Podcasts about Blend

The guys follow up the Test Pilot with one of its most famous descendants, created in 1958 at the Beverly Hills tiki bar Luau.JET PILOT RECIPE: 1oz/30ml OVERPROOF JAMAICAN RUM.75oz/22ml OVERPROOF DEMERARA RUM.75oz/22ml GOLD RUM .5oz/15ml GRAPEFRUIT JUICE.75oz/22ml LIME JUICE .5oz/15ml FALERNUM.5oz/15ml CINNAMON SYRUP1 dash ANGOSTURA BITTERS1 dash ABSINTHEAdd ingredients into a blender with a cup of ice. Blend at high speed for 5 seconds. Pour into a double rocks glass. Garnish as desired.Recipe via The Luau, Beverly HillsWANT MORE SLOP? Check out:PatreonSHOP the webstore at:The Sloppy Boys WebsiteLISTEN to The Sloppy Boys hit songs on:Apple MusicSpotifyYoutubeTOUR DATES, SOCIALS and more at:LinktreeT H E S L O P P Y B O Y S L L CExpand Ascend Conquer Retain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some episodes start with a plan.This one absolutely did not.In this episode of The Sesh, Brandon and Jesse light up a bowl of E85 and end up going everywhere. Money stress, bad jobs, business lessons, friendships, pain relief, and the strange way cannabis turns random conversations into meaningful ones.Along the way they break down the strain they're smoking, share a simple cannabis pain balm recipe, and get into a surprisingly deep conversation about trust, relationships, and why most successful businesses run on one thing: people.Sometimes the best conversations are the ones you never planned to have.And cannabis has a funny way of opening those doors.WHAT WE TALK ABOUT• The strain E85 and why it hits like a gassy, happy hybrid• Wedding Cake lineage and how it shapes the experience• Why joints still feel different from vapes and dabs• The communal ritual of passing a joint• Financial stress and digging out of debt• Learning business through failure• Why relationship-based sales beats transactional sales• The idea of “orbit building” and networking through trust• How friendships become the most valuable currency in life• Making a simple cannabis pain balm at home• Why cannabis keeps bringing people togetherSTRAIN REVIEWStrain: E85Genetics: Wedding Cake × Project 5146Type: HybridFlavor ProfileGassySweetCreamyReported EffectsHappyRelaxedSocialUpliftedWhy it stood out in this episode:E85 starts with a noticeable gassy kick but settles into a smooth, happy high that keeps the conversation flowing. It's the kind of strain that doesn't overpower the room but quietly elevates everything happening in it.Perfect for long conversations and passing around a bowl with friends.CANNABINOIDS DISCUSSEDTHCCBDCBGCBCThe presence of multiple cannabinoids in this flower created a balanced experience with less coughing and a smoother overall effect.BRANDONS PAIN BALMCannabis Pain Relief Balm (4 oz Jar)Cannabis InfusionIngredients1/8 oz decarbed cannabis flower2 tbsp shea butterInstructionsDecarb cannabis at 240°F for 35–40 minutes.Combine decarbed cannabis with shea butter.Heat gently at about 170°F for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.Strain out the plant material using cheesecloth or a fine strainer.Set aside the infused shea butter.Pain Balm Ingredients (per 4 oz jar)2 tbsp cannabis-infused shea butter1.5 tbsp tallow2 tbsp MCT oil3/4 tsp arrowroot powder1/2 tsp vitamin E oil1/4 tsp menthol crystals10–12 drops peppermint oilMethodMelt infused shea butter and tallow gently over low heat.Remove from heat and stir in MCT oil.Add menthol crystals and stir until dissolved.Place mixture in the fridge for 10–15 minutes until it thickens to a pudding consistency.Mix arrowroot powder with a small amount of MCT oil to form a slurry, then stir into the mixture.Add vitamin E oil and peppermint oil.Blend with an immersion whisk for 20–30 seconds. Do not whip air into it. (unless you want a lighter fluffier texture)Pour into a jar.Tap jar lightly on the counter to remove air pockets.Let set for 30–60 minutes.If you enjoy conversations like this, make sure to follow Cannabis School on your favorite platform and share this episode with someone who loves real conversations.Keep the Mic on.Fuel the movement. Keep the conversation going.We keep a running list of tools and brands we personally enjoy and actually use.Find everything in one place here:

It's our second installment of our Off the Beaten Path series and in this episode we're talking about Architectural Madness. In particular, the Rocchetta Mattei. A fever dream mash-up of Moorish, Italian Art Nouveau, and Medieval styles in a 19th century mountaintop castle between Bologna and Florence. What started out as a dream and a sanatorium became a life-long project, and then a second life-long project. As mentioned in the episode, Rocchetta Mattei is reachable from Florence and Bologna, perfect for a day-trip if you've already knocked a lot off the rest of your list. If you're looking to book a hotel in Florence, we recommend the three below:FH55 Hotel Calzaiuoli: -well-situated, traditional and luxuriously cozy- Expedia | BookingAlbergo Firenze: -incredible location, 24hr front desk- Expedia | BookingHotel La Scaletta Al Ponte Vecchio: -other side of the river, bright, open, with a terrace overlooking the city of Florence-  Expedia | BookingIf you're looking to book a hotel in Bologna, we recommend the hotels below:Hotel Metropolitan -upscale, in the city center - Expedia | BookingHotel Panorama - budget option in the city center - Expedia | BookingStarhotels Excelsior - near the train station - Expedia | BookingThese hotel links are affiliate links, and while we don't represent any of the companies listed, we do receive a small commission if you book a hotel through any of the links.If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and follow Only a Bag wherever you listen to podcasts! If you'd like to get in touch, you can send us a message on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠onlyabag.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Want to help the podcast? You can check out all of our affiliate links ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! If you book through any of them, we receive a small commission, and it helps to keep us going! You can also donate to Only a Bag on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ko-fi.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to keep the podcast going! As always, thank you all so much for listening.x Darcy and Nathaniel Only A Bag

On this episode of The KICK-ASS Stepmom Podcast parenting blogger and life transition coach Joanna Fowler of Nesting Story joins Jamie to discuss divorce, blending families, and the power of self-confidence.  Joanna will share how she navigated her divorce while being a well-known parenting blogger, the challenges she experienced when she stepped into the role of stepmom and blended families with her new husband, and how self-confidence, systems, and doing it her own way have made all the difference.  Check out Joanna's first episode on The KICK-ASS Stepmom Podcast: https://jamiescrimgeour.com/podcast/130/ Learn more about Joanna and her coaching:  https://nestingstory.ca/coaching/ Masterclass: How to Stop Letting a High Conflict Ex Highjack Your Life  www.jamiescrimgeour.com/masterclass Join Elevate: Group Coaching For The High Level Stepmom www.jamiescrimgeour.com/elevate  Subscribe to my Substack:  https://substack.com/@jamiescrimgeour Get My Ebook -  120 Ways To Be A KICK-ASS Stepmom  www.jamiescrimgeour.com/ebook    Episode Sponsors:  Cozy Earth | www.cozyearth.com and use the code COZYJAMIE for 20% off  LMNT | My Go To Electrolyte Drink. Head to www.drinklmnt.com/kickassstepmom to get a free sample pack with any drink mix purchase.

The Hartford Business Journal's Greg Bordonaro joins us to discuss Major global fintech company (Revolut) choosing Stamford as its U.S. HQ, as it pursues a U.S. bank charter, Gregs take on the idea that CT should resist new taxes on high earners, and a major development in the city of Hartford's financial recovery as it heads to the bond market for new money for the first time since 2017.

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Fluent Fiction - Mandarin Chinese: Brewing Tradition: Li Mei's Quest to Blend Old and New Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/zh/episode/2026-03-08-07-38-19-zh Story Transcript:Zh: 在一个阳光灿烂的春日里，李梅站在茶山上，眺望着青翠的山谷。En: On a sunny spring day, Li Mei stood atop the tea mountain, gazing at the verdant valley.Zh: 空气中弥漫着露水的清香，茶树在晨风中轻轻摇摆。En: The air was filled with the fresh scent of dew, and the tea trees gently swayed in the morning breeze.Zh: 这个茶园是她的家族一代代传下来的财富，而李梅决心掌握传统制茶技艺，在清明节时为先祖敬上一杯最纯正的茶。En: This tea plantation was a wealth passed down through her family for generations, and Li Mei was determined to master the traditional art of tea making, in order to offer her ancestors a cup of the purest tea during Qingming Festival.Zh: “现代的世界很快，传统有时候跟不上。”En: "The modern world is fast-paced, sometimes tradition can't keep up."Zh: 张伟是个务实的人，他觉得李梅追求过去的东西不太现实。En: Zhang Wei was a pragmatic person; he felt Li Mei's pursuit of the past was somewhat unrealistic.Zh: 但李梅心意已决。En: But Li Mei was resolute.Zh: 她决定动用多年来积攒的积蓄，去找陈玲师傅。En: She decided to use her savings accumulated over the years to seek out Chen Ling the master.Zh: 陈玲是一位年长的茶艺大师，住在遥远的乡村茶园。En: Chen Ling was an elderly tea art master living in a distant rural tea garden.Zh: 他曾经因为某些失败而饱受困扰，但他与茶叶之间有着深厚的感情。En: He had once been deeply troubled by certain failures, but he had a profound connection with tea.Zh: 旅途并不容易，En: The journey was not easy.Zh: 李梅来到茶山的第一天，就被眼前在阳光中熠熠发光的茶园深深吸引。En: On the first day Li Mei arrived at the tea mountain, she was deeply captivated by the tea plantation gleaming in the sunlight.Zh: 陈玲师傅招待了李梅，他知道她的决心。En: Master Chen Ling welcomed Li Mei, understanding her determination.Zh: 在接下来的日子里，李梅认真学习传统茶叶挑选、摊晾、揉捻和烘焙的方法。En: In the following days, Li Mei diligently learned the traditional methods of selecting, withering, kneading, and baking tea leaves.Zh: 然而，挑战在于，她很快发现传统的方法耗费时间，资源也不够充足。En: However, the challenge lay in the fact that she soon discovered traditional methods were time-consuming, and resources were not ample.Zh: 陈玲师傅和她讨论，如何在保持传统的同时，融入现代技术。En: Master Chen Ling and she discussed how to integrate modern technology while preserving tradition.Zh: 张伟也来拜访了几次，他开始慢慢理解李梅的追求，甚至开始帮忙。En: Zhang Wei also visited a few times, starting to slowly understand Li Mei's pursuit, and even began to lend a hand.Zh: 清明节近了，李梅开始感到压力。En: As Qingming Festival approached, Li Mei began to feel the pressure.Zh: 她担心无法准备出足够的好茶来纪念先祖，也担心无法证明给张伟看，传统和现代可以共存。En: She worried about not being able to prepare enough good tea to honor her ancestors, and was concerned about proving to Zhang Wei that tradition and modernity could coexist.Zh: 经过多番尝试，李梅弄清楚了其中的奥妙，最后她决定结合现代的快速干燥技巧和传统的手工揉捻。En: After numerous attempts, Li Mei uncovered the secret, ultimately deciding to combine modern quick drying techniques with traditional hand kneading.Zh: 节日的清晨，茶园里飘散着一股淡淡的清香。En: On the festival morning, a faint fragrance wafted through the tea garden.Zh: 村里的亲朋好友们聚集在一起，李梅怀着虔诚的心情，为大家献上了那杯足以代表丰厚传统的茶。En: Relatives and friends from the village gathered, and with a devout heart, Li Mei presented them with a cup of tea that represented rich tradition.Zh: 她微笑着看着大家品茶的神情，心里充满了自豪和宁静。En: She smiled as she watched everyone savor the tea, her heart filled with pride and serenity.Zh: 清明节的祭拜活动过后，张伟走过来轻声对她说：“我今天才明白，你走的这条路不容易。但你做到了，我很为你骄傲。”En: After the Qingming Festival memorial activities, Zhang Wei came over and softly said to her, "I only realized today that the path you've chosen is not easy. But you did it, and I'm very proud of you."Zh: 李梅点了点头，她知道，传统和现代，就像这片茶园，生生不息。En: Li Mei nodded, knowing that tradition and modernity, like the tea plantation, are ever enduring.Zh: 从那天起，李梅不仅传承了家族的传统，更找到了属于她自己的新方向。En: From that day on, Li Mei not only carried on her family's tradition but also found her own new direction.Zh: 她知道，无论将来如何变化，传统与创新，总能找到共同的出路。En: She understood that no matter how the future changes, tradition and innovation would always find a way to coexist. Vocabulary Words:verdant: 青翠的gazingly: 眺望着swayed: 摇摆pragmatic: 务实的resolute: 心意已决benevolent: 纯正的accumulated: 积攒的profound: 深厚的captivated: 吸引diligently: 认真地wither: 摊晾kneading: 揉捻ample: 充足的integrate: 融入devout: 虔诚的fragrance: 清香serenity: 宁静memorial: 祭拜活动unrealistic: 不太现实savings: 积蓄flawlessly: 无瑕疵地coexistence: 共存inevitable: 必然的artisan: 匠人enraptured: 陶醉equilibrium: 均衡chronicled: 记录sepulchers: 坟墓reverberate: 回响meticulous: 一丝不苟的

Podcast Summary – Stop Hiding Behind the Screen Welcome to today's episode. I work with small businesses. Strategy. Sales. E-commerce. Marketing. Customer retention. That last one is my weapon of choice. Getting existing customers to come back is cheaper and more powerful than chasing strangers all day. But here's what I'm seeing in early 2026. Everything is being pushed onto a screen. Zoom meetings. LinkedIn “connections”. Webinars instead of conferences. Entire businesses run from a spare bedroom in slippers. We are being sold the idea that you can build a serious company without leaving the house. Click a few buttons. Post a few videos. Watch the money roll in. It's nonsense. Yes, online tools matter. Of course they do. Email, WhatsApp, social media. They are efficient. But they are not a substitute for human contact. Small businesses, especially those under £1m turnover, grow through trust. And trust grows faster face to face. Eye contact matters. Sitting across a table matters. Having a coffee. Reading the room. Picking up on tone. Having a proper conversation about what your client actually wants. That nuance does not live inside a screen. When you meet people in person, something shifts. You get momentum. Ideas flow. Decisions happen. That is where real business gets done. So I am not saying ditch digital. I am saying stop hiding behind it. If you are a small business owner, look at your diary. How many real meetings are you having? How many proper conversations are you starting? If everything is online, your growth will be limited. Blend it. Use digital for reach. Use face to face for depth. That is where the money is. Call to Action If you run a small business under £1m and you want practical, hands on help with retention, sales and real world growth, go to: www.therichardsmith.com Or if you want structured support and sharp thinking applied directly to your business, visit: www.smallbusinessninja.co.uk Stop building your business through a webcam. Go and shake a hand. Final thought: if running a million-pound business in your underwear was that easy, Primark would be sponsoring the FTSE 100. Get In Touch Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.Name *Email *Subject *Comment or Message *WebsiteSend Message

This episode dives into the real challenges of building and growing startups, with practical advice from Guillano Demon. Listeners get insights on leadership, product-market fit, team alignment, and customer experience. The discussion is honest, energetic, and packed with actionable tips for founders and innovators. About the guest:  Guillano Demon is an ex-EY Partner with deep cross-functional experience in building, transforming, and scaling businesses across healthcare, consumer products and technology. He is a co-founder of ventures including Ohana Health, Admiral Freight and KompiTech.AI, works closely with startups and SMEs as a strategic advisor. His mission is to help founders turn bold ideas into real, scalable companies by combining disciplined execution with human-centered leadership. Relevant links:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillano-demon-264881/ Keay Take-aways: Blend conviction with openness: Startup leaders must be stubborn yet open to feedback and learning from others. Engage customers early and often: Constantly involve customers to ensure products are usable and meet real needs. Team alignment and governance matter: Having the right team and clear governance helps resolve issues and drive success. Chapters: 0:00 - Intro 0:35 - Introduction to Business Transformation and Startup Insights 1:57 - Giullano's Mission: Supporting Startup Founders 3:21 - Essential Leadership Qualities for Startups 4:36 - Engaging with Teams and Customers Effectively 5:39 - Overcoming Challenges in Fundraising and Market Fit 8:25 - Strategies for Achieving Product Market Fit 13:03 - Success Case: Launching a Pharmaceutical Startup 15:13 - Learning from Failure: The Importance of Team Alignment 18:43 - Quickfire Round: Insights on Business Challenges and Strategies 20:17 - Golden Nugget: Balancing Dreams with Reality 20:52 - Conclusion and Wrap-Up Please, hit the follow button and leave your feedback: Apple Podcast: https://www.cxgoalkeeper.com/apple Spotify: https://www.cxgoalkeeper.com/spotify About the host: Gregorio Uglioni is a seasoned transformation leader with over 15 years of experience shaping business and digital change, consistently delivering service excellence and measurable impact. As an Associate Partner at Forward, he is recognized for his strategic vision, operational expertise, and ability to drive sustainable growth. A respected keynote speaker and host of the well-known global podcast Business Transformation Pitch with the CX Goalkeeper, Gregorio energizes and inspires organizations worldwide with his customer-centric approach to innovation. Follow Gregorio Uglioni on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregorio-uglioni/

The guys blend up an early tiki drink from Air Force vet Don the Beachcomber-- a precursor to other, better-known “pilot”-themed drinks.TEST PILOT RECIPE:1.5oz/45ml DARK JAMAICAN RUM.75oz/22ml LIGHT RUM.5oz/15ml COINTREAU.5oz/15ml LIME JUICE.5oz/15ml FALERNUM6 drops PERNOD1 dash ANGOSTURA BITTERSAdd ingredients into a blender with a cup of ice. Blend at high speed for 5 seconds. Pour into a double rocks glass, adding more ice if needed.Garnish with speared maraschino cherry.Recipe via Don the BeachcomberWANT MORE SLOP? Check out:PatreonSHOP the webstore at:The Sloppy Boys WebsiteLISTEN to The Sloppy Boys hit songs on:Apple MusicSpotifyYoutubeTOUR DATES, SOCIALS and more at:LinktreeT H E S L O P P Y B O Y S L L CExpand Ascend Conquer Retain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hello, everyone, welcome to this episode posted exactly on time where Sarah and Cyrus discuss the romance series of the moment, The Gay Hockey One That Now Has a TV Show. But first, 13 minutes of bullshit. We really make you wait for it. And we also spend a lot of time on Game Changers, the first book in the series which Sarah read and Cyrus didn't. You know how bad books sometimes demand conversation more than good ones? Also. Sweat. We discuss a lot of sweat. My dudes, this episode is all over the place. Enjoy?Support the show

Engage in more of my content: read my personal blog posts watch workflow channel videos watch my monthly videos on books and reading read blog posts on project management topics connect with me on LinkedIn sign up for my monthly newsletter Learn more about my products and services: explore my 1:1 coaching practice learn more about my coach training program check out my PM by Design training program learn more about my Slow Hustle business building mastermind join Prolific, my online community devoted to meaningful productivity learn more about the Blend by Design online course check out my SoTL by Design online course Please offer your feedback about the show or ideas for future episodes and topics by emailing me. You can also come find me on Instagram! And if you listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, please take a moment to rate and/or review the show.

