🇺🇸 United States Episodes

Today, I am replaying my conversation with Nick Kokonas, one of my favorites from the show. Nick is the co-founder of 3 of the best restaurants and bars in America - Alinea, Next, and The Aviary as well as the co-founder and CEO of Tock, a comprehensive booking system for restaurants. He majored in philosophy before becoming a derivatives trader and is now one of the most well-known names in the hospitality industry. In this conversation, Nick shares his experience of bringing a business mindset to the restaurant industry. I'll remember it for why it's so important for a business to really know what it's selling and then actually sell it. Nick also pulls back the curtain on why restaurants and even book publishers can be great businesses if you do them the right way. I felt like this conversation could have gone on for hours and I hope you enjoy it. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here. ----- This episode is brought to you by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Ramp’s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- This episode is brought to you by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Ridgeline⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgelineapps.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about the platform. ----- This episode is brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠AlphaSense⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. AlphaSense has completely transformed the research process with cutting-edge AI technology and a vast collection of top-tier, reliable business content. Invest Like the Best listeners can get a free trial now at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Alpha-Sense.com/Invest⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and experience firsthand how AlphaSense and Tegus help you make smarter decisions faster. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). Timestamps: (00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (03:58) Intro to Nick Kokonas (4:36) – Why it’s so important to own something (6:09) – Make decisions that have outcomes (8:34) – His interest in the restaurant business (10:28) – Why restaurants are so tough (13:39) – How their business mindset changed their running of the restaurant (16:09) – Words they would avoid in the restaurant (17:53) – Asking the right questions in the restaurant business (22:14) – Importance in taking the right risks (23:36) – Coming up with innovative strategies for ticketing, selling meals ahead of time, and dynamic pricing (31:42) – Can dynamic pricing be extended to other businesses (32:54) – Origin of Tock (37:51) – Early days of Tock and identifying the right customers/challenges (43:07) – Importance of the first customer (45:56) – The typical restaurant business model (50:57) – Lessons from Tock and the importance of knowing what you’re selling (55:21) – Lessons from publishing (57:18) – Other aspects of business that people know but do nothing about (1:01:53) – Their response to Covid and lessons learned (1:09:17) – The real impact to the food delivery companies (1:10:58) – How businesses communicate their end processes to their customers (1:15:41) – The Kindest Thing

From investing through the modern data stack era (DBT, Fivetran, and the analytics explosion) to now investing at the frontier of AI infrastructure and applications at Amplify Partners, Sarah Catanzaro has spent years at the intersection of data, compute, and intelligence—watching categories emerge, merge, and occasionally disappoint. We caught up with Sarah live at NeurIPS 2025 to dig into the state of AI startups heading into 2026: why $100M+ seed rounds with no near-term roadmap are now the norm (and why that terrifies her), what the DBT-Fivetran merger really signals about the modern data stack (spoiler: it's not dead, just ready for IPO), how frontier labs are using DBT and Fivetran to manage training data and agent analytics at scale, why data catalogs failed as standalone products but might succeed as metadata services for agents, the consumerization of AI and why personalization (memory, continual learning, K-factor) is the 2026 unlock for retention and growth, why she thinks RL environments are a fad and real-world logs beat synthetic clones every time, and her thesis for the most exciting AI startups: companies that marry hard research problems (RAG, rule-following, continual learning) with killer applications that were simply impossible before. We discuss: The DBT-Fivetran merger: not the death of the modern data stack, but a path to IPO scale (targeting $600M+ combined revenue) and a signal that both companies were already winning their categories How frontier labs use data infrastructure: DBT and Fivetran for training data curation, agent analytics, and managing increasingly complex interactions—plus the rise of transactional databases (RocksDB) and efficient data loading (Vortex) for GPU-bound workloads Why data catalogs failed: built for humans when they should have been built for machines, focused on discoverability when the real opportunity was governance, and ultimately subsumed as features inside Snowflake, DBT, and Fivetran The $100M+ seed phenomenon: raising massive rounds at billion-dollar valuations with no 6-month roadmap, seven-day decision windows, and founders optimizing for signal ("we're a unicorn") over partnership or dilution discipline Why world models are overhyped but underspecified: three competing definitions, unclear generalization across use cases (video games ≠ robotics ≠ autonomous driving), and a research problem masquerading as a product category The 2026 theme: consumerization of AI via personalization—memory management, continual learning, and solving retention/churn by making products learn skills, preferences, and adapt as the world changes (not just storing facts in cursor rules) Why RL environments are a fad: labs are paying 7–8 figures for synthetic clones when real-world logs, traces, and user activity (à la Cursor) are richer, cheaper, and more generalizable Sarah's investment thesis: research-driven applications that solve hard technical problems (RAG for Harvey, rule-following for Sierra, continual learning for the next killer app) and unlock experiences that were impossible before Infrastructure bets: memory, continual learning, stateful inference, and the systems challenges of loading/unloading personalized weights at scale Why K-factor and growth fundamentals matter again: AI felt magical in 2023–2024, but as the magic fades, retention and virality are back—and most AI founders have never heard of K-factor — Sarah Catanzaro X: https://x.com/sarahcat21 Amplify Partners: https://amplifypartners.com/ Where to find Latent Space X: https://x.com/latentspacepod Substack: https://www.latent.space/ Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: Sarah Catanzaro's Journey from Data to AI 00:01:02 The DBT-Fivetran Merger: Not the End of the Modern Data Stack 00:05:26 Data Catalogs and What Went Wrong 00:08:16 Data Infrastructure at AI Labs: Surprising Insights 00:10:13 The Crazy Funding Environment of 2024-2025 00:17:18 World Models: Hype, Confusion, and Market Potential 00:18:59 Memory Management and Continual Learning: The Next Frontier 00:23:27 Agent Environments: Just a Fad? 00:25:48 The Perfect AI Startup: Research Meets Application 00:28:02 Closing Thoughts and Where to Find Sarah

With the year coming to a close, we're sharing our most popular Planet Money bonus episode of 2025! As U.S. trade with China exploded in the early 2000's, American manufacturing began to shrivel. Those workers struggled to adapt and find new jobs. It ran counter to how mainstream economics at the time viewed free trade ... that it would be a clear win for the U.S. Greg Rosalsky talks with David Autor about why economists got free trade with China so wrong.  Autor, an MIT economics professor, and his colleagues published a series of eye-opening studies over the last 15 years or so that brought to light the costs of U.S. trade with China. We also hear Autor's thoughts on the role of tariffs and get an update on his research. With better, more precise data, Autor says we have a more nuanced and "bleaker" picture of what happened to these manufacturing workers. You can read about Autor's research and sign up for The Planet Money Newsletter here. To hear more bonus content like this and support NPR and public media, sign up for Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney. Regular episodes remain free to listen!Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Why’s it suddenly so expensive to take your dog to the vet? Here’s a hint: private equity. Joe Spector on the solution. (00:00) Why Is Veterinary Care So Expensive? (02:55) The Private Equity Firms Swallowing Small Businesses (23:14) The AVMA Cartel Pushing Lobbying Politicians (27:13) The Mass Veterinarian Shortage Paid partnerships with: Masa Chips: Get 25% off with code TUCKER at https://masachips.com/tucker Battalion Metals: Shop fair-priced gold and silver. Gain clarity and confidence in your financial future at https://battalionmetals.com/tucker Last Country Supply: Real prep starts with the basics. Here’s what we keep stocked: https://lastcountrysupply.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lily Yeh calls herself a barefoot artist: she travels the world with a suitcase full of art supplies, working with whoever wants to join her. In an inspiring talk, she shares the fruits of her collaborative art projects that bring color, community and beauty to public spaces often seen as “broken."Learn more about our flagship conference happening this April at attend.ted.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As 2025 comes to a close, consumer AI is entering a new phase. A small number of products now dominate everyday use, multimodal models have unlocked entirely new creative workflows, and the big labs have pushed aggressively into consumer experiences. At the same time, it is becoming clearer which ideas actually changed user behavior and which ones did not. In this episode, a16z consumer investors Anish Acharya, Olivia Moore, Justine Moore, and Bryan Kim look back at the biggest product and model shifts of 2025 and then look ahead to what 2026 may bring. They discuss why consumer AI appears to be trending toward winner-take-most, how subtle product design choices can matter more than raw model quality, and why templates, multimodality, and distribution are shaping the next wave of consumer products. Where do startups still have room to win? How will the role of the big labs continue to change? And what will it actually take for consumer AI apps to break out at scale in 2026?

