Podcast appearances and mentions of scott nolan

Last 4 days before regular tickets sell out at AI Engineer World's Fair - this is the single biggest gathering of AI Engineers, Founders, Leaders, and Researchers in the world. Attendees get >$5000 worth of sponsor credits and talk tracks are looking FANTASTIC. Join us!The AI scaling debate always focuses on the question of “how do we get more GPUs?” but the better question may be: how do we make the most of ones we already have.The fact that a frontier lab like xAI could be running at sub-10% MFU (Model FLOPs Utilization) is just a hint at what the real problem may be.For context, older frontier-scale training runs were already much higher than 10%. GPT-3 was around 21% MFU. Gopher was around 32%. Megatron-Turing NLG was around 30%. PaLM reached around 46%. And our guest Anjney says best-in-class MFU today is closer to 60–70%.It's not necessarily that xAI is uniquely incompetent (it's clear they have talented folks) but rather the priorities may be flipped in the GPU arms race.While GPU access is a bottleneck, simply increasing CapEx won't automatically translate to better models as frontier AI is increasingly a systems problem: scheduling, utilization, networking, kernels, frameworks, data pipelines, parallelism, cluster reliability, and the thousand small decisions that determine whether your theoretical FLOPs become real training progress.From building Discord's developer platform and backing frontier AI companies like Anthropic, Mistral, Black Forest Labs, and Periodic Labs to now building AMP's independent compute grid, Anjney Midha has spent years close to the real bottlenecks of AI scaling. In this episode, Anjney joins swyx at Periodic Labs to unpack why the AI race is not just about buying more GPUs, why 95% utilization would have been considered an outage at Google, and why the next era of AI infrastructure has to be more aligned, more efficient, and more responsible.We go deep on AMP's vision for a compute grid that makes FLOPs flow like megawatts, the difference between full-stack AI labs and horizontal pooling, why AI data centers need community buy-in, and how compute markets could evolve into something closer to an independent system operator. Anjney also explains why DeepMind's unpublished research points to a market failure, why end-of-life prediction remains one of the most important AI applications he has thought about for fourteen years, and why “output maxing” may become a new discipline for frontier systems.We also discuss Anthropic's culture, why “luck favors the prepared mind” in coding models, how Claude cracked coding, why too much capital too early can make AI labs fragile, what Periodic Labs is trying to do with science and superconductors, why great researchers can become great CEOs, and why Silicon Valley is both deeply missionary and deeply mercenary.We discuss:* Why 95% utilization was considered an outage at Google* Why AI infrastructure waste compounds at frontier-lab scale* Why “move fast and break things” does not work for AI data centers* How data center backlash, power grids, and community incentives shape AI scaling* AMP's vision for making FLOPs flow like megawatts* Why compute needs an independent system operator* How interruptible demand and dynamic prioritization worked inside Google* Why DeepMind research hoarding creates negative externalities* AMP's 1.2GW base-load ambition and the need for 6GW of spike capacity* Why end-of-life prediction could become one of AI's most important healthcare applications* Frontier Systems, output maxing, and full-stack alignment* Why APIs and abstraction layers become lossy as organizations scale* Superconductors, standards, and the dream of lossless systems* SF Compute, open protocols, and the future of compute marketplaces* Why non-NVIDIA chips can still benefit from NVIDIA's reference architecture* Trust boundaries and why chip startups need visibility into future model architectures* Why VCs often underestimate researchers as CEOs* Scientists as star athletes of the mind* Why great CEOs need to be confrontational up and down the stack* Why leading the frontier matters more than “winning”* How Anthropic cracked coding* Why culture is fragile, not a permanent moat* Why hardship was a feature, not a bug, for Anthropic* Why Anthropic's P0 was coding from day one* Periodic Labs, physics as the constraint, and technical reality* Silicon Valley mercenaries, missionary teams, and what happens after a breakthroughAnjney Midha* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anjney* X: https://x.com/AnjneyMidhaAMP PBC* Website: https://amppublic.com/* X: https://x.com/amppublicTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction00:00:09 Why AI Compute Is Being Wasted00:03:17 Responsible Infrastructure and Data Center Backlash00:06:07 AMP Grid: Making FLOPs Flow Like Megawatts00:12:41 Foundry, Frontier Labs, and Research Hoarding00:14:42 Gigawatt-Scale Compute and End-of-Life Prediction00:24:08 Frontier Systems, Output Maxing, and Alignment00:27:38 Compute Markets, SF Compute, and Non-NVIDIA Chips00:32:57 Trust Boundaries, Co-Design, and Researcher CEOs00:38:17 AI Coachella and First-Principles Thinking00:42:43 Leading vs Winning in Frontier AI00:45:54 How Anthropic Cracked Coding00:48:25 Culture, Hardship, and Anthropic's P000:54:03 Periodic Labs, Physics, and Silicon Valley Mercenaries00:56:26 