Episode 105 (26/02/26) – On this week's show: Zippy and Bungle's Gaza peace plans, second chances to make first impressions, our new improv Clive Barton Travel Agent, a look at all the Nescafe Gold Blend adverts from 1987-1993, more future TV and movie projects, the story of a man that killed his mum and lived with the body during lockdown, an improv of two guys doing a drug awareness presentation about Ketamine to school kids, do you need to go to the toilet in heaven? Online IQ tests, recommendations, Future Greg and a whole lot more!

The Hartford Business Journal's Greg Bordonaro calls in to discuss Hartford HealthCare expanding even more, The People's Bank Arena and more in this week's CT Business Blend.

The Quiet Pulse of Life  In a world that often feels fast-paced and overwhelming, taking a moment to reconnect with the quiet rhythms of life can be deeply restorative. This practice invites you to step into a serene, snowy mountain landscape, where stillness meets life's quiet pulse. As you immerse yourself in this peaceful setting, you'll be guided to tune into your own inner rhythms, your breath andyour heartbeat. This simple yet powerful awareness can help reduce stress, increase a sense of trust in life, and cultivate gratitude for the miracles your body performs every day without effort. By focusing on the natural flow of your breath and the steady beat of your heart, you may find a renewed sense of calm and a deeper connection to life's quiet support system. Step Into a Moment of Peace and Healing with this guided meditation by Sylvia, thoughtfully crafted to help you reconnect with calm, clarity, and strength. Whether you're navigating life's daily stresses, feeling overwhelmed by emotions, or simply seeking a moment of quiet reflection, this meditation offers a sanctuary for your mind and heart. Key Features: Expertly Guided Experience: Sylvia's soothing voice, grounded in wisdom and empathy, gently leads you into a state of deep relaxation. A Blend of Science and Mindfulness: Combining neuroscience and ancient mindfulness practices to nurture both mind and body. Authentic and Heartfelt: A non-mainstream approach, offering profound yet practical guidance for real life. Accessible and Flexible: Download and listen anytime, whether for a quick reset or a longer, restorative practice.     All Episodes can be found at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.podpage.com/speaking-podcast/⁠⁠⁠   All about Roy / Brain Gym & Virtual Assistants at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://roycoughlan.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠   #SylviaWolfer #speaker #griefhealing   Find the full Interview with Sylvia Wolfe    Bio of Sylvia Wolfer   Sylvia Wolfer is a neuroscience-informed mindfulness guide and grief educator. Her work bridges contemplative practice, nervous system regulation, and lived experience after profound loss. A long-term meditation practitioner, Sylvia has explored contemplative traditions for many years. After losing both of her parents and her two brothers, her practice deepened — becoming not just a spiritual discipline, but a steady anchor through grief. Today, she creates grounded, body-aware guided meditations designed to support people through emotional overwhelm, loss, and life transitions. Her approach integrates neuroscience, breath, and embodied awareness to help people build emotional steadiness without bypassing what hurts. Sylvia is the creator of several digital courses and guided meditation series, and she teaches weekly online sessions blending mindfulness and movement.   How to Contact Sylvia Wolfer    ⁠https://sylviawolfer.com/⁠   ⁠https://www.instagram.com/_sylvia_wolfer_grief_support/⁠   ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylviawolfer/⁠     All about Roy / Brain Gym & Virtual Assistants at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://roycoughlan.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠    

Steve, Beka, Jeff, Justine & Matt M. talk about businesses where you can create a one bottle custom blend. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Fluent Fiction - Catalan: Amid Barcelona's Carnival: A Blend of Friendship and Trust Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/ca/episode/2026-02-26-08-38-20-ca Story Transcript:Ca: El vent fred de l'hivern bufava per les estretes carrers de Barcelona.En: The cold winter wind blew through the narrow streets of Barcelona.Ca: A l'interior de la torrefactora de cafè, en el cor de la ciutat, sonava una música alegre de Carnaval.En: Inside the coffee roastery, in the heart of the city, cheerful Carnival music played.Ca: Les màscares de colors i les serpentines brillaven sota la llum càlida de les làmpades.En: Colorful masks and streamers shone under the warm light of the lamps.Ca: Núria es movia amb agilitat entre els sacs de cafè i les tasses calentes.En: Núria moved agilely between the sacks of coffee and the hot cups.Ca: Núria treballava allí des de feia anys.En: Núria had been working there for years.Ca: Li encantava l'aroma del cafè recent torrat i les converses amb els clients fidels.En: She loved the aroma of freshly roasted coffee and the conversations with loyal customers.Ca: Però hi havia un client que la feia sentir papallones a l'estómac.En: But there was one customer who gave her butterflies in her stomach.Ca: Pere, el seu amic de tota la vida, entrava amb la seva habitual alegria.En: Pere, her lifelong friend, entered with his usual cheerfulness.Ca: —Ei, Núria! Com va el Carnaval? —va preguntar Pere mentre es sacudia la neu lleugera del seu abric.En: "Hey, Núria! How's the Carnival going?" asked Pere as he shook the light snow off his coat.Ca: —Va bé, Pere! I tu? T'has disfressat? —respongué Núria amb un somriure juganer.En: "It's going well, Pere! And you? Have you put on a costume?" Núria replied with a playful smile.Ca: Pere deixà escapar una rialla i s'assegué a la petita taula de fusta prop de la finestra.En: Pere let out a laugh and sat at the small wooden table near the window.Ca: Malgrat el seu somriure, Núria notà quelcom en els ulls de Pere.En: Despite his smile, Núria noticed something in Pere's eyes.Ca: Una ombra, una preocupació, que no havia vist abans.En: A shadow, a worry, that she hadn't seen before.Ca: Les seves sospites es confirmaren quan trobà una carta entre les seves llibretes que havia caigut a terra: era del banc.En: Her suspicions were confirmed when she found a letter among the notebooks that had fallen to the ground: it was from the bank.Ca: Pere tenia problemes econòmics.En: Pere was having financial problems.Ca: Conèixer el secret la deixà inquieta.En: Knowing the secret left her uneasy.Ca: Sabia que havia de fer alguna cosa, però no volia arriscar la seva amistat.En: She knew she had to do something, but she didn't want to risk their friendship.Ca: —Pere, et puc preguntar una cosa? —digué Núria mentre li servia una tassa de cafè.En: "Pere, can I ask you something?" said Núria as she served him a cup of coffee.Ca: —És clar, Núria. Què passa? —respongué Pere, prenent la tassa amb un somriure afectuós.En: "Of course, Núria. What's up?" replied Pere, taking the cup with an affectionate smile.Ca: —He trobat... alguna cosa. Sé que estàs passant per un moment difícil —va dir ella, amb la veu una mica tremolosa.En: "I found... something. I know you're going through a hard time," she said, her voice a little shaky.Ca: El somriure de Pere es va esvair lentament.En: Pere's smile slowly faded.Ca: La mirada oberta es tornà més tancada.En: His open look turned more closed.Ca: —Has trobat la carta, oi? —va preguntar ell, baixant la vista cap a la tassa.En: "You found the letter, didn't you?" he asked, lowering his gaze to the cup.Ca: Núria assentí, sentint el pes de les paraules entre ells.En: Núria nodded, feeling the weight of the words between them.Ca: Pere suspirà, i per un moment, el soroll alegre de la torrefactora semblà allunyar-se.En: Pere sighed, and for a moment, the cheerful noise of the roastery seemed to fade away.Ca: —Núria, no sabia com dir-t'ho.En: "Núria, I didn't know how to tell you.Ca: Ha estat difícil mantenir la feina i cuidar de casa meva —va admetre Pere, la veu plena de sinceritat.En: It's been hard to keep the job and take care of my home," admitted Pere, his voice full of sincerity.Ca: —Pots comptar amb mi, Pere.En: "You can count on me, Pere.Ca: Estic aquí per ajudar-te —va dir ella amb determinació, agafant la mà de Pere sobre la taula.En: I'm here to help you," she said with determination, taking Pere's hand over the table.Ca: Pere aixecà els ulls i va somriure amb agraïment.En: Pere looked up and smiled with gratitude.Ca: La preocupació als seus ulls minvà una mica.En: The worry in his eyes eased a bit.Ca: La sinceritat de Núria i la seva oferta d'ajuda li alleugeriren el cor.En: Núria's sincerity and her offer of help lightened his heart.Ca: El Carnaval continuava fora, el so de les rialles i els tambors omplint l'aire.En: The Carnival continued outside, the sound of laughter and drums filling the air.Ca: Dins aquell espai càlid, Núria i Pere es van adonar que l'amistat pot ser un refugi, un suport en els moments més difícils.En: Inside that warm space, Núria and Pere realized that friendship can be a refuge, a support in the most difficult times.Ca: I així, a mesura que el cafè es refredava, les seves paraules i la seva sinceritat encenien una nova força en la seva connexió.En: And so, as the coffee cooled, their words and sincerity ignited a new strength in their connection.Ca: Aquest hivern, a la torrefactora càlida de Barcelona, una amistat esdevingué més forta enmig dels colors del Carnaval.En: This winter, in the warm roastery in Barcelona, a friendship became stronger amidst the colors of the Carnival.Ca: I les paraules compartides, plenes de confiança, esdevingueren el millor regal d'aquella temporada.En: And the words shared, full of trust, became the best gift of that season. Vocabulary Words:the wind: el ventthe winter: l'hivernblew: bufavathe streets: les carrersthe coffee roastery: la torrefactora de cafèthe heart: el corcheerful: alegrethe music: la músicaplayed: sonavamasks: les màscaresstreamers: les serpentinescolorful: de colorsshone: brillaventhe lamps: les làmpadesmoved agilely: es movia amb agilitatthe aroma: l'aromafreshly roasted: recent torratloyal customers: els clients fidelsbutterflies: papallonesthe coat: l'abricthe laugh: una riallathe table: la tauladespite: malgratthe shadow: una ombrathe worry: una preocupacióthe suspicions: les sospitesthe letter: la cartathe bank: el bancuneasy: inquietaaffectionate: afectuós

Fluent Fiction - Italian: The Winter Heat: A Roastery's Spicy Blend of Laughter Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/it/episode/2026-02-26-08-38-20-it Story Transcript:It: Nell'antico villaggio di Borgo Serena, c'era una torrefazione di caffè che emanava un profumo invitante di chicchi appena tostati.En: In the ancient village of Borgo Serena, there was a coffee roastery that emitted an inviting aroma of freshly roasted beans.It: Era una giornata di fine inverno, e il freddo pungente esterno faceva apprezzare ancora di più il calore accogliente del locale.En: It was a late winter day, and the biting cold outside made the welcoming warmth of the place even more appreciated.It: Luca, un barista appassionato ma un po' distratto, stava sistemando gli ultimi dettagli del bar quando Giulia, una ragazza dai capelli ricci e un sorriso contagioso, entrò nel locale.En: Luca, a passionate but somewhat distracted barista, was tidying up the final details of the bar when Giulia, a girl with curly hair and a contagious smile, entered the shop.It: Giulia veniva spesso alla torrefazione.En: Giulia often came to the roastery.It: Le piaceva provare nuove miscele e Luca aveva notato nei suoi occhi una curiosità speciale.En: She liked trying new blends, and Luca had noticed a special curiosity in her eyes.It: Sentiva sempre il bisogno di stupirla.En: He always felt the need to impress her.It: Marco, il collega di Luca, era più pragmatica e spesso osservava con cautela le idee avventurose di Luca.En: Marco, Luca's colleague, was more pragmatic and often watched Luca's adventurous ideas with caution.It: Quel giorno, Luca aveva deciso di creare una miscela speciale in onore di Giulia.En: That day, Luca had decided to create a special blend in honor of Giulia.It: Mentre pensava ad un tocco unico, il suo sguardo cadde su un barattolo di polvere marrone.En: While thinking of a unique touch, his gaze fell on a jar of brown powder.It: "Cannella," pensò, desiderando dare al caffè un aroma dolce.En: "Cinnamon," he thought, wishing to give the coffee a sweet aroma.It: Ma nella fretta di preparare tutto prima dell'arrivo di Giulia, non si accorse che il barattolo era in realtà di polvere di chili.En: But in the rush to prepare everything before Giulia's arrival, he didn't realize that the jar actually contained chili powder.It: Giulia si sedette al solito posto e sorrise mentre Luca si avvicinava con la bevanda fumante.En: Giulia sat in her usual spot and smiled as Luca approached with the steaming drink.It: "Ho preparato una nuova miscela per te," disse Luca con entusiasmo.En: "I prepared a new blend for you," Luca said enthusiastically.It: Giulia, ignara dell'errore, sorseggiò il caffè e immediatamente iniziò a tossire, gli occhi aperti per la sorpresa.En: Giulia, unaware of the mistake, sipped the coffee and immediately started coughing, her eyes wide with surprise.It: Marco, da dietro il bancone, alzò un sopracciglio, mentre cercava di non ridere.En: Marco, from behind the counter, raised an eyebrow as he tried not to laugh.It: "Wow, ha un... calore particolare," disse Giulia cercando di riprendersi.En: "Wow, it has a... particular warmth," Giulia said, trying to recover.It: La situazione cominciò a sembrare comica e Luca, pur imbarazzato, cercò di mantenere la calma.En: The situation began to seem comical, and Luca, though embarrassed, tried to stay calm.It: "Sì, è un nuovo esperimento, il 'Calore dell'Inverno'," provò a dire Luca cercando di assecondare l'accaduto.En: "Yes, it's a new experiment, the 'Winter Heat,'" Luca tried to say, going along with what happened.It: Giulia scoppiò a ridere, e anche Marco si unì a quell'esplosione di risate.En: Giulia burst out laughing, and Marco joined in on the explosion of laughter.It: "Penso che tu abbia scoperto qualcosa di diverso!"En: "I think you've discovered something different!"It: esclamò Giulia, apprezzando l'improvvisazione non intenzionale di Luca.En: exclaimed Giulia, appreciating Luca's unintentional improvisation.It: Marco propose con un sorriso: "Magari potremmo venderlo come miscela speciale per riscaldarsi in inverno."En: Marco suggested with a smile, "Maybe we could sell it as a special blend to warm up in winter."It: E tutti trovarono la cosa ancora più divertente.En: And they all found it even more amusing.It: Alla fine, Luca si rese conto che non aveva bisogno di perfezione per impressionare; la sincerità e il buon umore erano più efficaci.En: In the end, Luca realized he didn't need perfection to impress; sincerity and good humor were more effective.It: Il caffè piccante divenne una storia da raccontare e la piccola torrefazione visse quel giorno un momento di giovialità che i clienti abituali ricordarono per molto tempo.En: The spicy coffee became a story to tell, and the small roastery experienced a moment of joviality that regular customers remembered for a long time.It: Quel pomeriggio, nel calore di risate condivise e nell'aroma denso di caffè, Luca capì che la vera alchimia stava nel cuore e non solo nei chicchi di caffè.En: That afternoon, in the warmth of shared laughter and the rich aroma of coffee, Luca understood that true alchemy lay in the heart and not only in the coffee beans. Vocabulary Words:roastery: la torrefazionebiting cold: il freddo pungentebarista: il baristacurl: il riccioblend: la miscelapragmatic: pragmaticagaze: lo sguardojar: il barattolopowder: la polverecinnamon: la cannellachili: il chilicounter: il banconeeyebrow: il sopracciglioexperiment: l'esperimentocough: la tossemistake: l'erroresincerely: sinceramentealchemy: l'alchimiaadventure: l'avventuraimprovise: l'improvvisazionesteam: il vaporespicy: piccantecuriosity: la curiositàsurprise: la sorpresawarmth: il caloreto impress: impressionareto sip: sorseggiarejoviality: la giovialitàregular: l'abitualeunintentional: non intenzionale