The stories that defined 2025, the themes to watch in 2026. Ryan Knutson and Jessica Mendoza hear from top editors across the paper. Plus, Ryan's bold proposal to switch Christmas and Valentine's Day.Thanks for listening to the show in 2025. We’ll see you in 2026! Listen to Ryan and Jess’s playlist of their Greatest Hits of 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Connor Beaton is a men’s life coach, founder of ManTalks and an author focusing on men’s wellness and personal growth. Why do so many men struggle with their own inner world? Many grow up believing they must handle life alone, stay tough, and hide their emotions. What helps men become emotionally stable, and how can they learn to work through challenges in healthier, more honest ways? Expect to learn why so many high-functioning men self-destruct in private, why so many men feel “emotionally safe” at work but not at home, the most misunderstood thing about men’s emotional life, what’s an addiction that doesn’t look like addiction, but absolutely behaves like one is, how men can build their self-worth, the traits of an emotionally safe man, why there is a trend to desexualise your brain and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom New pricing since recording: Function is now just $365, plus get $25 off at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a free bottle of D3K2, a Welcome Kit, Travel Packs, plus bonus gifts (US only) when you first subscribe at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Terry Real is a therapist and best-selling author expert on male emotional health and how men can build the skills for healthy relating to others: in relationships, work, friendships and to themselves. We discuss how mixed and ever-changing messages about what masculinity is are impacting the mental and physical health of men and boys. Terry explains how learning the skill of "relationality" leads to improvements in all aspects of boys' and men's lives and shares practical tools for how to do that. We also discuss the essential role of having a close male community to build confidence and self-esteem. This conversation offers actionable guidance for boys, men and women seeking to build healthier relationships with themselves and others. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/huberman David: https://davidprotein.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Waking Up: https://wakingup.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Terry Real (00:02:53) Men & Masculinity, Political vs Psychological Patriarchy, Feminism (00:07:39) Stoicism, Vulnerability, Traditional Masculinity, Emotions (00:10:50) Sponsors: BetterHelp & David (00:13:14) Masculinity Across Decades, Giving; Gratification vs Relational Joy (00:21:54) Healthy Emotional Expression, Connection & Vulnerability; Self-Esteem (00:31:17) Feeling Emotions, Tools: Asking For Help; Fights & "What Do You Need?" (00:35:10) Self-Esteem & Relationship Accountability; Criticism, Redefining Strength (00:40:47) Sponsor: AG1 (00:42:32) Healthy Criticism, Tool: Women & Articulating Needs (00:50:21) Childlike Behavior, Wise Adult & Trauma, Tool: Relational Mindfulness (00:58:11) Tool: Responsible Distance Taking; Self-Interest; Relationship "Biosphere" (01:08:14) Alcohol, Men & Friends, Loneliness, Men's Retreat (01:17:51) Fraternities, Men's Groups, Tool: Relationship vs Individual Support (01:25:39) Sponsor: Function (01:27:27) Lack of Male Friends, Hiking, Community, Teaching Young Men (01:36:11) Cannabis, Alcohol, Young Men & Purpose, Flexibility & Manliness (01:40:40) Work, Life Purpose & Men; Skillful Warriors (01:45:01) Absent Fathers; Early Childhood & Proper Nurturing; Caretaking (01:53:24) Sponsor: Waking Up (01:54:47) Women & Speaking Relationally, Objectivity Battle (01:59:02) Addiction & Disconnection, 12-Step Meetings & Fellowship (02:08:04) Pornography, Internet, Intensity vs Intimacy; Optimization (02:11:57) Tool: Families & Hanging Out; Relational Joy; Relational Recovery (02:22:29) Giving Criticism, Tools: Make Requests; Feedback Wheel (02:28:21) Gratitude, Aging; Skillful Fighting in Relationship & Repair (02:34:17) Men & Self-Esteem, Mentors, Tool: Inner Dialogue without Harshness (02:44:00) Y Chromosome, Wholeness (02:48:00) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow, Reviews & Feedback, Sponsors, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a hero’s journey with the great Macaulay Culkin. Find your light, hit your marks, systematically sabotage the Wet Bandits. It’s Magic v. Sexy v. Naughty… on an all-new SmartLess.

