Podcasts about Khosla

Randall Williams, Senior Reporter from Bloomberg, joins Dave Softy Mahler and Dick Fain to talk about his latest report about the Khosla family adding multiple private equity groups as owners of the Seahawks, the inclusion of these groups across sports, their influence level in the team, NBA expansion status, Portland’s situation, and what’s next.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Group Chat News is back with a special guest Rohan Shah, co-founder of Extend.com, the platform doing over $1 billion in GMV making extended warranties actually work for retailers. The guys go deep with a true Silicon Valley insider on Google's monster earnings, how tech billionaires really spend their money, why NFL teams might be the safest asset in America, and what's actually happening inside companies spending big on AI. This week's Group Chat covers: Rohan's path — Harker, Stanford, and building Extend into a billion-dollar GMV business Silicon Valley's prep school pipeline and the public vs private school divide Inside enterprise AI spending — big token bills, unclear ROI, and why "we don't know yet" is the honest answer The AI job-loss story that went in reverse — companies that cut heads are rehiring Apple's patience play — keeping cash on the balance sheet while everyone else spends trillions Rohan's stock picks — memory semis, nuclear and energy infrastructure, mining, Google, DoorDash, Meta Google's monster earnings — a $9 vs $2 beat, $99 billion in other income from Anthropic and SpaceX stakes, and the stock still dropped The Khosla family, the Seahawks, and the NFL's first Indian owner Why NFL teams might be the safest investment in America — "the Cowboys will outlast all of it" Trump accounts, custom ETFs, and kids treating stocks like baseball cards Why Silicon Valley doesn't build libraries the robber baron playbook vs "changing the world" Gambling ads on every screen what we allow now that we'd never allow for cigarettes And much more! Drop us a 5-star rating and a review if you're rocking with the show.

Mike Florio of PFT and NBC joins Dave Softy Mahler and Dick Fain to talk about the new Seahawks ownership family of the Khoslas, Devon Witherspoon’s possible new contract with Seattle, Kansas City building a new stadium built for sound, what the Hawks would need to do to get the Super Bowl, plus the Aaron Donald cap situation.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the first hour, Dave Softy Mahler and Hugh Millen react to the Mariners sitting at 50 and 50 including Softy’s thoughts on the last two weeks while he was gone, then they discuss the Seahawks new ownership family and Mike Florio’s report about how having a female controlling owner played a role and the feelings regarding new folks in charge.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bump and Stacy are joined by Seahawks Broadcaster Bryan Walters to discuss what he’ll be looking out for at Seahawks Training Camp and his expectations for the offense in 2026, they give you their thoughts on the World Cup final and the Red Sox’s win streak in Headline Rewrites, and they bring you the biggest stories around the NFL, including what made the Khosla family’s offer for the Seahawks stand out among the other bids. 

Congressman Adam Smith from the 9th District of Washington state joins Dick Fain to talk about the Protect College Sports Act and how it aims to change the landscape of the NCAA and NIL, the World Cup and Seattle’s success as a site, the hopeful return of the NBA with the Sonics soon, and the Seahawks new ownership in the Khosla family.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the third hour, Dick Fain talks to Larry Stone about NBA expansion, the Seahawks sale to the Khosla family, Dan Wilson’s job, and the Mariners issues, then Sounders FC Head Coach Brian Schmetzer joins Dick and Jackson Felts to discuss the World Cup and his team facing Portland tomorrow, then Fain shares his Open Championship picks.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bump and Stacy outline the first things the Khosla family will have to do as the new owners of the Seattle Seahawks, including the Devon Witherspoon extension, they give you their thoughts on the World Cup and tonight’s ESPY awards in Headline Rewrites, they give you their Training Camp preview for the Seahawks Tight End group, and Bump rants about the July sports calendar, the MLB All-Star Game, and traffic in Get Off My Lawn!

Dave and Lefko break down what the sale of the Seattle Seahawks to the Khosla family means for the team moving forward, they discuss what effect it will have on the Devon Witherspoon negotiations, they look at what the future holds for Seahawks defensive tackle Leonard Williams, and they react to where some key Seahawks landed on the latest offseason positional rankings. 

Bump and Stacy hear how the NFL world is reacting to the sale of the Seattle Seahawks to the Khosla family, they give you their thoughts on last night’s Home Run Derby and the World Cup semifinal in Headline Rewrites, they discuss where the Seahawks got better and worse over the offseason, and they break down what the Mariners can and cannot fix over the All-Star Break. 

Bump and Stacy are joined by former Packers VP Andrew Brandt of The Business of Sports podcast to get his thoughts on the Seattle Seahawks to the Khosla family, they answer your questions about Aaron Donald’s possible return and Seahawks LB Ernest Jones in Four Down Territory, they hear a wild mic’d up moment from Rory McIlroy at the Scottish Open in The Timeline, and they hear why one MLB expert thinks the Mariners could be a sleeping giant in the second half of the season. 

5PM: VIDEO GUEST - RY CURLEY - SEAHAWKS LOOK TO HAVE A NEW OWNER // Why sale of Seahawks to Khosla family group is ‘win all around’ // The MLB All-Star break is upon us… How do we feel about the M’s? // The One Thing Everyone in America Can Agree On? Costco // He Earns $33 an Hour as a Costco Cashier. Now He’s a Millionaire. // LETTERS

Scott and Eben discuss the Khosla family—led by tech billionaire Vinod Khosla and his wife, Neeru Khosla—agreeing to buy the Seattle Seahawks for an NFL record $9.61 billion. They talk about the Khosla family's background, the deal price and the yet-to-be-announced financing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hugh Millen joins Dick Fain and Alyssa Charlston-Smith to talk about the sale of the Seahawks to the family of Vinod Khosla, Neeru Khosla, and Neal Khosla including the feelings of nervousness that come with this major leadership change, a math equation that computes his level of nervousness, and what the future of the organization may be.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

RUNDOWN   Mitch and Hotshot Scott kick off Episode 390 with an unexpected detour into horse sanctuary volunteer orientation before turning their attention to a Mariners club desperately in need of the All-Star break after another miserable road trip. They discuss Seattle's lone All-Star representative Randy Arozarena, and the struggling offense before shifting to the biggest local sports story of the week: the $9.6 billion sale of the Seahawks to the Khosla family. Mitch and Brady Farkas survey a Mariners club that limps into the All-Star break below .500 after another frustrating road trip, debating whether an 8-2 finale provides any real optimism. The conversation centers on the anticipated returns of Julio Rodríguez and Brendan Donovan, and the uncomfortable reality that Seattle's season ultimately hinges on Cal Raleigh. Fresh off attending nine matches across the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Matt "Stretch" Johnson joins Mitch for one final World Cup recap as the pair dissect the United States' disappointing 4-1 loss to Belgium. The conversation explores the goalkeeper's costly mistakes, the overall trajectory of the U.S. program heading toward 2030, and why the next World Cup in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco should feature many of the same American stars. A miserable Mariners sweep in Miami sends Mitch and Danny O'Neil down one of the show's most delightfully bizarre rabbit holes, as baseball takes a backseat to an extended discussion about uneven sideburns, proper barbershop etiquette, London's luxurious hot-towel shaves, ear-hair removal by flame, and Mitch's childhood memories of his mother singeing stray chicken hairs with a blowtorch before dinner. The conversation eventually pivots to a sobering examination of former Seahawk Chris Johnson's ALS diagnosis, prompting a thoughtful debate over football's long-term health risks.   GUESTS   Brady Farkas | Host, Refuse to Lose podcast Danny O'Neil | Host, The Dang Apostrophe Matt "Stretch" Johnson | Longtime Seattle Sports Radio Personality   TABLE OF CONTENTS   0:00 | New Owners, Old Problems, And Another Round of Birthday Trivia 27:54 | Mariners No-Table [Brady Farkas]: All-Star Break Can't Come Soon Enough 53:12 | Matt "Stretch" Johnson: The World Cup Hangover…What Comes Next? 1:16:04 | Danny O'Neil: Sideburns, Blowtorches…and Football's Uncomfortable Truth 1:36:38 | Other Stuff: Justin Verlander retirement, Ace Reese drafted by the Mariners, Ace Reese vs. Cade Anderson in college, Aaron Donald comeback rumors, Jacob Tobey fired by the Spurs, Marshawn Kneeland diagnosed with CTE, Conor McGregor injured in UFC return, Tennessee couple celebrates 80 years of marriage with weekly McDonald's breakfasts. HEADLINES Japanese woman accused of sewing roommate's mouth shut, United Airlines sued over window seats without windows, parasite outbreak linked to contaminated produce, Fort Wayne man allegedly cuts off his own penis and uses it to start a garage fire. RIPS Bonnie Tyler (75), Jayden Adams (25), Randolph Mantooth (80), Louise Lasser (87), Lindsey Graham (71).

Salk reacts to the sale of the Seahawks by the Allen Estate to Vinod Khosla, a tech investor with a long track record of success. He has more details on the Khosla family that bought the Hawks, the Mariners disgusting road trip, and more in Need To Know. And Maura catches you up on everything you missed from Around The Weekend.

The Seattle Seahawks are officially being sold! The Estate of Paul G. Allen has entered into a formal agreement to sell the Seahawks to an ownership group led by the Khosla family, with Vinod Khosla at the helm. The Khosla family will become the team's controlling owners. The deal is still subject to NFL approval in the coming months.This marks the end of an era for the Seahawks, who were owned by Paul Allen since 1997. What do you think about the new ownership group? Will the Khosla family be good stewards of the franchise? Link to my YouTube Channel. Live on Wed and Sunday, 5PM PST...https://www.youtube.com/@TheHawksNest12thman?sub_confirmation=1 Link to my Patreon....https://www.patreon.com/thehawksnest Twitter...@SeahawksNester Twitch...@TheSeahawksNest Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ian Furness from KJR and Kraken Hockey Network joins the guys to share his thoughts on the new Seahawks owners...why he hates Tom Dundon and killing rumors about the Blazers...is there any controversy about the new Seahawks owners and Jedd Fisch answers more questions about Demond Williams being the QB this season.

Every week we talk about the most fascinating stories in the news and what they say about the Pacific Northwest. We call it Front Page. It’s our chance to talk about the latest news with a rotation of plugged-in journalists and guests, taking a look at the headlines from the weekend and the stories that we'll be following as the week moves forward. Guest: KUOW host Kim Malcolm Related Links: Seahawks sale: Answers to five key questions about what’s next Khosla-led group agrees to buy Seattle Seahawks Washington wildfire season turns deadly Northwest Large Fire Interactive Web Map Bison Attacks Tourist at Yellowstone National Park, Tossing Him Into the Air East Whatcom community leader hospitalized after bison rampage in Yellowstone Mariners snap skid, enter All-Star break on high note The Road Trip from Hell Ends with a Bang Mariners’ Julio Rodríguez unlikely to return from concussion IL before All-Star break Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Headlines and GREGG BELL joins the show with the lowdown on the new Seahawks owners. Vinod Khosla may be the name we've heard, but the majority of the shares will actually go to his wife, who is she? What does the Khosla family know about football? What should we be concerned about? :30- Vinod Khosla and his family are the new owners of the Seahawks and we don't even know how to pronounce his name! :45- The World Cup semifinals are set and all four teams remaining were our first round picks in our green jacket draft… talk about chalk! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Convenience retail is evolving beyond speed and accessibility. In this episode of OFFBounds, Paula Macaggi sits down with Anushree Khosla, Managing Director of 7-Eleven Singapore, to explore how one of the world's most recognizable retail brands is transforming its stores into destinations for discovery. Inspired by the success of convenience retail in markets like Japan, 7-Eleven Singapore is rethinking everything from store design and food innovation to viral products, collectibles, and customer experience to give consumers a reason to come back again and again.Anushree also shares lessons from her career across India, Hong Kong, and Singapore, explaining why understanding consumer behavior is more important than ever and how leaders can build organizations that continuously adapt to changing customer expectations. The conversation offers valuable insights into retail transformation, merchandising strategy, convenience retail, and what it takes to stay relevant in one of the world's fastest-moving industries.

