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This week hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot celebrate artists who found a new creative gear decades after they hit the music scene. It's Late-Career Encores, this week on Sound Opinions.Join our Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/3sivr9TBecome a member on Patreon: https://bit.ly/3slWZvcSign up for our newsletter: https://bit.ly/3eEvRnGMake a donation via PayPal: https://bit.ly/3dmt9lUSend us a Voice Memo: Desktop: bit.ly/2RyD5Ah Mobile: sayhi.chat/soundops Featured Songs:Johnny Cash, "Hurt," American IV: The Man Comes Around, American, 2002The Beatles, "With A Little Help From My Friends," Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Parlophone, 1967Johnny Cash, "Folsom Prison Blues," Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar!, Sun, 1955Johnny Cash, "The Mercy Seat," American III: Solitary Man, American, 2000Misson of Burma, "Academy Fight Song," Single, Ace of Hearts, 1980Misson of Burma, "2Wice," The Obliterati, Matador, 2006Wire, "1 2 X U," Pink Flag, Harvest, 1977Wire, "Joust & Jostle," Wire, Pinkflag, 2015The Staple Singers, "I'll Take You There," Be Altitude: Respect Yourself, Stax, 1972Mavis Staples, "99 and 1/2," We'll Never Turn Back, Anti-, 2007Superchunk, "Driveway To Driveway," Foolish, Merge, 1994Superchunk, "Me & You & Jackie Mittoo," I Hate Music, Merge, 2013Naked Raygun, "I Don't Know," Throb Throb, Homestead, 1985Naked Raygun, "Living in the Good Times," Over the Overlords, Wax Trax!, 2021A Tribe Called Quest, "Can I Kick It?," People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, Jive, 1990A Tribe Called Quest, "We the People....," We Got It from Here...Thank You 4 Your Service, Epic, 2016Bonnie Raitt, "Thank You," Bonnie Raitt, Warner Bros., 1971Bonnie Raitt, "The Road's My Middle Name," Nick of Time, Capitol, 1989Cher, "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves," Chér, Kapp, 1971Cher, "Strong Enough," Believe, WEA and Warner Bros., 1998Redd Kross, "Annie's Gone," Third Eye, Atlantic, 1990Redd Kross, "Candy Coloured Catastophe," Redd Kross, In the Red, 2024Converge, "Concubine," Jane Doe, Equal Vision, 2001Converge, "We Were Never the Same," Love is Not Enough, Epitaph and Deathwish, 2026John Prine, "Angel From Montgomery," John Prine, Atlantic, 1971John Prine, "When I Get to Heaven," The Tree of Forgiveness, Oh Boy, 2018Pulp, "Common People," Different Class, Island, 1995Pulp, "Spike Island," More, Rough Trade, 2025Al Green, "Belle," The Belle Album, Hi, 1977See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Most entrepreneurs believe they need to build everything alone.But the truth is, some of the fastest-growing businesses in the world are built through strategic partnerships and collaboration.In this episode of the Social Proof Podcast, David Shands and Donni Wiggins break down why the most successful entrepreneurs often merge strengths instead of competing.They talk about:• Why solo entrepreneurs grow slower than collaborative teams• The mindset shift required to scale faster• When it makes sense to pivot vs start something new• The hidden power of strategic partnerships• Why some entrepreneurs build generational businesses while others stallIf you're building a business and trying to figure out how to grow faster, this conversation will change how you think about collaboration, content, and scaling.Subscribe for more real conversations with real entrepreneurs on the Social Proof Podcast.Our Sponsors:* Check out Northwest Registered Agent and use my code socialprooffree for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode of the Women Powering Web3 by ECH Institute podcast, host Pooja engages with Christine Kim, a prominent figure in the Ethereum ecosystem. They discuss Christine's journey into the crypto space, significant Ethereum upgrades, the increasing institutional adoption of Ethereum, and the evolving role of women in the industry. Christine shares insights on the importance of visibility for women in crypto and debunks common myths surrounding participation in the space. The conversation concludes with a rapid-fire round and resources for listeners to explore further.