Fluent Fiction - Swedish: Brewing Success: The Blend That Transformed a Göteborg Roastery Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/sv/episode/2026-02-26-23-34-02-sv Story Transcript:Sv: Kaffedoften låg tung i luften på rosteriet i Göteborg.En: The scent of coffee hung heavy in the air at the roastery in Göteborg.Sv: Ute föll snön stilla, klädde gator och tak i vit elegans.En: Outside, snow fell quietly, dressing the streets and rooftops in white elegance.Sv: Inne jobbade Lars och Ingrid med deras viktiga projekt: en unik kaffeblandning som hade potential att bli något stort.En: Inside, Lars and Ingrid were working on their important project: a unique coffee blend that had the potential to become something big.Sv: Lars var noggrann.En: Lars was meticulous.Sv: Han tittade ständigt på termometern som visade temperaturen i rostern.En: He constantly checked the thermometer showing the temperature in the roaster.Sv: Allt måste vara perfekt.En: Everything had to be perfect.Sv: Men vinterns kyla smög sig på.En: But the winter chill crept in.Sv: Maskinerna var opålitliga när temperaturen svajade.En: The machines were unreliable when the temperature fluctuated.Sv: "Det blir bra, Lars," sa Ingrid med ett leende.En: "It'll be fine, Lars," said Ingrid with a smile.Sv: Hon var alltid positiv.En: She was always positive.Sv: Ingrid var den bästa på att smaka av kaffet och hennes instinkter vägledde dem ofta rätt.En: Ingrid was the best at tasting the coffee and her instincts often guided them right.Sv: Lars suckade.En: Lars sighed.Sv: "Jag hoppas det, Ingrid. Den här gången måste vi lyckas."En: "I hope so, Ingrid. This time we have to succeed."Sv: De hade arbetat i månader med just denna blandning.En: They had been working for months on this specific blend.Sv: Konkurrensen närmade sig, och roasteryts framtid hängde på resultatet.En: The competition was closing in, and the future of the roastery depended on the result.Sv: Plötsligt började rosteriets maskiner låta konstigt.En: Suddenly, the roastery's machines started to sound strange.Sv: Temperaturen sjönk.En: The temperature dropped.Sv: "Inte nu," mumlade Lars nervöst.En: "Not now," Lars mumbled nervously.Sv: Ingrid tittade på honom, såg hans oro.En: Ingrid looked at him, saw his worry.Sv: "Vi klarar det tillsammans, Lars," sa hon bestämt.En: "We'll get through this together, Lars," she said firmly.Sv: "Lita på mig."En: "Trust me."Sv: Lars tvekade, men fattade sedan beslutet att låta Ingrid avgöra.En: Lars hesitated but then made the decision to let Ingrid decide.Sv: Hennes optimism kanske kunde rädda dem.En: Her optimism might be able to save them.Sv: Tillsammans improviserade de, justerade inställningar, vred reglage, och snart lugnade sig maskinerna.En: Together they improvised, adjusted settings, turned knobs, and soon the machines calmed down.Sv: När rostningen var klar hällde de ut bönorna.En: When the roasting was finished, they poured out the beans.Sv: Doften var otroligt fyllig.En: The aroma was incredibly rich.Sv: Ingrid tog en klunk och log stort.En: Ingrid took a sip and smiled broadly.Sv: "Det här är det vi väntat på!" utbrast hon.En: "This is what we've been waiting for!" she exclaimed.Sv: Lars tog en klunk.En: Lars took a sip.Sv: Smaken var perfekt.En: The taste was perfect.Sv: Deras hårda arbete och mod att lita på varandra hade gett resultat.En: Their hard work and courage to trust each other had paid off.Sv: På tävlingsdagen vann deras blandning första pris.En: On the competition day, their blend won first prize.Sv: Domarna älskade den rika, balanserade smaken.En: The judges loved its rich, balanced flavor.Sv: Rosteriet fick sin efterlängtade chans till ett samarbete, ett steg mot en stor framtid.En: The roastery got its long-awaited opportunity for a collaboration, a step toward a bright future.Sv: Lars tittade på Ingrid med tacksamhet.En: Lars looked at Ingrid with gratitude.Sv: Han hade lärt sig värdet av samarbete och att våga tro.En: He had learned the value of collaboration and the courage to believe.Sv: Tillsammans hade de övervunnit både kyla och tvekan.En: Together they had overcome both the cold and their doubts.Sv: Winter i Göteborg var inte längre lika iskall.En: Winter in Göteborg was no longer as icy. Vocabulary Words:scent: kaffedoftenhung: lågroastery: rosterietelegance: elegansmeticulous: noggranncrept: smögunreliable: opålitligafluctuated: svajademumbled: mumladenervously: nervöstfirmly: bestämtimprovised: improviseradeadjusted: justeradesettings: inställningarknobs: reglagecalmed: lugnadeincredibly: otroligtrich: fylligsip: klunkexclaimed: utbrastcourage: modcollaboration: samarbetegratitude: tacksamhetovercome: övervunniticy: iskallblend: blandningpotential: potentialcompetition: konkurrensenfuture: framtidbalanced: balanserade

Fluent Fiction - French: Roastery Revelations: Trust Fuels Lyon's Perfect Blend Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/fr/episode/2026-02-26-23-34-02-fr Story Transcript:Fr: Dans une petite brûlerie de café à Lyon, l'air était rempli d'une odeur envoûtante de grains de café fraîchement torréfiés.En: In a small coffee roastery in Lyon, the air was filled with an enchanting aroma of freshly roasted coffee beans.Fr: De lourds sacs en toile de jute étaient empilés contre les murs de briques et des tables en bois, encombrées d'équipements, transformaient l'endroit en une ruche d'activité.En: Heavy jute sacks were piled against the brick walls, and wooden tables cluttered with equipment transformed the place into a hive of activity.Fr: La lumière hivernale filtrant à travers les fenêtres givrées ajoutait une douce chaleur à cet espace animé.En: The winter light filtering through the frosted windows added a gentle warmth to this bustling space.Fr: Thibault, un homme méticuleux aux cheveux légèrement ébouriffés, se tenait près du torréfacteur, sa principale préoccupation tournant autour du lancement imminent d'un nouveau mélange de café.En: Thibault, a meticulous man with slightly tousled hair, stood near the roaster, his main concern revolving around the impending launch of a new coffee blend.Fr: À ses côtés, Camille, pleine d'énergie et d'optimisme, s'activait à préparer les étiquettes et les sachets.En: By his side, Camille, full of energy and optimism, busily prepared the labels and packaging.Fr: Elle essayait de garder le rythme malgré la pression croissante.En: She tried to keep pace despite the growing pressure.Fr: "L'échéance approche, Camille," dit Thibault d'une voix teintée d'inquiétude.En: "The deadline is approaching, Camille," said Thibault with a voice tinged with worry.Fr: "Je veux que ce mélange soit parfait."En: "I want this blend to be perfect."Fr: "Je suis sûre que ce sera un succès, Thibault.En: "I'm sure it will be a success, Thibault.Fr: Les clients vont adorer," répondit Camille en souriant, bien que le poids des responsabilités alourdissait ses épaules.En: The customers are going to love it," replied Camille with a smile, although the weight of responsibility weighed heavy on her shoulders.Fr: Thibault hésitait.En: Thibault hesitated.Fr: Sa quête de la perfection ralentissait les préparatifs.En: His quest for perfection was slowing down the preparations.Fr: Il goûtait chaque échantillon encore et encore, toujours à la recherche de la moindre imperfection.En: He tasted each sample over and over, always searching for the slightest imperfection.Fr: Camille, elle, avait foi en leur produit, ressentant instinctivement son potentiel.En: Camille, on the other hand, had faith in their product, instinctively sensing its potential.Fr: La tension croissait avec l'arrivée du jour du lancement.En: The tension grew as the day of the launch approached.Fr: Voyant le stress de Thibault, Camille lui proposa une pause.En: Seeing Thibault's stress, Camille suggested a break.Fr: "Venons boire un café, discutons," suggéra-t-elle.En: "Let's have a coffee, let's talk," she suggested.Fr: Ils s'assirent à une table, leurs tasses réchauffant leurs mains.En: They sat at a table, their cups warming their hands.Fr: Camille sorti un carnet.En: Camille pulled out a notebook.Fr: "Nous avons travaillé dur.En: "We've worked hard.Fr: Faisons-le ensemble.En: Let's do it together.Fr: Je crois en toi, et en ton jugement," dit-elle sincèrement.En: I believe in you, and in your judgment," she said sincerely.Fr: C'était le moment de vérité pour Thibault.En: It was a moment of truth for Thibault.Fr: Il prit une profonde inspiration et décida de mettre en confiance Camille.En: He took a deep breath and decided to trust Camille.Fr: "Bien, avançons," acquiesça-t-il enfin.En: "Alright, let's move forward," he finally agreed.Fr: "Ton enthousiasme est essentiel."En: "Your enthusiasm is essential."Fr: Avec cette nouvelle résolution, ils terminèrent les préparatifs avec vigueur.En: With this newfound resolve, they completed the preparations with vigor.Fr: Le jour du lancement, les clients s'amassèrent dans la brûlerie.En: On the day of the launch, customers crowded into the roastery.Fr: Les premiers commentaires furent prometteurs, et le mélange fut un succès.En: The initial feedback was promising, and the blend was a success.Fr: Sous le regard rempli de satisfaction des amateurs de café, Thibault compris quelque chose de précieux.En: Under the satisfied gaze of coffee enthusiasts, Thibault understood something valuable.Fr: En acceptant l'avis de Camille, il avait non seulement gagné du temps mais aussi enrichi leur projet.En: By accepting Camille's input, he not only saved time but also enriched their project.Fr: Son anxiété s'estompa peu à peu alors qu'il apprenait à faire confiance.En: His anxiety gradually faded as he learned to trust.Fr: Cette expérience changea Thibault.En: This experience changed Thibault.Fr: Il se rendit compte qu'un équilibre entre perfection et collaboration pouvait mener à la réussite.En: He realized that a balance between perfection and collaboration could lead to success.Fr: Dans la petite brûlerie à Lyon, une nouvelle ère de complicité naquit entre Thibault et Camille, partageant leur amour pour le café et le travail bien fait.En: In the small roastery in Lyon, a new era of camaraderie was born between Thibault and Camille, sharing their love for coffee and a job well done. Vocabulary Words:the roastery: la brûleriethe aroma: l'odeurenchanting: envoûtantejute sacks: sacs en toile de jutemeticulous: méticuleuxslightly tousled: légèrement ébouriffésthe roaster: le torréfacteurthe deadline: l'échéancetinged with worry: teintée d'inquiétudethe sample: l'échantillonthe imperfection: l'imperfectionthe pressure: la pressionthe preparation: les préparatifsvitamin: la vitamineto trust: mettre en confiancethe enthusiasm: l'enthousiasmethe resolve: la résolutionthe feedback: les commentairesthe success: le succèsthe anxiety: l'anxiététhe balance: l'équilibrethe collaboration: la collaborationthe potential: le potentielthe responsibility: les responsabilitésto enrich: enrichirthe truth: la véritéunderstanding: compristhe warmth: la chaleurto trust: faire confiancecamaraderie: complicité

Today we're bringing you an episode with Esau McCaulley, from the Lenten season of 2023. Esau sees Lent as a practice of collective generational wisdom, passed down through centuries of sacramental rhythms—but as a contemporary reality, Lent is a spiritual rebellion against mainstream American culture. He construes Lent as a season of repentance and grace; he points out the justice practices of Lent; he walks through a Christian understanding of death, and the beautiful practice of stripping the altars on Maundy Thursday; and he's emphatic about how it's a guided season of pursuing the grace to find (or perhaps return) to yourself as God has called you to be. In his classic text, Great Lent, Orthodox priest and theologian Alexander Schmemann calls this season one of “bright sadness”—an important paradox that represents both Christian realism and hope. Lent is not about gloom, self-loathing, performative penitence, or despair. Instead it brings us face to face with our human condition, reminding us that we did not bring ourselves into being and someday we will die, sober about the reality and banality of evil, and sorrowful in a way that leads back to joy. Esau McCaulley is The Jonathan Blanchard Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College, a contributing writer for the New York Times, and is author of many books, including children's books. Notables are Reading While Black, a theology of Lent, and his latest: How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South. This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation. About Esau McCaulley Esau McCaulley is The Jonathan Blanchard Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College, a contributing writer for the New York Times, and is author of many books, including children's books. Notables are Reading While Black, a theology of Lent, and his latest: How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South. Learn more at https://esaumccaulley.com/. Show Notes Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal — https://esaumccaulley.com/books/lent-book/ Commodifying our rebellion—the agency on offer is a thin, weakened agency. Repentance, grace, and finding (or returning to) yourself Examination of conscience The Great Litany: “For our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty. Except our repentance, Lord.” The beauty of Christianity “Liturgical spirituality is not safe. God can jump out and get you at any moment in the service.” “The great thing about the, the, the season of Blend in the liturgical calendar more broadly is it gives you a thousand different entry points into transformation.” Lent is bookended by death. Black death, Coronavirus death, War death. Jesus defeated death as our great enemy. “Everybody that I know and I care about are gonna die. Everybody.” “I, as a Christian, believe that because we're going to die. our lives are of infinite value and the decisions that we make and the kinds of people we become are the only testimony that we have and that I have chosen to, to, in light of my impending death, put my faith in the one who overcame death.” Two realities: We're going to die and Jesus defeated death. Stripping of the Altars on Maundy Thursday. Silent processional in black; Good Friday celebrates no eucharist. “I'm, like, the one Pauline scholar who doesn't like to argue about justification all of the time.” Good Friday's closing prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion cross and death between your judgment and our souls.” “You end Lent with: Something has to come between God's judgement and our souls. And that thing is Jesus.” “Lent is God loving you enough to tell you the truth about yourself, but not condemning you for it, but actually saying that you can be better than that.” Production Notes This podcast featured Esau McCaulley Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa Hosted by Evan Rosa Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Luke Stringer, and Kaylen Yun. A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give Acknowledgements This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit http://blueprint1543.org/.

Join a 7-week group or download the in-person small group curriculum at www.beyondthebattle.net  Email groups@beyondthebattle.net if you've completed the 7-week curriculum and want to join the free alumni community.    Flip Side Notes: Join an upcoming Beyond the Battle online group at www.beyondthebattle.net   Support Flip Side sponsor Angry Brew by using promo code FLIP at angrybrew.com or fivelakes.com to pick up some Angry Brew or Chris' Blend coffee at 10% off.   Get a free month of Covenant Eyes at www.covenanteyes.com using promo code BEYOND   Get a free month of Accountable2You keyword accountability: a2u.app/beyond (do not use “www”)   Your recurring gifts make Noah's ministry & The Flip Side possible. Get some sweet swag by becoming a patron at www.patreon.com/noahfilipiak – includes exclusive access to Noah's episode commentary, interaction, and email access.    Tax-deductible recurring gifts can be given at www.noahfilipiak.com/give.      Purchase Beyond the Battle and Needed Navigation by Noah Filipiak.

Mentioned in this episode: my 2026 annual goals list Engage in more of my content: read my personal blog posts watch workflow channel videos watch my monthly videos on books and reading read blog posts on project management topics connect with me on LinkedIn sign up for my monthly newsletter Learn more about my products and services: explore my 1:1 coaching practice learn more about my coach training program check out my PM by Design training program learn more about my Slow Hustle business building mastermind join Prolific, my online community devoted to meaningful productivity learn more about the Blend by Design online course check out my SoTL by Design online course Please offer your feedback about the show or ideas for future episodes and topics by emailing me. You can also come find me on Instagram! And if you listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, please take a moment to rate and/or review the show.