This Week In Startups is made possible by:Deel - deel.com/twistNorthwest Registered Agent - northwestregisteredagent.com/twistLinkedIn - linkedIn.com/twistToday's show:Jason sits down with Brynn Putnam, CEO and founder of Board, to learn more about her company's tabletop gaming console. The pair talks about how to raise capital for yet-to-launch hardware projects, the screen-time debate, and how Board is approaching building or buying IP for its family-friendly games. Next, Alex got Heremus's AJ Piplica on the horn to chat hypersonic, autonomous jets. The startup's technology bridges the gap between rockets and airplanes, and may represent the future of warfare, yes, but also fast freight!Guest Links:Brynn Putnam https://x.com/BrynnPutnamBoard https://board.fun/Board Series A announcement https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/02/board-the-new-game-startup-from-mirror-founder-brynn-putnam-raises-20m-has-already-sold-thousands/Mirror https://www.lululemonstudio.com/AJ Piplica https://x.com/AJ_PiplicaHeremus https://www.hermeus.com/Heremus Series C announcement https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hermeus-reaches-1-billion-valuation-with-350-million-raise-to-build-todays-fastest-aircraft-for-the-american-warfighter-302735273.htmlTimestamps:0:00 Board's Brynn Putnam joins the show2:54 Board's proprietary AI software stack6:43 Why Board manufactures in Mexico (not China)9:21 LinkedIn: Thanks to our partners at LinkedIn! Post your job for free at https://linkedIn.com/twist then promote it to get access to LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant.9:42 How to raise a Seed round for hardware without a finished product15:26 Brynn's daughter and the mermaid example17:09 Can Board limit screen time fears?18:47 Northwest Registered Agent: Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity — Learn more at https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist22:54 Selling the first 10,000 units28:38 Deel - Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Visit https://deel.com/twist to learn more.29:42 Why Board is steering away from simple ports toward native IP experiences35:32 Hermeus's AJ Piplica joins the show35:32 What is Dark Horse?43:48 Commercial applications: Cargo, organs, flowers, and trans-Atlantic in 90 minutes47:47 Commercial applications: Cargo, organs, flowers, and trans-Atlantic in 90 minutes57:00 Dark Horse range and the "reusable first stage" analogy58:42 Dark Horse range and the "reusable first stage" analogy1:02:42 $350M Series C led by Khosla; total funding now exceeds $500M1:03:39 The SpaceX model: get customers to fund your R&D1:07:47 Closing: the American Dynamism pitchSubscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.comCheck out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcpFollow Lon:X: https://x.com/lonsFollow Alex:X: https://x.com/alexLinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelmFollow Jason:X: https://twitter.com/JasonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanisCheck out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarlandCheck out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanisFollow TWiST:Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartupsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekinInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartupsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartupsSubstack: https://twistartups.substack.com

Matan Grinberg is the Founder and CEO @ Factory, an AI research lab, bringing autonomy to software engineering. Matan has raised over $220M for the company from the likes of Sequoia, Khosla, NEA, Evantic and 20VC. Last round valued the company at a whopping $1.5BN.  AGENDA:  00:00 – Why AI Means Everyone Will Become a Builder 04:55 – Will AI Finally Break the 200-Year GDP Growth Ceiling? 06:45 – The Rise of the 100x Engineer & Load-Bearing Talent 08:00 – The New Executive Job: Allocating Tokens Like Capital 10:35 – Kirkland's $500M AI Bet: Brilliant or Delusional? 12:45 – The AI Value War: Models vs Applications vs Infrastructure 18:45 – Token Maxing, AI Hangovers & The Coming ROI Reckoning 22:00 – Why AI Spend Could Soon Exceed Developer Salaries 24:00 – Open Source Can Already Replace 80–90% of Frontier Model Work 28:00 – What Makes a Great Engineer in the Age of Agents? 35:00 – Jobs That Will Disappear First Because of AI 40:00 – Why Matan Isn't Worried About AI Taking Jobs Long-Term 46:00 – From String Theory to Startup Founder: The Sequoia Origin Story 52:00 – The Meeting That Led to Sequoia's First Check 58:00 – Why America's Lack of Frontier Open Models Is Embarrassing 1:08:00 – What Matan Looks for in Every New Employee 1:12:00 – Why Elite Companies Will Treat Employees Like NBA Athletes 1:16:00 – The Most Important Prediction Matan Has Changed His Mind On    

Episode #256 features Shernaz Daver, one of Silicon Valley's most respected executive advisors and communications strategists, who has worked alongside leaders including Steve Jobs, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla and Waymo/Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun. In conversation with Vidit Agarwal, Shernaz reflects on a remarkable journey shaped across India, Japan and the United States — from growing up between cultures as part of the small Zoroastrian community to navigating the inner circles of Silicon Valley's most influential founders and companies. She shares stories from Motorola, Electronic Arts and Sun Microsystems, the rejection that changed her trajectory, the unforgettable moment Steve Jobs told her she had done a “terrible job” marketing a product, and the lessons she learned working alongside elite founders and operators. The conversation also explores insecurity, ambition, storytelling, AI, burnout, hype versus reality in Silicon Valley, and what separates visionary leaders from merely successful ones. Please enjoy exploring your curiosity. ________ Get in touch with us via email at contact@curiositycentre.com Join our stable of commercial partners including the Australian Government, Google, KPMG, Vanta, Allens, Macquarie Capital, City of Sydney and more.  Show notes and more episodes here Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube Get in touch with our Founder and Host, Vidit Agarwal directly here Contact us via our website ________ The High Flyers Podcast features in-depth interviews with the world's most influential figures in business, tech, finance, government and sport. Launched in 2020, it has ranked in the global top ten for past three years, with listeners in 27 countries and over 200+ episodes released, and featured in Forbes, Daily Telegraph, and at SXSW. Our guests include -- Malcolm Turnbull (Prime Minister of Australia), Anil Sabharwal (Global VP, Product at Google), Jason Collins (Head of BlackRock, Asia Pacific), Jodie Auster (Uber's Global Head of Travel), Stevie Case (Chief Revenue Officer, Vanta), Brad Banducci (CEO, Woolworths),  David Haber (GP, a16z), Rob Giglio (CCO, Canva), Jean-Michel Lemieux (CTO, Shopify + Atlassian), Sweta Mehra (EGM, NAB; ex CMO, ANZ), Bowen Pan (Creator, Facebook Marketplace), Sam Sicilia (Chief Investment Officer, Hostplus), Craig Tiley (CEO, US Tennis), John Haddock (CBO, Harvey), Niki Scevak (Co-Founder, Blackbird Ventures), Mike Schneider (CEO, Bunnings), Trent Cotchin (3x Premiership Winning Captain, Richmond FC), Peter Varghese (Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Australian Government), Jack Zhang (CEO, Airwallex), Matteo Franceschetti (CEO, Eight Sleep), Vivek Bhatia (CEO, MUFG), Sanjeev Gandhi (CEO, Orica) and more. 

THE CINEMA OF RAJ KHOSLA — Why Do We Talk Hitchcock But Not Khosla?Why does global film culture endlessly celebrate Hitchcock, yet rarely speak of Raj Khosla—one of Hindi cinema's most versatile, inventive, and genre-defining directors? In this episode, we explore whether a filmmaker's personhood and the cinema they create are deeply intertwined—or deliberately separate.From noir to masala, from mentorship under Guru Dutt to shaping generations of filmmakers—including Mahesh Bhatt, who began his journey assisting Khosla—this conversation traces the evolution of Indian cinema through one remarkable yet under-discussed filmmaker.Joining us is **Amborish**, a **National Award–winning writer and journalist**, whose insights bring historical depth and critical clarity to the discussion. Find him on Linkedin/ Instagram.*Timestamps:*00:00 — Introduction01:45 — Why do we talk Hitchcock but not Khosla?02:44 — Raj Khosla: the director vs the person04:22 — Moving from noir to masala cinema10:50 — Working with Guru Dutt: a mentor–disciple relationship14:00 — The shape of Bollywood: then and now17:00 — Mahesh Bhatt assisting Raj Khosla: a guru–shishya bond19:40 — Film schools in America vs India's apprenticeship tradition20:21 — Cinema culture and understanding: India vs the West29:10 — Khosla's personal quest for love and his female protagonists34:10 — Financing films and industry markers of the era42:00 — Kaagaz Ke Phool47:00 — Do we know our cinematic legacy enough?A necessary conversation on memory, mentorship, and the filmmakers we choose to remember.*Now streaming on our YouTube channel — link in bio.*#podcast #rajkhosla #gurudutt #maheshbhatt #indiancinema #theartistspodcast

THE CINEMA OF RAJ KHOSLA — Why Do We Talk Hitchcock But Not Khosla?New episode drops tomorrow on our YouTube channel — link in bio.Why does global film culture celebrate Hitchcock endlessly, yet rarely speak of Raj Khosla—one of Hindi cinema's most versatile, inventive, and genre-defining directors? In this episode, we explore how an artist's personhood and their cinema can be deeply interconnected… or not at all.From noir to masala, from his mentorship under Guru Dutt to shaping generations of filmmakers—including Mahesh Bhatt, who began his journey assisting Khosla—this conversation maps the evolution of Indian cinema through one remarkable filmmaker.A deep dive into a master filmmaker we don't speak about nearly enough.Watch the full Episode: Subscribe and stay tuned.#rajkhosla #indiancinema #theartistspodcast #gurudutt #maheshbhatt

The investment comes as Pronto scales to 26,000 daily bookings and the market heads toward a potential $18 billion size. Also, Genesis AI, a startup that raised a $105 million seed round to build foundational AI for robotics, has unveiled its first model, GENE-26.5, but also a demo showcasing a set of robotic hands performing complex tasks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, Sam speaks with Vineet Khosla, CTO of The Washington Post, about how AI is reshaping the way news is produced, delivered, and consumed. Vineet argues that journalism itself isn't broken — but the formats people use to consume news are rapidly evolving, especially as audiences increasingly interact with information through AI. The conversation explores how the Post is experimenting with personalized AI podcasts, AI-powered research tools for journalists, and conversational news experiences that help readers understand not just what happened but why it matters and how it connects to other world events. Behind the scenes, the Post is deploying artificial intelligence across the entire organization, and Vineet shares details about the organization's “AI everywhere” philosophy. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: Vineet Khosla, chief technology officer at The Washington Post, is a renowned AI engineer whose career has been marked by groundbreaking achievements. Before joining the Post in 2023, Khosla created Uber's global maps routing system with cutting-edge AI tools. He was the first engineering hire for Siri's natural language engine, and as a senior AI engineer with Apple, he played a central role in developing the core natural language understanding engine and the architectural framework that allowed the virtual assistant to operate on devices.  Khosla has been working with AI since 2005 and is the holder of two patents and multiple white papers published on the subject. He earned a master's in artificial intelligence at the University of Georgia and a bachelor's in computer science at Pittsburg State University. Me, Myself, and AI is a podcast produced by MIT Sloan Management Review and hosted by Sam Ransbotham. It is engineered by David Lishansky and produced by Allison Ryder. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials. ME, MYSELF, AND AI® is a federally registered trademark of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All rights reserved.

In this episode, founders Adriene Bueno and Parul Khosla discuss Arena, a curated matchmaking platform designed to connect mid‑to‑senior level professionals, athletes, and organizations across sports, media, and entertainment. They explain how Arena streamlines introductions with weekly curated matches, enforces engagement to prevent ghosting, and helps members turn conversations into concrete opportunities. We cover the founder's journey, athlete involvement, upcoming events and mobile app plans, and why curated, intentional networking is becoming essential as the industry grows and converges.