All speakers are announced at AIE EU, schedule coming soon. Join us there or in Miami with the renowned organizers of React Miami! Singapore CFP also open!We've called this out a few times over in AINews, but the overwhelming consensus in the Valley is that “the IDE is Dead”. In November it was just a gut feeling, but now we actually have data: even at the canonical “VSCode Fork” company, people are officially using more agents than tab autocomplete (the first wave of AI coding):Cursor has launched cloud agents for a few months now, and this specific launch is around Computer Use, which has come a long way since we first talked with Anthropic about it in 2024, and which Jonas productized as Autotab:We also take the opportunity to do a live demo, talk about slash commands and subagents, and the future of continual learning and personalized coding models, something that Sam previously worked on at New Computer. (The fact that both of these folks are top tier CEOs of their own startups that have now joined the insane talent density gathering at Cursor should also not be overlooked).Full Episode on YouTube!please like and subscribe!Timestamps00:00 Agentic Code Experiments00:53 Why Cloud Agents Matter02:08 Testing First Pillar03:36 Video Reviews Second Pillar04:29 Remote Control Third Pillar06:17 Meta Demos and Bug Repro13:36 Slash Commands and MCPs18:19 From Tab to Team Workflow31:41 Minimal Web UI Philosophy32:40 Why No File Editor34:38 Full Stack Cursor Debate36:34 Model Choice and Auto Routing38:34 Parallel Agents and Best Of N41:41 Subagents and Context Management44:48 Grind Mode and Throughput Future01:00:24 Cloud Agent Onboarding and MemoryTranscriptEP 77 - CURSOR - Audio version[00:00:00]Agentic Code ExperimentsSamantha: This is another experiment that we ran last year and didn't decide to ship at that time, but may come back to LM Judge, but one that was also agentic and could write code. So it wasn't just picking but also taking the learnings from two models or and models that it was looking at and writing a new diff.And what we found was that there were strengths to using models from different model providers as the base level of this process. Basically you could get almost like a synergistic output that was better than having a very unified like bottom model tier.Jonas: We think that over the coming months, the big unlock is not going to be one person with a model getting more done, like the water flowing faster and we'll be making the pipe much wider and so paralyzing more, whether that's swarms of agents or parallel agents, both of those are things that contribute to getting much more done in the same amount of time.Why Cloud Agents Matterswyx: This week, one of the biggest launches that Cursor's ever done is cloud agents. I think you, you had [00:01:00] cloud agents before, but this was like, you give cursor a computer, right? Yeah. So it's just basically they bought auto tab and then they repackaged it. Is that what's going on, or,Jonas: that's a big part of it.Yeah. Cloud agents already ran in their own computers, but they were sort of site reading code. Yeah. And those computers were not, they were like blank VMs typically that were not set up for the Devrel X for whatever repo the agents working on. One of the things that we talk about is if you put yourself in the model shoes and you were seeing tokens stream by and all you could do was cite read code and spit out tokens and hope that you had done the right thing,swyx: no chanceJonas: I'd be so bad.Like you obviously you need to run the code. And so that I think also is probably not that contrarian of a take, but no one has done that yet. And so giving the model the tools to onboard itself and then use full computer use end-to-end pixels in coordinates out and have the cloud computer with different apps in it is the big unlock that we've seen internally in terms of use usage of this going from, oh, we use it for little copy changes [00:02:00] to no.We're really like driving new features with this kind of new type of entech workflow. Alright, let's see it. Cool.Live Demo TourJonas: So this is what it looks like in cursor.com/agents. So this is one I kicked off a while ago. So on the left hand side is the chat. Very classic sort of agentic thing. The big new thing here is that the agent will test its changes.So you can see here it worked for half an hour. That is because it not only took time to write the tokens of code, it also took time to test them end to end. So it started Devrel servers iterate when needed. And so that's one part of it is like model works for longer and doesn't come back with a, I tried some things pr, but a I tested at pr that's ready for your review.One of the other intuition pumps we use there is if a human gave you a PR asked you to review it and you hadn't, they hadn't tested it, you'd also be annoyed because you'd be like, only ask me for a review once it's actually ready. So that's what we've done withTesting Defaults and Controlsswyx: simple question I wanted to gather out front.Some prs are way smaller, [00:03:00] like just copy change. Does it always do the video or is it sometimes,Jonas: Sometimes.swyx: Okay. So what's the judgment?Jonas: The model does it? So we we do some default prompting with sort. What types of changes to test? There's a slash command that people can do called slash no test, where if you do that, the model will not test,swyx: but the default is test.Jonas: The default is to be calibrated. So we tell it don't test, very simple copy changes, but test like more complex things. And then users can also write their agents.md and specify like this type of, if you're editing this subpart of my mono repo, never tested ‘cause that won't work or whatever.Videos and Remote ControlJonas: So pillar one is the model actually testing Pillar two is the model coming back with a video of what it did.We have found that in this new world where agents can end-to-end, write much more code, reviewing the code is one of these new bottlenecks that crop up. And so reviewing a video is not a substitute for reviewing code, but it is an entry point that is much, much easier to start with than glancing at [00:04:00] some giant diff.And so typically you kick one off you, it's done you come back and the first thing that you would do is watch this video. So this is a, video of it. In this case I wanted a tool tip over this button. And so it went and showed me what that looks like in, in this video that I think here, it actually used a gallery.So sometimes it will build storybook type galleries where you can see like that component in action. And so that's pillar two is like these demo videos of what it built. And then pillar number three is I have full remote control access to this vm. So I can go heat in here. I can hover things, I can type, I have full control.And same thing for the terminal. I have full access. And so that is also really useful because sometimes the video is like all you need to see. And oftentimes by the way, the video's not perfect, the video will show you, is this worth either merging immediately or oftentimes is this worth iterating with to get it to that final stage where I am ready to merge in.So I can go through some other examples where the first video [00:05:00] wasn't perfect, but it gave me confidence that we were on the right track and two or three follow-ups later, it was good to go. And then I also have full access here where some things you just wanna play around with. You wanna get a feel for what is this and there's no substitute to a live preview.And the VNC kind of VM remote access gives you that.swyx: Amazing What, sorry? What is VN. AndJonas: just the remote desktop. Remote desktop. Yeah.swyx: Sam, any other details that you always wanna call out?Samantha: Yeah, for me the videos have been super helpful. I would say, especially in cases where a common problem for me with agents and cloud agents beforehand was almost like under specification in my requests where our plan mode and going really back and forth and getting detailed implementation spec is a way to reduce the risk of under specification, but then similar to how human communication breaks down over time, I feel like you have this risk where it's okay, when I pull down, go to the triple of pulling down and like running this branch locally, I'm gonna see that, like I said, this should be a toggle and you have a checkbox and like, why didn't you get that detail?And having the video up front just [00:06:00] has that makes that alignment like you're talking about a shared artifact with the agent. Very clear, which has been just super helpful for me.Jonas: I can quickly run through some other Yes. Examples.Meta Agents and More DemosJonas: So this is a very front end heavy one. So one question I wasswyx: gonna say, is this only for frontJonas: end?Exactly. One question you might have is this only for front end? So this is another example where the thing I wanted it to implement was a better error message for saving secrets. So the cloud agents support adding secrets, that's part of what it needs to access certain systems. Part of onboarding that is giving access.This is cloud is working onswyx: cloud agents. Yes.Jonas: So this is a fun thing isSamantha: it can get super meta. ItJonas: can get super meta, it can start its own cloud agents, it can talk to its own cloud agents. Sometimes it's hard to wrap your mind around that. We have disabled, it's cloud agents starting more cloud agents. So we currently disallow that.Someday you might. Someday we might. Someday we might. So this actually was mostly a backend change in terms of the error handling here, where if the [00:07:00] secret is far too large, it would oh, this is actually really cool. Wow. That's the Devrel tools. That's the Devrel tools. So if the secret is far too large, we.Allow secrets above a certain size. We have a size limit on them. And the error message there was really bad. It was just some generic failed to save message. So I was like, Hey, we wanted an error message. So first cool thing it did here, zero prompting on how to test this. Instead of typing out the, like a character 5,000 times to hit the limit, it opens Devrel tools, writes js, or to paste into the input 5,000 characters of the letter A and then hit save, closes the Devrel tools, hit save and gets this new gets the new error message.So that looks like the video actually cut off, but here you can see the, here you can see the screenshot of the of the error message. What, so that is like frontend backend end-to-end feature to, to get that,swyx: yeah.Jonas: Andswyx: And you just need a full vm, full computer run everything.Okay. Yeah.Jonas: Yeah. So we've had versions of this. This is one of the auto tab lessons where we started that in 2022. [00:08:00] No, in 2023. And at the time it was like browser use, DOM, like all these different things. And I think we ended up very sort of a GI pilled in the sense that just give the model pixels, give it a box, a brain in a box is what you want and you want to remove limitations around context and capabilities such that the bottleneck should be the intelligence.And given how smart models are today, that's a very far out bottleneck. And so giving it its full VM and having it be onboarded with Devrel X set up like a human would is just been for us internally a really big step change in capability.swyx: Yeah I would say, let's call it a year ago the models weren't even good enough to do any of this stuff.SoSamantha: even six months ago. Yeah.swyx: So yeah what people have told me is like round about Sonder four fire is when this started being good enough to just automate fully by pixel.Jonas: Yeah, I think it's always a question of when is good enough. I think we found in particular with Opus 4 5, 4, 6, and Codex five three, that those were additional step [00:09:00] changes in the autonomy grade capabilities of the model to just.Go off and figure out the details and come back when it's done.swyx: I wanna appreciate a couple details. One 10 Stack Router. I see it. Yeah. I'm a big fan. Do you know any, I have to name the 10 Stack.Jonas: No.swyx: This just a random lore. Some buddy Sue Tanner. My and then the other thing if you switch back to the video.Jonas: Yeah.swyx: I wanna shout out this thing. Probably Sam did it. I don't knowJonas: the chapters.swyx: What is this called? Yeah, this is called Chapters. Yeah. It's like a Vimeo thing. I don't know. But it's so nice the design details, like the, and obviously a company called Cursor has to have a beautiful cursorSamantha: and it isswyx: the cursor.Samantha: Cursor.swyx: You see it branded? It's the cursor. Cursor, yeah. Okay, cool. And then I was like, I complained to Evan. I was like, okay, but you guys branded everything but the wallpaper. And he was like, no, that's a cursor wallpaper. I was like, what?Samantha: Yeah. Rio picked the wallpaper, I think. Yeah. The video.That's probably Alexi and yeah, a few others on the team with the chapters on the video. Matthew Frederico. There's been a lot of teamwork on this. It's a huge effort.swyx: I just, I like design details.Samantha: Yeah.swyx: And and then when you download it adds like a little cursor. Kind of TikTok clip. [00:10:00] Yes. Yes.So it's to make it really obvious is from Cursor,Jonas: we did the TikTok branding at the end. This was actually in our launch video. Alexi demoed the cloud agent that built that feature. Which was funny because that was an instance where one of the things that's been a consequence of having these videos is we use best of event where you run head to head different models on the same prompt.We use that a lot more because one of the complications with doing that before was you'd run four models and they would come back with some giant diff, like 700 lines of code times four. It's what are you gonna do? You're gonna review all that's horrible. But if you come back with four 22nd videos, yeah, I'll watch four 22nd videos.And then even if none of them is perfect, you can figure out like, which one of those do you want to iterate with, to get it over the line. Yeah. And so that's really been really fun.Bug Repro WorkflowJonas: Here's another example. That's we found really cool, which is we've actually turned since into a slash command as well slash [00:11:00] repro, where for bugs in particular, the model of having full access to the to its own vm, it can first reproduce the bug, make a video of the bug reproducing, fix the bug, make a video of the bug being fixed, like doing the same pattern workflow with obviously the bug not reproducing.And that has been the single category that has gone from like these types of bugs, really hard to reproduce and pick two tons of time locally, even if you try a cloud agent on it. Are you confident it actually fixed it to when this happens? You'll merge it in 90 seconds or something like that.So this is an example where, let me see if this is the broken one or the, okay, this is the fixed one. Okay. So we had a bug on cursor.com/agents where if you would attach images where remove them. Then still submit your prompt. They would actually still get attached to the prompt. Okay. And so here you can see Cursor is using, its full desktop by the way.This is one of the cases where if you just do, browse [00:12:00] use type stuff, you'll have a bad time. ‘cause now it needs to upload files. Like it just uses its native file viewer to do that. And so you can see here it's uploading files. It's going to submit a prompt and then it will go and open up. So this is the meta, this is cursor agent, prompting cursor agent inside its own environment.And so you can see here bug, there's five images attached, whereas when it's submitted, it only had one image.swyx: I see. Yeah. But you gotta enable that if you're gonna use cur agent inside cur.Jonas: Exactly. And so here, this is then the after video where it went, it does the same thing. It attaches images, removes, some of them hit send.And you can see here, once this agent is up, only one of the images is left in the attachments. Yeah.swyx: Beautiful.Jonas: Okay. So easy merge.swyx: So yeah. When does it choose to do this? Because this is an extra step.Jonas: Yes. I think I've not done a great job yet of calibrating the model on when to reproduce these things.Yeah. Sometimes it will do it of its own accord. Yeah. We've been conservative where we try to have it only do it when it's [00:13:00] quite sure because it does add some amount of time to how long it takes it to work on it. But we also have added things like the slash repro command where you can just do, fix this bug slash repro and then it will know that it should first make you a video of it actually finding and making sure it can reproduce the bug.swyx: Yeah. Yeah. One sort of ML topic this ties into is reward hacking, where while you write test that you update only pass. So first write test, it shows me it fails, then make you test pass, which is a classic like red green.Jonas: Yep.swyx: LikeJonas: A-T-D-D-T-D-Dswyx: thing.No, very cool. Was that the last demo? Is thereJonas: Yeah.Anything I missed on the demos or points that you think? I think thatSamantha: covers it well. Yeah.swyx: Cool. Before we stop the screen share, can you gimme like a, just a tour of the slash commands ‘cause I so God ready. Huh, what? What are the good ones?Samantha: Yeah, we wanna increase discoverability around this too.I think that'll be like a future thing we work on. Yeah. But there's definitely a lot of good stuff nowJonas: we have a lot of internal ones that I think will not be that interesting. Here's an internal one that I've made. I don't know if anyone else at Cursor uses this one. Fix bb.Samantha: I've never heard of it.Jonas: Yeah.[00:14:00]Fix Bug Bot. So this is a thing that we want to integrate more tightly on. So you made it forswyx: yourself.Jonas: I made this for myself. It's actually available to everyone in the team, but yeah, no one knows about it. But yeah, there will be Bug bot comments and so Bug Bot has a lot of cool things. We actually just launched Bug Bot Auto Fix, where you can click a button and or change a setting and it will automatically fix its own things, and that works great in a bunch of cases.There are some cases where having the context of the original agent that created the PR is really helpful for fixing the bugs, because it might be like, oh, the bug here is that this, is a regression and actually you meant to do something more like that. And so having the original prompt and all of the context of the agent that worked on it, and so here I could just do, fix or we used to be able to do fixed PB and it would do that.No test is another one that we've had. Slash repro is in here. We mentioned that one.Samantha: One of my favorites is cloud agent diagnosis. This is one that makes heavy use of the Datadog MCP. Okay. And I [00:15:00] think Nick and David on our team wrote, and basically if there is a problem with a cloud agent we'll spin up a bunch of subs.Like a singleswyx: instance.Samantha: Yeah. We'll take the ideas and argument and spin up a bunch of subagents using the Datadog MCP to explore the logs and find like all of the problems that could have happened with that. It takes the debugging time, like from potentially you can do quick stuff quickly with the Datadog ui, but it takes it down to, again, like a single agent call as opposed to trolling through logs yourself.Jonas: You should also talk about the stuff we've done with transcripts.Samantha: Yes. Also so basically we've also done some things internally. There'll be some versions of this as we ship publicly soon, where you can spit up an agent and give it access to another agent's transcript to either basically debug something that happened.So act as an external debugger. I see. Or continue the conversation. Almost like forking it.swyx: A transcript includes all the chain of thought for the 11 minutes here. 45 minutes there.Samantha: Yeah. That way. Exactly. So basically acting as a like secondary agent that debugs the first, so we've started to push more andswyx: they're all the same [00:16:00] code.It is just the different prompts, but the sa the same.Samantha: Yeah. So basically same cloud agent infrastructure and then same harness. And then like when we do things like include, there's some extra infrastructure that goes into piping in like an external transcript if we include it as an attachment.But for things like the cloud agent diagnosis, that's mostly just using the Datadog MCP. ‘Cause we also launched CPS along with along with this cloud agent launch, launch support for cloud agent cps.swyx: Oh, that was drawn out.Jonas: We won't, we'll be doing a bigger marketing moment for it next week, but, and you can now use CPS andswyx: People will listen to it as well.Yeah,Jonas: they'llSamantha: be ahead of the third. They'll be ahead. And I would I actually don't know if the Datadog CP is like publicly available yet. I realize this not sure beta testing it, but it's been one of my favorites to use. Soswyx: I think that one's interesting for Datadog. ‘cause Datadog wants to own that site.Interesting with Bits. I don't know if you've tried bits.Samantha: I haven't tried bits.swyx: Yeah.Jonas: That's their cloud agentswyx: product. Yeah. Yeah. They want to be like we own your logs and give us our, some part of the, [00:17:00] self-healing software that everyone wants. Yeah. But obviously Cursor has a strong opinion on coding agents and you, you like taking away from the which like obviously you're going to do, and not every company's like Cursor, but it's interesting if you're a Datadog, like what do you do here?Do you expose your logs to