Sometimes an AI can out-reason a senior analyst in the time it takes to brew coffee. Giuseppe Sette is President and Co-Founder of Reflexivity, an AI-driven investment platform built to bring institutional-grade reasoning to every investor. After managing billions as Co-CIO of Global Macro at Lombard Odier and holding senior roles at Brevan Howard and Davidson Kempner, he saw a structural problem in modern finance: even the most talented analysts were overwhelmed by the scale and speed of market data. That realization led him to build around a core principle he calls Reflexivity, the idea that intelligence must examine its own reasoning. Instead of simply retrieving or summarizing information, the system audits assumptions, models feedback loops, and pressure-tests conclusions before delivering insight. The goal is not just faster answers, but structured reasoning under uncertainty. In this episode, we explore the shift from search tools to true reasoning agents, what it means to build AI that thinks through its own logic, and why personal experience and conviction matter when launching a company in the middle of rapid technological change. Key Takeaways: Prioritize Personal Experience. Build around a problem you have personally faced and understand deeply. Embrace Technological Leverage. Use automation and advanced tools to offload low-level tasks, allowing you to focus on strategy and decision-making. Iterate Through Practical Use. Validate by watching how people use your product in real-world settings, not just in theory. Implement Self-Reflective Systems. Add double-checks and self-audits so efficiency never sacrifices accuracy. Define Clear Methodologies. Technology creates real impact when guided by a clear human framework. Recognize Exponential Shifts. Stay alert to moments when technology fundamentally changes your industry. Those shifts create opportunity. Bridge Generational Approaches. Blend proven traditional methods with modern tools to create an edge. Listen to the full conversation here: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@risingtidestartups  Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rising-tide-startups/id1330525474  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2eq7unl70TRPsBhjLEsNZR  Connect with Giuseppe: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/togglegs/  Reflexivity Website: https://reflexivity.com/en   Closing thought: Experiencing a problem firsthand and solving it goes a long way to help you create a venture that succeeds. If you have a professional experience where you felt the pain, that is the best place to start.  Shoutout to our Great Sponsors:  Naviqus Virtual Services - Hassle-free administrative support services that are efficient, affordable, and tailored to your needs. Check out https://naviqus.com now to jumpstart your business for 2025! Podbrand Media - We specialize in hosting a podcast for your company or brand.    Affordable and effective in content creation and lead generation! Go to podbrandmedia.com for more info. 

Greg Bordanaro, Editor Hartford Business Journal. Potential impact to CT's banking industry of the big Webster-Santander deal, new potential regulations for data center development, and my take on Lamont's CT Option.

Feeling lost in your stepfamily journey? In Nacho Kids Podcast episode 351, Lori and David get real about what it's like to lose yourself in the chaos of blending families, and how to find your way back to "you." In this deeply relatable conversation, Lori opens up about her personal experience of losing her sense of self after joining families with David, taking on new roles, and navigating quadrupled responsibilities. David shares insights from a male perspective, highlighting the common pitfalls of stepfamily roles and why both partners can end up feeling like strangers to themselves. Together, they break down how cultural expectations, communication gaps, and a lack of boundaries can fuel resentment and exhaustion. You'll learn: Why stepmoms (and stepdads) often feel "lost" in the blend How responsibility overload happens and tips to prevent it The importance of alone time, hobbies, and open conversations with your partner Real-life examples of boundary-setting, self-care, and mutual support Actionable advice to reclaim your happiness without guilt If you're craving practical wisdom, moments of humor, and encouragement to put yourself back on your own priority list, this episode is for you.    