The one animal we can’t seem to live without, even when we really, really want to. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscriptionPrologue: At the announcement of New York City’s inaugural rat czar, we meet Darneice Foster, who despises the rats outside her apartment. And host Ira Glass introduces two special co-hosts for today’s show. (11 minutes)Act One: Producer Elna Baker meets Todd Sklar, a man who can’t quit rats. (22 minutes)Act Two: Fifty years ago, New York City started to put garbage out in plastic bags. This has become the number one food source for rats. Producer Ike Sriskandarajah investigates the decision that led to the city’s rat baby boom. (10 minutes)Act Three: How did Alberta, Canada pull off a feat that has eluded the rest of human civilization? Ira visits the largest rat-less land in the world. (15 minutes)Act Four: We drop a hot mic into a hot mess of a rats’ nest. You’ll never believe what happens next. (3 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Remember those fun high school superlatives like the “Class Clown” or the “Biggest Flirt”? In this special How to Be a Better Human season finale, you will be hearing from our previous guest Dallas Youth Poet Laureate Naisha Randhar and our team of editors, marketers, producers, fact-checkers and more on their favorite episodes this year. How to Be a Better Human 2025 SuperlativesMost Likely to Make You Rethink Your Place in the WorldMost Inspiring StoryMost Likely to Make You Feel Your FeelsBest Motivator Most Likely to Improve Your Life TomorrowBiggest Perspective ShifterMost Shared TidbitLearn more about our flagship conference happening this April at attend.ted.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Also: is shortsightedness part of human nature? This episode originally aired on May 30th, 2021.

One year ago, Anthropic launched the Model Context Protocol (MCP)—a simple, open standard to connect AI applications to the data and tools they need. Today, MCP has exploded from a local-only experiment into the de facto protocol for agentic systems, adopted by OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Block, and hundreds of enterprises building internal agents at scale. And now, MCP is joining the newly formed Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) under the Linux Foundation, alongside Block's Goose coding agent, with founding members spanning the biggest names in AI and cloud infrastructure. We sat down with David Soria Parra (MCP lead, Anthropic), Nick Cooper (OpenAI), Brad Howes (Block / Goose), and Jim Zemlin (Linux Foundation CEO) to dig into the one-year journey of MCP—from Thanksgiving hacking sessions and the first remote authentication spec to long-running tasks, MCP Apps, and the rise of agent-to-agent communication—and the behind-the-scenes story of how three competitive AI labs came together to donate their protocols and agents to a neutral foundation, why enterprises are deploying MCP servers faster than anyone expected (most of it invisible, internal, and at massive scale), what it takes to design a protocol that works for both simple tool calls and complex multi-agent orchestration, how the foundation will balance taste-making (curating meaningful projects) with openness (avoiding vendor lock-in), and the 2025 vision: MCP as the communication layer for asynchronous, long-running agents that work while you sleep, discover and install their own tools, and unlock the next order of magnitude in AI productivity. We discuss: The one-year MCP journey: from local stdio servers to remote HTTP streaming, OAuth 2.1 authentication (and the enterprise lessons learned), long-running tasks, and MCP Apps (iframes for richer UI) Why MCP adoption is exploding internally at enterprises: invisible, internal servers connecting agents to Slack, Linear, proprietary data, and compliance-heavy workflows (financial services, healthcare) The authentication evolution: separating resource servers from identity providers, dynamic client registration, and why the March spec wasn't enterprise-ready (and how June fixed it) How Anthropic dogfoods MCP: internal gateway, custom servers for Slack summaries and employee surveys, and why MCP was born from "how do I scale dev tooling faster than the company grows?" Tasks: the new primitive for long-running, asynchronous agent operations—why tools aren't enough, how tasks enable deep research and agent-to-agent handoffs, and the design choice to make tasks a "container" (not just async tools) MCP Apps: why iframes, how to handle styles and branding, seat selection and shopping UIs as the killer use case, and the collaboration with OpenAI to