FDP and let other people do it? Or do you try to own that it because it's extra business for you? Yeah. It's like an interesting one.Samantha: It's a good question. All I know is that I love the Datadog MCP,Jonas: And yeah, it is gonna be no, no surprise that people like will demand it, right?Samantha: Yeah.swyx: It's, it's like anysystemswyx: of record company like this, it's like how much do you give away? Cool. I think that's that for the sort of cloud agents tour. Cool. And we just talk about like cloud agents have been when did Kirsten loves cloud agents? Do you know, in JuneJonas: last year.swyx: June last year. So it's been slowly develop the thing you did, like a bunch of, like Michael did a post where himself, where he like showed this chart of like ages overtaking tap. And I'm like, wow, this is like the biggest transition in code.Jonas: Yeah.swyx: Like in, in [00:18:00] like the last,Jonas: yeah. I think that kind of got turned out.Yeah. I think it's a very interest,swyx: not at all. I think it's been highlighted by our friend Andre Kati today.Jonas: Okay.swyx: Talk more about it. What does it mean? Yeah. Is I just got given like the cursor tab key.Jonas: Yes. Yes.swyx: That's that'sSamantha: cool.swyx: I know, but it's gonna be like put in a museum.Jonas: It is.Samantha: I have to say I haven't used tab a little bit myself.Jonas: Yeah. I think that what it looks like to code with AI code generally creates software, even if you want to go higher level. Is changing very rapidly. No, not a hot take, but I think from our vendor's point at Cursor, I think one of the things that is probably underappreciated from the outside is that we are extremely self-aware about that fact and Kerscher, got its start in phase one, era one of like tab and auto complete.And that was really useful in its time. But a lot of people start looking at text files and editing code, like we call it hand coding. Now when you like type out the actual letters, it'sswyx: oh that's cute.Jonas: Yeah.swyx: Oh that's cute.Jonas: You're so boomer. So boomer. [00:19:00] And so that I think has been a slowly accelerating and now in the last few months, rapidly accelerating shift.And we think that's going to happen again with the next thing where the, I think some of the pains around tab of it's great, but I actually just want to give more to the agent and I don't want to do one tab at a time. I want to just give it a task and it goes off and does a larger unit of work and I can.Lean back a little bit more and operate at that higher level of abstraction that's going to happen again, where it goes from agents handing you back diffs and you're like in the weeds and giving it, 32nd to three minute tasks, to, you're giving it, three minute to 30 minute to three hour tasks and you're getting back videos and trying out previews rather than immediately looking at diffs every single time.swyx: Yeah. Anything to add?Samantha: One other shift that I've noticed as our cloud agents have really taken off internally has been a shift from primarily individually driven development to almost this collaborative nature of development for us, slack is actually almost like a development on [00:20:00] Id basically.So Iswyx: like maybe don't even build a custom ui, like maybe that's like a debugging thing, but actually it's that.Samantha: I feel like, yeah, there's still so much to left to explore there, but basically for us, like Slack is where a lot of development happens. Like we will have these issue channels or just like this product discussion channels where people are always at cursing and that kicks off a cloud agent.And for us at least, we have team follow-ups enabled. So if Jonas kicks off at Cursor in a thread, I can follow up with it and add more context. And so it turns into almost like a discussion service where people can like collaborate on ui. Oftentimes I will kick off an investigation and then sometimes I even ask it to get blame and then tag people who should be brought in. ‘cause it can tag people in Slack and then other people will comeswyx: in, can tag other people who are not involved in conversation. Yes. Can just do at Jonas if say, was talking to,Samantha: yeah.swyx: That's cool. You should, you guys should make a big good deal outta that.Samantha: I know. It's a lot to, I feel like there's a lot more to do with our slack surface area to show people externally. But yeah, basically like it [00:21:00] can bring other people in and then other people can also contribute to that thread and you can end up with a PR again, with the artifacts visible and then people can be like, okay, cool, we can merge this.So for us it's like the ID is almost like moving into Slack in some ways as well.swyx: I have the same experience with, but it's not developers, it's me. Designer salespeople.Samantha: Yeah.swyx: So me on like technical marketing, vision, designer on design and then salespeople on here's the legal source of what we agreed on.And then they all just collaborate and correct. The agents,Jonas: I think that we found when these threads is. The work that is left, that the humans are discussing in these threads is the nugget of what is actually interesting and relevant. It's not the boring details of where does this if statement go?It's do we wanna ship this? Is this the right ux? Is this the right form factor? Yeah. How do we make this more obvious to the user? It's like those really interesting kind of higher order questions that are so easy to collaborate with and leave the implementation to the cloud agent.Samantha: Totally. And no more discussion of am I gonna do this? Are you [00:22:00] gonna do this cursor's doing it? You just have to decide. You like it.swyx: Sometimes the, I don't know if there's a, this probably, you guys probably figured this out already, but since I, you need like a mute button. So like cursor, like we're going to take this offline, but still online.But like we need to talk among the humans first. Before you like could stop responding to everything.Jonas: Yeah. This is a design decision where currently cursor won't chime in unless you explicitly add Mention it. Yeah. Yeah.Samantha: So it's not always listening.Yeah.Jonas: I can see all the intermediate messages.swyx: Have you done the recursive, can cursor add another cursor or spawn another cursor?Samantha: Oh,Jonas: we've done some versions of this.swyx: Because, ‘cause it can add humans.Jonas: Yes. One of the other things we've been working on that's like an implication of generating the code is so easy is getting it to production is still harder than it should be.And broadly, you solve one bottleneck and three new ones pop up. Yeah. And so one of the new bottlenecks is getting into production and we have a like joke internally where you'll be talking about some feature and someone says, I have a PR for that. Which is it's so easy [00:23:00] to get to, I a PR for that, but it's hard still relatively to get from I a PR for that to, I'm confident and ready to merge this.And so I think that over the coming weeks and months, that's a thing that we think a lot about is how do we scale up compute to that pipeline of getting things from a first draft An agent did.swyx: Isn't that what Merge isn't know what graphite's for, likeJonas: graphite is a big part of that. The cloud agent testingswyx: Is it fully integrated or still different companiesJonas: working on I think we'll have more to share there in the future, but the goal is to have great end-to-end experience where Cursor doesn't just help you generate code tokens, it helps you create software end-to-end.And so review is a big part of that, that I think especially as models have gotten much better at writing code, generating code, we've felt that relatively crop up more,swyx: sorry this is completely unplanned, but like there I have people arguing one to you need ai. To review ai and then there is another approach, thought school of thought where it's no, [00:24:00] reviews are dead.Like just show me the video. It's it like,Samantha: yeah. I feel again, for me, the video is often like alignment and then I often still wanna go through a code review process.swyx: Like still look at the files andSamantha: everything. Yeah. There's a spectrum of course. Like the video, if it's really well done and it does like fully like test everything, you can feel pretty competent, but it's still helpful to, to look at the code.I make hep pay a lot of attention to bug bot. I feel like Bug Bot has been a great really highly adopted internally. We often like, won't we tell people like, don't leave bug bot comments unaddressed. ‘cause we have such high confidence in it. So people always address their bug bot comments.Jonas: Once you've had two cases where you merged something and then you went back later, there was a bug in it, you merged, you went back later and you were like, ah, bug Bot had found that I should have listened to Bug Bot.Once that happens two or three times, you learn to wait for bug bot.Samantha: Yeah. So I think for us there's like that code level review where like it's looking at the actual code and then there's like the like feature level review where you're looking at the features. There's like a whole number of different like areas.There'll probably eventually be things like performance level review, security [00:25:00] review, things like that where it's like more more different aspects of how this feature might affect your code base that you want to potentially leverage an agent to help with.Jonas: And some of those like bug bot will be synchronous and you'll typically want to wait on before you merge.But I think another thing that we're starting to see is. As with cloud agents, you scale up this parallelism and how much code you generate. 10 person startups become, need the Devrel X and pipelines that a 10,000 person company used to need. And that looks like a lot of the things I think that 10,000 person companies invented in order to get that volume of software to production safely.So that's things like, release frequently or release slowly, have different stages where you release, have checkpoints, automated ways of detecting regressions. And so I think we're gonna need stacks merg stack diffs merge queues. Exactly. A lot of those things are going to be importantswyx: forward with.I think the majority of people still don't know what stack stacks are. And I like, I have many friends in Facebook and like I, I'm pretty friendly with graphite. I've just, [00:26:00] I've never needed it ‘cause I don't work on that larger team and it's just like democratization of no, only here's what we've already worked out at very large scale and here's how you can, it benefits you too.Like I think to me, one of the beautiful things about GitHub is that. It's actually useful to me as an individual solo developer, even though it's like actually collaboration software.Jonas: Yep.swyx: And I don't think a lot of Devrel tools have figured that out yet. That transition from like large down to small.Jonas: Yeah. Kers is probably an inverse story.swyx: This is small down toJonas: Yeah. Where historically Kers share, part of why we grew so quickly was anyone on the team could pick it up and in fact people would pick it up, on the weekend for their side project and then bring it into work. ‘cause they loved using it so much.swyx: Yeah.Jonas: And I think a thing that we've started working on a lot more, not us specifically, but as a company and other folks at Cursor, is making it really great for teams and making it the, the 10th person that starts using Cursor in a team. Is immediately set up with things like, we launched Marketplace recently so other people can [00:27:00] configure what CPS and skills like plugins.So skills and cps, other people can configure that. So that my cursor is ready to go and set up. Sam loves the Datadog, MCP and Slack, MCP you've also been using a lot butSamantha: also pre-launch, but I feel like it's so good.Jonas: Yeah, my cursor should be configured if Sam feels strongly that's just amazing and required.swyx: Is it automatically shared or you have to go and.Jonas: It depends on the MCP. So some are obviously off per user. Yeah. And so Sam can't off my cursor with my Slack MCP, but some are team off and those can be set up by admins.swyx: Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, I think, we had a man on the pod when cursor was five people, and like everyone was like, okay, what's the thing?And then it's usually something teams and org and enterprise, but it's actually working. But like usually at that stage when you're five, when you're just a vs. Code fork it's like how do you get there? Yeah. Will people pay for this? People do pay for it.Jonas: Yeah. And I think for cloud agents, we expect.[00:28:00]To have similar kind of PLG things where I think off the bat we've seen a lot of adoption with kind of smaller teams where the code bases are not quite as complex to set up. Yes. If you need some insane docker layer caching thing for builds not to take two hours, that's going to take a little bit longer for us to be able to support that kind of infrastructure.Whereas if you have front end backend, like one click agents can install everything that they need themselves.swyx: This is a good chance for me to just ask some technical sort of check the box questions. Can I choose the size of the vm?Jonas: Not yet. We are planning on adding that. Weswyx: have, this is obviously you want like LXXL, whatever, right?Like it's like the Amazon like sort menu.Jonas: Yes, exactly. We'll add that.swyx: Yeah. In some ways you have to basically become like a EC2, almost like you rent a box.Jonas: You rent a box. Yes. We talk a lot about brain in a box. Yeah. So cursor, we want to be a brain in a box,swyx: but is the mental model different? Is it more serverless?Is it more persistent? Is. Something else.Samantha: We want it to be a bit persistent. The desktop should be [00:29:00] something you can return to af even after some days. Like maybe you go back, they're like still thinking about a feature for some period of time. So theswyx: full like sus like suspend the memory and bring it back and then keep going.Samantha: Exactly.swyx: That's an interesting one because what I actually do want, like from a manna and open crawl, whatever, is like I want to be able to log in with my credentials to the thing, but not actually store it in any like secret store, whatever. ‘cause it's like this is the, my most sensitive stuff.Yeah. This is like my email, whatever. And just have it like, persist to the image. I don't know how it was hood, but like to rehydrate and then just keep going from there. But I don't think a lot of infra works that way. A lot of it's stateless where like you save it to a docker image and then it's only whatever you can describe in a Docker file and that's it.That's the only thing you can cl multiple times in parallel.Jonas: Yeah. We have a bunch of different ways of setting them up. So there's a dockerfile based approach. The main default way is actually snapshottingswyx: like a Linux vmJonas: like vm, right? You run a bunch of install commands and then you snapshot more or less the file system.And so that gets you set up for everything [00:30:00] that you would want to bring a new VM up from that template basically.swyx: Yeah.Jonas: And that's a bit distinct from what Sam was talking about with the hibernating and re rehydrating where that is a full memory snapshot as well. So there, if I had like the browser open to a specific page and we bring that back, that page will still be there.swyx: Was there any discussion internally and just building this stuff about every time you shoot a video it's actually you show a little bit of the desktop and the browser and it's not necessary if you just show the browser. If, if you know you're just demoing a front end application.Why not just show the browser, right? Like it Yeah,Samantha: we do have some panning and zooming. Yeah. Like it can decide that when it's actually recording and cutting the video to highlight different things. I think we've played around with different ways of segmenting it and yeah. There's been some different revs on it for sure.Jonas: Yeah. I think one of the interesting things is the version that you see now in cursor.com actually is like half of what we had at peak where we decided to unshift or unshipped quite a few things. So two of the interesting things to talk about, one is directly an answer to your [00:31:00] question where we had native browser that you would have locally, it was basically an iframe that via port forwarding could load the URL could talk to local host in the vm.So that gets you basically, so inswyx: your machine's browser,likeJonas: in your local browser? Yeah. You would go to local host 4,000 and that would get forwarded to local host 4,000 in the VM via port forward. We unshift that like atswyx: Eng Rock.Jonas: Like an Eng Rock. Exactly. We unshift that because we felt that the remote desktop was sufficiently low latency and more general purpose.So we build Cursor web, but we also build Cursor desktop. And so it's really useful to be able to have the full spectrum of things. And even for Cursor Web, as you saw in one of the examples, the agent was uploading files and like I couldn't upload files and open the file viewer if I only had access to the browser.And we've thought a lot about, this might seem funny coming from Cursor where we started as this, vs. Code Fork and I think inherited a lot of amazing things, but also a lot [00:32:00] of legacy UI from VS Code.Minimal Web UI SurfacesJonas: And so with the web UI we wanted to be very intentional about keeping that very minimal and exposing the right sum of set of primitive sort of app surfaces we call them, that are shared features of that cloud.Environment that you and the agent both use. So agent uses desktop and controls it. I can use desktop and controlled agent runs terminal commands. I can run terminal commands. So that's how our philosophy around it. The other thing that is maybe interesting to talk about that we unshipped is and we may, both of these things we may reship and decide at some point in the future that we've changed our minds on the trade offs or gotten it to a point where, putswyx: it out there.Let users tell you they want it. Exactly. Alright, fine.Why No File EditorJonas: So one of the other things is actually a files app. And so we used to have the ability at one point during the process of testing this internally to see next to, I had GID desktop and terminal on the right hand side of the tab there earlier to also have a files app where you could see and edit files.And we actually felt that in some [00:33:00] ways, by restricting and limiting what you could do there, people would naturally leave more to the agent and fall into this new pattern of delegating, which we thought was really valuable. And there's currently no way in Cursor web to edit these files.swyx: Yeah. Except you like open up the PR and go into GitHub and do the thing.Jonas: Yeah.swyx: Which is annoying.Jonas: Just tell the agent,swyx: I have criticized open AI for this. Because Open AI is Codex app doesn't have a file editor, like it has file viewer, but isn't a file editor.Jonas: Do you use the file viewer a lot?swyx: No. I understand, but like sometimes I want it, the one way to do it is like freaking going to no, they have a open in cursor button or open an antigravity or, opening whatever and people pointed that.So I was, I was part of the early testers group people pointed that and they were like, this is like a design smell. It's like you actually want a VS. Code fork that has all these things, but also a file editor. And they were like, no, just trust us.Jonas: Yeah. I think we as Cursor will want to, as a product, offer the [00:34:00] whole spectrum and so you want to be able to.Work at really high levels of abstraction and double click and see the lowest level. That's important. But I also think that like you won't be doing that in Slack. And so there are surfaces and ways of interacting where in some cases limiting the UX capabilities makes for a cleaner experience that's more simple and drives people into these new patterns where even locally we kicked off joking about this.People like don't really edit files, hand code anymore. And so we want to build for where that's going and not where it's beenswyx: a lot of cool stuff. And Okay. I have a couple more.Full Stack Hosting Debateswyx: So observations about the design elements about these things. One of the things that I'm always thinking about is cursor and other peers of cursor start from like the Devrel tools and work their way towards cloud agents.Other people, like the lovable and bolts of the world start with here's like the vibe code. Full cloud thing. They were already cloud edges before anyone else cloud edges and we will give you the full deploy platform. So we own the whole loop. We own all the infrastructure, we own, we, we have the logs, we have the the live site, [00:35:00] whatever.And you can do that cycle cursor doesn't own that cycle even today. You don't have the versal, you don't have the, you whatever deploy infrastructure that, that you're gonna have, which gives you powers because anyone can use it. And any enterprise who, whatever you infra, I don't care. But then also gives you limitations as to how much you can actually fully debug end to end.I guess I'm just putting out there that like is there a future where there's like full stack cursor where like cursor apps.com where like I host my cursor site this, which is basically a verse clone, right? I don't know.Jonas: I think that's a interesting