Tickets for AIEi Miami and AIE Europe are live, with first wave speakers announced!From pioneering software-defined networking to backing many of the most aggressive AI model companies of this cycle, Martin Casado and Sarah Wang sit at the center of the capital, compute, and talent arms race reshaping the tech industry. As partners at a16z investing across infrastructure and growth, they've watched venture and growth blur, model labs turn dollars into capability at unprecedented speed, and startups raise nine-figure rounds before monetization.Martin and Sarah join us to unpack the new financing playbook for AI: why today's rounds are really compute contracts in disguise, how the “raise → train → ship → raise bigger” flywheel works, and whether foundation model companies can outspend the entire app ecosystem built on top of them. They also share what's underhyped (boring enterprise software), what's overheated (talent wars and compensation spirals), and the two radically different futures they see for AI's market structure.We discuss:* Martin's “two futures” fork: infinite fragmentation and new software categories vs. a small oligopoly of general models that consume everything above them* The capital flywheel: how model labs translate funding directly into capability gains, then into revenue growth measured in weeks, not years* Why venture and growth have merged: $100M–$1B hybrid rounds, strategic investors, compute negotiations, and complex deal structures* The AGI vs. product tension: allocating scarce GPUs between long-term research and near-term revenue flywheels* Whether frontier labs can out-raise and outspend the entire app ecosystem built on top of their APIs* Why today's talent wars ($10M+ comp packages, $B acqui-hires) are breaking early-stage founder math* Cursor as a case study: building up from the app layer while training down into your own models* Why “boring” enterprise software may be the most underinvested opportunity in the AI mania* Hardware and robotics: why the ChatGPT moment hasn't yet arrived for robots and what would need to change* World Labs and generative 3D: bringing the marginal cost of 3D scene creation down by orders of magnitude* Why public AI discourse is often wildly disconnected from boardroom reality and how founders should navigate the noiseShow Notes:* “Where Value Will Accrue in AI: Martin Casado & Sarah Wang” - a16z show* “Jack Altman & Martin Casado on the Future of Venture Capital”* World Labs—Martin Casado• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martincasado/• X: https://x.com/martin_casadoSarah Wang• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-wang-59b96a7• X: https://x.com/sarahdingwanga16z• https://a16z.com/Timestamps00:00:00 – Intro: Live from a16z00:01:20 – The New AI Funding Model: Venture + Growth Collide00:03:19 – Circular Funding, Demand & “No Dark GPUs”00:05:24 – Infrastructure vs Apps: The Lines Blur00:06:24 – The Capital Flywheel: Raise → Train → Ship → Raise Bigger00:09:39 – Can Frontier Labs Outspend the Entire App Ecosystem?00:11:24 – Character AI & The AGI vs Product Dilemma00:14:39 – Talent Wars, $10M Engineers & Founder Anxiety00:17:33 – What's Underinvested? The Case for “Boring” Software00:19:29 – Robotics, Hardware & Why It's Hard to Win00:22:42 – Custom ASICs & The $1B Training Run Economics00:24:23 – American Dynamism, Geography & AI Power Centers00:26:48 – How AI Is Changing the Investor Workflow (Claude Cowork)00:29:12 – Two Futures of AI: Infinite Expansion or Oligopoly?00:32:48 – If You Can Raise More Than Your Ecosystem, You Win00:34:27 – Are All Tasks AGI-Complete? Coding as the Test Case00:38:55 – Cursor & The Power of the App Layer00:44:05 – World Labs, Spatial Intelligence & 3D Foundation Models00:47:20 – Thinking Machines, Founder Drama & Media Narratives00:52:30 – Where Long-Term Power Accrues in the AI StackTranscriptLatent.Space - Inside AI's $10B+ Capital Flywheel — Martin Casado & Sarah Wang of a16z[00:00:00] Welcome to Latent Space (Live from a16z) + Meet the Guests[00:00:00] Alessio: Hey everyone. Welcome to the Latent Space podcast, live from a 16 z. Uh, this is Alessio founder Kernel Lance, and I'm joined by Twix, editor of Latent Space.[00:00:08] swyx: Hey, hey, hey. Uh, and we're so glad to be on with you guys. Also a top AI podcast, uh, Martin Cado and Sarah Wang. Welcome, very[00:00:16] Martin Casado: happy to be here and welcome.[00:00:17] swyx: Yes, uh, we love this office. We love what you've done with the place. Uh, the new logo is everywhere now. It's, it's still getting, takes a while to get used to, but it reminds me of like sort of a callback to a more ambitious age, which I think is kind of[00:00:31] Martin Casado: definitely makes a statement.[00:00:33] swyx: Yeah.[00:00:34] Martin Casado: Not quite sure what that statement is, but it makes a statement.[00:00:37] swyx: Uh, Martin, I go back with you to Netlify.[00:00:40] Martin Casado: Yep.[00:00:40] swyx: Uh, and, uh, you know, you create a software defined networking and all, all that stuff people can read up on your background. Yep. Sarah, I'm newer to you. Uh, you, you sort of started working together on AI infrastructure stuff.[00:00:51] Sarah Wang: That's right. Yeah. Seven, seven years ago now.[00:00:53] Martin Casado: Best growth investor in the entire industry.[00:00:55] swyx: Oh, say[00:00:56] Martin Casado: more hands down there is, there is. [00:01:00] I mean, when it comes to AI companies, Sarah, I think has done the most kind of aggressive, um, investment thesis around AI models, right? So, worked for Nom Ja, Mira Ia, FEI Fey, and so just these frontier, kind of like large AI models.[00:01:15] I think, you know, Sarah's been the, the broadest investor. Is that fair?[00:01:20] Venture vs. Growth in the Frontier Model Era[00:01:20] Sarah Wang: No, I, well, I was gonna say, I think it's been a really interesting tag, tag team actually just ‘cause the, a lot of these big C deals, not only are they raising a lot of money, um, it's still a tech founder bet, which obviously is inherently early stage.[00:01:33] But the resources,[00:01:36] Martin Casado: so many, I[00:01:36] Sarah Wang: was gonna say the resources one, they just grow really quickly. But then two, the resources that they need day one are kind of growth scale. So I, the hybrid tag team that we have is. Quite effective, I think,[00:01:46] Martin Casado: what is growth these days? You know, you don't wake up if it's less than a billion or like, it's, it's actually, it's actually very like, like no, it's a very interesting time in investing because like, you know, take like the character around, right?[00:01:59] These tend to [00:02:00] be like pre monetization, but the dollars are large enough that you need to have a larger fund and the analysis. You know, because you've got lots of users. ‘cause this stuff has such high demand requires, you know, more of a number sophistication. And so most of these deals, whether it's US or other firms on these large model companies, are like this hybrid between venture growth.[00:02:18] Sarah Wang: Yeah. Total. And I think, you know, stuff like BD for example, you wouldn't usually need BD when you were seed stage trying to get market biz Devrel. Biz Devrel, exactly. Okay. But like now, sorry, I'm,[00:02:27] swyx: I'm not familiar. What, what, what does biz Devrel mean for a venture fund? Because I know what biz Devrel means for a company.[00:02:31] Sarah Wang: Yeah.[00:02:32] Compute Deals, Strategics, and the ‘Circular Funding' Question[00:02:32] Sarah Wang: You know, so a, a good example is, I mean, we talk about buying compute, but there's a huge negotiation involved there in terms of, okay, do you get equity for the compute? What, what sort of partner are you looking at? Is there a go-to market arm to that? Um, and these are just things on this scale, hundreds of millions, you know, maybe.[00:02:50] Six months into the inception of a company, you just wouldn't have to negotiate these deals before.[00:02:54] Martin Casado: Yeah. These large rounds are very complex now. Like in the past, if you did a series A [00:03:00] or a series B, like whatever, you're writing a 20 to a $60 million check and you call it a day. Now you normally have financial investors and strategic investors, and then the strategic portion always still goes with like these kind of large compute contracts, which can take months to do.[00:03:13] And so it's, it's very different ties. I've been doing this for 10 years. It's the, I've never seen anything like this.[00:03:19] swyx: Yeah. Do you have worries about the circular funding from so disease strategics?[00:03:24] Martin Casado: I mean, listen, as long as the demand is there, like the demand is there. Like the problem with the internet is the demand wasn't there.[00:03:29] swyx: Exactly. All right. This, this is like the, the whole pyramid scheme bubble thing, where like, as long as you mark to market on like the notional value of like, these deals, fine, but like once it starts to chip away, it really Well[00:03:41] Martin Casado: no, like as, as, as, as long as there's demand. I mean, you know, this, this is like a lot of these sound bites have already become kind of cliches, but they're worth saying it.[00:03:47] Right? Like during the internet days, like we were. Um, raising money to put fiber in the ground that wasn't used. And that's a problem, right? Because now you actually have a supply overhang.[00:03:58] swyx: Mm-hmm.[00:03:59] Martin Casado: And even in the, [00:04:00] the time of the, the internet, like the supply and, and bandwidth overhang, even as massive as it was in, as massive as the crash was only lasted about four years.[00:04:09] But we don't have a supply overhang. Like there's no dark GPUs, right? I mean, and so, you know, circular or not, I mean, you know, if, if someone invests in a company that, um. You know, they'll actually use the GPUs. And on the other side of it is the, is the ask for customer. So I I, I think it's a different time.[00:04:25] Sarah Wang: I think the other piece, maybe just to add onto this, and I'm gonna quote Martine in front of him, but this is probably also a unique time in that. For the first time, you can actually trace dollars to outcomes. Yeah, right. Provided that scaling laws are, are holding, um, and capabilities are actually moving forward.[00:04:40] Because if you can put translate dollars into capabilities, uh, a capability improvement, there's demand there to martine's point. But if that somehow breaks, you know, obviously that's an important assumption in this whole thing to make it work. But you know, instead of investing dollars into sales and marketing, you're, you're investing into r and d to get to the capability, um, you know, increase.[00:04:59] And [00:05:00] that's sort of been the demand driver because. Once there's an unlock there, people are willing to pay for it.[00:05:05] Alessio: Yeah.[00:05:06] Blurring Lines: Models as Infra + Apps, and the New Fundraising Flywheel[00:05:06] Alessio: Is there any difference in how you built the portfolio now that some of your growth companies are, like the infrastructure of the early stage companies, like, you know, OpenAI is now the same size as some of the cloud providers were early on.[00:05:16] Like what does that look like? Like how much information can you feed off each other between the, the two?[00:05:24] Martin Casado: There's so many lines that are being crossed right now, or blurred. Right. So we already talked about venture and growth. Another one that's being blurred is between infrastructure and apps, right? So like what is a model company?[00:05:35] Mm-hmm. Like, it's clearly infrastructure, right? Because it's like, you know, it's doing kind of core r and d. It's a horizontal platform, but it's also an app because it's um, uh, touches the users directly. And then of course. You know, the, the, the growth of these is just so high. And so I actually think you're just starting to see a, a, a new financing strategy emerge and, you know, we've had to adapt as a result of that.[00:05:59] And [00:06:00] so there's been a lot of changes. Um, you're right that these companies become platform companies very quickly. You've got ecosystem build out. So none of this is necessarily new, but the timescales of which it's happened is pretty phenomenal. And the way we'd normally cut lines before is blurred a little bit, but.[00:06:16] But that, that, that said, I mean, a lot of it also just does feel like things that we've seen in the past, like cloud build out the internet build out as well.[00:06:24] Sarah Wang: Yeah. Um, yeah, I think it's interesting, uh, I don't know if you guys would agree with this, but it feels like the emerging strategy is, and this builds off of your other question, um.[00:06:33] You raise money for compute, you pour that or you, you pour the money into compute, you get some sort of breakthrough. You funnel the breakthrough into your vertically integrated application. That could be chat GBT, that could be cloud code, you know, whatever it is. You massively gain share and get users.[00:06:49] Maybe you're even subsidizing at that point. Um, depending on your strategy. You raise money at the peak momentum and then you repeat, rinse and repeat. Um, and so. And that wasn't [00:07:00] true even two years ago, I think. Mm-hmm. And so it's sort of to your, just tying it to fundraising strategy, right? There's a, and hiring strategy.[00:07:07] All of these are tied, I think the lines are blurring even more today where everyone is, and they, but of course these companies all have API businesses and so they're these, these frenemy lines that are getting blurred in that a lot of, I mean, they have billions of dollars of API revenue, right? And so there are customers there.[00:07:23] But they're competing on the app layer.[00:07:24] Martin Casado: Yeah. So this is a really, really important point. So I, I would say for sure, venture and growth, that line is blurry app and infrastructure. That line is blurry. Um, but I don't think that that changes our practice so much. But like where the very open questions are like, does this layer in the same way.[00:07:43] Compute traditionally has like during the cloud is like, you know, like whatever, somebody wins one layer, but then another whole set of companies wins another layer. But that might not, might not be the case here. It may be the case that you actually can't verticalize on the token string. Like you can't build an app like it, it necessarily goes down just because there are no [00:08:00] abstractions.[00:08:00] So those are kinda the bigger existential questions we ask. Another thing that is very different this time than in the history of computer sciences is. In the past, if you raised money, then you basically had to wait for engineering to catch up. Which famously doesn't scale like the mythical mammoth. It take a very long time.[00:08:18] But like that's not the case here. Like a model company can raise money and drop a model in a, in a year, and it's better, right? And, and it does it with a team of 20 people or 10 people. So this type of like money entering a company and then producing something that has demand and growth right away and using that to raise more money is a very different capital flywheel than we've ever seen before.[00:08:39] And I think everybody's trying to understand what the consequences are. So I think it's less about like. Big companies and growth and this, and more about these more systemic questions that we actually don't have answers to.[00:08:49] Alessio: Yeah, like at Kernel Labs, one of our ideas is like if you had unlimited money to spend productively to turn tokens into products, like the whole early stage [00:09:00] market is very different because today you're investing X amount of capital to win a deal because of price structure and whatnot, and you're kind of pot committing.[00:09:07] Yeah. To a certain strategy for a certain amount of time. Yeah. But if you could like iteratively spin out companies and products and just throw, I, I wanna spend a million dollar of inference today and get a product out tomorrow.[00:09:18] swyx: Yeah.[00:09:19] Alessio: Like, we should get to the point where like the friction of like token to product is so low that you can do this and then you can change the Right, the early stage venture model to be much more iterative.[00:09:30] And then every round is like either 100 k of inference or like a hundred million from a 16 Z. There's no, there's no like $8 million C round anymore. Right.[00:09:38] When Frontier Labs Outspend the Entire App Ecosystem[00:09:38] Martin Casado: But, but, but, but there's a, there's a, the, an industry structural question that we don't know the answer to, which involves the frontier models, which is, let's take.[00:09:48] Anthropic it. Let's say Anthropic has a state-of-the-art model that has some large percentage of market share. And let's say that, uh, uh, uh, you know, uh, a company's building smaller models [00:10:00] that, you know, use the bigger model in the background, open 4.5, but they add value on top of that. Now, if Anthropic can raise three times more.[00:10:10] Every subsequent round, they probably can raise more money than the entire app ecosystem that's built on top of it. And if that's the case, they can expand beyond everything built on top of it. It's like imagine like a star that's just kind of expanding, so there could be a systemic. There could be a, a systemic situation where the soda models can raise so much money that they can out pay anybody that bills on top of ‘em, which would be something I don't think we've ever seen before just because we were so bottlenecked in engineering, and this is a very open question.[00:10:41] swyx: Yeah. It's, it is almost like bitter lesson applied to the startup industry.[00:10:45] Martin Casado: Yeah, a hundred percent. It literally becomes an issue of like raise capital, turn that directly into growth. Use that to raise three times more. Exactly. And if you can keep doing that, you literally can outspend any company that's built the, not any company.[00:10:57] You can outspend the aggregate of companies on top of [00:11:00] you and therefore you'll necessarily take their share, which is crazy.[00:11:02] swyx: Would you say that kind of happens in character? Is that the, the sort of postmortem on. What happened?[00:11:10] Sarah Wang: Um,[00:11:10] Martin Casado: no.[00:11:12] Sarah Wang: Yeah, because I think so,[00:11:13] swyx: I mean the actual postmortem is, he wanted to go back to Google.[00:11:15] Exactly. But like[00:11:18] Martin Casado: that's another difference that[00:11:19] Sarah Wang: you said[00:11:21] Martin Casado: it. We should talk, we should actually talk about that.[00:11:22] swyx: Yeah,[00:11:22] Sarah Wang: that's[00:11:23] swyx: Go for it. Take it. Take,[00:11:23] Sarah Wang: yeah.[00:11:24] Character.AI, Founder Goals (AGI vs Product), and GPU Allocation Tradeoffs[00:11:24] Sarah Wang: I was gonna say, I think, um. The, the, the character thing raises actually a different issue, which actually the Frontier Labs will face as well. So we'll see how they handle it.[00:11:34] But, um, so we invest in character in January, 2023, which feels like eons ago, I mean, three years ago. Feels like lifetimes ago. But, um, and then they, uh, did the IP licensing deal with Google in August, 2020. Uh, four. And so, um, you know, at the time, no, you know, he's talked publicly about this, right? He wanted to Google wouldn't let him put out products in the world.[00:11:56] That's obviously changed drastically. But, um, he went to go do [00:12:00] that. Um, but he had a product attached. The goal was, I mean, it's Nome Shair, he wanted to get to a GI. That was always his personal goal. But, you know, I think through collecting data, right, and this sort of very human use case, that the character product.[00:12:13] Originally was and still is, um, was one of the vehicles to do that. Um, I think the real reason that, you know. I if you think about the, the stress that any company feels before, um, you ultimately going one way or the other is sort of this a GI versus product. Um, and I think a lot of the big, I think, you know, opening eyes, feeling that, um, anthropic if they haven't started, you know, felt it, certainly given the success of their products, they may start to feel that soon.[00:12:39] And the real. I think there's real trade-offs, right? It's like how many, when you think about GPUs, that's a limited resource. Where do you allocate the GPUs? Is it toward the product? Is it toward new re research? Right? Is it, or long-term research, is it toward, um, n you know, near to midterm research? And so, um, in a case where you're resource constrained, um, [00:13:00] of course there's this fundraising game you can play, right?[00:13:01] But the fund, the market was very different back in 2023 too. Um. I think the best researchers in the world have this dilemma of, okay, I wanna go all in on a GI, but it's the product usage revenue flywheel that keeps the revenue in the house to power all the GPUs to get to a GI. And so it does make, um, you know, I think it sets up an interesting dilemma for any startup that has trouble raising up until that level, right?[00:13:27] And certainly if you don't have that progress, you can't continue this fly, you know, fundraising flywheel.[00:13:32] Martin Casado: I would say that because, ‘cause we're keeping track of all of the things that are different, right? Like, you know, venture growth and uh, app infra and one of the ones is definitely the personalities of the founders.[00:13:45] It's just very different this time I've been. Been doing this for a decade and I've been doing startups for 20 years. And so, um, I mean a lot of people start this to do a GI and we've never had like a unified North star that I recall in the same [00:14:00] way. Like people built companies to start companies in the past.[00:14:02] Like that was what it was. Like I would create an internet company, I would create infrastructure company, like it's kind of more engineering builders and this is kind of a different. You know, mentality. And some companies have harnessed that incredibly well because their direction is so obviously on the path to what somebody would consider a GI, but others have not.[00:14:20] And so like there is always this tension with personnel. And so I think we're seeing more kind of founder movement.[00:14:27] Sarah Wang: Yeah.[00:14:27] Martin Casado: You know, as a fraction of founders than we've ever seen. I mean, maybe since like, I don't know the time of like Shockly and the trade DUR aid or something like that. Way back in the beginning of the industry, I, it's a very, very.[00:14:38] Unusual time of personnel.[00:14:39] Sarah Wang: Totally.[00:14:40] Talent Wars, Mega-Comp, and the Rise of Acquihire M&A[00:14:40] Sarah Wang: And it, I think it's exacerbated by the fact that talent wars, I mean, every industry has talent wars, but not at this magnitude, right? No. Yeah. Very rarely can you see someone get poached for $5 billion. That's hard to compete with. And then secondly, if you're a founder in ai, you could fart and it would be on the front page of, you know, the information these days.[00:14:59] And so there's [00:15:00] sort of this fishbowl effect that I think adds to the deep anxiety that, that these AI founders are feeling.[00:15:06] Martin Casado: Hmm.[00:15:06] swyx: Uh, yes. I mean, just on, uh, briefly comment on the founder, uh, the sort of. Talent wars thing. I feel like 2025 was just like a blip. Like I, I don't know if we'll see that again.[00:15:17] ‘cause meta built the team. Like, I don't know if, I think, I think they're kind of done and like, who's gonna pay more than meta? I, I don't know.[00:15:23] Martin Casado: I, I agree. So it feels so, it feel, it feels this way to me too. It's like, it is like, basically Zuckerberg kind of came out swinging and then now he's kind of back to building.[00:15:30] Yeah,[00:15:31] swyx: yeah. You know, you gotta like pay up to like assemble team to rush the job, whatever. But then now, now you like you, you made your choices and now they got a ship.[00:15:38] Martin Casado: I mean, the, the o other side of that is like, you know, like we're, we're actually in the job hiring market. We've got 600 people here. I hire all the time.[00:15:44] I've got three open recs if anybody's interested, that's listening to this for investor. Yeah, on, on the team, like on the investing side of the team, like, and, um, a lot of the people we talk to have acting, you know, active, um, offers for 10 million a year or something like that. And like, you know, and we pay really, [00:16:00] really well.[00:16:00] And just to see what's out on the market is really, is really remarkable. And so I would just say it's actually, so you're right, like the really flashy one, like I will get someone for, you know, a billion dollars, but like the inflated, um, uh, trickles down. Yeah, it is still very active today. I mean,[00:16:18] Sarah Wang: yeah, you could be an L five and get an offer in the tens of millions.[00:16:22] Okay. Yeah. Easily. Yeah. It's so I think you're right that it felt like a blip. I hope you're right. Um, but I think it's been, the steady state is now, I think got pulled up. Yeah. Yeah. I'll pull up for[00:16:31] Martin Casado: sure. Yeah.[00:16:32] Alessio: Yeah. And I think that's breaking the early stage founder math too. I think before a lot of people would be like, well, maybe I should just go be a founder instead of like getting paid.[00:16:39] Yeah. 800 KA million at Google. But if I'm getting paid. Five, 6 million. That's different but[00:16:45] Martin Casado: on. But on the other hand, there's more strategic money than we've ever seen historically, right? Mm-hmm. And so, yep. The economics, the, the, the, the calculus on the economics is very different in a number of ways. And, uh, it's crazy.[00:16:58] It's cra it's causing like a, [00:17:00] a, a, a ton of change in confusion in the market. Some very positive, sub negative, like, so for example, the other side of the, um. The co-founder, like, um, acquisition, you know, mark Zuckerberg poaching someone for a lot of money is like, we were actually seeing historic amount of m and a for basically acquihires, right?[00:17:20] That you like, you know, really good outcomes from a venture perspective that are effective acquihires, right? So I would say it's probably net positive from the investment standpoint, even though it seems from the headlines to be very disruptive in a negative way.[00:17:33] Alessio: Yeah.[00:17:33] What's Underfunded: Boring Software, Robotics Skepticism, and Custom Silicon Economics[00:17:33] Alessio: Um, let's talk maybe about what's not being invested in, like maybe some interesting ideas that you would see more people build or it, it seems in a way, you know, as ycs getting more popular, it's like access getting more popular.[00:17:47] There's a startup school path that a lot of founders take and they know what's hot in the VC circles and they know what gets funded. Uh, and there's maybe not as much risk appetite for. Things outside of that. Um, I'm curious if you feel [00:18:00] like that's true and what are maybe, uh, some of the areas, uh, that you think are under discussed?[00:18:06] Martin Casado: I mean, I actually think that we've taken our eye off the ball in a lot of like, just traditional, you know, software companies. Um, so like, I mean. You know, I think right now there's almost a barbell, like you're like the hot thing on X, you're deep tech.[00:18:21] swyx: Mm-hmm.[00:18:22] Martin Casado: Right. But I, you know, I feel like there's just kind of a long, you know, list of like good.[00:18:28] Good companies that will be around for a long time in very large markets. Say you're building a database, you know, say you're building, um, you know, kind of monitoring or logging or tooling or whatever. There's some good companies out there right now, but like, they have a really hard time getting, um, the attention of investors.[00:18:43] And it's almost become a meme, right? Which is like, if you're not basically growing from zero to a hundred in a year, you're not interesting, which is just, is the silliest thing to say. I mean, think of yourself as like an introvert person, like, like your personal money, right? Mm-hmm. So. Your personal money, will you put it in the stock market at 7% or you put it in this company growing five x in a very large [00:19:00] market?[00:19:00] Of course you can put it in the company five x. So it's just like we say these stupid things, like if you're not going from zero to a hundred, but like those, like who knows what the margins of those are mean. Clearly these are good investments. True for anybody, right? True. Like our LPs want whatever.[00:19:12] Three x net over, you know, the life cycle of a fund, right? So a, a company in a big market growing five X is a great investment. We'd, everybody would be happy with these returns, but we've got this kind of mania on these, these strong growths. And so I would say that that's probably the most underinvested sector.[00:19:28] Right now.[00:19:29] swyx: Boring software, boring enterprise software.[00:19:31] Martin Casado: Traditional. Really good company.[00:19:33] swyx: No, no AI here.[00:19:34] Martin Casado: No. Like boring. Well, well, the AI of course is pulling them into use cases. Yeah, but that's not what they're, they're not on the token path, right? Yeah. Let's just say that like they're software, but they're not on the token path.[00:19:41] Like these are like they're great investments from any definition except for like random VC on Twitter saying VC on x, saying like, it's not growing fast enough. What do you[00:19:52] Sarah Wang: think? Yeah, maybe I'll answer a slightly different. Question, but adjacent to what you asked, um, which is maybe an area that we're not, uh, investing [00:20:00] right now that I think is a question and we're spending a lot of time in regardless of whether we pull the trigger or not.[00:20:05] Um, and it would probably be on the hardware side, actually. Robotics, right? And the robotics side. Robotics. Right. Which is, it's, I don't wanna say that it's not getting funding ‘cause it's clearly, uh, it's, it's sort of non-consensus to almost not invest in robotics at this point. But, um, we spent a lot of time in that space and I think for us, we just haven't seen the chat GPT moment.[00:20:22] Happen on the hardware side. Um, and the funding going into it feels like it's already. Taking that for granted.[00:20:30] Martin Casado: Yeah. Yeah. But we also went through the drone, you know, um, there's a zip line right, right out there. What's that? Oh yeah, there's a zip line. Yeah. What the drone, what the av And like one of the takeaways is when it comes to hardware, um, most companies will end up verticalizing.[00:20:46] Like if you're. If you're investing in a robot company for an A for agriculture, you're investing in an ag company. ‘cause that's the competition and that's surprising. And that's supply chain. And if you're doing it for mining, that's mining. And so the ad team does a lot of that type of stuff ‘cause they actually set up to [00:21:00] diligence that type of work.[00:21:01] But for like horizontal technology investing, there's very little when it comes to robots just because it's so fit for, for purpose. And so we kinda like to look at software. Solutions or horizontal solutions like applied intuition. Clearly from the AV wave deep map, clearly from the AV wave, I would say scale AI was actually a horizontal one for That's fair, you know, for robotics early on.[00:21:23] And so that sort of thing we're very, very interested. But the actual like robot interacting with the world is probably better for different team. Agree.[00:21:30] Alessio: Yeah, I'm curious who these teams are supposed to be that invest in them. I feel like everybody's like, yeah, robotics, it's important and like people should invest in it.[00:21:38] But then when you look at like the numbers, like the capital requirements early on versus like the moment of, okay, this is actually gonna work. Let's keep investing. That seems really hard to predict in a way that is not,[00:21:49] Martin Casado: I think co, CO two, kla, gc, I mean these are all invested in in Harvard companies. He just, you know, and [00:22:00] listen, I mean, it could work this time for sure.[00:22:01] Right? I mean if Elon's doing it, he's like, right. Just, just the fact that Elon's doing it means that there's gonna be a lot of capital and a lot of attempts for a long period of time. So that alone maybe suggests that we should just be investing in robotics just ‘cause you have this North star who's Elon with a humanoid and that's gonna like basically willing into being an industry.[00:22:17] Um, but we've just historically found like. We're a huge believer that this is gonna happen. We just don't feel like we're in a good position to diligence these things. ‘cause again, robotics companies tend to be vertical. You really have to understand the market they're being sold into. Like that's like that competitive equilibrium with a human being is what's important.[00:22:34] It's not like the core tech and like we're kind of more horizontal core tech type investors. And this is Sarah and I. Yeah, the ad team is different. They can actually do these types of things.[00:22:42] swyx: Uh, just to clarify, AD stands for[00:22:44] Martin Casado: American Dynamism.[00:22:45] swyx: Alright. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, I actually, I do have a related question that, first of all, I wanna acknowledge also just on the, on the chip side.[00:22:51] Yeah. I, I recall a podcast that where you were on, i, I, I think it was the a CC podcast, uh, about two or three years ago where you, where you suddenly said [00:23:00] something, which really stuck in my head about how at some point, at some point kind of scale it makes sense to. Build a custom aic Yes. For per run.[00:23:07] Martin Casado: Yes.[00:23:07] It's crazy. Yeah.[00:23:09] swyx: We're here and I think you, you estimated 500 billion, uh, something.[00:23:12] Martin Casado: No, no, no. A billion, a billion dollar training run of $1 billion training run. It makes sense to actually do a custom meic if you can do it in time. The question now is timelines. Yeah, but not money because just, just, just rough math.[00:23:22] If it's a billion dollar training. Then the inference for that model has to be over a billion, otherwise it won't be solvent. So let's assume it's, if you could save 20%, which you could save much more than that with an ASIC 20%, that's $200 million. You can tape out a chip for $200 million. Right? So now you can literally like justify economically, not timeline wise.[00:23:41] That's a different issue. An ASIC per model, which[00:23:44] swyx: is because that, that's how much we leave on the table every single time. We, we, we do like generic Nvidia.[00:23:48] Martin Casado: Exactly. Exactly. No, it, it is actually much more than that. You could probably get, you know, a factor of two, which would be 500 million.[00:23:54] swyx: Typical MFU would be like 50.[00:23:55] Yeah, yeah. And that's good.[00:23:57] Martin Casado: Exactly. Yeah. Hundred[00:23:57] swyx: percent. Um, so, so, yeah, and I mean, and I [00:24:00] just wanna acknowledge like, here we are in, in, in 2025 and opening eyes confirming like Broadcom and all the other like custom silicon deals, which is incredible. I, I think that, uh, you know, speaking about ad there's, there's a really like interesting tie in that obviously you guys are hit on, which is like these sort, this sort of like America first movement or like sort of re industrialized here.[00:24:17] Yeah. Uh, move TSMC here, if that's possible. Um, how much overlap is there from ad[00:24:23] Martin Casado: Yeah.[00:24:23] swyx: To, I guess, growth and, uh, investing in particularly like, you know, US AI companies that are strongly bounded by their compute.[00:24:32] Martin Casado: Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I, I would view, I would view AD as more as a market segmentation than like a mission, right?[00:24:37] So the market segmentation is, it has kind of regulatory compliance issues or government, you know, sale or it deals with like hardware. I mean, they're just set up to, to, to, to, to. To diligence those types of companies. So it's a more of a market segmentation thing. I would say the entire firm. You know, which has been since it is been intercepted, you know, has geographical biases, right?[00:24:58] I mean, for the longest time we're like, you [00:25:00] know, bay Area is gonna be like, great, where the majority of the dollars go. Yeah. And, and listen, there, there's actually a lot of compounding effects for having a geographic bias. Right. You know, everybody's in the same place. You've got an ecosystem, you're there, you've got presence, you've got a network.[00:25:12] Um, and, uh, I mean, I would say the Bay area's very much back. You know, like I, I remember during pre COVID, like it was like almost Crypto had kind of. Pulled startups away. Miami from the Bay Area. Miami, yeah. Yeah. New York was, you know, because it's so close to finance, came up like Los Angeles had a moment ‘cause it was so close to consumer, but now it's kind of come back here.[00:25:29] And so I would say, you know, we tend to be very Bay area focused historically, even though of course we've asked all over the world. And then I would say like, if you take the ring out, you know, one more, it's gonna be the US of course, because we know it very well. And then one more is gonna be getting us and its allies and Yeah.[00:25:44] And it goes from there.[00:25:45] Sarah Wang: Yeah,[00:25:45] Martin Casado: sorry.[00:25:46] Sarah Wang: No, no. I agree. I think from a, but I think from the intern that that's sort of like where the companies are headquartered. Maybe your questions on supply chain and customer base. Uh, I, I would say our customers are, are, our companies are fairly international from that perspective.[00:25:59] Like they're selling [00:26:00] globally, right? They have global supply chains in some cases.[00:26:03] Martin Casado: I would say also the stickiness is very different.[00:26:05] Sarah Wang: Yeah.[00:26:05] Martin Casado: Historically between venture and growth, like there's so much company building in venture, so much so like hiring the next PM. Introducing the customer, like all of that stuff.[00:26:15] Like of course we're just gonna be stronger where we have our network and we've been doing business for 20 years. I've been in the Bay Area for 25 years, so clearly I'm just more effective here than I would be somewhere else. Um, where I think, I think for some of the later stage rounds, the companies don't need that much help.[00:26:30] They're already kind of pretty mature historically, so like they can kind of be everywhere. So there's kind of less of that stickiness. This is different in the AI time. I mean, Sarah is now the, uh, chief of staff of like half the AI companies in, uh, in the Bay Area right now. She's like, ops Ninja Biz, Devrel, BizOps.[00:26:48] swyx: Are, are you, are you finding much AI automation in your work? Like what, what is your stack.[00:26:53] Sarah Wang: Oh my, in my personal stack.[00:26:54] swyx: I mean, because like, uh, by the way, it's the, the, the reason for this is it is triggering, uh, yeah. We, like, I'm hiring [00:27:00] ops, ops people. Um, a lot of ponders I know are also hiring ops people and I'm just, you know, it's opportunity Since you're, you're also like basically helping out with ops with a lot of companies.[00:27:09] What are people doing these days? Because it's still very manual as far as I can tell.[00:27:13] Sarah Wang: Hmm. Yeah. I think the things that we help with are pretty network based, um, in that. It's sort of like, Hey, how do do I shortcut this process? Well, let's connect you to the right person. So there's not quite an AI workflow for that.[00:27:26] I will say as a growth investor, Claude Cowork is pretty interesting. Yeah. Like for the first time, you can actually get one shot data analysis. Right. Which, you know, if you're gonna do a customer database, analyze a cohort retention, right? That's just stuff that you had to do by hand before. And our team, the other, it was like midnight and the three of us were playing with Claude Cowork.[00:27:47] We gave it a raw file. Boom. Perfectly accurate. We checked the numbers. It was amazing. That was my like, aha moment. That sounds so boring. But you know, that's, that's the kind of thing that a growth investor is like, [00:28:00] you know, slaving away on late at night. Um, done in a few seconds.[00:28:03] swyx: Yeah. You gotta wonder what the whole, like, philanthropic labs, which is like their new sort of products studio.[00:28:10] Yeah. What would that be worth as an independent, uh, startup? You know, like a[00:28:14] Martin Casado: lot.[00:28:14] Sarah Wang: Yeah, true.[00:28:16] swyx: Yeah. You[00:28:16] Martin Casado: gotta hand it to them. They've been executing incredibly well.[00:28:19] swyx: Yeah. I, I mean, to me, like, you know, philanthropic, like building on cloud code, I think, uh, it makes sense to me the, the real. Um, pedal to the metal, whatever the, the, the phrase is, is when they start coming after consumer with, uh, against OpenAI and like that is like red alert at Open ai.[00:28:35] Oh, I[00:28:35] Martin Casado: think they've been pretty clear. They're enterprise focused.[00:28:37] swyx: They have been, but like they've been free. Here's[00:28:40] Martin Casado: care publicly,[00:28:40] swyx: it's enterprise focused. It's coding. Right. Yeah.[00:28:43] AI Labs vs Startups: Disruption, Undercutting & the Innovator's Dilemma[00:28:43] swyx: And then, and, but here's cloud, cloud, cowork, and, and here's like, well, we, uh, they, apparently they're running Instagram ads for Claudia.[00:28:50] I, on, you know, for, for people on, I get them all the time. Right. And so, like,[00:28:54] Martin Casado: uh,[00:28:54] swyx: it, it's kind of like this, the disruption thing of, uh, you know. Mo Open has been doing, [00:29:00] consumer been doing the, just pursuing general intelligence in every mo modality, and here's a topic that only focus on this thing, but now they're sort of undercutting and doing the whole innovator's dilemma thing on like everything else.[00:29:11] Martin Casado: It's very[00:29:11] swyx: interesting.[00:29:12] Martin Casado: Yeah, I mean there's, there's a very open que so for me there's like, do you know that meme where there's like the guy in the path and there's like a path this way? There's a path this way. Like one which way Western man. Yeah. Yeah.[00:29:23] Two Futures for AI: Infinite Market vs AGI Oligopoly[00:29:23] Martin Casado: And for me, like, like all the entire industry kind of like hinges on like two potential futures.[00:29:29] So in, in one potential future, um, the market is infinitely large. There's perverse economies of scale. ‘cause as soon as you put a model out there, like it kind of sublimates and all the other models catch up and like, it's just like software's being rewritten and fractured all over the place and there's tons of upside and it just grows.[00:29:48] And then there's another path which is like, well. Maybe these models actually generalize really well, and all you have to do is train them with three times more money. That's all you have to [00:30:00] do, and it'll just consume everything beyond it. And if that's the case, like you end up with basically an oligopoly for everything, like, you know mm-hmm.[00:30:06] Because they're perfectly general and like, so this would be like the, the a GI path would be like, these are perfectly general. They can do everything. And this one is like, this is actually normal software. The universe is complicated. You've got, and nobody knows the answer.[00:30:18] The Economics Reality Check: Gross Margins, Training Costs & Borrowing Against the Future[00:30:18] Martin Casado: My belief is if you actually look at the numbers of these companies, so generally if you look at the numbers of these companies, if you look at like the amount they're making and how much they, they spent training the last model, they're gross margin positive.[00:30:30] You're like, oh, that's really working. But if you look at like. The current training that they're doing for the next model, their gross margin negative. So part of me thinks that a lot of ‘em are kind of borrowing against the future and that's gonna have to slow down. It's gonna catch up to them at some point in time, but we don't really know.[00:30:47] Sarah Wang: Yeah.[00:30:47] Martin Casado: Does that make sense? Like, I mean, it could be, it could be the case that the only reason this is working is ‘cause they can raise that next round and they can train that next model. ‘cause these models have such a short. Life. And so at some point in time, like, you know, they won't be able to [00:31:00] raise that next round for the next model and then things will kind of converge and fragment again.[00:31:03] But right now it's not.[00:31:04] Sarah Wang: Totally. I think the other, by the way, just, um, a meta point. I think the other lesson from the last three years is, and we talk about this all the time ‘cause we're on this. Twitter X bubble. Um, cool. But, you know, if you go back to, let's say March, 2024, that period, it felt like a, I think an open source model with an, like a, you know, benchmark leading capability was sort of launching on a daily basis at that point.[00:31:27] And, um, and so that, you know, that's one period. Suddenly it's sort of like open source takes over the world. There's gonna be a plethora. It's not an oligopoly, you know, if you fast, you know, if you, if you rewind time even before that GPT-4 was number one for. Nine months, 10 months. It's a long time. Right.[00:31:44] Um, and of course now we're in this era where it feels like an oligopoly, um, maybe some very steady state shifts and, and you know, it could look like this in the future too, but it just, it's so hard to call. And I think the thing that keeps, you know, us up at [00:32:00] night in, in a good way and bad way, is that the capability progress is actually not slowing down.[00:32:06] And so until that happens, right, like you don't know what's gonna look like.[00:32:09] Martin Casado: But I, I would, I would say for sure it's not converged, like for sure, like the systemic capital flows have not converged, meaning right now it's still borrowing against the future to subsidize growth currently, which you can do that for a period of time.[00:32:23] But, but you know, at the end, at some point the market will rationalize that and just nobody knows what that will look like.[00:32:29] Alessio: Yeah.[00:32:29] Martin Casado: Or, or like the drop in price of compute will, will, will save them. Who knows?[00:32:34] Alessio: Yeah. Yeah. I think the models need to ask them to, to specific tasks. You know? It's like, okay, now Opus 4.5 might be a GI at some specific task, and now you can like depreciate the model over a longer time.[00:32:45] I think now, now, right now there's like no old model.[00:32:47] Martin Casado: No, but let, but lemme just change that mental, that's, that used to be my mental model. Lemme just change it a little bit.[00:32:53] Capital as a Weapon vs Task Saturation: Where Real Enterprise Value Gets Built[00:32:53] Martin Casado: If you can raise three times, if you can raise more than the aggregate of anybody that uses your models, that doesn't even matter.[00:32:59] It doesn't [00:33:00] even matter. See what I'm saying? Like, yeah. Yeah. So, so I have an API Business. My API business is 60% margin, or 70% margin, or 80% margin is a high margin business. So I know what everybody is using. If I can raise more money than the aggregate of everybody that's using it, I will consume them whether I'm a GI or not.[00:33:14] And I will know if they're using it ‘cause they're using it. And like, unlike in the past where engineering stops me from doing that.[00:33:21] Alessio: Mm-hmm.[00:33:21] Martin Casado: It is very straightforward. You just train. So I also thought it was kind of like, you must ask the code a GI, general, general, general. But I think there's also just a possibility that the, that the capital markets will just give them the, the, the ammunition to just go after everybody on top of ‘em.[00:33:36] Sarah Wang: I, I do wonder though, to your point, um, if there's a certain task that. Getting marginally better isn't actually that much better. Like we've asked them to it, to, you know, we can call it a GI or whatever, you know, actually, Ali Goi talks about this, like we're already at a GI for a lot of functions in the enterprise.[00:33:50] Um. That's probably those for those tasks, you probably could build very specific companies that focus on just getting as much value out of that task that isn't [00:34:00] coming from the model itself. There's probably a rich enterprise business to be built there. I mean, could be wrong on that, but there's a lot of interesting examples.[00:34:08] So, right, if you're looking the legal profession or, or whatnot, and maybe that's not a great one ‘cause the models are getting better on that front too, but just something where it's a bit saturated, then the value comes from. Services. It comes from implementation, right? It comes from all these things that actually make it useful to the end customer.[00:34:24] Martin Casado: Sorry, what am I, one more thing I think is, is underused in all of this is like, to what extent every task is a GI complete.[00:34:31] Sarah Wang: Mm-hmm.[00:34:32] Martin Casado: Yeah. I code every day. It's so fun.[00:34:35] Sarah Wang: That's a core question. Yeah.[00:34:36] Martin Casado: And like. When I'm talking to these models, it's not just code. I mean, it's everything, right? Like I, you know, like it's,[00:34:43] swyx: it's healthcare.[00:34:44] It's,[00:34:44] Martin Casado: I mean, it's[00:34:44] swyx: Mele,[00:34:45] Martin Casado: but it's every, it is exactly that. Like, yeah, that's[00:34:47] Sarah Wang: great support. Yeah.[00:34:48] Martin Casado: It's everything. Like I'm asking these models to, yeah, to understand compliance. I'm asking these models to go search the web. I'm asking these models to talk about things I know in the history, like it's having a full conversation with me while I, I engineer, and so it could be [00:35:00] the case that like, mm-hmm.[00:35:01] The most a, you know, a GI complete, like I'm not an a GI guy. Like I think that's, you know, but like the most a GI complete model will is win independent of the task. And we don't know the answer to that one either.[00:35:11] swyx: Yeah.[00:35:12] Martin Casado: But it seems to me that like, listen, codex in my experience is for sure better than Opus 4.5 for coding.[00:35:18] Like it finds the hardest bugs that I work in with. Like, it is, you know. The smartest developers. I don't work on it. It's great. Um, but I think Opus 4.5 is actually very, it's got a great bedside manner and it really, and it, it really matters if you're building something very complex because like, it really, you know, like you're, you're, you're a partner and a brainstorming partner for somebody.[00:35:38] And I think we don't discuss enough how every task kind of has that quality.[00:35:42] swyx: Mm-hmm.[00:35:43] Martin Casado: And what does that mean to like capital investment and like frontier models and Submodels? Yeah.[00:35:47] Why “Coding Models” Keep Collapsing into Generalists (Reasoning vs Taste)[00:35:47] Martin Casado: Like what happened to all the special coding models? Like, none of ‘em worked right. So[00:35:51] Alessio: some of them, they didn't even get released.[00:35:53] Magical[00:35:54] Martin Casado: Devrel. There's a whole, there's a whole host. We saw a bunch of them and like there's this whole theory that like, there could be, and [00:36:00] I think one of the conclusions is, is like there's no such thing as a coding model,[00:36:04] Alessio: you know?[00:36:04] Martin Casado: Like, that's not a thing. Like you're talking to another human being and it's, it's good at coding, but like it's gotta be good at everything.[00:36:10] swyx: Uh, minor disagree only because I, I'm pretty like, have pretty high confidence that basically open eye will always release a GPT five and a GT five codex. Like that's the code's. Yeah. The way I call it is one for raisin, one for Tiz. Um, and, and then like someone internal open, it was like, yeah, that's a good way to frame it.[00:36:32] Martin Casado: That's so funny.[00:36:33] swyx: Uh, but maybe it, maybe it collapses down to reason and that's it. It's not like a hundred dimensions doesn't life. Yeah. It's two dimensions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like and exactly. Beside manner versus coding. Yeah.[00:36:43] Martin Casado: Yeah.[00:36:44] swyx: It's, yeah.[00:36:46] Martin Casado: I, I think for, for any, it's hilarious. For any, for anybody listening to this for, for, for, I mean, for you, like when, when you're like coding or using these models for something like that.[00:36:52] Like actually just like be aware of how much of the interaction has nothing to do with coding and it just turns out to be a large portion of it. And so like, you're, I [00:37:00] think like, like the best Soto ish model. You know, it is going to remain very important no matter what the task is.[00:37:06] swyx: Yeah.[00:37:07] What He's Actually Coding: Gaussian Splats, Spark.js & 3D Scene Rendering Demos[00:37:07] swyx: Uh, speaking of coding, uh, I, I'm gonna be cheeky and ask like, what actually are you coding?[00:37:11] Because obviously you, you could code anything and you are obviously a busy investor and a manager of the good. Giant team. Um, what are you calling?[00:37:18] Martin Casado: I help, um, uh, FEFA at World Labs. Uh, it's one of the investments and um, and they're building a foundation model that creates 3D scenes.[00:37:27] swyx: Yeah, we had it on the pod.[00:37:28] Yeah. Yeah,[00:37:28] Martin Casado: yeah. And so these 3D scenes are Gaussian splats, just by the way that kind of AI works. And so like, you can reconstruct a scene better with, with, with radiance feels than with meshes. ‘cause like they don't really have topology. So, so they, they, they produce each. Beautiful, you know, 3D rendered scenes that are Gaussian splats, but the actual industry support for Gaussian splats isn't great.[00:37:50] It's just never, you know, it's always been meshes and like, things like unreal use meshes. And so I work on a open source library called Spark js, which is a. Uh, [00:38:00] a JavaScript rendering layer ready for Gaussian splats. And it's just because, you know, um, you, you, you need that support and, and right now there's kind of a three js moment that's all meshes and so like, it's become kind of the default in three Js ecosystem.[00:38:13] As part of that to kind of exercise the library, I just build a whole bunch of cool demos. So if you see me on X, you see like all my demos and all the world building, but all of that is just to exercise this, this library that I work on. ‘cause it's actually a very tough algorithmics problem to actually scale a library that much.[00:38:29] And just so you know, this is ancient history now, but 30 years ago I paid for undergrad, you know, working on game engines in college in the late nineties. So I've got actually a back and it's very old background, but I actually have a background in this and so a lot of it's fun. You know, but, but the, the, the, the whole goal is just for this rendering library to, to,[00:38:47] Sarah Wang: are you one of the most active contributors?[00:38:49] The, their GitHub[00:38:50] Martin Casado: spark? Yes.[00:38:51] Sarah Wang: Yeah, yeah.[00:38:51] Martin Casado: There's only two of us there, so, yes. No, so by the way, so the, the pri The pri, yeah. Yeah. So the primary developer is a [00:39:00] guy named Andres Quist, who's an absolute genius. He and I did our, our PhDs together. And so like, um, we studied for constant Quas together. It was almost like hanging out with an old friend, you know?[00:39:09] And so like. So he, he's the core, core guy. I did mostly kind of, you know, the side I run venture fund.[00:39:14] swyx: It's amazing. Like five years ago you would not have done any of this. And it brought you back[00:39:19] Martin Casado: the act, the Activ energy, you're still back. Energy was so high because you had to learn all the framework b******t.[00:39:23] Man, I f*****g used to hate that. And so like, now I don't have to deal with that. I can like focus on the algorithmics so I can focus on the scaling and I,[00:39:29] swyx: yeah. Yeah.[00:39:29] LLMs vs Spatial Intelligence + How to Value World Labs' 3D Foundation Model[00:39:29] swyx: And then, uh, I'll observe one irony and then I'll ask a serious investor question, uh, which is like, the irony is FFE actually doesn't believe that LMS can lead us to spatial intelligence.[00:39:37] And here you are using LMS to like help like achieve spatial intelligence. I just see, I see some like disconnect in there.[00:39:45] Martin Casado: Yeah. Yeah. So I think, I think, you know, I think, I think what she would say is LLMs are great to help with coding.[00:39:51] swyx: Yes.[00:39:51] Martin Casado: But like, that's very different than a model that actually like provides, they, they'll never have the[00:39:56] swyx: spatial inte[00:39:56] Martin Casado: issues.[00:39:56] And listen, our brains clearly listen, our brains, brains clearly have [00:40:00] both our, our brains clearly have a language reasoning section and they clearly have a spatial reasoning section. I mean, it's just, you know, these are two pretty independent problems.[00:40:07] swyx: Okay. And you, you, like, I, I would say that the, the one data point I recently had, uh, against it is the DeepMind, uh, IMO Gold, where, so, uh, typically the, the typical answer is that this is where you start going down the neuros symbolic path, right?[00:40:21] Like one, uh, sort of very sort of abstract reasoning thing and one form, formal thing. Um, and that's what. DeepMind had in 2024 with alpha proof, alpha geometry, and now they just use deep think and just extended thinking tokens. And it's one model and it's, and it's in LM.[00:40:36] Martin Casado: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.[00:40:37] swyx: And so that, that was my indication of like, maybe you don't need a separate system.[00:40:42] Martin Casado: Yeah. So, so let me step back. I mean, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, these things are like nodes in a graph with weights on them. Right. You know, like it can be modeled like if you, if you distill it down. But let me just talk about the two different substrates. Let's, let me put you in a dark room.[00:40:56] Like totally black room. And then let me just [00:41:00] describe how you exit it. Like to your left, there's a table like duck below this thing, right? I mean like the chances that you're gonna like not run into something are very low. Now let me like turn on the light and you actually see, and you can do distance and you know how far something away is and like where it is or whatever.[00:41:17] Then you can do it, right? Like language is not the right primitives to describe. The universe because it's not exact enough. So that's all Faye, Faye is talking about. When it comes to like spatial reasoning, it's like you actually have to know that this is three feet far, like that far away. It is curved.[00:41:37] You have to understand, you know, the, like the actual movement through space.[00:41:40] swyx: Yeah.[00:41:40] Martin Casado: So I do, I listen, I do think at the end of these models are definitely converging as far as models, but there's, there's, there's different representations of problems you're solving. One is language. Which, you know, that would be like describing to somebody like what to do.[00:41:51] And the other one is actually just showing them and the space reasoning is just showing them.[00:41:55] swyx: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Got it, got it. Uh, the, in the investor question was on, on, well labs [00:42:00] is, well, like, how do I value something like this? What, what, what work does the, do you do? I'm just like, Fefe is awesome.[00:42:07] Justin's awesome. And you know, the other two co-founder, co-founders, but like the, the, the tech, everyone's building cool tech. But like, what's the value of the tech? And this is the fundamental question[00:42:16] Martin Casado: of, well, let, let, just like these, let me just maybe give you a rough sketch on the diffusion models. I actually love to hear Sarah because I'm a venture for, you know, so like, ventures always, always like kind of wild west type[00:42:24] swyx: stuff.[00:42:24] You, you, you, you paid a dream and she has to like, actually[00:42:28] Martin Casado: I'm gonna say I'm gonna mar to reality, so I'm gonna say the venture for you. And she can be like, okay, you a little kid. Yeah. So like, so, so these diffusion models literally. Create something for, for almost nothing. And something that the, the world has found to be very valuable in the past, in our real markets, right?[00:42:45] Like, like a 2D image. I mean, that's been an entire market. People value them. It takes a human being a long time to create it, right? I mean, to create a, you know, a, to turn me into a whatever, like an image would cost a hundred bucks in an hour. The inference cost [00:43:00] us a hundredth of a penny, right? So we've seen this with speech in very successful companies.[00:43:03] We've seen this with 2D image. We've seen this with movies. Right? Now, think about 3D scene. I mean, I mean, when's Grand Theft Auto coming out? It's been six, what? It's been 10 years. I mean, how, how like, but hasn't been 10 years.[00:43:14] Alessio: Yeah.[00:43:15] Martin Casado: How much would it cost to like, to reproduce this room in 3D? Right. If you, if you, if you hired somebody on fiber, like in, in any sort of quality, probably 4,000 to $10,000.[00:43:24] And then if you had a professional, probably $30,000. So if you could generate the exact same thing from a 2D image, and we know that these are used and they're using Unreal and they're using Blend, or they're using movies and they're using video games and they're using all. So if you could do that for.[00:43:36] You know, less than a dollar, that's four or five orders of magnitude cheaper. So you're bringing the marginal cost of something that's useful down by three orders of magnitude, which historically have created very large companies. So that would be like the venture kind of strategic dreaming map.[00:43:49] swyx: Yeah.[00:43:50] And, and for listeners, uh, you can do this yourself on your, on your own phone with like. Uh, the marble.[00:43:55] Martin Casado: Yeah. Marble.[00:43:55] swyx: Uh, or but also there's many Nerf apps where you just go on your iPhone and, and do this.[00:43:59] Martin Casado: Yeah. Yeah. [00:44:00] Yeah. And, and in the case of marble though, it would, what you do is you literally give it in.[00:44:03] So most Nerf apps you like kind of run around and take a whole bunch of pictures and then you kind of reconstruct it.[00:44:08] swyx: Yeah.[00:44:08] Martin Casado: Um, things like marble, just that the whole generative 3D space will just take a 2D image and it'll reconstruct all the like, like[00:44:16] swyx: meaning it has to fill in. Uh,[00:44:18] Martin Casado: stuff at the back of the table, under the table, the back, like, like the images, it doesn't see.[00:44:22] So the generator stuff is very different than reconstruction that it fills in the things that you can't see.[00:44:26] swyx: Yeah. Okay.[00:44:26] Sarah Wang: So,[00:44:27] Martin Casado: all right. So now the,[00:44:28] Sarah Wang: no, no. I mean I love that[00:44:29] Martin Casado: the adult[00:44:29] Sarah Wang: perspective. Um, well, no, I was gonna say these are very much a tag team. So we, we started this pod with that, um, premise. And I think this is a perfect question to even build on that further.[00:44:36] ‘cause it truly is, I mean, we're tag teaming all of these together.[00:44:39] Investing in Model Labs, Media Rumors, and the Cursor Playbook (Margins & Going Down-Stack)[00:44:39] Sarah Wang: Um, but I think every investment fundamentally starts with the same. Maybe the same two premises. One is, at this point in time, we actually believe that there are. And of one founders for their particular craft, and they have to be demonstrated in their prior careers, right?[00:44:56] So, uh, we're not investing in every, you know, now the term is NEO [00:45:00] lab, but every foundation model, uh, any, any company, any founder trying to build a foundation model, we're not, um, contrary to popular opinion, we're