Rishi Valley, Singapore, and Money as a Measure00:58:47 Closing ThoughtsTranscriptIntroduction: Anjney Midha, AMP, and Compute WasteSwyx [00:00:00]: We're in Periodic Labs with Anjney Midha, CEO, founder of AMP. Welcome.Compute Utilization: Node Allocation, MFU, and AlignmentAnjney [00:00:09]: Thanks for having me. At Google, there are two types of utilization usually, right? That you're measuring in these clusters. One is node allocation, and then the other's MFU. Node utilization is usually like what percentage of cards in the data center are just, used, and that, if it's not at, 95%-Swyx [00:00:29]: There is no excuseAnjney [00:00:29]: There's no excuse, right? I think 95% at Google, which is where my co-founder, Seb, came from, he built the Borg, PBorg/GQM scheduler at Google, and there I think 95% was considered an outage, so 96% node utilization is, should be standard. And most single-tenant clusters are not running at that. So that's one. And then MFU should be, I would say the best in class today is somewhere between 60 and 70%. I think this is a leadership question, right? Fundamentally it's an alignment question, which is are the people who are funding the cluster and then deploying the cluster actually aligned? And sometimes theoretically they are, but in practice the number of people in the chain, the supply chain between, the capital and all the way to whoever's managing the cluster and then whoever's measuring what the output is, are just so many, degrees of separation away that, the, The Have you ever heard the radian metaphor, which is at the beginning of an arc, if you have two arcs that are two lines that are just off by a few degrees, that-Swyx [00:01:33]: It spreads outAnjney [00:01:34]: It spreads out, right? Or at scale. And I think what's happening is a lot of cluster implementations and infrastructure, a lot of frontier labs and other teams, that's what's happening, is they're, they initialize the plan, which is kind of like North Star with a team that wants to do good, but then they're, required to scale so fast instead of iteratively that the wastage just compounds really fast at scale. And so I think we know the answer, which is just do iterative bring ups. If you spend time with people who've been in the semiconductor industry or the DSN industry for a long time, this is not new, and I don't think AI should be an excuse. Sure. Something What is new? Okay. We have a lot of new capabilities, but that doesn't mean just abandon common sense. Common sense should always be in fashion. ? AI scaling doesn't change the in fact, if anything, AI scaling should be putting a premium on the value of common sense and infrastructure because the margin of error now is so much lower and the costs of wastage are so much higher. And the cost of wastage, by the way, is not just economic. I'm, obviously I'm, I'm an investor, or I'm an investor by background. Over the last few years now we're running an AI infrastructure business called, AMP. And I think that it's okay to say this time is different on the capabilities front. We are genuinely getting capabilities at, of the, of a kind we haven't had before. That doesn't give you an excuse to say this time is different for everything, especially infrastructure. So look, I love the hacker mindset and the hustler mindset. Now, that's great for the startup mindset, but you remember this moment where Zuck went from saying, “Move fast, break things” to, move-Responsible Infrastructure and Data Center BacklashSwyx [00:03:10]: Fast and stable infrastructureAnjney [00:03:11]: Move fast with stable infrastructure. I think now we need to move fast with, responsible infrastructure. People are going to ask where the impact is. There was a really In our class yesterday, Scott Nolan, who's the founder of General Matter, came by at Stanford to speak about energy bottlenecks. And he had a phenomenal idea. He said, “if you look at the marginal unit economics of compute per hour,” he goes, “let's call it, $4 an hour. If you're having to bring up a new data center in a new community, why not just say we're going to charge 4.50 an hour, and that marginal impact or that marginal increase, we just literally take that and give it to the local community as cash?” I can tell you as a customer of that compute, I would love that. I'd be happy to pay an additional 50 cents per hour at scale.Swyx [00:03:57]: Wow. Yeah.Anjney [00:03:58]: Because if that means the public benefit is so clear to the communities that the data centers are coming up in, I'm going to feel like that compute is much more reliable. Up to 20% of all data centers this year in the US, my understanding is are at risk.Swyx [00:04:13]: Of community backlash?Anjney [00:04:14]: Correct. Of not getting the community support they need to get brought up.Swyx [00:04:19]: Wow. That's a huge number.Anjney [00:04:20]: Yeah. Now, we, I think we should dig into what that number is. I think it's a little bit of overstated. These things can get over-reported, but it-Swyx [00:04:27]: They don't just care about jobs. They care about all the other stuff around it, right? They care about power grid, they care about environments-Anjney [00:04:33]: Power grid, permitting, and so on. And imagine I think if you said there's a new AI deal. If we're bringing up a data center in your community, we're actually going to reduce the cost of your electricity