question to be asking, and I think like the logic that you laid out for how you would get there is logic that I largely agree with.swyx: Yeah. Yeah.Jonas: I think right now we're really focused on what we see as the next big bottleneck and because things like the Datadog MCP exist, yeah. I don't think that the best way we can help our customers ship more software. Is by building a hosting solution right now,swyx: by the way, these are things I've actually discussed with some of the companies I just named.Jonas: Yeah, for sure. Right now, just this big bottleneck is getting the code out there and also [00:36:00] unlike a lovable in the bolt, we focus much more on existing software. And the zero to one greenfield is just a very different problem. Imagine going to a Shopify and convincing them to deploy on your deployment solution.That's very different and I think will take much longer to see how that works. May never happen relative to, oh, it's like a zero to one app.swyx: I'll say. It's tempting because look like 50% of your apps are versal, superb base tailwind react it's the stack. It's what everyone does.So I it's kinda interesting.Jonas: Yeah.Model Choice and Auto Routingswyx: The other thing is the model select dying. Right now in cloud agents, it's stuck down, bottom left. Sure it's Codex High today, but do I care if it's suddenly switched to Opus? Probably not.Samantha: We definitely wanna give people a choice across models because I feel like it, the meta change is very frequently.I was a big like Opus 4.5 Maximalist, and when codex 5.3 came out, I hard, hard switch. So that's all I use now.swyx: Yeah. Agreed. I don't know if, but basically like when I use it in Slack, [00:37:00] right? Cursor does a very good job of exposing yeah. Cursors. If people go use it, here's the model we're using.Yeah. Here's how you switch if you want. But otherwise it's like extracted away, which is like beautiful because then you actually, you should decide.Jonas: Yeah, I think we want to be doing more with defaults.swyx: Yeah.Jonas: Where we can suggest things to people. A thing that we have in the editor, the desktop app is auto, which will route your request and do things there.So I think we will want to do something like that for cloud agents as well. We haven't done it yet. And so I think. We have both people like Sam, who are very savvy and want know exactly what model they want, and we also have people that want us to pick the best model for them because we have amazing people like Sam and we, we are the experts.Yeah. We have both the traffic and the internal taste and experience to know what we think is best.swyx: Yeah. I have this ongoing pieces of agent lab versus model lab. And to me, cursor and other companies are example of an agent lab that is, building a new playbook that is different from a model lab where it's like very GP heavy Olo.So obviously has a research [00:38:00] team. And my thesis is like you just, every agent lab is going to have a router because you're going to be asked like, what's what. I don't keep up to every day. I'm not a Sam, I don't keep up every day for using you as sample the arm arbitrator of taste. Put me on CRI Auto.Is it free? It's not free.Jonas: Auto's not free, but there's different pricing tiers. Yeah.swyx: Put me on Chris. You decide from me based on all the other people you know better than me. And I think every agent lab should basically end up doing this because that actually gives you extra power because you like people stop carrying or having loyalty with one lab.Jonas: Yeah.Best Of N and Model CouncilsJonas: Two other maybe interesting things that I don't know how much they're on your radar are one the best event thing we mentioned where running different models head to head is actually quite interesting becauseswyx: which exists in cursor.Jonas: That exists in cur ID and web. So the problem is where do you run them?swyx: Okay.Jonas: And so I, I can share my screen if that's interesting. Yeahinteresting.swyx: Yeah. Yeah. Obviously parallel agents, very popal.Jonas: Yes, exactly. Parallel agentsswyx: in you mind. Are they the same thing? Best event and parallel agents? I don't want to [00:39:00] put words in your mouth.Jonas: Best event is a subset of parallel agents where they're running on the same prompt.That would be my answer. So this is what that looks like. And so here in this dropdown picker, I can just select multiple models.swyx: Yeah.Jonas: And now if I do a prompt, I'm going to do something silly. I am running these five models.swyx: Okay. This is this fake clone, of course. The 2.0 yeah.Jonas: Yes, exactly. But they're running so the cursor 2.0, you can do desktop or cloud.So this is cloud specifically where the benefit over work trees is that they have their own VMs and can run commands and won't try to kill ports that the other one is running. Which are some of the pains. These are allswyx: called work trees?Jonas: No, these are all cloud agents with their own VMs.swyx: Okay. ButJonas: When you do it locally, sometimes people do work trees and that's been the main way that people have set out parallel so far.I've gotta say.swyx: That's so confusing for folks.Jonas: Yeah.swyx: No one knows what work trees are.Jonas: Exactly. I think we're phasing out work trees.swyx: Really.Jonas: Yeah.swyx: Okay.Samantha: But yeah. And one other thing I would say though on the multimodel choice, [00:40:00] so this is another experiment that we ran last year and the decide to ship at that time but may come back to, and there was an interesting learning that's relevant for, these different model providers. It was something that would run a bunch of best of ends but then synthesize and basically run like a synthesizer layer of models. And that was other agents that would take LM Judge, but one that was also agentic and could write code. So it wasn't just picking but also taking the learnings from two models or, and models that it was looking at and writing a new diff.And what we found was that at the time at least, there were strengths to using models from different model providers as the base level of this process. Like basically you could get almost like a synergistic output that was better than having a very unified, like bottom model tier. So it was really interesting ‘cause it's like potentially, even though even in the future when you have like maybe one model as ahead of the other for a little bit, there could be some benefit from having like multiple top tier models involved in like a [00:41:00] model swarm or whatever agent Swarm that you're doing, that they each have strengths and weaknesses.Yeah.Jonas: Andre called this the council, right?Samantha: Yeah, exactly. We actually, oh, that's another internal command we have that Ian wrote slash council. Oh, and they some, yeah.swyx: Yes. This idea is in various forms everywhere. And I think for me, like for me, the productization of it, you guys have done yeah, like this is very flexible, but.If I were to add another Yeah, what your thing is on here it would be too much. I what, let's say,Samantha: Ideally it's all, it's something that the user can just choose and it all happens under the hood in a way where like you just get the benefit of that process at the end and better output basically, but don't have to get too lost in the complexity of judging along the way.Jonas: Okay.Subagents for ContextJonas: Another thing on the many agents, on different parallel agents that's interesting is an idea that's been around for a while as well that has started working recently is subagents. And so this is one other way to get agents of the different prompts and different goals and different models, [00:42:00] different vintages to work together.Collaborate and delegate.swyx: Yeah. I'm very like I like one of my, I always looking for this is the year of the blah, right? Yeah. I think one of the things on the blahs is subs. I think this is of but I haven't used them in cursor. Are they fully formed or how do I honestly like an intro because do I form them from new every time?Do I have fixed subagents? How are they different for slash commands? There's all these like really basic questions that no one stops to answer for people because everyone's just like too busy launching. We have toSamantha: honestly, you could, you can see them in cursor now if you just say spin up like 50 subagents to, so cursor definesswyx: what Subagents.Yeah.Samantha: Yeah. So basically I think I shouldn't speak for the whole subagents team. This is like a different team that's been working on this, but our thesis or thing that we saw internally is that like they're great for context management for kind of long running threads, or if you're trying to just throw more compute at something.We have strongly used, almost like a generic task interface where then the main agent can define [00:43:00] like what goes into the subagent. So if I say explore my code base, it might decide to spin up an explore subagent and or might decide to spin up five explore subagent.swyx: But I don't get to set what those subagent are, right?It's all defined by a model.Samantha: I think. I actually would have to refresh myself on the sub agent interface.Jonas: There are some built-in ones like the explore subagent is free pre-built. But you can also instruct the model to use other subagents and then it will. And one other example of a built-in subagent is I actually just kicked one off in cursor and I can show you what that looks like.swyx: Yes. Because I tried to do this in pure prompt space.Jonas: So this is the desktop app? Yeah. Yeah. And that'sswyx: all you need to do, right? Yeah.Jonas: That's all you need to do. So I said use a sub agent to explore and I think, yeah, so I can even click in and see what the subagent is working on here. It ran some fine command and this is a composer under the hood.Even though my main model is Opus, it does smart routing to take, like in this instance the explorer sort of requires reading a ton of things. And so a faster model is really useful to get an [00:44:00] answer quickly, but that this is what subagent look like. And I think we wanted to do a lot more to expose hooks and ways for people to configure these.Another example of a cus sort of builtin subagent is the computer use subagent in the cloud agents, where we found that those trajectories can be long and involve a lot of images obviously, and execution of some testing verification task. We wanted to use that models that are particularly good at that.So that's one reason to use subagents. And then the other reason to use subagents is we want contexts to be summarized reduced down at a subagent level. That's a really neat boundary at which to compress that rollout and testing into a final message that agent writes that then gets passed into the parent rather than having to do some global compaction or something like that.swyx: Awesome. Cool. While we're in the subagents conversation, I can't do a cursor conversation and not talk about listen stuff. What is that? What is what? He built a browser. He built an os. Yes. And he [00:45:00] experimented with a lot of different architectures and basically ended up reinventing the software engineer org chart.This is all cool, but what's your take? What's, is there any hole behind the side? The scenes stories about that kind of, that whole adventure.Samantha: Some of those experiments have found their way into a feature that's available in cloud agents now, the long running agent mode internally, we call it grind mode.And I think there's like some hint of grind mode accessible in the picker today. ‘cause you can do choose grind until done. And so that was really the result of experiments that Wilson started in this vein where he I think the Ralph Wigga loop was like floating around at the time, but it was something he also independently found and he was experimenting with.And that was what led to this product surface.swyx: And it is just simple idea of have criteria for completion and do not. Until you complete,Samantha: there's a bit more complexity as well in, in our implementation. Like there's a specific, you have to start out by aligning and there's like a planning stage where it will work with you and it will not get like start grind execution mode until it's decided that the [00:46:00] plan is amenable to both of you.Basically,swyx: I refuse to work until you make me happy.Jonas: We found that it's really important where people would give like very underspecified prompt and then expect it to come back with magic. And if it's gonna go off and work for three minutes, that's one thing. When it's gonna go off and work for three days, probably should spend like a few hours upfront making sure that you have communicated what you actually want.swyx: Yeah. And just to like really drive from the point. We really mean three days that No, noJonas: human. Oh yeah. We've had three day months innovation whatsoever.Samantha: I don't know what the record is, but there's been a long time with the grantsJonas: and so the thing that is available in cursor. The long running agent is if you wanna think about it, very abstractly that is like one worker node.Whereas what built the browser is a society of workers and planners and different agents collaborating. Because we started building the browser with one worker node at the time, that was just the agent. And it became one worker node when we realized that the throughput of the system was not where it needed to be [00:47:00] to get something as large of a scale as the browser done.swyx: Yeah.Jonas: And so this has also become a really big mental model for us with cloud, cloud agents is there's the classic engineering latency throughput trade-offs. And so you know, the code is water flowing through a pipe. The, we think that over the coming months, the big unlock is not going to be one person with a model getting more done, like the water flowing faster and we'll be making the pipe much wider and so ing more, whether that's swarms of agents or parallel agents, both of those are things that contribute to getting.Much more done in the same amount of time, but any one of those tasks doesn't necessarily need to get done that quickly. And throughput is this really big thing where if you see the system of a hundred concurrent agents outputting thousands of tokens a second, you can't go back like that.Just you see a glimpse of the future where obviously there are many caveats. Like no one is using this browser. IRL. There's like a bunch of things not quite right yet, but we are going to get to systems that produce real production [00:48:00] code at the scale much sooner than people think. And it forces you to think what even happens to production systems. Like we've broken our GitHub actions recently because we have so many agents like producing and pushing code that like CICD is just overloaded. ‘cause suddenly it's like effectively weg grew, cursor's growing very quickly anyway, but you grow head count, 10 x when people run 10 x as many agents.And so a lot of these systems, exactly, a lot of these systems will need to adapt.swyx: It also reminds me, we, we all, the three of us live in the app layer, but if you talk to the researchers who are doing RL infrastructure, it's the same thing. It's like all these parallel rollouts and scheduling them and making sure as much throughput as possible goes through them.Yeah, it's the same thing.Jonas: We were talking briefly before we started recording. You were mentioning memory chips and some of the shortages there. The other thing that I think is just like hard to wrap your head around the scale of the system that was building the browser, the concurrency there.If Sam and I both have a system like that running for us, [00:49:00] shipping our software. The amount of inference that we're going to need per developer is just really mind-boggling. And that makes, sometimes when I think about that, I think that even with, the most optimistic projections for what we're going to need in terms of buildout, our underestimating, the extent to which these swarm systems can like churn at scale to produce code that is valuable to the economy.And,swyx: yeah, you can cut this if it's sensitive, but I was just Do you have estimates of how much your token consumption is?Jonas: Like per developer?swyx: Yeah. Or yourself. I don't need like comfy average. I just curious. ISamantha: feel like I, for a while I wasn't an admin on the usage dashboard, so I like wasn't able to actually see, but it was a,swyx: mine has gone up.Samantha: Oh yeah.swyx: But I thinkSamantha: it's in terms of how much work I'm doing, it's more like I have no worries about developers losing their jobs, at least in the near term. ‘cause I feel like that's a more broad discussion.swyx: Yeah. Yeah. You went there. I didn't go, I wasn't going there.I was just like how much more are you using?Samantha: There's so much stuff to be built. And so I feel like I'm basically just [00:50:00] trying to constantly I have more ambitions than I did before. Yes. Personally. Yes. So can't speak to the broader thing. But for me it's like I'm busier than ever before.I'm using more tokens and I am also doing more things.Jonas: Yeah. Yeah. I don't have the stats for myself, but I think broadly a thing that we've seen, that we expect to continue is J'S paradox. Whereswyx: you can't do it in our podcast without seeingJonas: it. Exactly. We've done it. Now we can wrap. We've done, we said the words.Phase one tab auto complete people paid like 20 bucks a month. And that was great. Phase two where you were iterating with these local models. Today people pay like hundreds of dollars a month. I think as we think about these highly parallel kind of agents running off for a long times in their own VM system, we are already at that point where people will be spending thousands of dollars a month per human, and I think potentially tens of thousands and beyond, where it's not like we are greedy for like capturing more money, but what happens is just individuals get that much more leverage.And if one person can do as much as 10 people, yeah. That tool that allows ‘em to do that is going to be tremendously valuable [00:51:00] and worth investing in and taking the best thing that exists.swyx: One more question on just the cursor in general and then open-ended for you guys to plug whatever you wanna put.How is Cursor hiring these days?Samantha: What do you mean by how?swyx: So obviously lead code is dead. Oh,Samantha: okay.swyx: Everyone says work trial. Different people have different levels of adoption of agents. Some people can really adopt can be much more productive. But other people, you just need to give them a little bit of time.And sometimes they've never lived in a token rich place like cursor.And once you live in a token rich place, you're you just work differently. But you need to have done that. And a lot of people anyway, it was just open-ended. Like how has agentic engineering, agentic coding changed your opinions on hiring?Is there any like broad like insights? Yeah.Jonas: Basically I'm asking this for other people, right? Yeah, totally. Totally. To hear Sam's opinion, we haven't talked about this the two of us. I think that we don't see necessarily being great at the latest thing with AI coding as a prerequisite.I do think that's a sign that people are keeping up and [00:52:00] curious and willing to upscale themselves in what's happening because. As we were talking about the last three months, the game has completely changed. It's like what I do all day is very different.swyx: Like it's my job and I can't,Jonas: Yeah, totally.I do think that still as Sam was saying, the fundamentals remain important in the current age and being able to go and double click down. And models today do still have weaknesses where if you let them run for too long without cleaning up and refactoring, the coke will get sloppy and there'll be bad abstractions.And so you still do need humans that like have built systems before, no good patterns when they see them and know where to steer things.Samantha: I would agree with that. I would say again, cursor also operates very quickly and leveraging ag agentic engineering is probably one reason why that's possible in this current moment.I think in the past it was just like people coding quickly and now there's like people who use agents to move faster as well. So it's part of our process will always look for we'll select for kind of that ability to make good decisions quickly and move well in this environment.And so I think being able to [00:53:00] figure out how to use agents to help you do that is an important part of it too.swyx: Yeah. Okay. The fork in the road, either predictions for the end of the year, if you have any, or PUDs.Jonas: Evictions are not going to go well.Samantha: I know it's hard.swyx: They're so hard. Get it wrong.It's okay. Just, yeah.Jonas: One other plug that may be interesting that I feel like we touched on but haven't talked a ton about is a thing that the kind of these new interfaces and this parallelism enables is the ability to hop back and forth between threads really quickly. And so a thing that we have,swyx: you wanna show something or,Jonas: yeah, I can show something.A thing that we have felt with local agents is this pain around contact switching. And you have one agent that went off and did some work and another agent that, that did something else. And so here by having, I just have three tabs open, let's say, but I can very quickly, hop in here.This is an example I showed earlier, but the actual workflow here I think is really different in a way that may not be obvious, where, I start t