Fluent Fiction - Hindi: Darjeeling Dreams: Arushi's Blend of Tradition & Innovation Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/hi/episode/2026-02-19-23-34-02-hi Story Transcript:Hi: ठंडी हवा के झोंके जब चाय के बागानों में सरसराते, तो मानो पूरा दरजीलिंग उन पत्तियों की खुशबू में खो जाता।En: When the cold breezes rustled through the tea gardens, it was as if all of Darjeeling got lost in the fragrance of those leaves.Hi: अरुशी वहीं काम करती थी, उसकी आँखों में चाय की तरह गरमागरम सपनें थे।En: Arushi worked there, her eyes brimming with hot dreams, much like tea.Hi: हर सुबह वह अपने कोट में खुद को लपेटकर काम शुरू करती थी, उसकी हथेलियाँ ठंड में सुर्ख हो जातीं।En: Every morning, she wrapped herself in her coat and started working, her palms turning red in the cold.Hi: विवान हमेशा उसकी मेहनत से प्रभावित था, लेकिन उसे अरुशी के सपने पूरे होते नहीं दिखते थे।En: Vivaan was always impressed by her hard work, but he couldn't see Arushi's dreams coming true.Hi: "यहां हमारा काम पर्याप्त है," वह कहता, "इतना बड़ा कदम लेने की जरूरत क्या है?"En: "Our work here is enough," he would say, "why is there the need to take such a big step?"Hi: पर अरुशी की आँखों में कुछ और ही चमक थी।En: But a different kind of sparkle was in Arushi's eyes.Hi: कप में चाय डालते हुए उनके पुराने गुरु, कार्तिक, दिनभर उनके साथ होते थे।En: While pouring tea into a cup, their old mentor, Kartik, would be with them all day.Hi: कार्तिक के पास चाय की हर किस्म की जानकारी थी। वो चाय की परंपरागत विधियों के संरक्षक माने जाते थे।En: Kartik had knowledge of every type of tea and was considered a guardian of traditional tea methods.Hi: अरुशी कार्तिक के पास जाकर अपने विचार साझा करती, "गुरुजी, एक नई किस्म की चाय बनाने का सोच रही हूँ।"En: Arushi would go to Kartik to share her thoughts, "Guruji, I'm thinking of creating a new kind of tea."Hi: कार्तिक शुरुआत में उसकी योजनाओं से सहमत नहीं थे।En: Kartik initially didn't agree with her plans.Hi: "परंपरा का महत्व समझो, अरुशी," उन्होंने कहा।En: "Understand the importance of tradition, Arushi," he said.Hi: लेकिन अरुशी ने ठान लिया था, "मैं हमेशा इस परंपरा का सम्मान करूंगी, पर कुछ नया करना चाहती हूँ।"En: But Arushi had made up her mind, "I will always respect this tradition, but I want to create something new."Hi: सर्दियाँ कड़ी थीं।En: The winters were harsh.Hi: लेकिन अरुशी और उसका जोश कड़ी सर्दी को जैसे चुनौती दे रहा था।En: Yet, Arushi and her enthusiasm seemed to challenge the bitter cold.Hi: चाय के पत्तों को नई तकनीकियों से तैयार करना, देर रात तक काम करना, यह सब अब उसका रोज़ का काम बन गए थे।En: Preparing tea leaves with new techniques and working late into the night had become her daily routine.Hi: आखिरकार, उसने विवान को भी अपने साथ मिला लिया।En: Eventually, she even convinced Vivaan to join her.Hi: विवान ने देखा कि उसका सपना अब कुछ ज्यादा ही ऊंचा उड़ने लगा है, और उसने उसे समर्थन देने का निश्चय किया।En: Vivaan saw that her dream was now soaring even higher and decided to support her.Hi: महाशिवरात्रि की पूर्व संध्या में, बागान में सकारात्मक ऊर्जा थी।En: On the eve of Mahashivaratri, there was a positive energy in the plantation.Hi: भक्तों की चहल-पहल, और मंदिर से आती घंटियों की मधुर आवाज वातावरण में गूंज रही थी।En: The hustle and bustle of the devotees and the melodious bells ringing from the temple echoed in the atmosphere.Hi: अरुशी ने अपनी मेहनत का परिणाम सामने रख दिया।En: Arushi presented the result of her hard work.Hi: पत्तियों की खास सुगंध उसके प्रयासों की गवाही दे रही थी।En: The unique aroma of the leaves testified to her efforts.Hi: जब उसने अपने अद्वितीय मिश्रण को निरीक्षण के लिए प्रस्तुत किया, तो सबकी नज़रें उसी पर थीं।En: When she presented her unique blend for inspection, all eyes were on her.Hi: सुपरवाइजर ने उसका स्वाद लिया और मुस्कराते हुए कहा, "इसमें कुछ विशेष है। हमें तुम पर गर्व है, अरुशी। मैं तुम्हें एक छोटी आर्थिक सहायता देना चाहता हूँ, तुम्हारा चाय का व्यवसाय शुरू करने के लिए।"En: The supervisor tasted it and, smiling, said, "There is something special about this. We are proud of you, Arushi. I want to give you a small financial aid to start your tea business."Hi: अरुशी की आँखों में खुशी के आँसू थे।En: Tears of joy filled Arushi's eyes.Hi: उसे विश्वास हो गया था कि मेहनत से सपने सच होते हैं।En: She became convinced that dreams do come true through hard work.Hi: कार्तिक ने मुस्कराकर कहा, "नवाचार का स्वागत किया जा सकता है, अगर उसमें परंपरा की खुशबू हो।"En: Kartik smiled and said, "Innovation can be welcomed if it carries the scent of tradition."Hi: विवान और कार्तिक ने मिलकर उसका सम्मान किया।En: Vivaan and Kartik honored her together.Hi: इस नई यात्रा पर, अरुशी ने देखा कि सपनों के साथ चलने वाले साथी कितने महत्वपूर्ण होते हैं।En: On this new journey, Arushi realized how important companions who walk with your dreams are.Hi: कार्तिक ने परंपरा और नवाचार के बीच संतुलन समझा, और विवान ने सपनों की अहमियत को स्वीकारा।En: Kartik understood the balance between tradition and innovation, and Vivaan acknowledged the importance of dreams.Hi: दरजीलिंग के उन चाय बागानों में अरुशी ने न केवल अपनी मंजिल पा ली, बल्कि एक नई शुरुआत भी की थी।En: In those tea gardens of Darjeeling, Arushi not only reached her destination but also embarked on a new beginning. Vocabulary Words:breeze: हवा के झोंकेrustled: सरसरातेfragrance: खुशबूbrimming: लबालबmentor: गुरुguardian: संरक्षकhesitate: झिझकनाblend: मिश्रणinspection: निरीक्षणsupervisor: सुपरवाइजरenthusiasm: जोशtechniques: तकनीकियाँeve: पूर्व संध्याpositive energy: सकारात्मक ऊर्जाdevotees: भक्तmelodious: मधुरaroma: सुगंधtestified: गवाही दीfinancial aid: आर्थिक सहायताacknowledged: स्वीकाराcompanions: साथीinnovation: नवाचारtradition: परंपराdestination: मंजिलembarked: शुरू कियाsparkle: चमकroutine: दिनचर्याsoaring: ऊंचा उड़नाharsh: कड़ीtestament: गवाही

