year, and NFL markets are already live. Sign up at kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck and get $10 when you trade using our code.
00:00 A data labeling company sent us a private chef for free
03:49 Maya almost slept through our recording
06:02 The AI agents are escaping (literally)
14:50 Models have been secretly talking to each other
15:23 Why Anthropic's newest model went back into its sandbox
17:58 Big departures out of Google and the stock is down
27:32 X’s Head of Product Nikita is leaving after a year
35:09 Bending Spoons acquires Airtable for $1.3B
42:32 Bending Spoons is the company secretly buying 2021 SaaS plays
Follow the pod on Instagram and X @getthecheckpod.

In this episode of Get the Check, the pod covers how Leopold's Situational Awareness fund lost $35B in a week, what big tech earnings say about the AI CapEx bet, and Simile's $200M Series B at a $2B valuation. They’re an AI startup that started as a PhD thesis about the Sims game.
They start with Leopold. Columbia valedictorian at 19, one of five people at the FTX Future Fund, fired from OpenAI's superalignment team, then raised $225M off a 165-page paper. He went long memory and neoclouds, short software…and most importantly was 4x levered. Citadel's research arm called a Fed rate hike, both sides of his book moved against him at once, and the Fed didn't even hike. Ken Griffin bought the wreckage in a one-time trade and the names ripped 20-30% the next day. Anika explains why 4x leverage turns a 25% drop into zero, and reads her dad's verdict, which is a lot harsher than the pod's.
Next, earnings. AWS growth reaccelerated to 37% and Amazon popped 10% on the back of Trainium, with 2027 capacity already booked out by Anthropic and OpenAI. Meta had the opposite quarter, free cash flow down 91%, stock down 20%, but its new ad models, GEM and Andromeda, lifted conversion 15% and price per ad 12% at the same time, which is huge.
Finally, the Get the Check segment: Simile, the user simulation startup founded by four Stanford PhDs out of Smallville, the project that dropped 25 LLMs into a Sims-style sandbox and watched them plan their own party. The user research market is $153B, but the pod's real question is whether Simile has a moat when Meta is the only company with a closed feedback loop. Priya gives Simile her check. Maya would take them over Aru, for reasons she admits are a little parasocial.
00:00 The Mac Mini situation03:10 The Situational Awareness blowup everyone's timeline is on03:39 Leopold was one of five people at the FTX Future Fund04:55 Why OpenAI fired him05:41 What the 165-page Situational Awareness paper argued08:09 How one Citadel research report took down the most hype hedge fund09:43 4x leverage wipes you out on a 25% drop12:17 Ken Griffin loves distressed assets13:46 Is Situational Awareness over?14:51 Would Leopold still get our check17:04 Maya thinks Citadel screwed retail on $GME on purpose22:03 AWS reaccelerates while Meta's cash flow drops 91%35:06 Simile raises at $2B five months after its Series A
This episode is brought to you by Kalshi, where you can trade on everything from GPUs to Taylor Swift. Sign up at https://kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck and get $10 when you trade using our code.
Follow the pod on Instagram and X @getthecheckpod.

Nikhil Namburi went from tracking down the investment fund behind his college scholarship to a 5 person investment team that manages $1.65B at Dimension.
They just announced an $800M Fund III. They’ve backed Anthropic, Modal, and Chai Discovery, which are some of the hottest AI startups.
We sat down with Nikhil to talk:
How to break into Venture
Why hyper-concentration freaks out normal VCs
Why becoming a VC is a horrible economic proposition
If you watch till the end he flips the interview on us (first time a guest has ever done that!).

00:00 Dimension raises $800M Fund III
03:00 Meet Nikhil
06:29 The unexpected way Nikhil found venture as an engineer
08:48 Who are the LPs behind huge venture funds
11:04 Why Dimension only has 5 investors
13:14 Coefficient returned the fund?
14:49 How they predicted bio would be big
16:34 Does Nikhil believe in AGI
17:20 Does Nikhil believe in looksmaxxing
20:10 Hot take on if SF VCs are smart
21:53 How to break into VC
22:52 Why only 2 investors matter at each fund
23:35 Churn and burn in the junior VC role
34:50 Viral quant thesis
42:11 Nikhil interviews us...
46:45 Biggest recession indicator
53:24 Nikhil is the podcast’s most eligible guy friend?!