"We ultimately are trying to level the playing field for independent brands to be able to sell into big major retailers."On this episode of Limitless Africa, we're looking at how African businesses can sell to US customers. If you're a homeware brand in Togo, or a clean beauty maker in South Africa or a jewelry manufacturer in Kenya, how can you get your product to American customers, those consumers shopping on Target, Etsy or Bloomingdale's? And it's not a one-way street: those American retailers are also looking to stock amazing African homeware, accessories, lotions and potions - they are crying out for high quality products that are unique, and will delight their customers.That's where amazing entrepreneurs like Ella Pienovich come in. She's the co-founder behind PoweredByPeople, a multi-channel distribution platform that connects independent brands to over 100 million customers across more than 200 leading online retailers & marketplaces. Ella is opening up huge new markets, and offering digital innovation to African entrepreneurs.Plus: How clean beauty is the next trend.

La rédaction de Programmez! échange avec Donia Chaiehloudj sur comment contribuer à un projet open source et l'initiative Merge Forward de la CNCFSite CNCF : https://www.linkedin.com/company/merge-forward-community/Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

It's not hard.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The US Supreme Court blocks a California education law that advocates say protects trans students. Paramount wants to merge its streaming service with HBO-Max. LA City Council is on the verge of a major decision on the future of homeless service spending. Plus, more from Morning Edition. Support The L.A. Report by donating at LAist.com/join and by visiting https://laist.comSupport the show: https://laist.com

welcome to wall-e's tech briefing for tuesday, march 3rd! explore today's captivating tech stories: cursor's milestone: cursor, the ai coding assistant, achieves a revenue milestone with over $2 billion annualized revenue. despite competition, focusing on large corporate clients contributes to 60% of its revenue. stripe's new ai tool: stripe launches a feature turning ai costs into profitable ventures for startups by allowing a markup on ai model usage, helping maintain steady profit margins. paramount skydance merger: paramount+ and hbo max plan to merge following the acquisition of warner bros. discovery, forming a platform projected to have over 200 million subscribers. the merger raises antitrust concerns and potential job cuts. openai's defense deal backlash: openai faces backlash after its deal with the department of defense, resulting in a 295% increase in chatgpt uninstalls. competitor anthropic gains traction as concerns on tech ethics rise. shifts in tech landscape: the openai defense contract sparks discussion on tech ethics and national security, highlighting a shift in consumer sentiment and awareness. stay tuned for tomorrow's tech updates!

Paramount+ and HBO Max to possibly merge See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Plus - X adds ‘Paid Partnership' labels so creators can ditch the hashtags; Apple speeds up the iPad Air with an M4 upgrade Presented by Adaptive. Learn more at adaptivesecurity.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Reclaiming Purpose in the "New World Normal" This episode exposes the generational trauma and rigid "normality" cages holding you back...

Today on the Show, an Upside Down PIZZA ruined someone's night, Payton tells us about her unfortunate driving habits, Johnjay's live photos led him down a path of confusion, and MORE! Also, CARDI B-EAT SHAZAM courtesy of Nic and REVERSE THE VERSE for NEW MUSIC FRIDAY BRUNO MARS! Plus, JAKE MISPOKE so we asked you about your BRAIN STUCK TONGUE STUCK MISPOKE moments.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Atticus Derrickson is a composer and music producer who recently scored The Black Phone 2. He is also the son of Scott Derrickson, director of both Black Phone movies, Sinister, and many others. In this conversation, Atticus and I get into composing horror scores, how to achieve fear through sound design, and much much more.Show NotesMovies and TV MentionedThe Black Phone 2The Black PhoneSinisterV/H/S 85SmileThe WitchThe LighthouseShadow Crawler (Short)People & Artists MentionedChristopher YoungTangerine DreamVangelisCliff MartinezMark Korven (including his “Apprehension Engine”)Throbbing GristleChris Carter (Throbbing Gristle member referenced in gear discussion)Ulver (band whose music is used in the Sinister tapes discussion)Scott DerricksonJoe HillAdam HendricksLou Ford (editor)Luciano (sound designer)Marina Moore (string player)Robert EggersGear and Music Tech MentionedProphet synthesizer, including Prophet-5 and Prophet-10John Carpenter style synthCrystallizer pedal recreation from Dirt Monger InstrumentsLogic Pro XCanter reel (used to create drone textures)Dulcimer (used in experimentation)Atmos and surround mixing formats, including 5.1Physical MediaWaxwork Records vinyl release for The Black Phone 2 soundtrackKey TakeawaysStart early and let tone guide the whole production.Atticus began writing tonal score pieces before the script was even finished. That let production carry his music into the shoot, so the score could help dictate direction. A lot of those early pieces ended up in the final film because they already lived inside the world of the story—and inside the director's head.This is why Atticus recommends avoiding temp tracks: they can be a trap, tying you to a specific (often derivative) sound instead of pushing you toward something new. Working this far upstream also allows for a more holistic approach to scoring the film. The tone and feeling of Black Phone 2 is one of the things that made it so distinctive, and a big reason is that the score was completely original rather than shaped by temp music.Merge score and sound design for unified texture.Atticus describes a constant collaboration with the sound designer and mixer so elements like static, wind, and snowy ambience could interlock with the music instead of competing with it. The goal was one cohesive system—where sound design and score feel like the same organism. As a result, the movie has a very strong sense of surrealism that makes you feel like you're in a very beautiful nightmare.Protect what's working.Atticus told a story about a final music cue that had to be shortened to fit the edit. When he tried to cut it down, he realized it damaged the overall effect, so he fought to keep the full cue intact—and won. As a result, the scene works beautifully. Whether it's a music cue or any other element, sometimes something is perfect as-is and it's the surrounding pieces that need to be reshaped to support it. When something is working, protect it.Follow Atticus Derrickson at:IMBd: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm12279894/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/atticusderricksonSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1ZAQG5e9sxTTkxKjr5OcLs?si=bT32GgkJTpKHqThqabqT1A

I also built a playable during the recording! Playables are no longer optional. If you're running on AppLovin, Unity, ironSource, or any SDK network and you don't have playables, you're leaving scale on the table.https://playablemaker.com/25gamers/ build your playables now!In this solo episode, I break down:• Why top games produce 60 playables per month• The real playable testing structure• Why “just wrapping your tutorial” doesn't work• Template strategy vs gameplay fidelity• How to iterate instead of building from scratch every time• And I built a playable live on cameraThis episode is a teaser for the upcoming Playable Bible.If you want to scale outside Meta/Google/TikTok in 2026, this is mandatory.