bill. Okay, now we're talking. Right? The community's going, “Okay. Now this is a deal. I feel like a partner in this.” Right now that's not happening. There will be audits, there will be investigations, and when the, when the regulators come, I don't know when it's going to be, the folks who are moving fast and breaking things in the name of AI progress better be prepared. That's certainly not how we're procuring compute. Or we're, we're trying as much as we can to work with partners who have long-term track records. Many of whom, by the way, are not, AI providers. I think this whole idea of neoclouds being somehow this new category is a lot of marketing speak. There are really good, reliable, trusted data center providers in America who've been around 20 plus years. I love those folks. They know how to Sure. Are they sponsoring happy hours at NeurIPS? No. Are they legibly listed in Build? No. Are they hanging out in my, in, situational awareness parties? No. But they're adults. I trust them.Swyx [00:05:44]: They can run LAN. They can run power.Anjney [00:05:45]: They can run LAN, power, and shell. They have credit histories. We sit down, we have a conversations. Many of them live in Silicon Valley. They've, they've had to deal with the boom and bust cycles of the internet, and I love those folks. They are stable infrastructure partners and thinkers. And I think there's a lot of short-term thinking going on in the compute layer, and it's going to catch up to us. It's not going to be good.AMP Grid: Making FLOPs Flow Like MegawattsSwyx [00:06:07]: You talk about aligning incentives, and, I would think that aligning incentives means you have the full stack in one company, which is xAI and OpenAI, right? So you as a standalone infrastructure layer, why are you somehow more aligned to your portfolio companies than people who just own the whole thing?Anjney [00:06:28]: In systems design, right, there's, there's two regimes of, architecture, right? You have integration, and then you have pooling and utilization, right? So the Or rather, the way to increase utilization often is you can do systems integration where you collapse a lot of process into one node, or you can pull out a process from a node and share that amongst various That resource amongst several different nodes. And so we see the AMP grid, which is, the, what, the system we're building here, which is basically a compute grid. We're trying to do for compute what the electric grid-Swyx [00:07:02]: PowerAnjney [00:07:02]: Yeah, what the power grid did for electricity. It-- this is a pooling and utilization layer across clouds, And so we're actually the opposite of a full stack integration like approach.Swyx [00:07:12]: Super horizontal.Anjney [00:07:13]: Where it's much more horizontal and it's, it's multi-cloud, it's multi-silicon. The goal is to try to make FLOPs flow like megawatts, and that is very hard to do today for many reasons. There's stranded pools of compute all over the place and there's no fungibility. And so right now we do it at the level of scheduling, and we often do it at the economic layer. But as we start to announce what we're working on, it's extraordinary like how many folks are coming out of the woodworks and saying, “Hey, I'm actually working on a way to make compute fungible at this part of the stack and that part of the stack.” And as a grid, we'd like all of these folks to participate on the grid. There's, people often ask me, “Andra, are you a new cloud?” And I go, “No, actually neoclouds are suppliers.” sometimes they'll ask, “Are you a venture capital firm?” I go, “No, actually they are, they are demand like sort of off-takers of the grid.” We see ourselves as what's called an independent system operator. So if you study the history of the electric grid, once it became legible to a lot of factories and industrial sort of participants that, hey, actually it turns out pooling is a good idea. We should pool our generators instead of all having a generator running at half capacity in our backyard. There was a need for an independent entity who could coordinate all these parties. Transmission line, power generation, facilities, transmission lines, factories, and that neutral coordination mechanism is very critical. In order-- If you study like the history of grids, the most enduring ones were those that never owned their own assets. They were ones that had, or often started with long-term anchors who are uncorrelated sources of demand, a steel factory, a shoe mill or whatever in a particular town who weren't competitive, where the steel factory want to spike up at night, the shoe mill wanted to spike up during the day. So then you pool and you share, right? So each of you is guaranteed some base load, but then you kind of schedule your spikes to drive a peak utilization across the town. The gold standard, so to speak, historically, has been these utility companies like PJM Interconnect in the northeast of America, where they, over many years became this what's called an ISO, an independent system operator of the grid. So that's how we see ourselves. Economically, that's what we are. From a technical perspective, we started at the scheduling layer because Seb and Mihai, who, run engineering here, built that at-Swyx [00:09:28]: Did your schedulingAnjney [00:09:28]: They did that at Google. And, -Swyx [00:09:32]: And you have infra shops from Discord