Billionaire investor Vinod Khosla suggested as many as 125 million people should be exempt from paying income taxes in the coming decades as artificial intelligence gets closer to eliminating a mass number of jobs, suggesting the government make up the lost revenue by relying on capital gains tax. Key Facts Khosla wrote on X the AI boom will require a "rethink of capitalism and equity" and suggested increasing capital gains taxes would allow the government to eliminate "the bottom 125 million taxpayers from the tax rolls."  He also suggested eliminating certain tax breaks—like tax-free borrowing against unrealized gains—would help to make up the deficit.  There are only about 160 million taxpaying Americans, and Khosla's plan would exempt almost 80% of them from income taxes.  Last year, Khosla suggested it may be necessary to implement a universal basic income for lower-income Americans whose jobs are eliminated due to AI automation, predicting 80% of jobs will soon be handled by AI.  A video Khosla shared this week highlighted dozens of jobs being replaced by AI in his venture capital firm's portfolio, including personal assistants, financial analysts, doctors, accountants, customer service agents and more.  Big Number 92 million. That's how many jobs will be displaced by AI by 2030, according to the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025. Key Background Economic experts have been warning about the loss of jobs due to artificial intelligence automation for years. More than 50,000 jobs cuts in 2025 were blamed on AI, according to career services firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, with another 20,000 in 2023 and 2024. Aneesh Raman, LinkedIn's chief economic officer, said in a New York Times op-ed that AI is destroying the “bottom rungs of the career ladder,” eliminating entry level jobs and significantly cutting into the hiring of recent college graduates. Tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Bill Gates, as well as leaders like Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, have all suggested artificial intelligence is on its way to automating a significant portion of white-color work and, in some scenarios, could eliminate the need for traditional jobs altogether. Last May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted AI could drive unemployment up 10% to 20% in the next five years. Women and people of color are expected to be disproportionately impacted by AI job automation. Crucial Quote “In my little group chat with my tech CEO friends, there's this betting pool for the first year there is a one-person billion-dollar company, which would've been unimaginable without AI. And now [it] will happen,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman saidlast year. Read the full story on Forbes: By Mary Whitfill Roeloffs https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2026/02/17/billionaire-khosla-if-125-million-are-unemployed-by-ai-they-shouldnt-pay-taxes/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her role as Chief Impact Officer, Sona Khosla is at the helm of Benevity Impact Labs, an incubator and social innovation lab. Sona and her team bring cutting-edge data, research and insights to help organizations and individuals maximize their impact and inclusion efforts, and authentically live their purpose.As the host of the Speaking of Purpose by Benevity podcast, Sona is also a frequent guest on shows and in the media because of her expertise and sharp insight on purpose-driven business and corporate social impact.