build a common standard The registry problem: official registry vs. curated sub-registries (Smithery, GitHub), trust levels, model-driven discovery, and why MCP needs "npm for agents" (but with signatures and HIPAA/financial compliance) The founding story of AAIF: how Anthropic, OpenAI, and Block came together (spoiler: they didn't know each other were talking to Linux Foundation), why neutrality matters, and how Jim Zemlin has never seen this much day-one inbound interest in 22 years — David Soria Parra (Anthropic / MCP) MCP: https://modelcontextprotocol.io https://uk.linkedin.com/in/david-soria-parra-4a78b3a https://x.com/dsp_ Nick Cooper (OpenAI) X: https://x.com/nicoaicopr Brad Howes (Block / Goose) Goose: https://github.com/block/goose Jim Zemlin (Linux Foundation) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zemlin/ Agentic AI Foundation https://agenticai.foundation Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: MCP's First Year and Foundation Launch 00:01:17 MCP's Journey: From Launch to Industry Standard 00:02:06 Protocol Evolution: Remote Servers and Authentication 00:08:52 Enterprise Authentication and Financial Services 00:11:42 Transport Layer Challenges: HTTP Streaming and Scalability 00:15:37 Standards Development: Collaboration with Tech Giants 00:34:27 Long-Running Tasks: The Future of Async Agents 00:30:41 Discovery and Registries: Building the MCP Ecosystem 00:30:54 MCP Apps and UI: Beyond Text Interfaces 00:26:55 Internal Adoption: How Anthropic Uses MCP 00:23:15 Skills vs MCP: Complementary Not Competing 00:36:16 Community Events and Enterprise Learnings 01:03:31 Foundation Formation: Why Now and Why Together 01:07:38 Linux Foundation Partnership: Structure and Governance 01:11:13 Goose as Reference Implementation 01:17:28 Principles Over Roadmaps: Composability and Quality 01:21:02 Foundation Value Proposition: Why Contribute 01:27:49 Practical Investments: Events, Tools, and Community 01:34:58 Looking Ahead: Async Agents and Real Impact

Regret is one of our most powerful emotions -- and also one of the most misunderstood. Over the past two years, author Daniel H. Pink has collected a trove of more than 16,000 regrets from people in 105 countries in an effort to better understand this mysterious emotion. He shares the key patterns that emerged (it all boils down to the same four core regrets, he says) and explains how to transform your own regrets in order to create the life you've always wanted to live. (This talk and conversation, hosted by TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers, was part of an exclusive TED Membership event. Visit ted.com/membership to become a TED Member.)Learn more about our flagship conference happening this April at attend.ted.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon is a functional medicine physician and Founder of the Institute of Muscle-Centric Medicine. The most overlooked aspect of health optimisation might be hiding in plain sight. Your environment shapes your health far more than you probably realise. So how exactly does your environment affect your body, and what practical steps can you take to regain control and move toward better health? Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a free bottle of D3K2, a Welcome Kit, Travel Packs, plus bonus gifts (US only) when you first subscribe at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom New pricing since recording: Function is now just $365, plus get $25 off at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Note: Steve and Gene’s talk on Vibe Coding and the post IDE world was one of the top talks of AIE CODE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dtu2bilcFs&t=1019s&pp=0gcJCU0KAYcqIYzv From building legendary platforms at Google and Amazon to authoring one of the most influential essays on AI-powered development (Revenge of the Junior Developer, quoted by Dario Amodei himself), Steve Yegge has spent decades at the frontier of software engineering—and now he's leading the charge into what he calls the "factory farming" era of code. After stints at SourceGraph and building Beads (a purely vibe-coded issue tracker with tens of thousands of users), Steve co-authored The Vibe Coding Book and is now building VC (VibeCoder), an agent orchestration dashboard designed to move developers from writing code to managing fleets of AI agents that coordinate, parallelize, and ship features while you sleep. We sat down with Steve at AI Engineer Summit to dig into why Claude Code, Cursor, and the entire 2024 stack are already obsolete, what it actually takes to trust an agent after 2,000 hours of practice (hint: they will delete your