as well.Anjney [00:09:35]: I have some.Swyx [00:09:35]: I don't know, I don't know if Discord is like the primary identity, but what-whatever, I'm just kind of-Anjney [00:09:39]: No, D-Discord was-Swyx [00:09:40]: Choosing a well-known name.Anjney [00:09:42]: Well, I So I was running the developer platform there. The internal infrastructure I was not responsible for. That was actually a guy by the name of Mark Smith, who was extraordinary. And yes, Discord did pool So Discord is actually a counter example. I had the chance to learn a lot about fully, full stack infra there because-Swyx [00:09:56]: It's the same thing, yeahAnjney [00:09:57]: It's the, it's the other architecture which is, Discord built its own WebRTC vo-voice and video infra. So like Discord did not use-Swyx [00:10:08]: For the calls, yeah.Anjney [00:10:09]: Yeah, did not For communication, Discord did not use third party infra. It was all built in-house. And then the way you maximize utilization was you pool demand from the world's 200 million plus monthly active gamers, right? And so that's, that's how those stacks were constructed. Again, in systems design, the two concepts that keep coming up over and over again are abstraction and composition, right? And-Swyx [00:10:31]: Bundling and unbundlingAnjney [00:10:33]: Bundling and unbundling, abstraction, composition, like verticalization and-Swyx [00:10:36]: HorizontalAnjney [00:10:36]: Horizontalization. So in that sense, AMP is an independent system operator of the grid. We pool demand, we pool supply from a number of partners we trust At about 1.3 gigawatt scale over four years. And then we pool demand from some of the world's best, research labs and so on. We're sitting at one, periodic labs who need extraordinary long-term demand. And the idea is that, each of them is guaranteed base load on the grid, but they can spike up and down flexibly on, for compute, with much shorter timelines as needed. That was roughly the design of the program I came up with at a16z called Oxygen. The same-- That was the same design of the GQM, BorgX, Borg GQM implementation at Google that Mihai and Seb had built. Which was that how do you allow, teams inside of Google, on the internal infrastructure to be guaranteed capacity, for their base workloads? But when they need to spike up on research, how could they ensure that was sufficiently there? And of course, the big innovation that was not discovered, but kind of implemented in the space, this infra space maybe three, four years ago at Google was the idea of interruptible demand, right? Where you just queue up a bunch of jobs and through this like sort of credit system, there can be a bidding mechanism.Swyx [00:11:53]: Like priorities.Anjney [00:11:54]: It's a dynamic prioritization Basically. And jobs can get interrupted based on somebody else who's saying, “what? I have 10 tokens, 10 credits I want to spend on this job.” Another like team lead, research lead is “Genie 3 or whatever is only worth five, credits, and NanoBanana2 is worth 10 credits,” and so the NanoBanana job gets priority. That's a, that's a made up example.Swyx [00:12:15]: It's very real. Brain Marketplace was real. And, we've, we've covered this on the pod with David Luan, who was-Anjney [00:12:20]: Oh, great. OkaySwyx [00:12:20]: Was there. And the criticism is that, well, actually sometimes you need central command to go all in on a thing. And actually sometimes capitalism via credits doesn't work. Not, this is not a criticism of AMP. I'm just saying, this is a thing that has been tried, internally within Google, and it led to Google missing GPT.Foundry, Frontier Labs, and Research HoardingAnjney [00:12:41]: Like, we structured ourself essentially very similarly to Google. We are structured as a holdings company. So, Alphabet holdings is Alphabet holdings, and then they've got these subsidiaries called Google and-Swyx [00:12:51]: Other betsAnjney [00:12:52]: Other bets and so on. We've got, AMP holdings, and we've got our infrastructure business, and then we've got a capital business called Foundry that incubates new frontier AI labs or invests in them as venture capital, like Periodic. We put a few hundred million dollars into Anthropic from our fund earlier this year. So wherever we feel like teams are making progress, especially researchers and so on who've pushed the frontier inside of existing labs like DeepMind, I find, there comes a point where they feel misaligned with the dictatorship of Alphabet holdings. And at that point, sometimes the dictatorship doesn't want them anymore. And they're “Thank you. You've done your job here. You've kind of helped us through the zero to one phase, and for whatever reason, we're going to deprioritize your amazing, omni model or whatever it is, and instead we're going to prioritize coding.” And, I think that's a tragedy, but I get it. They're Sergey and team are running their own business there. But that doesn't mean we the rest of us should sit around waiting for that progress to get unlocked for the rest of the world and humanity. If you think about how much extraordinary research has happened inside of DeepMind over the last 10 years, I, Demis and Sergey and those guys did such a great job. But at the end of the day, so much of that has never seen the light of day?Swyx [00:14:00]: Or they're like papers only, but they never actually shipped it to production