If you want to know how to think on your feet, you need to understand something most advice on this topic gets wrong: Thinking on your feet is not a talent. It's a trained response. And the training required goes far deeper than memorizing a few “power phrases” or practicing small talk at networking events. Real mental agility, by which I mean the kind that serves you in a boardroom, on a stage, in a heated conversation, and even in physical danger, is something you earn. And to earn it requires systematic preparation across multiple domains. I know this because I've spent decades training for exactly these moments. As a university professor, I've lectured in multiple languages to rooms of students who didn't always want to be there. And to get my PhD, I had to sit for a dissertation defense in a room where some of the examiners delighted in throwing hardball questions. As a performing musician, I've improvised solos on stages where the set list changed mid-show. While performing card magic, I've recovered from botched tricks in front of audiences who were actively trying to catch me out. And as a martial arts practitioner, I've used my training to escape three real-world physical confrontations without throwing a single punch. Then there was my TEDx Talk where I had to make real time adjustments when the audience failed to even smile at my scripted laugh lines, but chuckled substantially during parts I had not planned to be funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqtDy68-gkY How to Think on Your Feet: The Complete Training System for Mental Agility Under Pressure What I've learned across all of these experiences is that every domain of “thinking on your feet” shares one foundational requirement. It's not intelligence. It's not quick wit. It's often not even confidence. Rather, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that thinking quickly and responding in the best possible way comes down to the systematic reduction of ego. That might sound philosophical, but it's intensely practical. And it will become the thread that connects everything in this guide. From how to recall information instantly in a conversation to how to physically escape a threatening situation without freezing. Here's what we'll cover today: Part 1: Why “Thinking on Your Feet” Is a Trained Skill, Not a Personality Trait Part 2: The Ego Problem (Why Your Self-Image Is Your Biggest Obstacle) Part 3: Mental Recall Under Pressure (How to Access What You Know When It Matters) Part 4: Verbal Agility (How to Sound Smart, Pivot, and Recover in Conversation) Part 5: Performance Under Pressure (Lessons from Music, Magic, and the Stage) Part 6: Physical Composure (How to React When Your Safety Is at Stake) Part 7: Daily Training Exercises for Mental Agility Part 8: Loading Your Mind (Why What You Memorize Determines How Well You Think) Part 9: The Paradox of Mental Silence Let’s dive in with why most people struggle with the skill of spontaneously responding in optimal ways in the first place. Why “Thinking On Your Feet” Is a Trained Skill, Not a Personality Trait As Freud pointed out, civilization is not our natural state. In Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, which is usually translated as Civilization and Its Discontents, he argues that much of our inner tension comes from how our social training represses our instincts. “Discontents” is not really a great translation for the title of this book. “Unbehagen” means something more like “unease” or “discomfort.” And since languages and skills are something we learn, we literally have to undergo a process of discomfort to learn most things. That's not a political statement. It's a neurological one. Your brain's implicit memory system, the part that handles automatic behaviors, gut reactions, and how you repeat social patterns on autopilot, was shaped by millennia of environments that looked nothing like a conference room or a dinner party. It was shaped by physical survival, tribal dynamics, and the need to read danger before it arrives. This means that when you're put on the spot in a modern context, your brain defaults to patterns it learned through observation, not through deliberate training. And those patterns were modelled on the people around you growing up. Especially in contexts like: Being asked a question you weren't expecting Getting challenged during a meeting Having someone force you to improvise a presentation at school or work In such situations, you might find yourself freezing under pressure and not realizing that you’re actually repeating how you saw a parent go cold when you were young. Or you might find yourself getting defensive in arguments the way a sibling did, or going blank during presentations based on someone else’s blip you observed. When you repeat this behavior yourself, it’s not a character flaw. That's implicit memory doing exactly what it was designed to do: replicate observed behavior. And if you’re reading this and don’t have problems thinking on your feet, chances are that you were a lucky observer of someone who could when you were young. Combatting Implicit Memory’s Hold with Reconsolidation The problem is that your default patterns are not optimized for the situations modern life throws at you. They're survival patterns, not performance patterns. Since you’ve learned to react like those you’ve observed instead of how you’d prefer to act as a fully realized being in this world, what can you do? Fortunately, quite a bit. Neuroscientists call the mechanism behind how you can shift the hold of implicit memory on your behavior memory reconsolidation. Here’s how memory reconsolidation works in brief: Every time you recall a memory, it temporarily destabilizes. Researchers call this destabilization a “labile state.” And while the memory is transitioning, the memory can be modified before your brain stores it again. This includes modifying behavioral patterns, not just facts. So when you clam up after being put on the spot and then reflect on what happened, that freezing response is briefly open to revision. This process was first demonstrated in landmark research by Karim Nader and Joseph LeDoux at NYU, which you can read about in Memory Reconsolidation. As part of their investigation, Nader and LeDoux demonstrated that even deeply encoded fear memories could be altered during reconsolidation. Unlocking Transformation Bruce Ecker and colleagues later applied this principle therapeutically. I recommend their discussion in Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Memory Reconsolidation and the Psychotherapy of Transformational Change. As you’ll read, they discovered how long-held emotional patterns can be rewritten. Not through willpower, but through a specific process of activating the old pattern, introducing a contradictory experience, and allowing the brain to re-encode. Monica Khosla explores a parallel idea in The First and Last Belief. This fascinating book is written by someone who experiences non-dual states similar to those I shared in The Victorious Mind: How to Master Memory, Meditation and Mental Well-Being. Khosla discusses how our earliest family-formed beliefs become the templates for how we respond under pressure as adults. Her work in family therapy suggests that these templates aren’t permanent fixtures. Rather, they’re “reconsolidatable,” provided you understand how they were formed and deliberately create new experiences that contradict them. This is precisely what the training in the guide you’re reading now is designed to do. Every exercise, every practice, every discipline I’ll share works by activating your default pattern (the freeze, the defensive reaction, the blank stare) and replacing it with a trained alternative in the moment it’s most labile. The Catch But there’s a catch. There’s always a catch, isn’t there? The pattern that most resists reconsolidation is your self-image. It’s also your self-image that most aggressively defends itself against change. People literally argue for hours with therapists that they cannot change. I know because I made this argument myself for years in front of my own therapists. This is precisely why thinking on your feet requires training. You cannot simply decide to be quicker, calmer, or more articulate under pressure. You have to deliberately replace your default patterns with trained responses. And use deliberate practice to ensure those responses become the new default. The training looks different depending on the context: In conversation and debate, it means learning frameworks for organizing thoughts rapidly and practicing with real people. In professional settings, it means memorizing key information so thoroughly that recall becomes effortless, freeing your mind to think rather than search. On stage or in front of an audience, it means thousands of hours of performance practice that builds a reservoir of recoveries and pivots you can draw on automatically. In physical danger, it means martial arts or self-defense training that bypasses conscious thought entirely and produces trained physical reactions. Each of these contexts has its own training methods. But they all share the same underlying principle: the trained response must be so deeply encoded that it fires before your conscious mind has time to interfere. The single biggest source of that interference? Your ego. But never fear. As big of a problem as the ego can be, you’re going to learn how to solve and resolve it. Part 2: The Ego Problem (Why Your Self-Image Is Your Biggest Obstacle) Here's the uncomfortable truth that almost no “how to think on your feet” article will tell you: The reason most people freeze, fumble, or fail under pressure is not that they lack information or intelligence. It's that they're managing their self-image at the same time as they're trying to perform. They experience serious cognitive drain as a result. Why? Well, when you're in a meeting and someone asks you a question you don't know the answer to, your mind doesn't just process the question. If your ego is not well-managed, your mind simultaneously processes: “What will they think of me if I don't know? Will I look incompetent? How do I maintain my status?” That parallel processing consumes the very cognitive resources you need for actual thinking. The Additional Cognitive Drain of Fantasizing Your Own Wit The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan made an observation that I've found profoundly useful in this context. He once pointed out that our fantasies are almost always better than the reality. For example, when we fantasize about being the quick-witted person everyone admires, we're constructing an idealized self-image that the real moment can never live up to. At least not all the time. You’ve probably heard the phrase “the gods have clay feet.” Well, spend enough time with accomplished performers, and you’ll start to see why. No one always has: the perfect response the devastating comeback the elegant pivot But we fantasize that some people do. And then when we don't perform like our fantasy, we experience not just the failure of the moment, but also a painful collapse of our self-image. That's why a stumble in a presentation can feel catastrophic even when the audience barely notices. The ego is experiencing a much larger injury than the situation warrants. How to Reduce Ego Before It Costs You There’s no quick fix for the ego. And ego reduction exercises so you can respond with greater self-satisfaction in the moment require: Practice in advance Consistent application in a variety of situations And in a variety of ways until responding off the top of your head from a clear mind becomes your default orientation. Then you maintain the practices that get you the spontaneous mastery you want over time. Here is a powerful place to start. Practice Stoic Premeditation The Stoics called it premeditatio malorum or negative visualization. Basically, you deliberately imagine everything that could go wrong related to the situations that regularly require your response. If you regularly visualize yourself going blank in a meeting, stumbling through a presentation, or being publicly corrected, the actual event loses its power to destabilize you. You've already experienced the worst in your imagination. The real version is almost always milder. It’s the flipside of the point from Lacan we discussed above. You’ve now made the reality much better than the fantasy. Modify the Classic Stoic Exercise You can modify premeditatio malorum in two key ways. I suggest you experiment with both techniques I’m about to describe. One: Transform Old Memories of a Disastrous Performance First, you can excavate through your memory to find situations you recall where things have already been bad for you. Then, you can “cleanse” those memories by placing them in a “Happy Memory Palace.” The scientific basis for this process comes from research showing promise in therapy for trauma, such as this study of memory reconsolidation specific to declarative memory. And there is the now classic Tim Dalgleish-headed research on using Memory Palaces or the method of loci for successfully reducing depression. For more on this kind of research, the following livestream replay gives you an exact exercise and more about the memory science behind the positive outcomes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs9UHz4pVuM In terms of how I’ve used this approach personally, I sometimes wince at one particular memory from when I sang a song during show-and-tell one morning when I was in grade two. I don’t know why I used to feel embarrassed when the memory would arise as an adult, but I could feel the sting in my cheeks. And later when I first started sharing the Sanskrit phrases I’ve memorized, that little flush of shame would arise again. So to forgive that kid whatever my memory was holding against him for his squeaky little voice, I turned the classroom into a Memory Palace and used it to memorize a delightful poem. From the point that I finished learning the poem (you can learn the process from this poetry memorization guide), I can think of that episode without that old embarrassment reviving any of its sting. And I’ve used this approach to transform other lingering memories I don’t like as well, something I’ll share more in-depth in a forthcoming book. Releasing old negative memories that involve shame makes me feel more spontaneous. And I’m confident you’ll enjoy a similar benefit too. Two: Memorize Stoic Quotes Memorizing poetry is one thing, but it takes time. You can commit quotes to memory a lot faster. I share one of my favorite quotes from Seneca in this YouTube short, one that took only a few minutes to memorize, even though it’s in Latin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISvX0-CfRkk I found this quote in Kevin Vost’s Memorize the Stoics! Although it’s not on my list of best Memory Palace Books, it provides a great look at memory training through a Stoic lens. And Vost is right: The value of having ancient wisdom on tap cannot be exaggerated. Not just for correcting your ego. You’ll also find that you have more things to say when pressed to speak on the spot. Things that have stood the test of time. Meditate Specifically for Ego Reduction Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now, often says in his talks that if you are empty of thought, you don’t have to worry about what to say next during a conversation. You’ll spontaneously produce the best possible reply. I often wondered how it was possible to empty my mind of thoughts until I encountered Gary Weber’s Happiness Beyond Thought and Evolving Beyond Thought amongst other works. Although Weber’s full program requires a fair amount of time, it’s worth it for the mental space and spontaneity you’ll enjoy. Two Other Tactics for Detaching From Your Ego for Greater Spontaneity While you’re experimenting with Stoicism, here are two other tactics to explore. They’re both counterintuitive, but powerful. Embrace ignorance as a position of strength Saying “I don't know, but I'll find out” is not a failure. It's a demonstration of intellectual honesty that most people find more impressive than an imaginary answer. If your ego tells you that not knowing something is a form of weakness, push back. Admitting when you don’t know something and then doing some research and following up, builds trust at the same time as it builds your knowledge base. Detach from Needing Any Particular Outcome Your job in any high-pressure moment is not to be brilliant. It's to be present and responsive. Almost as if there is no “you” longing to be perceived in any particular way. Or desiring things to play out for or against you. When you stop trying to produce the perfect response and instead focus on actually hearing the question, understanding the situation, and responding honestly, the quality of your thinking improves dramatically. And it happens largely because you've freed up the cognitive resources consumed by your egotistical needs. You’ll also enjoy your perception of the present moment much more. Part 3: Mental Recall Under Pressure (How to Access What You Know When It Matters) One of the most common experiences of “not thinking on your feet” is this: You know the information, but you can't access it in the moment. You know your mind possesses the answer. But the pressure of the situation has locked the door. There's a neurological explanation for this. Researcher Amy Arnsten has documented how stress signalling pathways in the prefrontal cortex effectively shut down under acute stress. As we know from studies in anxiety-induced memory loss, during stress, the amygdala takes prominence over the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for working memory, reasoning, and flexible thinking. As a result, your brain redirects resources toward fight-or-flight responses that are useful for physical survival but terrible for articulate speech. This is a major reason why you can know something perfectly in a calm environment and go completely blank when asked about it in front of an audience or in a heated discussion. The information hasn't disappeared. Your brain has simply redirected resources away from the systems that retrieve it. The Alphabet Retrieval Technique When I suddenly can't recall something (a name, a fact, a point I wanted to make), I have a technique that works more often than I'd expect: I mentally run through the alphabet from A to Z. It doesn’t always bring back the information. But the technique works often enough to make it a reliable first move, hitting the correct first letter while scanning through the alphabet triggers the retrieval. When it works, it’s because the first letter acts as a cue that unlocks the rest of the word or thought. It’s also the basis of how associative memory operates. As Dr. Gary Small has explained, your brain stores information in networks that somewhat resemble neighborhoods. And the first letter of a word is often enough of a “key” to unlock the door on a full node of information. It's the same principle behind why a song's opening notes can bring back the entire melody. Or how just a word or two of a lyric can bring back an entire verse. The “Let It Go” Retrieval Technique If scanning the alphabet doesn't work, the next best strategy is counterintuitive: Stop trying. In other words, deliberately release any attempt to search your mind for the content. Instead, move on to the next point, the next topic, the next question. Often, within 5–10 minutes, the information you were grasping for will come racing back to mind. This form of recall happens because your subconscious continues processing the retrieval request even after your conscious mind has moved on. Releasing the conscious effort actually accelerates the process, because you've removed the stress that was blocking retrieval in the first place. The Anti-Digital Amnesia Discipline You Need In order to ensure your memory gets stronger over time, you need to break the habit of immediately reaching for your phone or a search engine when you fail to recall something. Every time you outsource mental retrieval to a computer, you weaken the neural pathways that perform recall. You're training your brain that it doesn't need to do the work — and over time, it stops trying. This is the phenomenon I've written about as digital amnesia, and it's one of the most insidious threats to mental agility in the modern world. Preloading: The Real Solution to In-the-Moment Recall Both alphabetical retrieval and simply letting go are recovery strategies. They're useful when recall fails. But the real solution to thinking on your feet is to ensure that recall rarely fails in the first place. This is where a variety of memory training techniques enter the picture. Not as gimmicks, but as the foundational infrastructure for mental agility. The Memory Palace Technique Using Memory Palaces provides a core means of preloading information into your mind. Because this technique allows you to encode very large amounts of information, retrieval under pressure becomes qualitatively different from trying to recall something you passively read or heard. You literally own that information, forwards and backwards. It works because the spatial structure of the Memory Palace gives your brain a retrieval path that works even when the prefrontal cortex is under stress, because spatial memory is processed partly by the hippocampus. This is a different system than the one stress shuts down. In practical terms: If you've memorized the key points of a presentation using a Memory Palace, you don't need to “remember” them under pressure. You just mentally walk to the next room. The information is there, waiting. But it’s not merely attached to a place you know as well as your own home. It has also entered long-term memory. To learn this approach, check out The Memory Palace Technique: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide. Memory Wheels and the Art of Combination Retrieving facts, quotes, even entire passages under pressure is one thing. But what about those moments when you need to synthesize information on the spot? Such as when someone poses a complex question and the right answer isn’t a single piece of information but a combination of ideas you need to assemble in real time? This is where most people’s recall fails them entirely. They might remember one relevant point, but they can’t pull together the three or four ideas needed to construct a substantive response on the spot. I use a technique for this that dates back to the 13th-century philosopher Ramon Llull, later refined by the Renaissance memory master Giordano Bruno. It’s called ars combinatoria or the art of combination. It works by pre-organizing your knowledge onto mental structures called memory wheels so that you can rotate through ideas rapidly and recombine them in novel ways during live situations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opmb-mU-KPI Here’s the simplest version of how it works in practice: Imagine a circle in your mind with the letters A through Z arranged around it. For each letter, you’ve pre-assigned a thinker, a framework, or a principle you know well. A might be Aristotle. B might be a breathing technique. C might be a core value you hold. M might be Marcus Aurelius. S might be the Stoic concept of premeditatio malorum. When a difficult question hits you in conversation, instead of grasping for one perfect answer, you mentally spin the wheel. Instead of searching randomly for something to say, you approach the task of coming up with something to say by scanning an organized inventory of your best thinking. Because you’ve pre-loaded and spatially arranged all of it, your mind can traverse what you’ve already learned quickly. Memory Wheel Example One of my favorite Memory Wheels is populated with philosophers (one for each letter of the alphabet). When I’m confronted with a complex topic, I rotate through and consider what Aristotle would say and then move on through as many philosophers as I like, all the way to Zizek for Z. I know this technique sounds elaborate and it requires having read the best philosophy books, but once you have a Memory Wheel built and practiced, the rotation takes seconds. Here’s a rapid fire discussion with a few more examples from one of my YouTube shorts from the road in Brisbane: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/29nOib2ZS_4 Please don’t overlook this technique. It produces responses that are genuinely multi-perspectival, not just whatever my default opinion happens to be. The deeper history of this technique and detailed instructions for building your own memory wheels are covered in my full guide to Ramon Llull’s memory wheel method. But the principle you can apply immediately upon developing your own memory wheels is this: If you pre-organize your knowledge into a spatial structure rather than leaving it scattered across your memory, you gain the ability to not just recall individual facts under pressure but to combine and recombine ideas on the fly. That is the difference between someone who can answer a question and someone who can think through a problem in real time. It’s not speed without purpose. It’s architecture with a sense of direction based on the shoulders of giants. Part 4: Verbal Agility (How to Sound Smart, Pivot, and Recover in Conversation) Verbal agility isn't about having a quick tongue. It's about having a calm mind with a deep well of material to draw from. The people who seem effortlessly articulate in conversation are rarely making it up on the spot. They're drawing on vast reserves of pre-loaded knowledge, practiced frameworks, and rehearsed transitions. What looks like spontaneous brilliance is actually the visible tip of an enormous iceberg of preparation. Frameworks for Organizing Your Thoughts Rapidly When someone throws a topic at you and you need to respond coherently, having a mental framework prevents the rambling that makes people sound unprepared. Here are several that work, provided you practice using them before they’re required in real-life situations: The PREP Framework PREP stands for: Point Reason Example Point It’s a very powerful formula to practice during debates as well as in conversation. When using PREP, you state your position, give one reason, illustrate with one example, then restate your position. This takes 30–60 seconds and helps keep your replies structured without sounding rehearsed. The WRAP Technique I learned this one from Chip and Dan Heath's Decisive. WRAP stands for: Widen your options Reality-test your assumptions Attain distance before deciding Prepare to fail I placed WRAP on a memory wheel and demonstrate how to run through it mentally in this ars combinatoria video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cYDmaBXvJg What to Do When You're Stumped Even with the frameworks we just discussed or tactics like running through the alphabet, you will experience situations where you simply don't have a response. Here are more strategies you can try. Pause Peacefully Although falling silent can feel painful when you first start practicing it, rest assured that it barely registers to the person listening. And in many cases, a two or three-second pause before responding signals thoughtfulness, not ignorance. Most people rush to fill silence because their ego can't tolerate appearing slow. But a measured pause followed by a substantive response is always more impressive than a rushed response followed by backtracking. Seek Clarification There’s nothing wrong with asking people: “Can you say more about what you mean by that?” or “Are you asking about X or Y specifically?” Such questions will not stall the conversation. It's genuine intellectual engagement, and it often reveals avenues for further conversation that would not be revealed any other way. Use the Truth You might not know this, but many people find it refreshing when someone admits that something is outside of their area. Nir Eyal did that on my podcast a few years ago and I’ve never forgotten his willingness to “stay in his lane,” as he put it. The best part? Nobody penalizes honest uncertainty and a request to move on if you really don’t have a settled opinion on some matter or any expertise. Practice Physical Awareness Sometimes when we’re stumped, our body tenses up. Shoulders rise, the jaw clenches and breathing shallows. This physical tension feeds back into your mental state and makes mental freezing worse. But deliberately dropping your shoulders and taking one slow breath can help break the cycle. More on this kind of physical solution is coming up in Part 6. Practice Steelmanning One of the most powerful exercises for verbal agility is practicing steelmanning. Related to the principle of charity in rhetoric, steelmanning is the practice of arguing for positions with which you disagree. But not half-heartedly. No, you make the argument in the strongest possible terms. One simple way to practice steelmanning involves getting a friend to throw topics at you randomly. Your job is not to argue your own position, but to construct the best possible argument for the opposite side. This practice accomplishes three things simultaneously: It forces you to think through ideas from perspectives you wouldn't naturally adopt, which builds cognitive flexibility. It trains you to separate your ego from your position, because you're explicitly not defending your own views. It prepares you for actual debates, because you've already rehearsed the strongest version of your opponent's argument. For more tips that will help you in this department, check out my guide to preparing for debates. The Improv Principle If you take one thing from this section and act on it, let it be this: Take an improvisation class. Why? Improv comedy training provides you with the single most transferable skill for verbal agility in any context. The core principle of improv is quite easy. You simply answer everything with either “yes, and…” or “no, but…” This simple structure teaches you to accept whatever is thrown at you and build on it rather than blocking or deflecting. This is the exact skill you need in meetings, conversations, presentations, and debates. Improv also provides the one thing you can't get from reading articles: Real-time practice under social pressure while receiving immediate feedback. No amount of theory replaces the experience of standing in front of a group with nothing planned and having to produce something. It’s been a long time since I took an improv class, or any class. But you really only need one round to create a permanent transformation. Part 5: Performance Under Pressure (Lessons from Music, Magic, and the Stage) If you've never performed music, theatre, magic, public speaking, or any other form of real-time presentation, you may not realize how much of “thinking on your feet” is simply having enough trained material that you can recover from anything. The principle applies far beyond the stage. But the stage is where the principle is most visible, so let me share what I've learned from three performance disciplines. Music: Improvisation Is Built on Structure & Self-Awareness When I studied music, I learned something that most non-musicians find surprising: improvisational soloing requires more preparation than playing a written piece. A written piece has every note specified. You practice it, you perform it, you're done. An improvised solo, on the other hand, requires you to internalize the underlying structure so thoroughly that you can navigate it in real time without conscious planning. You need to know the modes, the chord changes, the rhythmic patterns, the phrasing conventions. And you need to know them so well that they're available to your fingers before your conscious mind has time to think about which note comes next. I know this from decades of musical experience. But my life in music almost never happened at all. In grade five, I failed a recorder test. It was given as a prerequisite