production database if you anthropomorphize them), why the real skill is no longer writing code but orchestrating agents like a NASCAR pit crew, how merging has become the new wall that every 10x-productive team is hitting (and why one company's solution is literally "one engineer per repo"), the rise of multi-agent workflows where agents reserve files, message each other via MCP, and coordinate like a little village, why Steve believes if you're still using an IDE to write code by January 1st, you're a bad engineer, how the 12–15 year experience bracket is the most resistant demographic (and why their identity is tied to obsolete workflows), the hidden chaos inside OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google as they scale at breakneck speed, why rewriting from scratch is now faster than refactoring for a growing class of codebases, and his 2025 prediction: we're moving from subsistence agriculture to John Deere-scale factory farming of code, and the Luddite backlash is only just beginning. We discuss: Why Claude Code, Cursor, and agentic coding tools are already last year's tech—and what comes next: agent orchestration dashboards where you manage fleets, not write lines The 2,000-hour rule: why it takes a full year of daily use before you can predict what an LLM will do, and why trust = predictability, not capability Steve's hot take: if you're still using an IDE to develop code by January 1st, 2025, you're a bad engineer—because the abstraction layer has moved from models to full-stack agents The demographic most resistant to vibe coding: 12–15 years of experience, senior engineers whose identity is tied to the way they work today, and why they're about to become the interns Why anthropomorphizing LLMs is the biggest mistake: the "hot hand" fallacy, agent amnesia, and how Steve's agent once locked him out of prod by changing his password to "fix" a problem Should kids learn to code? Steve's take: learn to vibe code—understand functions, classes, architecture, and capabilities in a language-neutral way, but skip the syntax The 2025 vision: "factory farming of code" where orchestrators run Cloud Code, scrub output, plan-implement-review-test in loops, and unlock programming for non-programmers at scale — Steve Yegge X: https://x.com/steve_yegge Substack (Stevie's Tech Talks): https://steve-yegge.medium.com/ GitHub (VC / VibeCoder): https://github.com/yegge-labs Where to find Latent Space X: https://x.com/latentspacepod Substack: https://www.latent.space/ Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: Steve Yegge on Vibe Coding and AI Engineering 00:00:59 The Backlash: Who Resists Vibe Coding and Why 00:04:26 The 2000 Hour Rule: Building Trust with AI Coding Tools 00:03:31 The January 1st Deadline: IDEs Are Becoming Obsolete 00:02:55 10X Productivity at OpenAI: The Performance Review Problem 00:07:49 The Hot Hand Fallacy: When AI Agents Betray Your Trust 00:11:12 Claude Code Isn't It: The Need for Agent Orchestration 00:15:20 The Orchestrator Revolution: From Cloud Code to Agent Villages 00:18:46 The Merge Wall: The Biggest Unsolved Problem in AI Coding 00:26:33 Never Rewrite Your Code - Until Now: Joel Spolsky Was Wrong 00:22:43 Factory Farming Code: The John Deere Era of Software 00:29:27 Google's Gemini Turnaround and the AI Lab Chaos 00:33:20 Should Your Kids Learn to Code? The New Answer 00:34:59 Code MCP and the Gossip Rate: Latest Vibe Coding Discoveries

From the frontlines of OpenAI's Codex and GPT-5 training teams, Bryan and Bill are building the future of AI-powered coding—where agents don't just autocomplete, they architect, refactor, and ship entire features while you sleep. We caught up with them at AI Engineer Conference right after the launch of Codex Max, OpenAI's newest long-running coding agent designed to work for 24+ hours straight, manage its own context, and spawn sub-agents to parallelize work across your entire codebase. We sat down with Bryan and Bill to dig into what it actually takes to train a model that developers trust—why personality, communication, and planning matter as much as raw capability, how Codex is trained with strong opinions about tools (it loves rg over grep, seriously), why the abstraction layer is moving from models to full-stack agents you can plug into VS Code or Zed, how OpenAI partners co-develop tool integrations and discover unexpected model habits (like renaming tools to match Codex's internal training), the rise of applied evals that measure real-world impact instead of academic benchmarks, why multi-turn evals are the next frontier (and Bryan's "job interview eval" idea), how coding agents are breaking out of code