Special: "Why Now" for Digital Health (with Levels founder Josh Clemente)

The hosts introduce Levels as a direct-to-consumer digital-health company built around continuous glucose monitoring, but the opening establishes that its founder arrived at the idea through a different field. Josh Clemente studied how complex systems fail while working on spacecraft, then became a user of glucose data while trying to understand persistent fatigue and stress. The interview will connect those experiences to Levels’ product, though this opening section mainly supplies the engineering and personal context.

Clemente describes entering SpaceX as a new graduate after months of trying to get a job there, including three months selling used cars and reaching out through his network. He started as an entry-level manufacturing engineer when the company was small, helping move designs and tested first articles into production. His work ranged from factory processes and technician training to launch preparation, then expanded into end-to-end responsibility for structural systems and, later, the life-support program for the human-rated Dragon effort.

That progression matters to the episode’s framing: Clemente was not only observing a technology company but working on systems where oxygen delivery, cabin pressure, fire suppression, and docking interfaces had direct safety implications. He recalls leading a small team through critical design review and describes seeing Dragon Cargo and Dragon Crew fly as a striking payoff. The account conveys the scope of the work, while remaining a participant’s retrospective rather than a technical review of the systems or their safety record.

Clemente’s most concrete example of SpaceX’s operating style is damage found on the second Falcon 9 vehicle. Air flowing through the interstage had made a thin skirt flutter until it tore. He contrasts a conventional response—disassemble, delay, investigate, and redesign—with the decision to send a technician to the launch site with shears and trim away the damaged edge. The team then checked whether the second stage could still reach orbit despite the expected loss of efficiency, and the launch succeeded.

The story is vivid because it turns an abstract claim about scrappiness into a physical scene: a worker afraid of heights enters a stacked rocket more than 100 feet above the ground and makes a field repair. The account refers to the lead technician as Marty when first introducing him and later calls him Kelly; the transcript does not resolve that naming discrepancy. It also presents one successful repair, not evidence that this approach is generally safer or preferable. Clemente’s point is about the company’s willingness to act under pressure, while the episode itself acknowledges that the situation was frightening and required propulsion analysis.