for joining band class in grade six. The reason, though I didn’t have the language for it at the time, was a condition then called image-deficit disorder, now known as aphantasia. I couldn’t visualize what my teachers were asking me to see on the recorder or the sheet music. And the boring mnemonic sentences they gave us for remembering the notes made no sense to me. The school’s verdict in the face of my supposed failure? No band class. My dad changed that. He rolled up to the school on his Harley Davidson and had a conversation with the administration that I wasn’t privy to. Whatever he said, it worked. I was in. So long as I played the trombone instead of my dream bass guitar. They thought trombone would be easiest for me with its one simple slide. The Art of Coping By Copying But getting into band class didn’t mean I could play. In fact, for the entire first year, I sat beside another trombonist who picked up every note like it was nothing. I survived by watching his slide positions and copying them. I wasn’t reading music. I was reading him. The next year, in grade seven, the teacher gave us separate parts, and my copying lifeline was over. I remember sitting alone in a room with that trombone, sweat rolling down my face, sheet music on the stand turning my brain into wet sawdust. It felt like staring at an explosive I didn’t know how to defuse. But something shifted as my juvenile brain worked to solve the problem. Once I was forced to actually engage with the notation instead of mimicking someone else, I started seeing patterns. The theory behind the notes began to click. My teacher noticed the transformation quickly, both in performance and on my written tests. Later that year, she encouraged me to enter a sight-reading competition. Even though I didn’t win, I remember the thrill of performing music I’d never seen before. And because my teacher saw how deeply I’d started engaging with music, she helped me secure a spot at the local summer school of music before high school. That summer changed my trajectory. I studied with a celebrated trombonist from Canadian Brass. My skills went up substantially, and after a solo I played during the final concert, I was asked to audition for the Kamloops Rube Band. I turned that invitation down and finally retired the trombone for a bass and joined a heavy metal band instead. Over the years that followed, I played in multiple bands, learned increasingly complex music, and eventually realized a lifelong dream: going on tour with an established band. Memory expert Anthony Metivier performing at a concert in Germany. The Lesson That Changed How I Perform And it was during that tour, playing with a sophisticated band called The Outside, that I received perhaps the most important lesson about thinking on your feet that music ever gave me. After a show, our drummer Tito told me I’d missed a few notes. I braced for a critical lecture, but he said something I’ve never forgotten. It was an important tip that has everything to do with the practice of thinking on your feet: “The real problem isn’t missing the notes. It’s looking like you made a mistake. If you look like you made a mistake, it is a mistake.” From that moment on, I trained myself to improvise how I looked just as much as how I sounded. A missed note played with confidence reads as a creative choice. A perfect note played with visible anxiety reads as a near-miss. The audience often doesn’t hear your mistakes, but they do see your reaction to them. This principle extends far beyond music. It shows up in meetings, presentations and conversations. Your stumbles themselves are almost never what people remember. They remember whether or not you flinched. And to tie this all back to the beginning, flinching is an ego response. It’s the visible evidence of caring more about how you appear than about what you’re communicating. Tito didn’t know he was teaching me about ego reduction back during that tour in 2013. But that’s exactly what his lesson was. Card Magic: Multiple Outs and Recovery In card magic, which is especially useful in memorized deck magic, there's a concept called “multiple outs.” I think about it constantly in non-magic contexts. A multiple out is a tactic you might never use, but always have something prepared so that no matter what the spectator does, you conclude the trick successfully. In other words, no matter which card they choose, which pile they point to, which decision they make, you have a prepared path to a successful conclusion. The spectator thinks they're making free choices. In reality, every choice leads to the same place, or to one of several equally impressive endings. This is exactly how preparation works for thinking on your feet. If you've prepared thoroughly for a meeting, you don't just have one argument. You have multiple arguments, multiple examples, multiple pivot points. If someone challenges your position, you have an “out.” If someone asks an unexpected question, you have another “out.” The more preparation you've done, the more outs you have. Magician in Trouble There's also a sub-genre in magic called “magician in trouble” where the performer intentionally appears to make a mistake, building tension before a surprising recovery. What the audience doesn't realize is that the “mistake” was planned and the recovery was rehearsed. But it only works because the performer has done thousands of hours of practice behind the scenes. If you’re having trouble acting spontaneously, learning a few magic tricks is one of the best things you can do. The more tricks you know, the more you can make mistakes and recover. If one trick goes wrong, you transition to another. If a spectator does something unexpected, you have a different trick that accommodates their choice. The depth of your repertoire is directly proportional to your ability to handle anything. Translate this to your professional life: The more tools, frameworks, examples, and stories you have memorized, the more “tricks” you can draw from when a conversation or presentation goes sideways. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvtYjdriSpM Two Levels of TEDx Improvisation Where Preparation Met Reality Minutes before I was due on stage for my TEDx Talk, a long-time fan showed up without a ticket. From what I gathered, he’d traveled to attend the event in Melbourne. And I could tell he was genuinely excited. But he didn’t have a ticket. And when the venue staff told him he couldn’t come in, due to fire capacity rules, we were both frustrated. Anyone with two eyes could see that the room wasn’t actually full. But there was no time to argue the bureaucracy. I was about to deliver the most important presentation of my career, after all. This is exactly the kind of moment that derails people. Not the talk itself, but the things that happen right before you hit the stage. I’m talking about the unexpected disruptions that flood your system with cortisol at the worst possible time. My ego wanted to fight for this person’s entry. It wanted to make a scene about the absurdity of empty seats and fire codes. It wanted to be the hero who fixes things. Instead, thinking on my feet, I suggested we meet for dinner after the talk. He understood. We shook hands. And then I had approximately four minutes to completely reset my mental state before walking on stage. Here’s what I did, standing backstage where nobody could see: I placed my hands behind my back and began Kirtan Kriya. This is a four-syllable meditation (Sa, Ta, Na, Ma) combined with a sequential mudra where your fingers tap. Gary Weber teaches it in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehvokeZnXMM By using the technique with both hands behind my back so no one would see, I simultaneously slowed my breathing and brought myself back to center. Between breath cycles, I also ran a quick body scan from my feet to my scalp, deliberately releasing tension wherever I found it. Jaw, shoulders, hands, the major muscle groups. By the time they called my name, I was calm. Not confident in the way people usually mean. I wasn’t puffed up or “psyched” to give my speech. Just calm in the way that comes from having emptied the bowl. The fan situation was gone from my mind. The ego’s need to intervene was gone. What remained was a mind with nothing in it except a memorized talk and the willingness to deliver it to whoever was in that room. What To Do When the Room Doesn’t Follow Your Script Shortly after my talk began, the room did something I hadn’t planned for. A scripted joke that had worked perfectly to create laughter during the dress rehearsal the day before landed in silence. Not awkward silence. Just… nothing. The audience looked at me with interest but no laughter. A few minutes later, during a section I hadn’t intended to be funny at all, they laughed. Genuinely. A speaker working from notes would have been buried in their script at that moment, unable to read the room because their eyes were on the page. But my entire talk was encoded in Memory Palaces using the technique I teach in my guide, How to Memorize a Speech. I didn’t need to look at any notes. I could look at everyone and connect with them directly. So I did and leaned into their laughter. I let it breathe. I adjusted my pacing to ride the energy they were giving me rather than forcing the energy I’d planned. Going with the flow, I made an unscripted joke and it landed. And when the moment passed, I stepped to the next station in my Memory Palace and continued on with the talk. What the Audience Saw vs. What Actually Happened The audience experienced this as spontaneity. They saw a speaker who was loose, present, reading the room. What actually happened was decades of training expressing itself through a four-second decision. The musical performance training that taught me to keep playing through mistakes without flinching. The card magic training that taught me to have multiple outs when a planned effect doesn’t land. The teaching experience that taught me to read a room full of people who may not be responding the way I expected. And underneath all of it, my ego-reduction efforts shone through, including the willingness to let go of the talk I’d planned and deliver the talk the audience needed. After the event, several people told me how natural and relaxed I seemed. One person said it felt like I was just talking to them, not giving a speech. That’s the highest compliment a speaker can receive. And it was entirely the product of preparation. But nothing about that talk was spontaneous other than the joke I made up on the fly. Otherwise, every word of that talk was memorized verbatim. The audience saw someone thinking on their feet. What they were actually seeing was someone falling back on their training. That, and they witnessed someone with enough training to fall back on. That is the difference. And it’s available to anyone willing to put in the work before the moment arrives. Part 6: Physical Composure (How to React When Your Safety Is at Stake) There are situations where “thinking on your feet” has nothing to do with being articulate or quick-witted. Quite the opposite. There are many moments in life when thinking itself is the problem, especially during situations where what you need is a trained physical response that fires before your conscious mind has time to interfere. I've been in three of these situations. Each time, it was my years-long Systema training that kept me safe. In case you don’t know it, Systema is a martial art focused on breathing, relaxation, and fluid movement under stress. To be clear, it didn’t help me fight. It helped me because it stopped fights from erupting in the first place. Let me explain. Incident One: The Attempted Mugging While writing my dissertation, I was living in Washington Heights, a district north of Harlem in New York City. I was walking south, down to the 170s from the corner of 187th and Cabrini, where I’d stopped to use a bank machine. On my way out, a man stood in front of me with something resembling a gun in his pocket. Exactly as it happens in the movies, he gestured in quick spurts of energy so that my eyes dropped and looked at his pocket. “Give me your wallet and all your money,” he demanded. My Systema training kicked in. Instead of having my shoulders shoot up with anxious tension — the default I’d seen in almost every new student Emmanuel Manolakakis worked with, including me during my first lessons — my mind automatically followed the training I’d received. Without willing it, my shoulders dropped and my mind and body synced with my breath. In a way that still completely bewilders me, a smile came across my face. I don’t know what I looked like, but my expression unnerved the mugger. It created the stress in him that should have been in my body. After what seemed like an eternity, the mugger said, “Wipe that smile off your face or I’ll shoot you.” At this point, my smile grew wider and I started to laugh. An instant later, it felt right to move. I took one step forward into his space and angled to the left with the second and third steps. I didn’t break his gaze and watched as his eyes and entire head tracked me as I moved past him. Then, still operating completely on autopilot, I started to run and found myself in a cleaning supplies store filled with mops and buckets. No confrontation. No escalation. No ego. Just a trained body responding faster than a thinking mind would have. My Systema training, from breath coordination to deep muscle relaxation and long hours of practice with dropping into calm during situations of simulated threat, delivered exactly what it was designed for: bypassing the conscious mind that would have frozen me and let the body handle the situation. Incident Two: The Dark Path in Toronto Some time later, walking in Toronto, I approached a path at the end of a high school field. It was too late to be taking this popular shortcut, but there I was during a night that was far darker than I would have liked. There was just one street lamp hanging over that path, and its bulb was barely working. Before I stepped onto the path, I put a dime on my thumb. I didn’t think about why. There was no conscious strategy at work. My body simply did what training had taught it to do: prepare for the possibility of contact without committing to a plan. Sure enough, someone stepped into my path. I flicked the dime. The coin caught his gaze and seized his attention, producing a few seconds of involuntary visual tracking. This is the same reflex that makes every human eye follow sudden movement. Thanks to the distraction created by the spinning dime, I moved past him easily and paced off into the distance before his focus returned. The entire encounter lasted maybe three seconds. There was no conversation, no confrontation, no mental calculation. Just a trained response that created a tiny window of distraction and an immediate exit through it. I still think about the fact that I put the dime on my thumb before anything happened. It wasn’t a decision so much as it was a product of procedural memory — the same memory system that helps a musician’s fingers find the right fret before their conscious mind has named the note. Systema trains you to read environments the way musicians read chord changes. Not by analyzing, but by responding to patterns your body has trained to respond to inside the dojo. Incident Three: Outside the Post Office The third incident was the strangest. Outside a post office, someone with a grievance I didn’t fully understand began yelling at me aggressively. His body language was escalating and the situation felt like it could turn physical. My response was immediate: I raised my hands into a prayer gesture. With my palms together and fingers standing straight up, I found myself saying “thank you” over and over. I wasn’t being clever. I wasn’t trying to defuse the situation with wit. The gesture came from training, and it served two purposes simultaneously that I was only partially aware of in the moment. First, it put my hands in a position to quickly block any incoming strike. The prayer position is a natural guard because your hands are high, elbows close and forearms ready to redirect. I mean, it’s not going to make you bulletproof, but it’s just as disarming as the smile I delivered back during the mugging I survived in New York. Second, my response psychologically short-circuited the man’s aggression. Being thanked while you’re on the offensive is so dissonant that the brain doesn’t know how to process it. This person’s rhythm broke. His volume dropped. The escalation stalled because the script he was running had been interrupted by a response that didn’t fit. He didn’t thank me back. But at least he stopped. And I walked away unscathed. The Common Thread: No Ego, No Thinking, Just the Fruits of Training In all three incidents, the pattern is identical: Because the ego was out of the way, I wasn't trying to prove anything or “win” the encounters. There was also no conscious thinking. The responses were physical, automatic, and executed faster than mental deliberation would have allowed. Plus, there was relaxation under threat. The counterintuitive act of relaxing when threatened, which Systema specifically trains, prevented the freeze response that ego and fear typically produce. Finally, the strategy in each case was oriented toward getting away, not engaging. For anyone who wants to develop this dimension of thinking on their feet, I strongly recommend studying a martial art that emphasizes relaxation, awareness, and movement rather than aggression and force. Finding Your Own Physical Practice If personal experiences make you want to sign up for Systema, I’d encourage it. But I’d also encourage any martial art that emphasizes awareness, breathing, and relaxation over aggression and force. The point is not to become a fighter. The point is to develop a body that responds to threat with trained composure rather than untrained panic. Beyond martial arts, I practice Qigong daily and have for years. It’s not a combat discipline, but it trains the same foundational skills experienced in a gentler format: Breath coordination Bodily awareness Relaxation under tension For someone who has no interest in martial training, Qigong offers many of the same benefits for composure and physical presence without ever throwing or receiving a strike. Whatever physical practice you choose, I’d offer one caution: Don’t romanticize these practices or turn them into a glamorous fantasy. Remember the lesson from Lacan and the Stoic lessons that make sure reality is better than fantasy if and when real situations of trouble land. The three incidents I described above weren’t action sequences. They were awkward, brief, and slightly absurd. I didn’t defeat anyone. I smiled, flicked a coin, and said thank you. The training didn’t make me dangerous. It made me calm enough to exit each situation without a scratch. And that brings me to what I consider the most important physical skill of all, one that doesn’t require any formal training: situational awareness. Train for Situational Awareness In each of the three incidents, there was a moment before contact where my body registered something my conscious mind hadn’t articulated yet. In Washington Heights, I noticed the man’s posture before he spoke. In Toronto, something made me put a dime on my thumb before I entered the dark path. Outside the post office, I registered the escalation in body language before any words were exchanged. To train for greater situational awareness, walk with your phone in your pocket instead of your hand. Move around the world with your ears empty instead of listening to music or podcasts. When you enter a room, notice the exits. When you’re in an unfamiliar environment, pay attention to who is around you and how they’re moving. These aren’t paranoid habits. They’re the same environmental reading skills your ancestors used every day. Modern life has simply given us the luxury of ignoring them. There is almost no better way to think on your feet than the thinking that steers you clear of sticky situations in the first place. When it comes to physical confrontation, the best-trained response is the one you never have to use. Part 7: Daily Training Exercises for Mental Agility Everything discussed so far requires ongoing practice. Here are the specific daily exercises I use and recommend, organized from quick (2 minutes) to involved (30+ minutes). Breathing Techniques (2–5 minutes) Before any high-pressure situation, be it a presentation, a meeting or a difficult conversation, controlled breathing is the fastest way to shift your nervous system from sympathetic (fight-or-flight) to parasympathetic (calm and focused). The simplest technique: Breathe in for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, breathe out for 6 counts. The extended exhale activates the vagus nerve and physically slows your heart rate. Do this for 2 minutes and you'll enter any situation calmer and more mentally available. For more advanced breathing techniques, check out this video tutorial I made for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeO06_uZZcg   Progressive Muscle Relaxation (5–10 minutes) Systematically tensing and releasing muscle groups, from your feet to your face, trains your body to release the physical tension that accumulates under stress. Over time, you develop the ability to detect and release tension in real time — during a conversation, during a presentation, during a confrontation. This is the body scan component that I used before my TEDx Talk, and it's a core element of Systema training as well. The ability to scan your body for tension and deliberately release it is a physical skill that directly supports mental agility. Steelmanning Practice (15–20 minutes) Get a partner. Have them throw random topics at you. Your job: argue the strongest possible case for the position you naturally oppose. Switch roles. Do this twice a week and within a month you'll notice a dramatic improvement in your ability to think through problems from multiple angles under time pressure. Now, you might think about going to Chat-GPT or some other LLM. You can certainly give this a try. However, beware of context-dependent memory and state-dependence issues. If you only train in digital environments with a bot, you will likely find that you perform fine when sparring with a computer, but flounder with a human. As this study found, training in certain environments creates less cognitive fatigue than others. So if you come to develop certain beliefs about the difficulty of discussing things based on experiences with chatbots, you will probably not like the energy-drain you encounter when dealing with humans. Remember: we tend to fight the way we train, so practice all rhetorical argumentation in a variety of environments, never just one. Random Topic Riffing (10–15 minutes) Have someone give you a topic and speak about it for 2 minutes without stopping. What you say doesn't need to be brilliant, but work at speaking continuously. The exercise trains your brain to keep producing output even when it doesn't feel ready, which is exactly the skill you need when put on the spot. Increase difficulty by having the topic-giver interrupt you with new topics mid-stream. This trains your ability to pivot and shift directions without losing composure. Memory Palace Practice (15–30 minutes) Every time you encode information using a Memory Palace, you're doing more than memorizing. You're building the retrieval infrastructure that makes recall under pressure possible. Regular Memory Palace practice is the single most important investment you can make in your ability to access information when you need it. The more you memorize, the more you should seek to incorporate memorized material into your steelmanning and random riffing practice routines. Alphabet Drills and Multiple Mentality (5–15 minutes) One of the most unusual training systems I’ve encountered comes from Harry Kahne, a performer from the 1920s who could write with both hands simultaneously while reciting poetry from memory. He called his approach “Multiple Mentality” because it’s the deliberate practice of running several mental operations at once. His exercises sound deceptively simple. The foundational one: write out the alphabet backwards from memory. Not from Z-A printed on a card. From memory, cold. Most people find reciting the alphabet backwards surprisingly difficult the first time. But once you can do it? That’s when the real training begins. Kahne then asks you to pair the alphabet’s extreme ends mentally: A-Z, B-Y, C-X, working inward. Then start from the center and pair outward in reverse. These are pure concentration drills because they force your brain to hold a structure in working memory while performing various forms of recall. I go deeper into the full Multiple Mentality system and all of Kahne’s exercises in my detailed review of his course, including the parts I think are brilliant and the parts where I respectfully disagree with him. Part 8: Prepping Your Mind (Why What You Memorize Determines How Well You Think) Most of us know that the quality of your thinking is directly proportional to the quality of what you've committed to memory. A mind loaded with poetry, philosophy, scientific principles, historical examples, memorable quotes, and well-understood frameworks will produce richer, more nuanced, more creative responses under pressure than a mind that relies on whatever it happens to recall from last week's reading. This is not about showing off. It's about having raw material that makes you mentally dexterous. And gives you information you can use in an instant. What to Memorize for Maximum Mental Agility As you’ve seen, I strongly recommend memorizing quotes and poems. Because memorized poetry gives you access to compressed wisdom, beautiful language, and emotional resonance that you can draw on in conversation, writing, and thinking. Likewise, you can learn how to remember a story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM4TxD6ez1Y When you've memorized a poem or story, you own the content in a way that reading on its own never provides. The lines and structures become part of your mental vocabulary. I've memorized dozens of poems and passages of verse, and they surface constantly in conversation, in my writing, in my thinking about problems that have nothing to do with literature. Memorize Speeches for Mental Dexterity Likewise, you can seek out speeches from people like Churchill, Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and Marcus Aurelius. The words of leaders who were themselves masters of thinking on their feet make for excellent training material. When you've memorized their words, you internalize their patterns of thought. You don't just quote them. You begin to think in the structures they used. Learn to Tell Jokes Like improv, humor provides you with one of the ultimate forms of thinking on your feet. And telling jokes is far more learnable than people assume. To get started, commit a few jokes to memory and study their structure. You’ll soon notice that a good joke is a tiny argument: The setup establishes expectations The twist violates the expectations The punchline resolves the violation in a surprising or ironic way This simple structure is not so different from the PREP framework we discussed above. Practice Parroting and Accent Imitation Imitating a famous actor might sound like a party trick, but it's actually a profound exercise in sharing another person’s perspective and behavioral patterns. To imitate someone convincingly, you have to at least try and understand how they think, how they move and how they use language. As a result, the understanding you develop translates directly to the ability to read and respond to different people in different contexts. I’m not particularly good with foreign accents or imitating people. But merely by putting time into practicing a few people, I’ve learned a lot and become more spontaneous on my feet. Reflective Thinking Practice Memorization alone isn't enough. The material you memorize needs to be processed through reflective thinking. This is the practice of deliberately considering what you've learned, connecting it to other things you know, and forming your own positions. I do a lot of my reflective thinking through journaling, through conversation with carefully chosen friends, and through a practice I've maintained for years: regularly re-reading books I've already read, looking for things I missed the first time. All of these practices transform static knowledge into dynamic intellectual resources you’ll draw upon with great ease when you find yourself put on the spot. Part 9: The Paradox of Mental Silence We've covered a great deal of ground today: ego reduction, memory techniques, verbal frameworks, performance training, martial arts, daily exercises, and the art of loading your mind with quality material. And now I want to end with something that sounds like a contradiction but is, in fact, the deepest truth about thinking on your feet: The goal is not to think faster. Rather, it’s to create the conditions where you don't need to think at all. I know this sounds paradoxical. How can “thinking on your feet” require not thinking? It’s because the highest level of performance in any domain doesn’t just look like effortlessness. It actually is, if only in the present moment. I’m talking about the musician who plays a transcendent solo. That performer isn't thinking about which notes to play. Nor does the martial artist who evades a strike sit there thinking about which direction to move. And the speaker who delivers a perfect response to an unexpected question isn't thinking about what to say. They’re drawing upon deep preparation. In each case, the performer has trained so deeply that the right response emerges from a place beneath conscious thought. The preparation started long ago. Practice has quieted your fantasies, both positive and negative. And what remains is a mind so well-prepared that it can be still during the demands and in that stillness, the right response simply appears. This outcome is common in the world of mindfulness and meditation, where practitioners describe the experience of being “full by being empty.” In order to receive the moment as it actually is (not as your ego wants it to be, nor as your anxiety fears things might go wrong), you just have to empty your mind of the noise that normally fills it. Your Next Step If this article has shown you anything, I hope it's this: thinking on your feet is not a gift. It's the product of deliberate, ongoing training across multiple domains — mental, verbal, physical, and philosophical. The foundation of all of it is memory. Not “good memory” as a vague trait, but trained memory — the ability to encode, store, and retrieve information on demand, under pressure, in any context. If you want to start building that foundation, I've created a free course that teaches you the core Memory Palace technique in four video lessons. It's the same starting point my Masterclass students use, and it will give you your first experience of what trained recall feels like. For even deeper training that includes the Memory Wheel technique, ars combinatoria, advanced Memory Palace strategies, and the Recall Rehearsal patterns that make long-term retention predictable, my Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass takes you through the complete learning system. And if you want to explore the meditation, breathing, and muscle relaxation routines I've combined with memory training for maximum mental composure, I go into all of that in The Victorious Mind. So what do you say? Are you ready to stop worrying about what you’ll say next and start training so deeply that the right response arrives on its own? Remember: the secret every performer, martial artist, and memory expert discovers is ultimately the same. You don’t rise to the level of the mome