Lumea evoluează tot mai rapid, întreaga planetă se digitalizează accelerat și asigurările sunt la vârful acestui trend. Cum se adaptează industria de profil la nevoile clienților? În ce măsură inovația digitală îi ”atinge” pe toți cei interesați? Pot acestia, acum, găsi, mai ușor și mai rapid, cele mai bune forme de protecție pentru ei înșiși și cei dragi? Invitat: Mihai Dan APOSTOL, CEO & Co-Fondator, Insuretech

Joseph Cianflone, Leader of the Canadian Party of Quebec

Does God care about generosity? How did the early church “have everything in common”? Why did God judge Ananias and Sapphira? In this episode, one of Watermark's elders, Kyle Thompson, joins Emma to discuss Acts 4:32-37 and the radical generosity that marked the early church. Then, Emma unpacks Acts 5:1-11 and the story of Ananias and Sapphira with Watermark's National Director of Merge and Foundation Groups, Scott Kedersha.  // ADDITIONAL VERSES MENTIONED: 1 John 3: 17; Psalm 50: 10; 2 Corinthians 8: 5, 12-15; 9:7; Proverbs 14: 12; Luke 21: 3-4; John 8: 44  // RELATED JOIN THE JOURNEY EPISODES:  S4:265 – Acts 5-6 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s4-265-acts-5-6/id1600151923?i=1000735373170)  // RESOURCES: Moneywise, biblical money management at Watermark: (https://www.watermark.org/ministries/moneywise)  // WHAT IS JOIN THE JOURNEY? Join The Journey is a realistic daily Bible reading plan that helps followers of Jesus at Watermark Community Church and beyond enjoy abiding in Jesus together. Join The Journey Jr. is designed to help parents guide their kids in Bible reading through interactive and age-specific lessons. In 2026, we're studying the book of Acts—one passage per week. For another year, teaching on Sunday will align with each week's passage. Then, for the next six days, we'll return to the same passage with fresh focus, exploring insights about who God is and how we can enjoy him more deeply. Monday through Saturday, we'll approach the same passage from a different perspective each day—whether observation, interpretation, prayer, or another spiritual practice—to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for God's Word. Then, watch or listen to the video podcast to tackle the week's toughest verses and discover key historical, theological, and practical insights. Daily Bible lessons for adults: https://jointhejourney.com Daily Bible lessons for parents and families: https://jointhejourney.com/jr Weekly Bible podcast for kids: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...  // MORE RESOURCES FROM JOIN THE JOURNEY:  Digital Bible study resources: https://jointhejourney.com/resources Previous years' print curriculum: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Waterma... Contact the Join The Journey team: jointhejourney@watermark.org  

St. Johns Technical High to merge with SAHS

There are so many misconceptions about what tantra truly is.It's not about sex.It's not about partner work.It's about coming into deep inner union with your Self. Your soul. Your divinity.Tantra begins as in individual practice that, when navigated consciously, allows you to:* Reclaim the holiness of your body* Merge your sensuality with your spirituality* Reunite your divinity with your humanityTune into the latest Soul Sovereignty Podcast on What is Tantra from an Ancient Perspective to discover more.You can listen on all major platforms including iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.Host Jessica Falcon was trained in Egyptian Tantra and supports all of her clients to develop inner union by reuniting with their own divinity (which is necessary to experience sacred union with another).Special Guest Sunny Grigorova is a Tantra Essence Teacher who helps women soften into a deeper level of receptivity. They bring their shared lineage of love into a deep conversation about the original essence of tantra.Stay tuned for next week's episode about how past woundings and unhealed trauma affect your relationships!!Both Jessica Falcon and Sunny Grigorova have free gifts for you; simply click on the links below. About Special Guest Sunny Grigorova: Sunny is a women's embodiment coach, Tantra Essence teacher, and international retreat leader who helps high-achieving women soften, open, and receive love, support, and deep fulfillment without losing their power. She is one of the few U.S.-based teachers trained in the Goddess Essence Tantra lineage, and her work blends somatic practices, archetypal psychology, conscious relationships, and feminine energetics. Sunny is known for helping women stop "doing everything right" and start living, loving, and receiving with ease. Learn more and receive a free quiz here: https://gowithsunny.com/https://gowithsunny.com/the-feminine-code-quiz/IG: @gowithsunny.coach About Podcast Host Jessica FalconA former lawyer turned mystic, Jessica Falcon guides you to embody your power, reclaim your sovereignty, and revolutionize your relationships. Since 2016, she has researched religious history, ancient civilizations, and mythology to identify the core wounds and subconscious beliefs deeply embedded in the collective psyche that keep you from experiencing freedom in your relationships. Jessica hosts the Soul Sovereignty Podcast, leads international retreats, and offers online portals of transformation, including a Temple of Divine Feminine Power.  You can receive a FREE 12 Days to Transformation course simply by signing up here:https://thepathtosovereignty.comhttps://thepathtosovereignty.com/sign-up-to-receive-your-free-gift/ IG: @thepathtosovereignty This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit soulsovereigntyandsexuality.substack.com/subscribe

Ecoutez Vous allez en entendre parler avec Tom Lefevre du 19 février 2026.Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

An ICE detainee has died while in custody at the Miami Correctional Facility north of Kokomo. Lawmakers in the House and Senate have merged competing bills involving the consolidation of Township governments. Tensions are rising at the Statehouse over a proposal to overhaul the oversight of Indianapolis Public Schools. A commercial turkey flock in Sullivan County has been hit with bird flu, the first case in southwestern Indiana in a year. The wellbeing of children in Indiana has improved according to an annual assessment. Indiana lawmakers propose new penny-policies, after President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Mint not to make the once cent coins last year. Want to go deeper on the stories you hear on WFYI News Now? Visit wfyi.org/news and follow us on social media to get comprehensive analysis and local news daily. Subscribe to WFYI News Now wherever you get your podcasts. WFYI News Now is produced by Zach Bundy, with support from News Director Sarah Neal-Estes.

Some surprisingly good with feature potential, some bad with fairly poor execution. The future apparently has a bit of everything.

This week on bigcitysmalltown, we examine the future of professional classical music in San Antonio in the wake of disruption, dissolution, and ongoing uncertainty for long-standing arts organizations. San Antonio native Paul Montalvo, a former firefighter who now leads Orchestra San Antonio, discusses growing the organization from a $45,000 budget to a projected $2.4 million this year, and the unique model he believes can sustain orchestral music in the city where prior efforts have struggled.Host Cory Ames sits down with Montalvo to address the realities facing professional musicians, the collapse of the San Antonio Symphony, and the Philharmonic's current difficulties, asking whether San Antonio can support and sustain a world-class orchestra—both now and long-term.They discuss:• How Orchestra San Antonio's hybrid model merges performance and education, employing musicians as both performers and artist-educators• The challenges and prospects for funding arts programming outside traditional public education or city infrastructure• The organization's goal to employ 40–50 full-time faculty artists by 2031, and what it would take to make that a reality• The impact and limitations of philanthropy versus tax-funded support for the arts in a rapidly changing city• What other Texas and U.S. cities can—and cannot—teach San Antonio about building sustainable arts infrastructureThis episode offers an unfiltered look at what must change for orchestral music to thrive in San Antonio, and the questions every arts patron, donor, and resident should consider as the city's cultural future is shaped.RECOMMENDED NEXT LISTEN:▶️ #96. How a Baggage Handler Became One of San Antonio's Most Iconic Artists – What does it really take to build a creative life in San Antonio? Host Bob Rivard sits down with Gary Sweeney to uncover how a longtime baggage handler turned his passion for storytelling, humor, and public art into a lasting legacy across the city's landscape—perfect listening for anyone inspired by unconventional journeys and local impact.-- -- CONNECT

Things got kinda catty between OpenAI and Anthropic

Despite Dylan's doubts, the first half of his new script "Merge Conflict" gave Dalton (and our audience) chills! But now that his first proper horror script is taking its necessary turn into the realm of science fiction, will it still satisfy? Will it fulfill the precious promise of the premise? One way to find out. This episode is brought to you by... AXOLOTL WITH A GUN - a new RPG you can support on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/residentbard/axolotl-with-a-gun-2nd-edition?ref=csa26yYOUR FAVORITE BAD MOVIE PODCAST - which you can find on your favorite podcatcherAnd of course our Patreon, which you can join for $5 a month and enjoy our wonderful Discord community and bonus pod, and participate in our revamped STUDIO MANDATES program, Patreon.com/DylanAndDaltonCHAPTERS00:00:00 - Opening00:04:24 - Act Two, Part Two00:19:28 - Sponsor: Axolotl with a Gun00:21:05 - Discussion00:43:17 - Sponsor: Your Favorite Bad Movie Podcast00:44:45 - Discussion00:44:26 - Act Three00:59:25 - Mid-Credits scene01:01:11 - Post-Credits scene01:02:29 - An update about Studio Mandates01:05:54 - Discussion

"I am the Violet Flame of Transmutation."

"I am the Violet Flame of Transmutation."

On this week's “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” we take a look at Nvidia's changing investment relationship with OpenAI. Plus, a stormy start for the new U.S. version of TikTok. But first, SpaceX, one of the world's largest rocket companies, announced this week that it's buying xAI, a two-and-half-year-old artificial intelligence startup. Both companies are controlled by Elon Musk. The new company is reportedly valued at $1.25 trillion. It means the chatbot Grok, the satellite internet company Starlink, and the social media firm X are all going to co-exist under the same rocket hangar. Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes spoke with Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired, about what adding these companies together equals.

On this week's “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” we take a look at Nvidia's changing investment relationship with OpenAI. Plus, a stormy start for the new U.S. version of TikTok. But first, SpaceX, one of the world's largest rocket companies, announced this week that it's buying xAI, a two-and-half-year-old artificial intelligence startup. Both companies are controlled by Elon Musk. The new company is reportedly valued at $1.25 trillion. It means the chatbot Grok, the satellite internet company Starlink, and the social media firm X are all going to co-exist under the same rocket hangar. Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes spoke with Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired, about what adding these companies together equals.

As of the first of this year, the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce and the South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance are now one entity. What was the impetus for this merger?

Elon Musk envisions a groundbreaking future where AI infrastructure in space revolutionizes cost, innovation, and competition. This episode explores how SpaceX's satellite ambitions could transform AI, potentially dwarfing terrestrial data centers. We delve into the strategic merging of SpaceX and xAI, revealing a blueprint for the next decade's tech race. If you know ARK, then you probably know about our long-term research projections, like estimating where we will be 5-10 years from now! But just because we are long-term investors, doesn't mean we don't have strong views and opinions on breaking news. In fact, we discuss and debate this every day. So now we're sharing some of these internal discussions with you in our new video series, “The Brainstorm”, a co-production from ARK and Wolf.financial, and sponsored by Public. Tune in every week as we react to the latest in innovation. Here and there we'll be joined by special guests, but ultimately this is our chance to join the conversation and share ARK's quick takes on what's going on in tech today.Key Points From This Episode:Elon Musk's vision of space-based AI infrastructure aims to drastically reduce costs and accelerate innovation, positioning it as a game-changer in the tech industry.SpaceX's satellite initiatives are not just about communication but are pivotal in creating a space-powered AI ecosystem that could surpass terrestrial data centers.The strategic integration of SpaceX and xAI is set to redefine the AI landscape, offering a blueprint for the next decade's technological advancements.To learn more about WOLF: https://wolf.financialTo learn more about Public: https://public.com/

Today's episode continues our 12-part series: 12 Shifts in 2026 for Social Impact. Over twelve episodes, we're unpacking the mindset + strategy shifts shaping the future of fundraising, leadership, and doing good in 2026. Explore the series at weareforgood.com/12shiftsShift 9 / Merge to MultiplyIn today's episode, Jon and Becky explore why collaboration is becoming a defining strategy for nonprofits seeking to protect mission and scale impact — and why the funding side of mergers and partnerships doesn't get nearly enough airtime.They're joined by Ananya Poddar, Senior Associate at SeaChange Capital Partners, to unpack what it really takes to resource nonprofit collaboration — from shared infrastructure and strategic alliances to program transfers and full-scale mergers. Ananya shares insights from the SeaChange–Lodestar Fund for Nonprofit Collaboration, including why neutral third-party support is often the missing ingredient, how leaders can build trust with funders and partner organizations, and what becomes possible when collaboration is treated as a fundable priority.Episode Highlights: Introduction to Nonprofit Collaboration (01:52)SeaChange-Lodestar Fund for Nonprofit Collaboration (5:40)Forms of Collaboration (07:00)Building Trust with Partners (10:50)Technical Assistance Funding (15:18)Case Study: She's the First & Girl Rising Merger (16:23)Cost Savings Example: Detroit Human Services Merger (20:10)Case Study: Philly Food Rescue Program Transfer (21:22)Motivations for Partnerships (23:57)One Good Thing / Homework: Make yourself familiar with what opportunities exist. (29:00)Dive Deeper: She's The First Girl RisingEpisode 653: Nonprofit Mergers Aren't a Last Resort—They're a Strategic First Choice, She's The First and Girl Rising: Listen on Apple / SpotifyEpisode Shownotes: www.weareforgood.com/episode/680Save your free seat at the We Are For Good Summit

Plus: Data company Palantir hits another revenue record despite criticism over its role in the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. And lawmakers are set to vote on ending the partial government shutdown. Daniel Bach hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stay at home dad Grant Goodkin lives a quiet life tending to his loving family. But when he sleeps, he dreams of violence and decay, and every morning he wakes up a little more dangerous. What's happening to him, and can his blissful family life survive it? Listen to writer Dylan Roth present his feature-length script to storytelling partner Dalton Deschain, as they perform and critique this latest installment in their ongoing universe of imaginary sci-fi movies.SPONSORS:The Second Disc, your guide to the best in physical music releases. Visit www.theseconddisc.comMALINKO, a novel by Rick Paulas, which you can get only by sending $25 to @Rick-Paulas on Venmo.As always, you can join our community and enjoy extra fun perks at Patreon.com/DylanAndDaltonCHAPTERS00:00:00 - Cold Open00:08:47 - Discussion00:21:09 - Fan Predictions00:30:12 - Director Choice00:33:31 - Act One01:02:42 - Discussion01:13:16 - Ad Read: The Second Disc01:16:11 - Act Two Content Warning01:17:06 - Act Two01:27:14 - Go here to skip That Scene01:38:33 - Ad Read: Malinko01:40:24 - Discussion

WIGTP presents Queued Up, As Requested, our listener-requested movie review series featuring short, straight-to-the-point discussions with no filler—just honest opinions. In this episode, we review the 2025 sci-fi anthology film Merge, now streaming on Amazon Prime. We break down the story, character decisions, standout moments, and the elements that left us confused, while exploring the film's deeper themes around artificial intelligence. Our conversation dives into whether AI can truly be used as a helpful tool for humanity or if it risks becoming a dangerous crutch. As always, we wrap things up by answering the question, Was It Good Though?