or-Anjney [00:14:03]: What's worse is the paper is actually not even being published anymore ‘cause there's a six-month embargo inside of DeepMind, right? We've heard about this where a paper comes out, and then I think there's a six-month embargo window where if anybody on the business team says, “This could be interesting” It's embargoed for life.Swyx [00:14:18]: Exactly. So the stuff that gets published is the stuff that's not good enough.Anjney [00:14:21]: There's an adverse selection problem, basically. Yeah. At this point-Swyx [00:14:25]: It's, it's a common complaint at NeurIPS, by the way, that's “Well, why would I look at the papers that are the trash of GDM?”Anjney [00:14:31]: Again, I think it's a tragedy. I get it. They're running their business, but the rest of the I think there's negative externalities of research being hoarded, and so that'there's a market failure. And somebody needs to unlock that research, and we can't do it on our own. We only have 1.2 gigawatts of compute. That's nothing. That's about $40 billion of cloud spend. We're going to need a lot-Gigawatt-Scale Compute and End-of-Life PredictionSwyx [00:14:51]: By the way, is that's a new number. I haven't, haven't come across that gigawatt number. That's huge.Anjney [00:14:56]: Yeah. And to be clear, we haven't secured all of it. That's how much demand we have started to secure. I think publicly we haven't actually confirmed how much we have for this year. In order-Swyx [00:15:04]: Where do you want to get to?Anjney [00:15:06]: I think the steady state would be that we have a base load pool Of 1.2 gigawatts at all times Of base load capacity. For spike capacity, right now my estimate is we need roughly six gigawatts over the next four years for all our teams to feel like they were able to keep moving the frontier, whatever they're working on, whether it's, like superconductor discovery over here. There's a new investment we're working on right now, which is in the end of life prediction space in healthcare. It's extraordinary how much you can, you can give this was actually my graduate school work. I went to grad school for bioinformatics at Stanford Med. And I know we-Swyx [00:15:40]: Econ, MCS, bio.Anjney [00:15:41]: So my-- I was this really weird cat where, I was never satisfied with my major options. So at one point I was an econ major, then I was a CS major, then I was a MCS major called mathematical computational science, and they decided they were going to end that major. So I took all that coursework, and I applied it to grad school, my graduate degree in bioinformatics, which was the master's program, and then I thought I was going to do a PhD. I never ended up doing it. I dropped out and went to work at Kleiner. But I was lucky enough to apprentice with this professor at, Stanford Med. His name is Nigam Shah, and he was working on end of life prediction. Stanford is one of the only research facilities in America that has a longitudinal patient data set that's larger at scale. I think it's at least 12 million patient lives. The only larger data set is at the VA, the Veterans Affairs, of America. And to do research, like do any deep learning and so on that data set, it was called the STRIDE data set at that time, you had to be a Stanford Med School affiliate, which is why I went and enrolled in the bioinformatics department. End of deep learning was early. Nigam Shah had the visibility-- the vision to see that, you could do end of life prediction to help palliative care. In America, the, over 30% of all Medicare, Medicaid spend, at least at that time, was spent on end of life care. And what's we grew up in Asia, so we all-- Yeah, at least I won't speak for you, but I have A very different relationship with death than I find folks who grew up in America do. In America, spiritually and culturally, especially in Western societies where Christianity, the Christian tradition sort of frames death as this terminal point, there's often a judgment day and so on. The way we view death is with a finality. In Indian culture, in Hindu culture, death is one-Swyx [00:17:35]: Also, he's Buddhist as well.Anjney [00:17:36]: You're Buddhist, yeah. So it's one, it's one step in a journey of many lives, right? And so, I grew up in this city called Chennai in the south of India, and when people die, you dance on the street. There's like a procession where your body is carried to be cremated and your family, like celebrates and there's drums and so on. It's this huge thing. And, It's because the idea is that you're going to be reincarnated. You've been liberated from the responsibilities of this life, and now you're onto your next. It's a new It's like going off to a new college or whatever, right? And so it was so alien to me when I got here as an undergrad- That the medical system works backwards from that assumption that we have to view death as this terminal thing and delay it, postpone it's a bad thing. And so at the time, clinical decision support in the United States was this very primitive field. Even to this day, physicians in the United States often will tell you when you have a terminal disease, this is your, we've diagnosed you, which is great. Our ability to diagnose you is extraordinary. You have somewhere between six months to six years to live. What do you do with that information? The error bars are so high that then you In times of uncertainty, we