Welcome to Printing Money Episode 36!  For this episode Danny is joined by a new guest, John Barnes (Founder and President, The Barnes Global Advisors, Founder and CEO, Metal Powder Works (MPW.ASX). From career foundations in industrial development John has built both an AM consultancy and a metal AM powders company. We are thankful to have his perspective here. This episode starts with a look at John's background and what's brought him to this point. Then, Danny and John review the MILAM 2026 event which occurred earlier this month in Tampa Bay. From Tampa the conversation heads to Australia as a nexus for the global metal AM powder market.  John and Danny dive into dynamics driving that. After the low-down down under, the conversation turns to Printing Money's why and wherefore — 3DP/AM deal analysis around the globe from VulcanForms and Hadrian in the USA, to SWISSTO12 and Additive Drives in Europe, to Snapmaker in China, and more. The best quote of the episode is actually a paraphrase from Seinfeld, as John drops “The whale is the largest mammal in the world, but it doesn't have to be!” seamlessly amidst incisive deal analysis. Danny and John will continue the discussion in person at AMS 2026 this week in New York City.  Meanwhile, please enjoy Episode 36 and check out our previous episodes too. This episode was recorded February 17, 2026. Timestamps: 00:12 – Welcome to Episode 36 and welcome to John Barnes (TBGA & MPW) 01:14 – John Barnes' career, in his own words: Sandia, Lockheed/Skunkworks, CSIRO, RTI 06:25 – TBGA founded in 2017, MPW founded shortly thereafter 07:44 – Can 3DP/AM materials companies be parts producers? 09:45 – MILAM 2026 review: A displacement between capabilities and use? 13:35 – Dissociating sustainment from new builds 15:00 – An impressive sense of urgency (at MILAM 2026) 17:12 – DoW inefficiencies stymie return on investment 21:21 – The global metal AM powder market 24:59 – The ASX (Australian stock market) applicability for metal AM powder companies (MPW, 6KA, 3DA, TTT, etc) 25:22 – Scaling, and the value proposition for metal AM powders 30:00 – 6K Additive IPOs in Australia 30:33 – Metal Powder Works' path to public markets in Australia 35:55 – List in Australia, scale operations in the United States 37:10 – MPW.ASX raises AUD 15M in follow-on offering 38:21 – Hadrian receives investment for advanced manufacturing facility 38:39 – VulcanForms raises $220M from Eclipse, 1789 Capital and more 43:08 – Machina Labs raises $124M from Lockheed Martin, NVIDIA, and more 45:44 – Additive Drives $20M+ round 48:09 – Uptool raises $6M from Khosla, Bessemer, Kleiner Perkins, et al. 50:47 – Kickstart this: Snapmaker raises a more classical Series B 52:38 – SWISSTO12 raises EUR 73M (not all equity) 54:48 – Perseus Materials receives strategic investment from Lockheed Martin 57:53 – Vulcan and Burgmaster merge to form MASTREX for very low cost metal LPBF 1:03:27 – Thingiverse to be acquired by MyMiniFactory 1:03:53 – Reasons for optimism for the metal AM market 1:04:52 – Thanks again to John, thanks for listening, and see you at AMS this week! 1:05:19 – Disclaimer Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing stated on this podcast constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by the hosts, the organizer or any third-party service provider to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in this or in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction.  The information on this podcast is of a general nature that does not address the circumstances and risk profile of any individual or entity and should not constitute professional and/or financial advice. Referenced transactions are sourced from publicly available information. Danny Piper is a registered representative of Finalis Securities LLC, member FINRA/SIPC. This material has been prepared for information and educational purposes only, and it is not intended to provide, nor should it be relied on for tax, legal, or investment advice. Investors should consult with their own tax, legal, and financial professionals before investing. Real estate investments are generally highly risky. They can be volatile, unpredictable, illiquid, and are subject to ebbs and flows and market shifts. Investors also risk the loss of all principal investments.