Apple does a big acquisition. OpenAI is racing to IPO. Elon might just merge all his companies into one. Google's Project Genie is the latest thing that will make you say, gee, AI can do that?! And, of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions. Apple buys Israeli start-up Q.AI for close to $2bn in race to build AI devices (FT) OpenAI Plans Fourth-Quarter IPO in Race to Beat Anthropic to Market (WSJ) SpaceX in merger talks with other Musk companies ahead of IPO (Reuters) Elon Musk's SpaceX Said to Consider Merger With Tesla or xAI (Bloomberg) Google's AI helped me make bad Nintendo knockoffs (The Verge) Moltbot Gets Another New Name, OpenClaw, And Triggers Security Fears And Scams (Forbes) Weekend Longread: To avoid accusations of AI cheating, college students are turning to AI (NBCNews) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Great Practice, Great Life, Steve Riley is joined by Atticus Practice Advisor Daniel Struna for a candid conversation about one of the most consequential decisions a law firm owner can make: whether to merge practices. Drawing on years of experience advising law firm owners, along with Steve's own history with failed mergers, they identify exactly where law firm consolidations go wrong. The problem is rarely legal talent or goodwill. Too often, lawyers merge based on mutual respect or personal chemistry without pressure-testing whether their visions and financial realities actually align. Steve and Daniel walk through the fault lines that undermine mergers early. They explore what happens when partners skip hard conversations about the future of the firm and personal life goals, and why avoiding early financial clarity around compensation structure, origination, and profit splits can lead to frustration later. They also draw a clear distinction between a true merger and what many firms mistakenly create instead: roommates sharing space while everything else remains separate. This episode is the first in a two-part series designed to help lawyers slow down and think like owners. Whether you are actively considering a merger or simply curious about future growth options, this conversation will help you ask better questions and spot warning signs earlier. Next week, tune in for Part 2, where Steve and Daniel sit down with the partners of a successful family law merger to unpack what worked, what they aligned on early, and the practical decisions that helped them build the new firm together. In this episode, you will hear: Why most law firm mergers fail due to business misalignment, not legal skill The difference between a true merger and simply sharing office space The danger of merging based on personal rapport instead of strategic fit Aligning long-term practice vision with personal life goals before merging Critical money conversations that must happen early, including compensation and investment Common red flags that signal a merger should not move forward How the merger evaluation process can strengthen your firm even if you don't merge Subscribe & Review Never miss an episode. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. ⭐Like what you hear? A quick review helps more people find the show.⭐ If there's a topic you would like us to cover on an upcoming episode, please email us at steve.riley@atticusadvantage.com. Supporting Resources: Daniel Struna, Practice Advisor & Attorney Workbook: Should We Merge? Workshop: The Path to a Great Practice & Great Life Limited-time offer! My Great Life Focus: Get a one-year supply (4 quarterly focusers) for $99.90 (50% off) with this link. Valid through January 31, 2026. Claim the offer → Curious about growing your own law firm or getting support on how to do a succesful merger? Contact Atticus to see whether our law firm coaching can help you strengthen attorney success, refine your law firm business strategy, and build a practice that actually supports your life. This podcast for lawyers is part of our broader legal podcast library, offering practical insights on how to grow a law firm through stronger law firm leadership, law firm pricing and management, smarter marketing, intentional hiring, efficient operations, healthy law firm culture, and sustainable profitability, all while addressing law firm burnout and the realities of modern practice. You can also sign up for our newsletter to get practical insights on how to grow a law firm: from law firm leadership and management to marketing, hiring, operations, culture, and profitability, so you can build a Great Practice and a Great Life.

Cynthia Lane, director of the state's Blueprint for Literacy program, says Kansas is improving literacy instruction from preschool to college levels. She says the next step is to blend Blueprint for Literacy with the Kansas State Board of Education's literacy program known as Every Child Can Read.

A Tippecanoe County judge and his wife continue to recover after they were shot at their home Sunday afternoon. Legislation moving through the Statehouse would define gender and sex -- and the words male and female — and adds restrictions based on them. Affordability is a major focus for Indiana lawmakers. Indiana lawmakers are backing away from a proposed rollback to a school safety law. A Notre Dame tutoring model will expand statewide, thanks to 10-million dollars in federal funding. Two free programs that help people facing eviction in Marion County are merging. Indianapolis will make history this spring hosting all three men's NCAA division championship games and the NIT Finals for teams that didn't make it to the big dance. Want to go deeper on the stories you hear on WFYI News Now? Visit wfyi.org/news and follow us on social media to get comprehensive analysis and local news daily. Subscribe to WFYI News Now wherever you get your podcasts. WFYI News Now is produced by Zach Bundy, with support from News Director Sarah Neal-Estes.

In a future where technology feels more human than ever, people confront love, loss, and identity as the boundaries between man and machine disappear.Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Get access to metatrends 10+ years before anyone else - https://qr.diamandis.com/metatrends   Ray Kurzweil is an American inventor and futurist best known for his pioneering work in optical character recognition and his predictions regarding the technological singularity. Salim Ismail is the founder of OpenExO Dave Blundin is the founder & GP of Link Ventures Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross is a computer scientist and founder of Reified – My companies: Pre order "We Are As Gods" at diamandis.com/book Apply to Dave's and my new fund: https://qr.diamandis.com/linkventureslanding     Go to Blitzy to book a free demo and start building today: https://qr.diamandis.com/blitzy   _ Connect with Peter: X Instagram Connect with Dave: X LinkedIn Connect with Salim: X Join Salim's Workshop to build your ExO  Connect with Alex Website LinkedIn X Email Listen to MOONSHOTS: Apple YouTube – *Recorded on January 15th, 2026 *The views expressed by me and all guests are personal opinions and do not constitute Financial, Medical, or Legal advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conor and Jaeden dive into the intriguing world of brain-computer interfaces, particularly focusing on Merge Labs, a startup recently backed by OpenAI with a significant investment. They discuss the implications of such technology, comparing it to Neuralink and exploring the potential benefits and ethical concerns surrounding direct brain interfacing. Jaeden shares his thoughts on the competitive landscape of AI and the motivations behind these advancements, while also reflecting on the personal experiences and conspiracy theories related to tech figures like Sam Altman. The conversation highlights the balance between innovation and caution as they speculate on the future of human-AI integration.Get the top 40+ AI Models for $20 at AI Box: ⁠⁠https://aibox.aiConor's AI Course: https://www.ai-mindset.ai/coursesConor's AI Newsletter: https://www.ai-mindset.ai/Jaeden's AI Hustle Community: https://www.skool.com/aihustleWatch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/TGlqI0PTc3QChapters 00:00 Introduction to Merge Labs and OpenAI's Investment 01:20 The Implications of Brain-Computer Interfaces 04:42 Neuralink vs. Merge Labs: A Competitive Analysis 06:21 The Ethical Considerations of Brain Interfacing 10:54 Speculating on the Future of AI and Human Integration 12:43 Conspiracy Theories and Tech Giants See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the audio version of the Naavik Digest newsletter published on January 18th, 2026. We look back at the mobile Match-3 and Merge genres in 2025, exploring what succeeded, what top performers do differently, and what might be important in the future.You can read the newsletter (with even more sections and visual detail) here: https://www.naavik.co/digest/what-leading-match-3-and-merge-games-do-differentlyLet us know what you think by sending us a note at podcast@naavik.co.Watch our episodes: YouTube ChannelFor more episodes and details: Podcast WebsiteFree newsletter: Naavik DigestFollow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | WebsiteSound design by Gavin Mc Cabe

In this episode, we discuss OpenAI's foray into brain-computer interface technology with Merge Labs. We examine how this initiative could reshape human-AI interaction beyond traditional interfaces.

Sponsored by Auth0 for Startups → 1-year free https://auth0.com/startups/vip Auth0 is an adaptable authentication and authorization platform that helps you secure your apps and AI agents. It delivers convenience, privacy, and security so you can focus on building a great UX. FOUNDER PROFILE:Gil Feig, Founder of Mergehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/gilfeig/