Noah has a conversation with author Cynthia Beach about gender justice, abuse & trauma, and writing serious fiction. Cynthia talks about what led her to weave these important issues into her novel The Surface of Water, and how our stories can bring about change and transformation in ways standard approaches can't.    Cynthia Beach authored The Surface of Water: A Novel (IVP, 2024) and a writing book, Creative Juices for Writers, 2nd edition. She was a longtime professor of English and Creative Writing and now serves as an Artist in Residence in Scotland. She co-founded and offers Scriptoria Workshop with Newbery winner Gary D. Schmidt. Her sequel, A Thousand Wings of Light, is forthcoming. (See CynthiaBeach.com)   You can also watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/deGP0XDbj98   Flip Side Notes: Join an upcoming Beyond the Battle online group at www.beyondthebattle.net   Support Flip Side sponsor Angry Brew by using promo code FLIP at angrybrew.com or fivelakes.com to pick up some Angry Brew or Chris' Blend coffee at 10% off.   Get a free month of Covenant Eyes at www.covenanteyes.com using promo code BEYOND   Get a free month of Accountable2You keyword accountability: a2u.app/beyond (do not use “www”)   Your recurring gifts make Noah's ministry & The Flip Side possible. Get some sweet swag by becoming a patron at www.patreon.com/noahfilipiak – includes exclusive access to Noah's episode commentary, interaction, and email access. (Not tax-deductible)  Tax-deductible recurring gifts can be given at www.noahfilipiak.com/give.      Purchase Beyond the Battle and Needed Navigation by Noah Filipiak.

Engage in more of my content:read my personal blog postswatch workflow channel videoswatch my monthly videos on books and readingread blog posts on project management topicsconnect with me on LinkedInsign up for my monthly newsletterLearn more about my products and services:explore my 1:1 coaching practicelearn more about my coach training programcheck out my PM by Design training programlearn more about my Slow Hustle business building mastermindjoin Prolific, my online community devoted to meaningful productivitylearn more about the Blend by Design online coursecheck out my SoTL by Design online coursePlease offer your feedback about the show or ideas for future episodes and topics by emailing me. You can also come find me on Instagram!And if you listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, please take a moment to rate and/or review the show.