default to culture, and when the culture is let's-- this is a bad thing, I've got to prolong my life, then you start doing things like And just to, just sort of from a systems perspective, what's going on there is Physicians often feel like they need to provide such high error bars because there's always some uncertainty in end of life diagnosis, and if you provide the wrong Diagnosis or recommendation to your patient, you can be sued for medical malpractice. And then your license can be taken away. It can be catastrophic for your career. In contrast, if in countries where that's not the case, what you often observe is that patients, physicians are quite prescriptive with their recommendation. They say, “Hey, this is your condition. The literature says that you probably have this much time on Earth left. My expert opinion is that you are an outlier or whatever.” And they try to be more prescriptive, and that empowers a patient, right? ‘Cause then a patient can say, “I trust my doctor. They said on average, I have six months to live, but if I do these things, I may have a shot because of my particular predispositions or my genetic history or whatever.” And that empowers you to go about your life in a actually more scientific way than leaning on religion, culture, spirituality, and so on. In contrast, here, because of that medical malpractice sort of thing looming over your head, a physician never gives you a clear recommendation. So instead you say, “Okay, Doc, well, let's try it all.” And then you start a whole regime of drugs and therapies, and then you often spend weeks and weeks in the hospital, and that deteriorates your quality of life. And when that deteriorates your quality of life, you instead of spending your last few days doing the things you love with your family, you're spending it on a hospital bed. And that ends up being thirty percent of Medicare and Medicaid. So it's worse for the patients. The doctors feel terrible. The American taxpayer is paying a huge amount of money. And so this is why Nigam Shah, who was this professor at Stanford, said, “Anjney, if there's “ I kind of sat down with him. I was this young, I'd, I was twenty-one, and I was “I want to work on a big problem.” He's “The big problem is end of life care.” And so we tried to do deep learning to say, to-- So we started trying to run deep learning on these tried patient data sets to say, “Could you have an AI system make a recommendation that is orders of magnitude more precise about how much time you have left once you've been diagnosed with a terminal condition than a human?” And then if we can get that precision to be high enough, then you can empower the patient. And it turns out the tech works. Like it's-- Once you get the data set, like RL works. Honestly, even regression models work. You don't need to get that fancy. At the time, we were just trying, doing like very simple neural nets.Swyx [00:21:54]: Simple solutions, yeah.Anjney [00:21:54]: Today, what we can do with RL is extraordinary. The problem remains then and now is regulatory, because you actually can't shift the burden of the wrong clinical diagnoses from the physician to the AI system. And so at that time, I got quite disillusioned ten years ago for, twelve years ago where, ‘cause I felt I just didn't have the resources to influence regulation. Today, I'm very lucky. I'm in a different place. I've, I'm a lot older, and so I've been spending a lot of time on my next incubation, which is how can we unlock the, patient empowerment by training AI models to do end of life prediction much, with much more precision and ac-Swyx [00:22:37]: Oh, wow. You're still focused on this the whole time.Anjney [00:22:40]: The-- I haven't been able to get, this out of my mind a single day for the last fourteen years. This is the hill I want, I would like to die on. There's two, I would say. What? I actually, I'd prefer not to die.Swyx [00:22:51]: Yeah, exactly.Anjney [00:22:52]: But I think two bipartisan issues, I think two issues that should be bipartisan in America are how do we empower patients to make the right clinical decisions at the end of their life, such that we're reducing the taxpayer burden with science? It's just good old science, and AI can help here. And the second is, net positive data centers, ‘cause I think that's the biggest critical bottleneck on training and good enough AI models to help people at the end of their life. So there's sort of two sides of the, of the same scaling bottleneck curve, but those two, we formed AMP as a public benefit corporation. My wife and I, who you've met, you've met Viv. Her passion is education. Her family is a long line of educators and so on, and, of physicists. And so this class is my attempt to stop being the black sheep of the family and be a, an educator. But if I'm not educating, the thing I would be doing is working, on these two problems, whether on the political spectrum or as a researcher back at, in some lab. And my hope is if anyone's listening to this podcast, if they're passionate about either of those two topics, I'd love to hear from them. We'll, we'll we can share the contact in the show notes, but, we're looking for people to join both of those missions on the, on the political side as well as on the medical side, on the research side.Frontier Systems, Output Maxing, and AlignmentSwyx [00:24:08]: You said, this is a