Today - The Sun's Kevin Simpson talks to mystery writers Becky Clark and Holly Harris talk about collaborating on "Colorado Mystery Merge".See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Re-releasing a DAT listener favorite! The Dental A-Team is joined by Dr. Nate Tilman! Fascinating history aside (read his bio below), Dr. Tilman talks with Kiera about his unique dental practice situation, how he's managed to merge five different practices into his own, and a strategy for doing so. He also speaks to the shifting of culture in his practice, what it took for him to recognize, and the success it's brought. More on Dr. Tilman: Originally from Salisbury, Maryland, Dr. Tilman attended Wake Forest University for his undergraduate degree. He was awarded his Doctor of Dental Surgery from the University of Maryland where he graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2001. Dr. Tilman served in the U.S. Navy Dental Corps for four years, including two years forward deployed aboard USS Ashland (LSD 48). Following his military service, Dr. Tilman moved to Newport, Rhode Island, in 2007 and opened Newport Family and Cosmetic Dentistry. He has had the pleasure to work with an amazing team and amazing patients in creating a state-of-the art, caring, and comfortable dental practice. His commitment to incorporating advanced technologies and techniques allows Dr. Tilman and his team to provide dental treatment in fewer visits and more comfortably than with traditional techniques. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: speaker-0 (00:05) Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent, and I have this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective, because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants where we have traveled to over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep, we don't just understand you, we are you.   Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental. And I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress, and create A-Teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast.   Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and you guys. I love podcasts where I get to bring on offices that I just think are fantastic. So this is an office that we have worked with in the Dental A Team. Also fun fact, he is in the smallest state in the entire United States. So you all know me and my state traveling. His state is one of my hardest states to get to every year, because it's so tiny and it's so far away from me. But he's just one of the best people I've ever met. He's an incredible leader, incredible dentist, incredible just   good human. So I'm so glad and so excited to welcome Dr. Nate Tilman to the show. How are you today, Nate?   speaker-1 (01:27) I am great. Thank you. Thank you. I'm super excited to be here. ⁓ as you know, I've been a fan of the podcast for, know, pretty much since you started. And it's kind of like, it's kind of surreal being, you know, being on, being on the podcast. So I appreciate, appreciate the offer.   speaker-0 (01:44) Well, I love it. love to one it's fun. Thank you for being a podcast fan I mean it's almost coming up on three years of the podcast since we created it and I never would have thought that the podcast could connect me with such cool people so one thank you for being a podcast listener and two things are just being a rad person I I liked the podcast has become a fun passion project for me to meet people to hear their stories   So I kind of alluded to it. You're also doing something similar to Dr. Dave Mogadon, who was on the podcast about those chart ⁓ mergers and buyouts that's kind of helped with your growth, but kind of just tell the listeners like how you even got into dentistry and kind of what your growth trajectory has been, just so they kind of know as a background to today's podcast.   speaker-1 (02:28) Yeah, I'll try not to ramble too much about it. yeah, I went to always wanted to do something in healthcare. My grandfather was a public health physician is a big inspiration for me. So kind of I think it's midway through college decided dentistry is gonna be a really good fit, you know, for a number of reasons. Went to University of Maryland for dental school, loved it decided to stay in general dentistry for   you know, all the variety of what we do. was on a Navy scholarship, so I was able to spend the first four years as a practicing dentist in the Navy. ⁓ Two years I was on a ship as the only dentist. So it was a really good, didn't realize like how helpful an experience that was for like running us an organization, even though it was an organization of three.   speaker-0 (03:14) Yeah, but I also feel like let's just talk about the Navy real fast because I didn't know this about you and my husband and I were literally talking probably two days ago and he said I don't think I ever could do the Navy like put me on a ship with these people for so long and dump me in the middle of the ocean like nowhere to go no hiking like what do you even do? How how was that? feel like more than anything it would teach you mental stamina is what I think I would learn from being on the Navy. But how was it for you? Maybe maybe you guys go swimming every day. I don't know like what do you do all day?   speaker-1 (03:43) Definitely not at all. it was, the two years on the ship was very, it's a super unique experience. And we were a small ship, 400 sailors. We transported Marines. So I was responsible for pretty much 400 patients. had, it was me, I had an administrative assistant and I had two dental technicians that could do some basic hygiene, not a hygienist, but it was me. ⁓   So having to learn like managing supplies and, know, managing appointments and all of that stuff. But the unique thing as a, as a dentist, and mean, this is one year out of a, you know, my GPR. still I was safe, but didn't really know necessarily all what I was doing, but I love to get myself out of jams because middle of the ocean, like. Mid procedure. I'm not going to be the guy calling a helicopter, you know, you got to work through it. So.   speaker-0 (04:40) They're like awesome because it's gonna push your limits and you've got to just figure it out Which I think so many dentists when they do own they don't learn that stamina that stress like hey, it's you figure it out But you're like the odds are even stacked more you're in the middle of the ocean and I mean it would been a pretty cool story for me maybe not for you to hear like a helicopter to come get a patient because you botched a root canal or something like you'd have to figure that out, but that that doesn't definitely up your odds of intensity   for sure being out there and nobody else is there to help you. You're the man. You got to figure it all out.   speaker-1 (05:13) Yeah. And I think it's, while it would have been nice to, you know, if I'd had a situation like, know, where I had a mentor, another dentist I was working with, you know, to be able to bail out, like it have been helpful, but it really, it did, it gave me a lot of, a lot of confidence, um, you know, early on for like, can work my way through this. And then also like what things I don't want to do. Cause I don't want to get stuck in that position again. Yeah. And it was, and yeah, while I didn't have to helicopter anybody out, one of the things I did do, and I don't think at the time, nobody had ever really.   speaker-0 (05:34) True.   speaker-1 (05:42) done it from a small ship or the even smaller ships around us that there were two times where people had some dental emergencies that I was able to fly out to their ship and take care of them.   speaker-0 (05:52) No way. Well, you do have like built in planes. You travel anywhere. So it's like quick, like fly you in, but that's crazy. Cause you ma I can't even imagine the stress that those poor other dentists were feeling of like we're in the middle of here. Like what am I supposed to do? ⁓ I guess call someone else. So, I mean, we talk about dentistry and I've said this so many times, like, feel like dental practices are like these solo islands out there. All y'all just kind of hang in your own area. You literally were in the middle of the ocean flying solo.   speaker-1 (06:22) Yeah. That's crazy. It was fun. There wasn't a ton of dentistry to do. I, know, cool thing with the Navy, they give you other jobs. So I became an air traffic controller. So I was in charge of, you know, all of the flight operations on the ship. so between that and dentistry, it me pretty busy. And then I played a of video games, you know,   speaker-0 (06:41) I'm like, I would be pulling pranks. mean, just throughout COVID, my husband, he makes fun of me. I feel like a roaming tiger in these four walls of our house. Like sometimes I'm like, just let me out of here. Like I can't even handle it. I'm like, I gotta go for a run. I gotta go for a hike that I can't even imagine being on a ship. would be like, I know I'd be pulling pranks on every single person on that ship and just like running for my life. Cause I probably would torment everybody, but air traffic control that like you really went for all the things, Nate, dentistry and air traffic controller.   What don't they say those are the top two suicide jobs? Like you really went for the whole extreme there. Nice job.   speaker-1 (07:15) Well, that's that's like when they selected me to go to the school for our traffic control. What are you guys trying to tell me? You already know I'm a dentist.   speaker-0 (07:23) Gosh, that's crazy. So you were in the Navy and then you went, got out of the Navy. Did you go straight to private practice? Did you go in and be an associate?   speaker-1 (07:32) So I was an associate for a year, still in the Virginia Beach area and then moved to Rhode Island. My wife is, we met in college, I'm two years older, so she was awesome for following me around. then, ⁓ so when she was done with her residency, she's from New England, so we kinda, that's where we looked up here. And I'll tell you, Virginia Beach area, super easy to get a job as an associate, tons of positions around, I figured it'd be the same thing coming up here and there was nothing.   speaker-0 (08:00) mean,   Rhode Island is like the size of a dot on a map. I mean, it's itty bitty, which I makes you a celebrity just because you live there. Like, not many people even live there, so.   speaker-1 (08:11) Yeah, it's in and it's there's there's a number of dentists, but it's it's all solo guys and it's tough like restricted covenants. You know you get a two mile radius. That's the whole state.   speaker-0 (08:21) Exactly   exactly that is you definitely have to look at your associate ships of their contracts really closely Otherwise, you might be booting out of that state just because like you said two mile radius is not far in Rhode Island   speaker-1 (08:34) Not at all. So I ended up having an opportunity to a it's like a four operatory practice, like three, I think two and a half, three days a week. The guy was definitely like on the decline of practice. So jumped into that, had no idea what I was doing. And then six months later, was approached by another dentist who was moving from the area. I think it was a family thing too. And he was having trouble getting somebody to buy   his practice Rhode Island. It's not many dentists moved to the state for a number of reasons. So again, I was still trying to figure out how I was paying my initial loan and how I was running this practice or whatever. the opportunity to buy, to merge this, the patient base. So I did that and it was definitely the best thing I did because it brought in a whole new group of patients. I was able to go from like two and a half days a week to four days a week.   I was able to add another hygienist at the time. so it wasn't super intentional, but the growth was happening. just kind of fell in my lap. I'm like, I'll do this. And looking back, it is where I realized what a good thing it was.   speaker-0 (09:48) For sure. And I hope people listening, ⁓ I am a firm believer that opportunity doesn't always knock on the door and say, I'm opportunity. Sometimes it looks like pure chaos. Sometimes it's stretching you beyond. Sometimes it's really just showing up. I remember the day that I was asked to work with DSI as a consultant. Guys, I had one consulting client before Mark asked me to be a consultant. And overnight, I had 45 clients in my lab. I didn't know what the heck I was doing. But I people listening realize like,   For you, you're struggling. just bought your practice. Don't know what you're doing. Yes, you've had quite a bit of experience, but at the same time, running a practice is very different than being an associate or I'm sure even in the Navy. And so now, and then, hey, by the way, there's all this other patient base wanting to come in. And I love that you just, jumped, you took that opportunity. And I think again, so many times in life, opportunities show up. It's just a matter of, we willing to take them and figure it out or are we too scared and just let them pass by? ⁓   You brought those patients in and you were mentioning pre record that adding in patients from other practices has really been a great way for you to get new patients. ⁓ which people are constantly looking for new patients. was just talking to, there's a guy out here. He's a pathiatrist guys. I'm like, I don't know. I just can't help myself, but help business owners. Like I love it. Podiatry is not that much different than dentistry. Y'all see patients like dentistry, we work on the mouth, but I treat work on the foot. Like   Basically, it's kind of like pediatric. You go to your surgery centers, they come in, you see these patients for their adjustments. But I was talking to him and he's a solo podiatrist and there are two podiatry offices around him that have just shut down doors. So he's like, yeah, it's just great. Like people are finding us and I'm like, did you call those people and ask them for their charts, buy those charts? that is two practices worth of patients that you're just hoping maybe one day will Google you when they're seriously sitting right in front of you. So   I'm super curious. I love this topic. know Dave's talked about it as well, but Nate, how do you buy charts successfully? How do you make that transition? Like Dave was talking about buying so many charts, but kind of from your experience, how do you buy these charts? How do you merge these patients in successfully? And other than just good luck and being in the right place at the right time, finding more of these opportunities. I'm super curious.   speaker-1 (12:04) Yeah, yeah. So for this one, know, having no idea what I was doing, I did have some, think, good advice from a transition attorney that I worked with. initially, the guy that was selling his charts, wanted X number of dollars for his, I think he said, 1,000 active records.   speaker-0 (12:26) And what's like X number of dollars like just give me a ballpark you don't have to say the exact amount but I'm like is it five dollars a chart ten dollars a chart thirty dollars a chart like what   speaker-1 (12:35) If I remember, this was probably 10 years ago, so I believe it was 60 a chart is what he wanted. So I think he wanted 60 million, right? And, you know, I, again, not knowing too much, I definitely knew that those 1,000 people were not gonna come over, right? So I was worried about like, what's the risk? Like, are 10 people gonna come or are 800 gonna come? I have no idea.   Yeah. So the attorney I was talking to, he said, he'd never done it this way. said, but maybe what you want to do is offer a little bit more per record, but only for like a small percentage at first. And then keep track of it over time. And that's what I think I did. It was either a hundred or 120 a chart. And I prepaid for like 300. But then for the next year, I kept track of all the, like once I got above that 300, I kept track of it.   So the nice thing is it limited my, it limited my risk. It put more, I guess, importance or motivation on the seller to really like push his patients to come. Cause the more you make more, the more people that came to see me. So it was a win-win that way. And it also, it let me kind of control that the influx too, because I think if all of sudden I was getting, you know, 800 patients calling all at once, it'd be a little bit trickier to merge this all in.   So that worked out really well.   speaker-0 (14:00) And I'm just curious on that, because this is something else I've been really wondering. After talking to Dave, now meeting this podiatrist, guys, I just love this type of stuff. This is cool business stuff that I feel a lot of people don't talk about. I'm curious, how long was the arrangement? Was it for a year that you would pay him? Was it for five years you'd pay the selling doctor? Because I'm curious, how is the motivation? for me as a business owner, I wouldn't want this to go on forever. I'd want an end date of when I don't have to pay you $120 per patient.   So how is that kind of arrangement set up?   speaker-1 (14:32) It actually, was nine months is what we had set. And I think it could work either, but I certainly wouldn't go more than a year, because it is, it becomes a major pain. And then, honestly for me, as I got close to that nine months, we sort of started slowing down. We strategically scheduled those last few patients in the nine months, but I still had all the records.   speaker-0 (14:54) That's what curious. So did you get all the records? So like you paid this, all the charts come to you, and then the other dentist has good faith that you're going to be honest? Or do they get access to it? Was that what it was?   speaker-1 (15:04) He could have like, had it written. If you wanted to send somebody to audit it, like absolutely. He had access to do that. He just never did. and yeah, we had an initial wave of a lot of people and then it slowed down a bit. And you know, it's, um, I think, I think it ended up, maybe we got 450 out of that thousand. Um, and it and it was close and it was close to that nine months. You know, we were getting close to like 400 and again, I just.   We slowed down a little bit, ⁓ just whatever. But as soon as that nine months hit, then we started re-marketing to the people we hadn't seen.   speaker-0 (15:43) 100   % because then it's like you've got basically 400 patients on recall that haven't been in and so did you guys win it happened and of course you might say things you'd do differently or whatnot but did you have that selling doctor send a letter to all of his patients like hey I'm no longer seeing it come see Nate like he's fantastic or did you guys just pick up the phone and start calling these people what was kind of the strategy of the how-to for you?   speaker-1 (16:07) So he, so he wrote, we both wrote a joint letter, which was good. And then I was able, I actually brought on his, he didn't have an office manager, but it was like his lead front desk and scheduler. So we brought her on. She wasn't a, she wasn't a great, perfect culture fit, but she knew the patients. So that worked. I think she was with us for probably about the nine months.   speaker-0 (16:26) Exactly.   Cause in my mind I was thinking like, that's genius. Maybe you can do like a little like sweetheart deal where it's like, Hey, I'm buying your charts and also your scheduler upfront. Can I just have them like help me call these patients? I'll pay them for a couple of months or whatnot. I don't know. Like there's a piece of me that's like, I could see the pros and the cons of that, but you're right. It's me calling that person who's known these patients for years calling to get them scheduled and help out with that. That's probably again, even if it wasn't a great culture fit, it probably did get more patients in your door.   speaker-1 (16:59) For that initial, yeah, absolutely for the initial. Because they already had the patients pre-scheduled, so they were able, and they know them, it was really helpful having that familiar voice.   speaker-0 (17:09) Totally. Yeah. Clever. Okay. So you went higher than what they're doing, ⁓ which I tell everybody, I'm like these people who are shutting their doors, pretty much any offer you give them is, mean, don't be like a low ball and completely have it feel ridiculous, but they, have no option to sell. There are no options for them to sell. They're not going to make any money. Like that's gotta be a hard reality for that selling doctor to realize like, Hey, I built this business up, but it's not even a sellable product.   So I have no asset anymore. So I'm like, honestly, any money that they can get for these charts, I do think is a good deal and something great for the selling doctor as well. So I don't think it's a ⁓ vicious, like you're taking advantage. I just think again, opportunity shows up in different ways. And I think for the selling doctor, it also was an opportunity that they got probably way more than they were expecting to get when they closed the doors of their practice.   speaker-1 (18:02) Yeah. Cause honestly, it hadn't been for new, he'd been trying actively to sell it somewhere. And I was like, I think I was like the last person, you know, had I not been able to step up and, and, work something out, it would have just been all those patients out into the ether. And, know, probably who knows how many of those, you know, 450 would have shown up with us anyway. But it's, it's, know, again, being younger, not knowing what I was doing, like it was intimidating for me. But as I look back, like he'd never done that either.   speaker-0 (18:22) Yeah   speaker-1 (18:30) You know, so was all, it was new for both of   speaker-0 (18:33) Well, and also thinking about, I'm sure some listeners might think like, Nate, that's a bad deal, though, spending $120 per patient chart. And if you are a wise business owner and you know the cost of acquisition of a new patient, yes, I would say that that probably is on the higher end of a patient. However, I think the perk of this is these are most likely patients who have been active patients in a dental practice that are going to be good patients that are coming. And odds are they also might be, I call them sleeping.   patients in the fact that this dentist was on the retiring side, odds are that dentist was just slowing down with dentistry. Every dentist will have this happen to where odds are these patients actually have a lot more treatment available since their selling doctor was slowing down in their career. while it might be more expensive, you're probably also paying for it with the dentistry available with an older doctor selling. So got it. Okay.   speaker-1 (19:22) Yeah. Yeah.   And then yeah, like, and then fast forward, you know, another five years or so from then, it's not five, about five years ago. I had a dentist moonlighting with me who was in the Navy. It was getting out, wanted to stay in the area. Awesome, awesome dentist, really good friend of mine now. And he wanted to stay, but again, at that point I wasn't busy enough to really support another.   an associate and I'd never really never had an associate either. And again, opportunity I had, was having, it was like a county dental society meeting. I was talking to a friend of mine as well, who was a little bit older dentist and she was like, I'm thinking about slowing down. maybe this guy could work for you for a couple of days a week and me a couple of days a week. And kind of light bulb went off my head. I was like, or I could buy your practice if you're open to it. And then you can slow down whatever you want. ⁓   be an associate with me and he could work at the two. I kind of saw the writing, like the potential if he did that, what happens if now he wants to buy that practice and then it's, you know, so that actually.   speaker-0 (20:29) You would be training up your competition. So good job on seeing that and not letting that happen.   speaker-1 (20:35) Yeah. And, uh, and it worked and that worked out great around the, again, just weird timing around the same as I was closing on that deal. One town over those, dentist who unfortunately had a terminal, uh, terminal cancer and was looking for somebody to help take over his practice. So I was able to take over his patient base, which another bonus of being able to help, you know, get this new associate, you know, even busier.   speaker-0 (21:01) So really your practice is a makeup of four practices. Did I count my?   speaker-1 (21:06) And then I had one more a little bit later. There's like five, five, nine into two locations now. So yeah. Yeah. And with that one, was the, um, I was able to bring one of the hygienists on board. Um, which again, that familiar, familiar face, familiar voice, um, was a big, was big and she's still with us and she's awesome. So, um, so that's been, that's been really good.   speaker-0 (21:07) Okay, so   Clever. love it.   awesome.   Have you guys heard? But like really have you heard? And are you the type of person that loves to take massive action? Well, if you are, I would love to invite you to Dental A Team's Virtual Summit, April 22nd through 23rd. And yes, right now guys, it's early bird. That means it's $200 off the normal ticket price. You guys are going to learn how to optimize your practice this year. We know it's been a rough year. People have quit. We've had COVID, we've had changes. So we want to teach you guys how to optimize within your practice now and execute.   Friday is full team, Saturday is all things leadership. So bring your team, get some CE, take massive action, head on over to TheDentalATeam.com. Coupon code is summit early bird, and it's valid until March 31st. That's summit early bird, all one word, and it's valid until March 31st. So guys, head on over. I can't wait to have you take massive action, optimize your practice, and execute. Let's make 2022 your best year. I love it.   I love how much you have, ⁓ I think if anything I'm taking is don't be afraid to take those risks, don't be afraid to look at opportunities and also I think you just kind of have also positioned yourself to be well known within your community and I feel like so many dentists, like yes even within big cities like New York, Denver, guess what? People are always retiring. I just had a student from Midwestern reach out to me and was mentioning how like.   Hey, care, do you know of anybody to buy a practice? And I'm like, what is going on? I don't know all the details, but I'm like, this is somebody who's been graduating for maybe a couple of years looking to sell a practice. so I think it's just important to get to know the doctors around you to build those friendships. Because when I think it's often like you're putting yourself in a position to be ready for that opportunity, it's kind of like right now they say have a lot of cash on hand. We know something's going to be shifting in the economy.   So just be ready for when opportunities there. And I think getting to know your neighbors, getting to know those dentists, hey, great, you also as a dentist might need them as a resource in the future as well. So I think it can go both ways, but I love that you've done that. So now I'm curious, Nate, because I selfishly want to talk to you about this. You've got these two practices, you've got these dentists.   Who knows, you're gonna like probably add on like four more practices of charts in the next five years. I mean, based on your record, like let's just start piling them all on. You'll be the only dentist in Rhode Island. You're just gonna last. But I know culture is something you and I off air. Nate is one of my favorite clients. I don't even come to your practice, Nate, and you and I will just chat business, talk shop. You are somebody that I will say publicly is someone who's just been.   a really great influence in my life. Periodically, you will just send me a random text of like, just tell me that we're doing a good thing. And I will say, and you know, as an owner, those kudos and those like good vibes, they don't happen as often because you're the one who's giving all that out to your team and to your clients and to your patients. And so Nate, I will say publicly, like how much you've just been an influence in my life as well. Something I just have appreciated with you as a client, as a friend, as a mentor. So I'm excited to chat. You've got all these things going.   I know culture has been a piece that you and I both have been talking about of developing this culture. So kind of what spurred you into realizing you wanted to shift your culture of your practice. And then let's talk about the nitty gritty, but like how did you as a business owner know you needed to do a shift within your culture? Because I think that that's humility. And I'm just curious, like what tipped you off? How are you able as a dentist to own that, that you wanted to shift that?   speaker-1 (25:03) Yeah, I mean, I think for me it was noticing, you know, sort of the patterns over the years of the just the ups and downs of culture, you know, and it's, you know, whether you call it the vibe or how everybody's getting along. ⁓ And there, I mean, it's over the years, like we've had some pretty painful, painful times and times where it's like, nobody likes being here. That's way better, you know, in the last few years and it had been in the past, but.   It's, I was realizing I didn't really know how to, I didn't realize I had, that I could have influence on, on how to change that. It's, you know, some of it, I'm not a confrontational person. I'm pretty laid back and I want every, you know, I want to be the one that's liked. I want to be everybody's friend. And it's hard. It's, mean, whatever 13 years into practice ownership. And I still, you know, struggle with that.   kind of not being able to be everybody's best friend. Like I actually own the boss and like I have to own that. So it's, know, again, I finally got like just really got so exhausting of the ups and downs of like, is this going to be a good month or is this going to be a good week or who's going to be upset and all that. that it's like, you know, it's not just on me, but it's like, creating that environment that people, you know, that people want to be here. You know, people are happy people.   playing well together and trying to manage all that. it's, you know, it's certainly I haven't figured it out completely, but it's, you know, just trying to work on little things.   speaker-0 (26:41) Yeah, well and I love that you said that because incidentally I'm like, ⁓ Nate, why didn't I even think about this? I know why you and I are good friends. We're eyes on the disc profile. We both love to be liked. We're both very outgoing. We're like, you know life at the party have a good time. We're also okay to like let other people be the life of the party, but just really that and I do think a lot of dentists have that personality. ⁓ I was thinking about dentists last night actually while I was falling asleep and I'm like gosh you guys have to charm and dazzle and wow all day long.   Like you walk in and you have to make friends quickly and it's in an uncomfortable like, hey, let me like get real up and close and personal, like look in your mouth. And I got to like win you over and make you like me. I want to say yes to treat Mike. That's a lot of output of energy all day long for you guys. And so for you to realize that you also have to be a boss, I think one takes humility and two, also is ownership. And I would agree. I think it's like you get to a spot where I'm like, all right, being friends is fun.   But we got to have this like even kill because this up and down is just causing me to feel like I'm in whiplash all day long. So what were some of the things that you started to shift again? You and I chatted in December and I know we both like I've taken this from our conversation of culture is a slow burn. It is not something that happens overnight. It is not something that is instantaneous and I am an instantaneous person. Like I will figure it out. I will come up with it like we will find the solution and culture is like, all right.   Cool, I'm here for the journey. So what were some of the things you started to shift that you've been able to see? know Tiffanie's been helping you guys in your practice quite a bit as well, but I think ultimately at the end of the day, consultants can only help as far as the leaders are willing to go. And so for you to be willing to shift and change is why your team's been shifting and changing too. So what were some of those specifics?   speaker-1 (28:26) One of the, I would say the hardest thing for me and I still like, it still gives me anxiety and trouble is having difficult conversations. And while, you know, it's   you wouldn't think it would necessarily play toward helping with culture, having difficult conversations. I think it really does because I think it resets some of that, ⁓ like where the expectations are, what kind of the clarity on what needs to be done. But I think that's part of, on my ups and downs, I, again, wanting to be agreeable and being pretty laid back, if there was some...   trouble happening or there's some conflict between the team. Like a lot of my default for years was, it'll just blow over. Like, let's it work itself out. And it would work itself out by exploding after a drink or two. And then everybody would hug it out after a drink or two, and then we're fine for a while. But like, was no way to operate, right? So for me, getting over my fear and my anxiety of having those hard conversations, you know, and that's actually, that's one of the things that Tiffanie has been super helpful.   with on helping me through some of those. And I think one of the biggest skills that I've gotten with working with the Dental A Team is that, to have those conversations. They're not fun. People don't like them. I don't like them. But I think it makes a big difference and means a lot once people, like once you get through that.   speaker-0 (30:02) For sure. And you're lucky to have Tiff. think Tiff is one of the best at it. Tiffanie is very masterful on being able to, I say word ninja it. She's also just very direct, which is odd because she's so lovable and so nice. But something her and I have chatted a lot. And to your exact point, when team members have those uncomfortable conversations and they know their employer is willing to do it, everybody actually feels safe.   and that safety can create stability, which also creates like easiness. So my husband and I felt like I used to be a people pleaser with him. And just this week, he and I had a really big decision, a really awesome opportunity, and we ended up turning it down. And I was so frustrated. Like, I'm such a like driver and doer and like, this is an opportunity. We've been working for five years for this and we're just gonna like walk away from it. And I was not my most polished Kiera. ⁓   Thankfully, I would never do this with my team, but my husband, was just like full on expressive on like, and not anger at him, just the frustration of the situation. Like we've worked for this for five years and we're still not going to go through with it. And he made a comment to me, said, Kiera, I love that we've worked on our relationship so much to where you can feel comfortable and confident to have this conversation, to express your true feelings and we can work through it and find a solution. And I use that example because I feel like it's very similar with teams with   bosses that are willing to have these uncomfortable conversations because there's a there's a trust and a confidence that I can come to you. I know we can go toe to toe. I know we can work through this even though it's not fun in the moment per se. There's so much beauty and ease and flow that happens because we're not just always like holding it inside trying to like charm everybody else around us.   speaker-1 (31:47) Yeah. And what I have sort of seen ⁓ as I'm doing that more often and as I'm getting more comfortable with it, I'm seeing my team do the same thing with each other, in a, you know, in a respectful way. And they're confronting things before they become like these underlying deep seated issues. So yeah. So that's been good. ⁓ Working on gratitude is another, is another big one. Yeah. It's funny. It's, it's, ⁓   That's been, that's taken me a little bit to get used to and kind of coming up with a pattern of how to do it because it doesn't necessarily come naturally to me. You know, I think it all the time in my head, you know, how appreciative I am, but it's expressing it is what's hard and finding the way that resonates because everybody's different. What, you know, what lights everybody up is different. So it's trying to, I'm still trying to figure that out for everybody individually.   speaker-0 (32:42) But I think it's awesome that you're taking that on and like you said and I will say kudos to male doctors that are willing to share their appreciation because I'm not a male, but I have heard from several male colleagues that it's very uncomfortable. They're like, I'm just not somebody like you said, I think it, but I don't necessarily say it I don't know how to say it and sometimes it's an awkward thing. But I will say as a team member, I worked only with male doctors, except for one time I had a female doctor. But most of the time males were the doctors I would work with.   And as a team member, especially a female team member, it meant the world to me when they would share that appreciation. it just would, most women are very much ⁓ people who love those words of affirmation that are genuine and sincere. And so I think that that's a great thing that you've taken on. And I know that that's shifting because you shifting that way is shifting your entire team as well. Very cool. Okay. I just want like a quick highlight list as we wrap up, Nate, I appreciate you so much. What are some of the things working with Tiffanie that you've   that you guys have implemented in your practice or some things that you've seen, like we've talked about chart mergers, which gosh, it's just so fun. And we talked about culture shifts, but what are some of the things over the last year? I think you guys are just wrapping up your heading into year two. What are some of the things you guys have implemented with her this last year that were really just impactful for you?   speaker-1 (33:59) Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a, we've done a bunch of like small things, you know, and, and, that's what I think has been great is like they, they're easy concepts, but communicating ⁓ better handoffs from front to back and committing to that. ⁓ It's, one of the first things that she introduced with us. And, you know, it seemed like such a simple thing, but it's made a huge difference in. ⁓   and just having consistency of communication and then also it helps the teamwork. ⁓ That's been really good. She's helped a lot with trying to ⁓ have us have a better of sense and strategy around our revenue cycle. Just little things that we didn't necessarily know that we weren't doing, you know, as efficiently as we could. But what I love the most is the process and the accountability part that's put in. ⁓   there, you know, I, in previous years, you know, I've worked with other coaches and consultants and things. Um, and it's always been like a kind of a cookie cutter type thing. And it's, you know, it has been helpful, but what I really love about Dental A Team is how. Yeah. She's able to look and see exactly what it is that we do and how we do it and tailor those systems to us. Um, uh, but also that holding us like holding us accountable to do it. Like we had a, we had a call.   this week, I think it was. we've been looking at outsourcing things for, and I think we've probably been talking about it for a month, two months or so. And it was kind of funny because she has, she's like the sweetest person in world, but she was like, all right guys, I'm tired of talking about this. You're going to buy the end of it. And we're going to, we're going to make a decision on this in my head. This is on Tuesday. I was like, all right, by the end of Thursday, we'll have this done. She's like today, like today that you've done this and tell me who you're going with. And I was like, all right.   But sometimes that's what we need, know, cause we were stuck in this little cycle. So she, you she's good with that. And then sort of same thing with, you know, those are one of the difficult kinds of conversations I needed to have, but was Tuesday was funny. She was, she like really lit a fire under us. Cause like three or four things are like, you're getting this stuff done today and it's happening. that's the push we need, but there's other, know, there's, it's not always that intense. You know, there's also, ⁓ you know, if we need a little help with, you know, with things and,   It's process. She's there each step of the way.   speaker-0 (36:25) awesome. I love it. Well, I think that other no, go ahead.   speaker-1 (36:28) Sorry, it's   been really, it's been really good that I haven't seen with anybody else I've worked with before is she's totally accessible to my team. And I have a couple of the people on my team who are like very growth mindset, growth oriented with us. And, know, they, I think they talked to her more than I realized. And it's, it's one of like, felt initially like when she, you know, gave everybody her contact information, she like, I don't know, I hope that doesn't get abused. And she's like, I love it. That's what I'm here for.   and not knowing the specifics of what she's helping some people with. Like I've had a couple of people on my team, they're like, is so great to be able to reach out to Tiffanie and get this advice on this. And she's helping them just as much as she's helping me. That's awesome.   speaker-0 (37:09) That's huge and I appreciate that Nate because one it's fun to hear how our consultants are doing and I love like a few pieces you said which makes me happy because like as an owner and I'm sure as dentists we have this great vision of what we want our company to be what we want our practice to be and then to hear a patient experience to hear a client experience I'm like we will never be cookie cutter I refuse like forever because no practice is cookie cutter so to hear that it's systems that are customized to you guys where it's what's gonna work with you and also like you said   that accountability. Tiff and I, will say kudos to Tiff because at first, you know, we were like, how do you consult offices? And most of time we'll just kind of go through with you holding you accountable. But there are times when we will need to like laser in, lay it down and be like, guys, here's the reality. Just like a coach at the gym. I'm like, I don't want you like high five. I mean, that was a great workout when my squats look terrible. Like tell me to get my booty down, get my back out. Like   make sure I'm actually doing the work if I'm going to put in the work. And so I love that she did that. And like you said, that is something that we are so pro having those team members elevate rising them around you. That's something like we have kind of, I have a three prong approach and it's making sure you are profitable as a business. Cause if we're not profitable, fantastic. And to hear that TIF is helping you guys with that revenue cycle, making sure that's there at the handoffs, but then also growing people themselves.   You with those hard conversations, you making sure, I mean, we were just talking, you're having time off and your whole team is like killing it and you're not even there, which is awesome. ⁓ Also elevating team members. So it's not just the dentists themselves, but the team and then putting in those systems and team development top to bottom. So to hear it from a client experience, and we didn't even rehearse this prior to it, but to really hear the, and I didn't even prep you Nate. I didn't tell you to like, Hey, think of the last year and the highlights before we get on it. And I purposely did that because I wanted to hear.   what really stood out to you over this last year? What were the things that, because sure, you could go back and reread the emails and prep for it, but I'm like, that doesn't actually matter. What matters is what sticks in the moment. And so I just appreciate that. I love you as a client. know Tiff loves you as a client. You're just a, you're a great example of execution, of humility, of seeing opportunities and executing on them. And I hope people realize that success in my opinion doesn't just happen by chance. It is methodical. is...   Executed on sometimes you get sprinkled with that good luck charm But I also think that good luck charm is only good luck if you actually execute on it So Nate, you're just a dream. I love it. I love what you've done. I appreciate you being on the podcast you're just such a happy human and You're you're a great person who's doing great things in this world and your team's super lucky to get to work with you and learn from you as well   speaker-1 (39:48) Oh, thank you so much. And I feel so, you know, so lucky to have come to come across the Dental A Team, you know, three years ago and, and, and gotten to know you, gotten to know your team and all of you thought, you know, to me, my team and my life, it's awesome.   speaker-0 (40:00) Totally.   Well, it's, you know, we said yes, because you're in Rhode Island first. That was the first like initial yes. then you know, so but no, I appreciate it, Nate. So guys, if you if you have questions on mergers, or how to buy these charts, like please reach out, we'll connect you in with Nate. And if his story and the successes he's had resonate with you, email us, we'd love to chat with you. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And Nate, thanks for being here today. Thanks for just being a good human in this world that we need more people like you. So thanks for being here today.   Thank you. Awesome, guys. All right. As always, thank you all for listening, and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.   wraps it up for another episode of the Dental A Team Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.  

Is the discomfort you're trying to fix actually the signal calling you back to your soul instead of another problem to solve? Josh Trent welcomes Ex-Comedian, Kyle Cease, to the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast, episode 791, to explore how fasting dissolves emotional hunger, why effort and ambition are often trauma driven, how the ego uses goals and problems to stay in control, why pain is a spiritual teacher, and how surrendering identity, outcomes, and the need to be someone can reconnect us to soul, presence, and God.