Segment 1: The Secret to Great Soup     Chef Robert: Let's start with the basics. The best soups begin with a great foundation—and that means building flavor from the bottom up.   Start with what I call the "holy trinity" of soup-making: onions, carrots, and celery. Sauté them in a little olive oil until they're soft and fragrant. That's your soup's base note—like the rhythm section in a jazz band.   Then, build from there! Add garlic, herbs, and spices. Think thyme, rosemary, cumin, or smoked paprika—whatever fits your vibe.   Remember, soup is all about layers of flavor. Take your time. Let things caramelize. The longer you simmer, the deeper the magic gets.   Segment 2: Chef's Recipe Corner – Roasted Tomato Basil Soup Alright, it's time to cook! Today's feature recipe is my Roasted Tomato Basil Soup—easy, delicious, and completely diabetes-friendly. Here's how to do it:   1.    Roast 2 pounds of fresh tomatoes, a head of garlic, and an onion with a drizzle of olive oil—until they're caramelized and slightly browned. 2.    Blend them up with 2 cups of low-sodium vegetable broth. 3.    Add a handful of fresh basil and a splash of balsamic vinegar. 4.    Simmer for 10 minutes—Give it a quick blend and that's it!   Serve it with a sprinkle of Parmesan or a dollop of Greek yogurt instead of cream for that silky finish. Low in carbs, high in flavor, and your taste buds will do a happy dance. Segment 3: Ask Chef Robert Alright, it's time for Ask Chef Robert!   Question: "How can I thicken soup without using cream or flour?"   Great question! You've got a few options:   Puree some of the soup—blend half and stir it back in for a thicker texture. Add pureed beans or lentils—they add body and protein. Or, one of my favorites—cauliflower puree! It's creamy, low-carb, and blends like a dream.   Healthy hacks for a happy pot of soup!   Segment 4: The Spice of Life Let's talk flavor! Herbs and spices don't just make soup taste amazing—they're packed with antioxidants and can help support healthy blood sugar. Try these in your next batch: Turmeric – bright color, anti-inflammatory. Cumin – adds warmth and depth. Fresh herbs like parsley or basil – add them at the end for a burst of freshness.   Remember, herbs and spices are your best friends in the kitchen. No salt overload needed—just natural flavor power! Segment 5: Final Ladle – Happy Diabetic Wisdom Before we close the lid on today's episode, here's a little Happy Diabetic wisdom:   "Good soup isn't just food—it's comfort, connection, and creativity in a bowl."   So as you head into soup season, take a little time to slow down. Chop some veggies. Let the pot simmer. And share a bowl with someone you love.   Because when you cook from the heart, every spoonful tastes better.

Доброго времени суток, дорогие друзья. Сегодня Вас ждёт особенный выпуск, состоящий из хитов российской и зарубежной музыкальной сцены в ремиксах и Blend'ах в стиле #MelodicTechno. Мой подарок для всех влюбленных. Поехали! TRACKLIST: 01. Isentie - Ringtone (Viktor Runx Remix) 02. Моральный Кодекс - Первый Снег (NRG Remix) 03. Lysov Studio II - Прилетел в Тайланд 2026 04. Гости из Будущего - Игры (Sasha White Remix) 05. Ночные Снайперы x Anyma - Неторопливая Любовь (GoodMax Blend) 06. ARUBA ICE feat. Letichev Sky - Верь в мою любовь (CheekyBitt remix) 07. Sabi, MIA BOYKA & Osxan - Базовый минимум (Swan Blend) 08. DJ ReDi - Missing (Extended Club Mix) 09. Anton Fish & Deep House Mafia - Fading Out 10. VNGL.ika - Золотая Москва (Extended) 11. Kamro & Tianna - La Isla Bonita (Slim x Shmelev Remix Extended) 12. Karna.val - Холодное Сердце (Nezil Melodic Techno Version) 13. Джиган feat. Юлия Савичева - Отпусти (Ramirez & Arefiev Melodic VIP Blend) 14. Natalie Rise, Kolya Funk - Улетай (Skoresound Remix) 15. Artbat, Benny Benassi - Love is Gonna Save Us (ABM Remix) 16. OPIUM Project - Губы шепчут (Andrey Sokolov Blend) 17. Gorilla Zippo x Yves V & Chester Young ft. EXA - RTDX.RU (James Miller Blend) 18. T-Fest - Давай сконнектимся (Zero Degrees Extended Remix) 19. TIGO, Migrant - Планы на завтра (StrannikoFF blend remix) 20. WDRN x BLACKPINK with Red Line & Andy Shik - SENSATION JUMP (Pasha DELUXE Blend) 21. ASPARAGUSproject - I'll always with you (Dj Flare Remix) 22. SABINA SUNDAY & DMC Sneg - Am i real Подписывайтесь на мой подкаст (Subscribe to My Podcast): ● Apple Podcasts - podcasts.apple.com/ru/podcast/… ● Pocket Casts - pca.st/drpc1gfj Слушайте и наслаждайтесь! Listen & Enjoy! From Russia with Love!

Have you ever put pressure on yourself to move towards your dreams faster,  compared and judged your path, or felt confused or anxious about where your life was heading? What if it was possible to create a life you love fueled by play, fun, joy and purpose? In this episode with Samantha Shaibani, founder of the Moonifest app, we talk all about how connecting with the moon, your intuition and manifestation can help you do just that!Ready to work with the seasons and cycles of nature to manifest a life more beautiful than your wildest dreams?Give this episode a listen and see what opens up for you!IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT:How to work with both masculine (structure) and feminine (intuitive) energies when you're manifesting.Why following tiny breadcrumbs everyday is more powerful than worrying about the final destination. The power of embracing all of your passions, releasing comparison and trusting the unique gifts you bring to the world. How the Sun and Moon move at different speeds and how we can access both of those creative energies within ourselves. The arc of creation: how to support yourself when you're birthing something new into the world. Ways to use Moonifest to set powerful intentions for the Lunar New Year and beyond!Craving support to work with both logic and intuition as you take inspired actions towards your dreams?Own your Becoming was designed for you!

It seems like Instagram drops a new feature every five minutes

Ep. 116: Pastor Dale Dalman on Visiting the Midwest's Largest Immigration Detention Center   Noah has a conversation with Pastor Dale Dalman on his visits to North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, MI, the Midwest's largest immigrant detention center. Dale shares as a pastor from a biblical, non-partisan perspective on what's happening with ICE, immigrant arrests, what our laws are and how they're used, and the process immigrants go through at detention centers.    Dale Dalman is a retired missionary and pastor with the Evangelical Covenant Church denomination. He served as a missionary to Venezuela and senior pastor to a Hispanic church in Michigan. He currently serves with the Clergy on Patrol program with the Grand Rapids Police Department and is Mayor Pro Tem of the city of Rockford, MI. He's been married to his wife Sheryl for 43 years and has 3 married children and 7 grandchildren. He has a bachelor's degree from Moody Bible Institute and a master's degree from Calvin Theological Seminary.    Take 7 minutes and listen to the recent NPR story of Pastor Dale's visits to the immigration detention center.   Listen to Noah's interview with World Relief and the Evangelical Immigration Table's Matthew Soerens on Understanding Immigration from a Biblical Perspective   Advocate for Immigrants and Refugees with World Relief of the National Association of Evangelicals   Noah's blog: A Biblical Understanding of Romans 13, "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities..."   You can give to Dale's ministry at North Lake via his Venmo account @Dale-Dalman - this money goes toward gift cards for families, clothing, train and bus tickets, and detainees' accounts.    You can also watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4RtQb7E_jFI   Flip Side Notes: Join an upcoming Beyond the Battle online group at www.beyondthebattle.net   Support Flip Side sponsor Angry Brew by using promo code FLIP at angrybrew.com or fivelakes.com to pick up some Angry Brew or Chris' Blend coffee at 10% off.   Get a free month of Covenant Eyes at www.covenanteyes.com using promo code BEYOND   Get a free month of Accountable2You keyword accountability: a2u.app/beyond (do not use “www”)   Your recurring gifts make Noah's ministry & The Flip Side possible. Get some sweet swag by becoming a patron at www.patreon.com/noahfilipiak – includes exclusive access to Noah's episode commentary, interaction, and email access. (Not tax-deductible)  Tax-deductible recurring gifts can be given at www.noahfilipiak.com/give.      Purchase Beyond the Battle and Needed Navigation by Noah Filipiak.

LOUNGE LIZARDS PRESENTED BY FABRICA5 - Brilliant Honduran Cigars - Visit Fabrica005.com and use code LIZARDPOD at checkout for 10% off THE ENTIRE STORE! Free worldwide shipping from Miami on all orders over $125. See website for more information and terms.SMALL BATCH CIGAR - SAVE 15% - Exclusive Cigar Retail Partner of the Lizards - Visit SmallBatchCigar.com and use code LIZARD15 for 15% off your order. Free shipping and 5% rewards back always. Standard exclusions apply. Simple. Fast. Small Batch Cigar.Recorded at Ten86 Cigars in Hawthorne, New Jersey, the Lizards pair the Trinidad Espiritu Series No. 3 Belicoso with twelve year aged Yellow Spot Irish Whiskey. The guys discuss unpleasant flavor notes in cigars, they share a reflective listener email, and they make their first-ever change to the formal rating process.PLUS: Rafael Nodal's Impression on Trinidad, Davidoff Exclusive Editions, Blend Transparency Importance, Consistency vs Marketing Gimmicks & MoreJoin the Lounge Lizards for a weekly discussion on all things cigars (both Cuban and non-Cuban), whiskey, food, travel, life and work. This is your formal invitation to join us in a relaxing discussion amongst friends and become a card-carrying Lounge Lizard yourself. This is not your typical cigar podcast. We're a group of friends who love sharing cigars, whiskey and a good laugh.website/merch/rating archive: loungelizardspod.comemail: hello@loungelizardspod.com to join the conversation and be featured on an upcoming episode!instagram: @loungelizardspodGizmo HQ: LizardGizmo.com

If this episode lands for you join me on my upcoming workshop DM me “BRAND” on instagram:https://www.instagram.com/thequeenofconfidence If you're holding back, second-guessing yourself, or diluting your message so you don't upset anyone… this episode is for you. Caring what people think doesn't make you professional. It makes you forgettable. In this episode, I'm breaking down why people-pleasing is the fastest way to kill your authority, your confidence, and your personal brand, and what actually happens when you stop editing yourself for approval. This is a real conversation about visibility, courage, leadership, and the cost of staying small. If you've ever thought: • “What if they judge me?” • “What if I say the wrong thing?” • “What if I'm too much?” You're going to want to hear this.

In this episode of the Healthy, Wealthy and Smart podcast, Dr. Karen Litzy interviews Dr. Aisha Akpabio D.D.S., a Detroit-based dentist and entrepreneur. They discuss the challenges and triumphs of being a female healthcare provider while running a business. Dr. Akpabio shares her journey from employee to owner of her own dental practice, the importance of design in healthcare, and the significance of representation in the field. They also address the balance between delivering high-quality care and managing business aspects, as well as the importance of self-care for longevity in the profession.   Takeaways   ·      It takes courage to bring people together in healthcare. ·      Transitioning from employee to entrepreneur requires a mindset shift. ·      Business education in dental school is minimal. ·      Delivering exceptional care justifies pricing. ·      Patients appreciate a personal touch over corporate practices. ·      Design can significantly impact patient experience. ·      Representation in healthcare matters for community trust. ·      Self-care is essential for longevity in the profession. ·      Balancing work and personal life is crucial. ·      Living in the moment is important for personal growth.   Chapters   ·      00:00 Introduction to Female Healthcare Entrepreneurship ·      02:58 Dr. Aisha Akpabio's Journey and Practice ·      05:51 Transitioning from Dentist to Entrepreneur ·      08:41 Navigating Healthcare Pricing and Value ·      12:05 Competing with Corporate Dental Practices ·      12:57 The Importance of Design in Healthcare ·      16:49 Legacy and Representation in Dentistry ·      20:02 Self-Care and Longevity in Dentistry   More About Dr. Akpabio:  Dr. Aisha Akpabio D.D.S. is a Detroit-based dentist, entrepreneur, and community advocate dedicated to smiles and systems of care. As the founder of Diamond Smiles Dentistry, she is redefining what it means to build a thriving dental practice rooted in wellness, accessibility, and neighborhood revitalization. A graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business program, she leads with vision and heart, creating opportunities for growth in underserved communities while mentoring the next generation of healthcare professionals. Beyond dentistry, she is passionate about wellness, motherhood, and empowering others to build healthy, wealthy, and purpose-driven lives.   Resources from this Episode: Diamond Smiles Dentistry Website Instagram- Diamond Smiles Dentistry Facebook - Diamond Smiles Dentistry   Jane Sponsorship Information: Book a one-on-one demo here Mention the code LITZY1MO for a free month   Follow Dr. Karen Litzy on Social Media: Karen's Instagram Karen's LinkedIn   Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: YouTube Website Apple Podcast Spotify SoundCloud Stitcher iHeart Radio

Ever tried to make a seemingly straightforward family decision (something that should be easy) only to feel the tension rise, opinions harden, and lines get drawn? You're not imagining it. In blended families, decisions can feel like loyalty tests.In this episode, we walk through a realistic scenario with a blended couple facing a decision dilemma: Do we prioritize a new experience that one side of the family is excited about… or protect a familiar tradition the other side values deeply? And that's where things get complicated. Because it's often not really about the decision itself. It's about what the decision represents: loyalty and priority.That's when a hurtful pattern shows up that we call a Tenuous Triad:One parent becomes the Trapped Teammate (torn between spouse and kids),Their spouse becomes the Stranded Stranger (feeling unheard, powerless, devalued, overlooked),And the children become Confounded Kiddos (confused, unsettled, and often emotionally loud as they express what they want).And once that triad forms, couples can get stuck in predictable traps:Impatience (“Why can't we just move forward?”)Fear and guilt (“My kids are hurting and I'm to blame if they're disappointed.”)Lack of empathy (“You don't get what this means to them.”)Lack of unity (“We aren't leading together.”)Parent-child allegiance (“I have to side with my kids.”)Our goal is to help you name what's happening so you can stop reacting to surface-level conflict and start leading from a place of clarity and unity.You'll DiscoverWhat a Tenuous Triad is and why it often forms around everyday decisionsHow the Trapped Teammate / Stranded Stranger / Confounded Kiddos dynamic can quickly create biological “sides” in the home and ongoing disconnection, resentment, and hurtHow to shift from reaction and contention to calm, united leadership as a coupleResources from this Episode:Simple Step Episode: Managing Loyalties & Priorities in Your HomeEpisode 59. Why Are You Stuck in a Parent-Child Allegiance? (Part 1 of 2)Episode 179. Conquer Fear and Embrace Your Blend with Confidence and ClarityEpisode 180. Break Free from Guilt and Blend with Authenticity and SecurityEpisode 119.  6 Tips to Grow Empathy and Create More Connection in Your MarriageEpisode 72.  The Best Way to Create Healthy, Bonded RelationshipsEpisode 50.  How to Openly Communicate What You Really WantEpisode 203.  How to Make Better Decisions and Solve Problems as a United TeamEpisode 49. Should Your Highest Priority be Your Marriage…or Your Kids?Episode 103.  4 Revealing Myths About 1 on 1 Time Between Parent and Their Bio-Kids (Part 1 of 2) Ready for some extra support?Connect with us to see how we might help you experience more clarity, confidence, and connection in your home.  Schedule your free call here:  https://calendly.com/mikeandkimcoaching/freesession

At the celebration of Dr Elcott’s and Gloria Grover’s “Blend-a-ment” (anniversary) Dr Elcott hears “Return of the Mack” and loses his mind. Sign up for a Backstage Pass and enjoy Hours of exclusive content, Phil's new podcast, Classic podcasts, Bobbie Dooley's podcasts, special live streaming events and shows, and oh so very much more…See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Steve Young (@steveyoung) is a Hall of Fame NFL quarterback who played more than 15 seasons, primarily with the San Francisco 49ers. Steve co-founded HGGC, which manages more than $6.9B in capital commitments. He's also the founder and current chair of the Forever Young Foundation, which supports children's charities globally. He is the author of QB: My Life Behind the Spiral and The Law of Love.This episode is brought to you by:Cresset family office services for CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs: CressetCapital.com/TimAG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement: DrinkAG1.com/TimWealthfront high-yield cash account: Wealthfront.com/TimNew clients get 3.25% base APY from program banks + additional 0.65% boost for 3 months on your uninvested cash (max $150k balance). Terms and conditions apply. The Cash Account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC (“WFB”) member FINRA/SIPC, not a bank. The base APY as of 12/19/25 is representative, can change, and requires no minimum. Tim Ferriss, a non-client, receives compensation from WFB for advertising and holds a non-controlling equity interest in the corporate parent of WFB, which creates a conflict of interest. Experiences will vary. Outcomes not guaranteed. Instant withdrawals may be limited by your receiving firm and other factors. Investment advisory services provided by Wealthfront Advisers LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. Securities investments: not bank deposits, not bank-guaranteed or FDIC-insured, and may lose value.*For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsorsSign up for Tim's email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim's books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissYouTube: youtube.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferrissSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.