discipline that you want to form. You call it's called variously called Frontier System. It's variously called One Person Frontier Lab. What is the ideal name or shape of this? Like the, what is the mission?Anjney [00:24:24]: Of the class?Swyx [00:24:26]: Of the discipline that you're, exploring, right? I The class is called Frontier Systems. But like for me, maybe one phrase is you're, you're just anti-waste, right? Which is wasting GPUs, wasting in human and Medicare. But is there, is there a broader theme that I'm, that maybe you can encapsulate more succinctly?Anjney [00:24:45]: Yeah. The, from an engineering perspective, it's very simple. It's output maxing. It's the, it's the department of output maxing.Swyx [00:24:51]: Making the most of what we have.Anjney [00:24:52]: Exactly. I'm a huge believer in optimal outcomes. I think both in America and other countries, we are losing our appreciation for nuance, and this is the thing of And AI is the same case, right? Oh, the bitter lesson holds. Okay, fine. But that doesn't mean you just like throw 500 GB300, 500,000 GB300s at your suboptimal model scaling and you waste a bunch of compute. It also doesn't mean that, the most optimal is to have like 50 different architectures where there isn't enough standardization. One of the reasons Anthropic has had extraordinary sort of velocity is ‘cause they picked the transform architecture and said, “This is simple. Let's double down on it,” right? And now luckily there's enough investment going to the space that we can afford other architectures, but at the time, investment was just too fragmented into other architectures, so that arguably unlocked scaling. So I think there's a philosophy. I think we all owe it to ourselves to do output maxing with a new capability called AI on a global level. I think if I was starting a new department at Stanford, depending on how fuzzy or technical I wanted to be, I'd probably call it the Department of Alignment. Like-Swyx [00:25:59]: It's an overloaded termAnjney [00:26:01]: But it is, But alignment really Is a hard problem. And I think when you unlock it, full stack alignment is super hard in any organization and in any system. Like in a, in a venture capital firm, if you can have full stack alignment between your limited partners and your, the founders who are creating the value and ultimately the public that owns the IPO stock, that is a gift that keeps giving. And when you study the history of these systems, when they start off, they usually start out small scale where the feedback loop is actually so tight that there's alignment. And then the more you try to scale, the more division of labor happens, the more specialization happens, and at each step you add abstractions. And wherever there's an API interface, there's like loss. There's communication loss. And so I think a really cool thing would be for us to figure out is there a way for us to have our cake and eat it too as an engineering discipline? Is there a way to actually scale up and scale out Without losing any alignment, without lossy transmission?Swyx [00:27:01]: You mean standards?Anjney [00:27:02]: So standards is one way. The other way is you just have net new capabilities. So like what we're trying to do here is discover new superconductors. A room temperature superconductor would be a lossless transmission mechanism for energy. We would have flying cars. We are right within a few years of having a new room temperature superconductor. So I think those are the two. You either have to standardize On protocols or API specs that allow lossless communication, or you can come up with a whole new capability that unlocks so much abundance, the standardization doesn't matter ‘cause you just unlock net new capacity. This, the, so this is what I spend my days thinking about these days.Compute Markets, SF Compute, and Non-NVIDIA ChipsSwyx [00:27:38]: No, I think every infra person at, who wants scale and wants to output max does eventually end up thinking about this. We don't have time to go into it, but we have done an episode with SF Compute-Anjney [00:27:50]: Oh, coolSwyx [00:27:50]: That is trying to standardize The futures contract for compute. I don't, I don't know how that's going by the way, but like at some point this will be public.Anjney [00:27:57]: Oh, I think Evan is awesome and SF Compute is the kind of effort that I hope we can accelerate because what often happens is these exchanges are very hard to get, they, it's hard to bootstrap them, right? Because they often require-- There's many inefficiencies between parties. There's trust boundary inefficiencies in infrastructure because you don't trust, one part of the stack doesn't trust another part of the stack to give them visibility. There's capital markets inefficiencies, there's operational efficiencies. So if you can inject like a single shock to the system of a ton of compute demand or supply, then you can accelerate, these new flywheels. And so my hope is one day, or soon, if SF Compute needs extra like has excess capacity, they just hook it up to the grid and they get flooded with demand from us. And on the other side, if they have a ton of demand but they don't have supply, they just again hook up to the grid and it's a two-way protocol where they can just hook up to our capacity. And I don't think we're too far from that. Today our working implementation of it is mostly