Recorded live at Apollo House 2026, this fireside chat captures a candid, in-the-room conversation between StartUp Health's Unity Stoakes and entrepreneur, investor, and technologist Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures on AI's accelerating impact on healthcare. Khosla explains why he believes AI is a platform shift larger than the internet or mobile, and how that shift could unlock access to high-quality care for billions. The conversation explores his “AI intern” model for healthcare, why copilots often underperform in complex clinical work, and why trust, supervision, and fit-for-purpose guardrails are essential. A live exchange with Esther Dyson adds perspective on empathy, communication, and the enduring human dimensions of care. As a live recording, the audio reflects the energy of the room rather than a studio setting. Do you want to participate in live conversations with industry luminaries? When you join the StartUp Health Network – a new private community for investors, buyers, and industry leaders to connect year-round with top health entrepreneurs – you are invited to a full calendar of interactive Fireside Chats with the most influential leaders shaping health innovation. Come with questions, learn what is working right now, and connect with industry icons. » Learn more and join today. Want more content like this? Sign up for StartUp Health Insider™ to get funding insights, news, and special updates delivered to your inbox.

This week marks the 9th month we have put out the Top 10 Sleep Threats Power Rankings, and this week, we have a special guest assessor, Dr. Seem Khosla. In this episode we will:Find out what Seema thinks are the top threats to your sleepFocus on sleep priority failures...both of the patient and the clinicianLearn why Dr. Khosla's list marks a different view of sleep problems than lists beforeProduced by: Maeve WinterMore:Twitter: @drchriswinterIG: @drchriwinterThreads: @drchriswinterBluesky: @drchriswinterThe Sleep Solution and The Rested ChildProduced by: Maeve WinterMore Twitter: @drchriswinter IG: @drchriwinter Threads: @drchriswinter Bluesky: @drchriswinter The Sleep Solution and The Rested Child Thanks for listening and sleep well!

Mayo Clinic's Dr. Sundeep Khosler discusses findings from the first major randomized controlled trial of senolytics in humans, revealing why cellular aging varies dramatically between individuals and what this means for longevity interventions.Dr. Sundeep Khosler, a physician-researcher at the Mayo Clinic, leads some of the first human clinical trials testing senolytics for aging and age-related diseases. In this conversation, he shares critical findings from their 60-person randomized controlled trial that challenge assumptions about how we age at the cellular level.The study revealed that senescent cell burden varies dramatically between individuals, with significant implications for who might benefit from senolytic interventions. While overall results showed modest improvements in bone formation markers, women with the highest senescent cell burden (measured through blood biomarkers) showed dramatic 60% improvements—suggesting aging interventions may require personalized approaches rather than universal protocols.Dr. Khosler discusses the development of blood-based biomarkers for measuring senescent cell burden, explains why age 70 appears to be a critical threshold, and addresses the gap between promising animal studies and human translation. He provides evidence-based guidance on what people can do now, explains why he doesn't recommend current senolytics outside clinical trials, and discusses FDA-approved medications that may impact cellular aging as secondary benefits.This interview offers a balanced, nuanced perspective on where senolytic research actually stands, moving beyond hype to understand both the promise and limitations of targeting senescent cells for healthspan.

From building Medal into a 12M-user game clipping platform with 3.8B highlight moments to turning down a reported $500M offer from OpenAI (https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-offered-pay-500-million-startup-videogame-data) and raising a $134M seed from Khosla (https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/16/general-intuition-lands-134m-seed-to-teach-agents-spatial-reasoning-using-video-game-clips/) to spin out General Intuition, Pim is betting that world models trained on peak human gameplay are the next frontier after LLMs.We sat down with Pim to dig into why game highlights are “episodic memory for simulation” (and how Medal's privacy-first action labels became a world-model goldmine https://medal.tv/blog/posts/enabling-state-of-the-art-security-and-protections-on-medals-new-apm-and-controller-overlay-features), what it takes to build fully vision-based agents that just see frames and output actions in real time, how General Intuition transfers from games to real-world video and then into robotics, why world models and LLMs are complementary rather than rivals, what founders with proprietary datasets should know before selling or licensing to labs, and his bet that spatial-temporal foundation models will power 80% of future atoms-to-atoms interactions in both simulation and the real world.We discuss:* How Medal's 3.8B action-labeled highlight clips became a privacy-preserving goldmine for world models* Building fully vision-based agents that only see frames and output actions yet play like (and sometimes better than) humans* Transferring from arcade-style games to realistic games to real-world video using the same perception–action recipe* Why world models need actions, memory, and partial observability (smoke, occlusion, camera shake) vs. “just” pretty video generation* Distilling giant policies into tiny real-time models that still navigate, hide, and peek corners like real players* Pim's path from RuneScape private servers, Tourette's, and reverse engineering to leading a frontier world-model lab* How data-rich founders should think about valuing their datasets, negotiating with big labs, and deciding when to go independent* GI's first customers: replacing brittle behavior trees in games, engines, and controller-based robots with a “frames in, actions out” API* Using Medal clips as “episodic memory of simulation” to move from imitation learning to RL via world models and negative events* The 2030 vision: spatial–temporal foundation models that power the majority of atoms-to-atoms interactions in simulation and the real world—Pim* X: https://x.com/PimDeWitte* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pimdw/Where to find Latent Space* X: https://x.com/latentspacepodFull Video EpisodeTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction and Medal's Gaming Data Advantage00:02:08 Exclusive Demo: Vision-Based Gaming Agents00:06:17 Action Prediction and Real-World Video Transfer00:08:41 World Models: Interactive Video Generation00:13:42 From Runescape to AI: Pim's Founder Journey00:16:45 The Research Foundations: Diamond, Genie, and SEMA00:33:03 Vinod Khosla's Largest Seed Bet Since OpenAI00:35:04 Data Moats and Why GI Stayed Independent00:38:42 Self-Teaching AI Fundamentals: The Francois Fleuret Course00:40:28 Defining World Models vs Video Generation00:41:52 Why Simulation Complexity Favors World Models00:43:30 World Labs, Yann LeCun, and the Spatial Intelligence Race00:50:08 Business Model: APIs, Agents, and Game Developer Partnerships00:58:57 From Imitation Learning to RL: Making Clips Playable01:00:15 Open Research, Academic Partnerships, and Hiring01:02:09 2030 Vision: 80 Percent of Atoms-to-Atoms AI Interactions Get full access to Latent.Space at www.latent.space/subscribe

From building Medal into a 12M-user game clipping platform with 3.8B highlight moments to turning down a reported $500M offer from OpenAI (https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-offered-pay-500-million-startup-videogame-data) and raising a $134M seed from Khosla (https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/16/general-intuition-lands-134m-seed-to-teach-agents-spatial-reasoning-using-video-game-clips/) to spin out General Intuition, Pim is betting that world models trained on peak human gameplay are the next frontier after LLMs. We sat down with Pim to dig into why game highlights are “episodic memory for simulation” (and how Medal's privacy-first action labels became a world-model goldmine https://medal.tv/blog/posts/enabling-state-of-the-art-security-and-protections-on-medals-new-apm-and-controller-overlay-features), what it takes to build fully vision-based agents that just see frames and output actions in real time, how General Intuition transfers from games to real-world video and then into robotics, why world models and LLMs are complementary rather than rivals, what founders with proprietary datasets should know before selling or licensing to labs, and his bet that spatial-temporal foundation models will power 80% of future atoms-to-atoms interactions in both simulation and the real world. We discuss: How Medal's 3.8B action-labeled highlight clips became a privacy-preserving goldmine for world models Building fully vision-based agents that only see frames and output actions yet play like (and sometimes better than) humans Transferring from arcade-style games to realistic games to real-world video using the same perception–action recipe Why world models need actions, memory, and partial observability (smoke, occlusion, camera shake) vs. “just” pretty video generation Distilling giant policies into tiny real-time models that still navigate, hide, and peek corners like real players Pim's path from RuneScape private servers, Tourette's, and reverse engineering to leading a frontier world-model lab How data-rich founders should think about valuing their datasets, negotiating with big labs, and deciding when to go independent GI's first customers: replacing brittle behavior trees in games, engines, and controller-based robots with a “frames in, actions out” API Using Medal clips as “episodic memory of simulation” to move from imitation learning to RL via world models and negative events The 2030 vision: spatial–temporal foundation models that power the majority of atoms-to-atoms interactions in simulation and the real world — Pim X: https://x.com/PimDeWitte LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pimdw/ Where to find Latent Space X: https://x.com/latentspacepod Substack: https://www.latent.space/ Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction and Medal's Gaming Data Advantage 00:02:08 Exclusive Demo: Vision-Based Gaming Agents 00:06:17 Action Prediction and Real-World Video Transfer 00:08:41 World Models: Interactive Video Generation 00:13:42 From Runescape to AI: Pim's Founder Journey 00:16:45 The Research Foundations: Diamond, Genie, and SEMA 00:33:03 Vinod Khosla's Largest Seed Bet Since OpenAI 00:35:04 Data Moats and Why GI Stayed Independent 00:38:42 Self-Teaching AI Fundamentals: The Francois Fleuret Course 00:40:28 Defining World Models vs Video Generation 00:41:52 Why Simulation Complexity Favors World Models 00:43:30 World Labs, Yann LeCun, and the Spatial Intelligence Race 00:50:08 Business Model: APIs, Agents, and Game Developer Partnerships 00:58:57 From Imitation Learning to RL: Making Clips Playable 01:00:15 Open Research, Academic Partnerships, and Hiring 01:02:09 2030 Vision: 80 Percent of Atoms-to-Atoms AI Interactions