into personal automation, terminal workflows, and computer use, and their 2026 vision: coding agents trusted enough to handle the hardest refactors at any company, not just top-tier firms, and general enough to build integrations, organize your desktop, and unlock capabilities you'd never get access to otherwise. We discuss: What Codex Max is: a long-running coding agent that can work 24+ hours, manage its own context window, and spawn sub-agents for parallel work Why the name "Max": maximalist, maximization, speed and endurance—it's simply better and faster for the same problems Training for personality: communication, planning, context gathering, and checking your work as behavioral characteristics, not just capabilities How Codex develops habits like preferring rg over grep, and why renaming tools to match its training (e.g., terminal-style naming) dramatically improves tool-call performance The split between Codex (opinionated, agent-focused, optimized for the Codex harness) and GPT-5 (general, more durable across different tools and modalities) Why the abstraction layer is moving up: from prompting models to plugging in full agents (Codex, GitHub Copilot, Zed) that package the entire stack The rise of sub-agents and agents-using-agents: Codex Max spawning its own instances, handing off context, and parallelizing work across a codebase How OpenAI works with coding partners on the bleeding edge to co-develop tool integrations and discover what the model is actually good at The shift to applied evals: capturing real-world use cases instead of academic benchmarks, and why ~50% of OpenAI employees now use Codex daily Why multi-turn evals are the next frontier: LM-as-a-judge for entire trajectories, Bryan's "job interview eval" concept, and the need for a batch multi-turn eval API How coding agents are breaking out of code: personal automation, organizing desktops, terminal workflows, and "Devin for non-coding" use cases Why Slack is the ultimate UI for work, and how coding agents can become your personal automation layer for email, files, and everything in between The 2026 vision: more computer use, more trust, and coding agents capable enough that any company can access top-tier developer capabilities, not just elite firms — Bryan & Bill (OpenAI Codex Team) http://x.com/bfioca https://x.com/realchillben OpenAI Codex: https://openai.com/index/openai-codex/ Where to find Latent Space X: https://x.com/latentspacepod Substack: https://www.latent.space/ Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: Latent Space Listeners at AI Engineer Code 00:01:27 Codex Max Launch: Training for Long-Running Coding Agents 00:03:01 Model Personality and Trust: Communication, Planning, and Self-Checking 00:05:20 Codex vs GPT-5: Opinionated Agents vs General Models 00:07:47 Tool Use and Model Habits: The Ripgrep Discovery 00:09:16 Personality Design: Verbosity vs Efficiency in Coding Agents 00:11:56 The Agent Abstraction Layer: Building on Top of Codex 00:14:08 Sub-Agents and Multi-Agent Patterns: The Future of Composition 00:16:11 Trust and Adoption: OpenAI Developers Using Codex Daily 00:17:21 Applied Evals: Real-World Testing vs Academic Benchmarks 00:19:15 Multi-Turn Evals and the Job Interview Pattern 00:21:35 Feature Request: Batch Multi-Turn Eval API 00:22:28 Beyond Code: Personal Automation and Computer Use 00:24:51 Vision-Native Agents and the UI Integration Challenge 00:25:02 2026 Predictions: Trust, Computer Use, and Democratized Excellence

The U.S. government is nearly $40 trillion in debt, a fact that pretty much guarantees exciting times ahead. Coleman Church on what comes next. (00:00) Debt Trading and Emerging Markets Debt (08:58) The IMF's Role in American Foreign Policy (28:57) How the Fed Is Secretly Destroying Free Market Capitalism (1:07:59) What Is the Alternative to Investing in the Stock Market? (1:12:07) Is Crypto the Next Global Reserve Currency? Paid partnerships with: Dutch: Get $50 a year for vet care with Tucker50 at https://dutch.com/tucker TCN: Watch our new outdoor series at https://tuckercarlson.com/americangame Last Country Supply: Real prep starts with the basics. Here’s what we keep stocked: https://lastcountrysupply.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To truly savor life, pursue "powerful first experiences," says storyteller and nonprofit founder Kenneth Chabert. Learn more about how to create these meaningful moments, where mundane routine is broken by novel experiences in small but significant ways -- no matter how old you are.Learn more about our flagship conference happening this April at attend.ted.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.