Composer Siddhartha Khosla joins Emily to discuss scoring Only Murders in the Building, what bonded him with Steve Martin, and his epic This is Us crossover with rock band Chicago. Emily reveals an embarrassing Linda Cardellini story, we talk about Siddhartha's hilarious meet-cute with Martin Short, and Emily gets an invite to cross something off her bucket list. So find your trailer, bleach your hair, and compose yourself as you enjoy Chapter 36 of How To Make It.Follow us on Instagram: @HowToMakeItPodcastSubscribe to our YouTube channel: @HowToMakeItPodcast

Khosla Ventures Co-Founder Vinod Khosla discusses backing AI-startup Reevo, the company's founder and CEO and founder David Zhu, and Reevo's "Frankenstack". Khosla spoke with Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rian sits down with Harpal Khosla for the Halloween episode. Costumes cheap. Mustaches falling off. They talk childhood snacks, why candy corn is actually good, monster movies, and Dennis Quaid reacting like a cartoon. Impressions happen. The friend-o-meter moves. Simple. Funny. Low stakes. Good hang. Thank you all for Listening!  Follow Harpal Khosla: https://www.instagram.com/khoslaharpal Follow Us: Podcast pages - https://linktr.ee/reydarpod https://www.instagram.com/reydarpodcast Rian Reyes - https://linktr.ee/rianreyes Josh the Producer - https://www.instagram.com/imjoshuabenjamin This Old Ting - https://www.instagram.com/thisoldthing.tv Support the podcast: Patreon - https://patreon.com/reydarpo Merch - https://www.etsy.com/shop/RiansMerch  Legacy Teas and Spices: https://legacyteasandspices.com Use code: 10YEARS

Sona Khosla thinks purpose belongs on the P&L. As Chief Impact Officer at Benevity, nicknamed the company's “conscience”, she helps global brands turn doing good into real business momentum. After a personal loss, she pivoted from marketing and built Benevity Impact Labs, using $3.8B in annual giving data to separate noise from signal. We talk about the new era of “quiet courage,” where companies may soften the language but keep the work moving. Sona shares small actions any employee can take right now and why authentic impact keeps people longer and sharpens performance. Her bottom line: purpose and profit aren't at odds - done right, they accelerate each other.

Welcome back to another episode of the EUVC Podcast, where we bring you the people and perspectives shaping European venture.Today, we're joined by Alexey Plesakov and Alexander Lis from Social Discovery Ventures (SDV) — a quietly influential, globally active investment firm deploying capital across the US and Europe. Born out of the bootstrapped success of Social Discovery Group (the company behind Dating.com), SDV invests in both funds and directs, with a venture allocation far above the family office norm.We dive into their origin story, why they're leaning into Europe now, their approach to fund vs. direct investments, and how they think about the future of VC in a more uncertain macro climate.

Interviewee: Bassel Shanab, BS is a fourth-year medical student at the Yale School of Medicine.  Interviewer:  Lisa Meeks, PhD, MA, Guest Editor, Academic Medicine Supplement on Disability Inclusion in UME. Description: This episode of Stories Behind the Science sits down with Bassel Shanab (Yale School of Medicine), co-first author of “The Intersection of Disability, Race, Ethnicity, and Financial Background on Food Insecurity Among Medical Students,” part of the Academic Medicine supplement on Disability Inclusion in UME. We move beyond prevalence rates to the lived realities behind them—and why hunger so often hides in plain sight in elite training environments. Bassel shares the personal experiences that shaped his questions, the multi-institutional data that sharpened the answers, and the practical moves any school can make now: screen routinely, get cost-of-living estimates right, normalize help-seeking, and invest in evidence-based campus supports. Along the way, we talk flourishing (not just “fixing”), student-led research networks, and why transparency beats stigma every time. Whether you're a dean, DRP, faculty member, or student, this conversation offers a humane roadmap from surviving to thriving. Links to the open-access article, and related tools are in the show notes. Transcript:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/184LJqvcAgHGmpHyOcaxOxRw4yetR7qrGPPin0HDX7i4/edit?usp=sharing   Bios:   Bassel Shanab, BS is a fourth-year medical student at the Yale School of Medicine. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Biological Sciences and Global Health Studies from Northwestern University, graduating with distinction. His academic interests include medical education, cardiovascular health, social determinants of health, and health policy. Key Words:   Food insecurity Medical students Disability Race and ethnicity Underrepresented in medicine (URiM) Low-income background Intersectionality Student well-being Academic performance   Resources:  Article from Today's Talk The Intersection of Disability, Race, Ethnicity, and Financial Background on Food Insecurity Among Medical Students   Nguyen, Mytien MS; Shanab, Bassel M.; Khosla, Pavan; Boatright, Dowin MD, MBA, MHS; Chaudhry, Sarwat I. MD; Brandt, Eric J. MD, MHS; Hammad, Nour M. MS; Grob, Karri L. EdD, MA; Brinker, Morgan; Cannon, Caden; Cermack, Katherine; Fathali, Maha; Kincaid, John W.R. MS, MPhil; Ma, Yuxing Emily; Ohno, Yuu MS; Pradeep, Aishwarya; Quintero, Anitza MBA; Raja, Neelufar; Rooney, Brendan L.; Stogniy, Sasha; Smith, Kiara K.; Sun, George; Sunkara, Jahnavi; Tang, Belinda; Rubick, Gabriella VanAken MD; Wang, JiCi MD; Bhagwagar, Sanaea Z.; Luzum, Nathan; Liu, Frank MS; Francis, John S. MD, PhD; Meeks, Lisa M. PhD, MA; Leung, Cindy W. PhD. The Intersection of Disability, Race, Ethnicity, and Financial Background on Food Insecurity Among Medical Students. Academic Medicine 100(10S):p S113-S118, October 2025. | DOI: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000006156   https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/fulltext/2025/10001/the_intersection_of_disability,_race,_ethnicity,.12.aspx The Docs With Disabilities Podcast https://www.docswithdisabilities.org/docswithpodcast

Apple ships hardware while everyone else ships AI press releases. The MOL quad debates whether Apple's “ignore the hype” strategy wins, why YC is full of “made-to-chart” AI startups, what unique conviction really means for investors, and how meme warfare is becoming the new GTM.Chapters: 01:02 – “Ozempic iPhone” and why “thin” might be back10:06 – Market reaction: “Not enough AI,” money flows to Oracle16:49 – YC protest: is relevance measured by outrage?25:47 – Creator-led startups as an investing edge26:49 – Khosla: bargain hunting is a poor AI bet37:20 – Why money feels unlimited again (FOMO returns)40:29 – Quiet shakeout: sub-$100M seed funds at risk42:05 – Crypto policy clarity as 2025 macro driver50:11 – Meme warfare: the next GTM playbookWe're also on ↓X: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspodInstagram: https://instagram.com/moreorlessYouTube: https://youtu.be/xzlAjHPZtW4Connect with us here:1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

The energy transition bears risks but also brings opportunities for investors. That insight drove the conversation led by Jayen Veerapen, Senior Advisor with the BMO Climate Institute, with Pooja Khosla, CEO of Entelligent, a developer of analytical tools to help the financial industry understand the future impact of climate change and energy transition. Also joining to discuss BMO's collaboration with Entelligent was Fabrice Tenga, Managing Director and Head of Equity Derivatives Financial Engineering, BMO Capital Markets.   “Every company is either a producer of energy or a user of energy. So, energy transition, yes, it impacts power companies, utility companies, but it also impacts technology companies that have a strong demand or use that energy component. It also impacts strongly the finance sector, because the funding of these companies is coming from the finance sector. So, we live in a very interconnected ecosystem of energy,” said Khosla.

Hi everyone, thanks for listening. Drop a line or two about the episode! Raj Khosla, one of the absolute greats, made films across genres. His films were often marked by outstanding music, well-written women characters, and self-referential nods. National Award-winning writer Amborish Roychoudhury has written a fantastic new biography of the man. I was delighted to host Amborish on the pod, for the second time, to take a closer look at Khosla and his films. Join us!Amazon link for Amborish's book: https://www.amazon.in/Raj-Khosla-Authorized-Amborish-Roychoudhury/dp/9357317708/f you enjoy the podcast, do consider supporting the show: https://www.buzzsprout.com/257788/supportFeedback/comments/questions: loveofcinemasf@gmail.comCredits:Produced and hosted by: Himanshu Joglekar (@loveofcinemasf8)Editor: Devika JoglekarMusic: Nakul AbhyankarCopyrights © Love of Cinema 2025Support the showIf you liked the episode and found value, please considering supporting the show. Your support will help me continue making good content for fans of Indian cinema everywhere across the world: https://www.buzzsprout.com/257788/support

Everywhere you look, it seems like bad news for climate tech. Investments are down, the US government has cut incentives and startups are running out of cash. But venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is still bullish, even though the One Big Beautiful Bill cut an estimated $500 billion in green spending. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi speaks with Khosla to find out when we can expect to see fusion, whether he’s reconsidering investing in the US and why he still thinks the best clean tech is yet to come. Explore further: Trump Immigration Policies Hit Climate Tech Talent Pipeline, Khosla Says Vinod Khosla Says ‘Fusion Will Be Real’ Within the Next Five Years From Brazil to Singapore, Manipulated Mosquitoes Fight Dengue - Bloomberg Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Brian Kahn, Michelle Ma, Eleanor Harrison Dengate, Jessica Beck, Siobhan Wagner, Meg Szabo, Abby Danzig and Krystal Contreras. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tech titan Vinod Khosla argues that a dozen extraordinary entrepreneurs could make all the difference in combatting climate change. He spoke with host Jeff Berman live at the Masters of Scale Summit in October. Khosla shares insights as an investor and details his techno-optimist view on what the future may hold.You can find Vinod's essay "AI: Dystopia or Utopia?" here: https://www.khoslaventures.com/ai-dystopia-or-utopia/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

(0:00) The Besties welcome Keith Rabois! (4:01) Keith explains why he returned to Khosla Ventures, the differences between Founders Fund and Khosla, and his husband Jacob Helberg's role in Trump Admin (13:09) Business acumen of Trump's cabinet and appointees, diversity of opinion (25:59) Google's new quantum chip: potential impact on encryption, cryptography, and more (43:50) Apple developing new server chip for AI inference, iOS flop, why its product culture is failing (54:30) TikTok panics after appeals court upholds the "divest-or-ban" law, with a January 19th deadline (1:03:55) State of Venture Capital, why Stripe is still private, thoughts on crypto Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow Keith: https://x.com/rabois Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://www.tiktok.com/@frankielapenna/video/7010077215576575238 https://www.axios.com/2024/12/06/trump-billionaires-cabinet-elon-musk https://blog.google/technology/research/google-willow-quantum-chip https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08449-y https://research.google/blog/suppressing-quantum-errors-by-scaling-a-surface-code-logical-qubit https://quantumai.google/roadmap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartmut_Neven https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment https://www.discovery.com/science/Double-Slit-Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-is-working-on-ai-chip-with-broadcom?rc=pxkrxo https://x.com/rabois/status/870673635375104000 https://www.amazon.com/Company-Giants-Conversations-Visionaries-Digital/dp/0070329656 https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/09/tech/bytedance-tiktok-halt-us-ban-intl/index.html https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-us-ban-sale-china-congress-de12b4d22aa8095e62cb0982a6e62235 https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ban-congress-bill-1c48466df82f3684bd6eb21e61ebcb8d https://pitchbook.com/news/reports/q3-2024-pitchbook-nvca-venture-monitor https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/12/servicetitan-starts-trading-on-nasdaq-after-ipo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/business/dealbook/ftc-trump-ferguson-khan.html https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/6/15/antitrust https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-05/convertible-bond-arbs-are-making-microstrategy-wall-street-s-hottest-trade