through a group of labs, universities, and a few sort of trusted parties who are, who all feel like they're in alignment to borrow an over sort of used word. But our hope is to just have it be an open protocol that anyone can hook up to on-Swyx [00:29:20]: Hook up for demand or hook up for supply? In primarily demand, it sounds like. Like you-Anjney [00:29:25]: No, bothSwyx [00:29:26]: You would want to offer demand.Anjney [00:29:27]: Both. Yeah. Unfortunately, what's happened in the last six weeks is, we thought we'd have a bunch of excess capacity by the end of this year. It's all gone.Swyx [00:29:37]: It's exploding.Anjney [00:29:38]: It, yeah. It's all gone. And so I have, my text messages are full of friends, we know many of these people, these are founders who've raised billions of dollars in San Francisco going, “Oh, any chance you have like 50 nodes in the next few weeks?”Swyx [00:29:51]: What is the scope for, non-Nvidia, right? You have Lisa Su coming and, Rainer Pope as well. And so There is a lot of demand for, more performance Alternative architectures and all that. At the same time, this hurts your standardization.Anjney [00:30:11]: I don't think so. So actually Rainer's a great example, right? Rainer is a CEO and founder of, MatX. I actually had him by for office hours in the class earlier today, and there was an insight he brought up that I hadn't considered before, which is when they decided to pick the standard For their data center, they picked the NVIDIA reference architecture. So the MatX chips Just plug in to any site that has an NVIDIA bring up planned. And, the-Swyx [00:30:42]: It's just software then. It's, it's not the-Anjney [00:30:44]: A-Swyx [00:30:44]: Hardware.Anjney [00:30:46]: Well, from an input and IO perspective It's the same footprint as an NVIDIA rack.Swyx [00:30:52]: That makes sense.Anjney [00:30:53]: Where they have done, innovated a bunch from what I can tell is on systems co-design. Which is where a lot of the gains are to be had. And so he picked He was “Anjney, we, there's just so much work to do when you're building a new chip company.”Swyx [00:31:08]: Can't fight every front.Anjney [00:31:08]: You just can't fight on every front. So my question to him was, “Well, you're working on this new chip. Their tape-out is next year. What, who are you going to partner with to host the chips?” And he said, “Whoever will host them. That's just not, that's not my focus.” And I said, “But how did you “ you decided back to our earlier systems design question, he decided that, he didn't want to be a full, fully integrated chip provider. The bottleneck they're focused on is the logic die, and they, he feels they can crank out a ton of performance gains through co-design there. But then that means you delegate, to our question earlier, it, you he's the data center provider is a different part of the stack, and so then he's dependent on that part of the ecosystem to host his chips to get the performance gains to the customer. So now you have another abstraction, and you might have loss. So I asked him, “How do you prevent loss?” And back to your point, he said, “I just picked the NVIDIA standard ‘cause I didn't want to Like I wanted to piggyback off of an existing protocol.” And that, what's great about NVIDIA is that reference architecture is known.Swyx [00:32:15]: Open.Anjney [00:32:15]: It's open. They've published it. So Jensen's actually enabled someone like Rainer to build a chip company like MatX, and I don't see them as competitive. The compute demand is so high. Like, I don't I think NVIDIA's not able to meet the demands of production, so we just need more chips. And I think it's very smart what MatX has done, which is say, “We're just going to we're not going to innovate on the data center design ‘cause actually, thank you, Jensen, you've done all the hard work. Where we can innovate is somewhere else.” And I think that's, that's very healthy. I think that's how we unblock new bottlenecks. And my view is these, the, chip teams like MatX, who have arrived at the insight that co-design is the way, The primary bottleneck for them is trust boundary. To do co-design well, you need visibility into the next model generation as soon as possible ‘cause it takes two years to tape out. So if by the time I bring my chip to market, your model architecture's changed, I'm host. Now, when he was inside Google, he was sitting next to the Gemini team. He was on Palm or whatever.Trust Boundaries, Co-Design, and Researcher CEOsSwyx [00:33:19]: His co-founder was the, was one, was one of the Palm guys, I think.Anjney [00:33:23]: Yes. Yes, exactly. So when you're inside the trust boundary of Google, then your systems co-design loop is super tight. When you leave as a founder, one of the biggest risks you take is now you're outside the trust boundary. And so what I love doing is helping chip teams who can help us unlock more capacity for the independent ecosystem access to trust. Because when I If I've been, involved with a lab from day one, and I was lucky enough to work with Anthropic, and then I'm on the board of Mistral and helped Black Forest Labs get started. I think at this point I'm on six or seven different teams.Swyx [00:33:57]: Only six? I feel like my mental number was going to be 13, but yeah, it's-Anjney [00:34:02]: No, I go deep with one at a time.Swyx [00:34:04]: You're founding CEO of Arena.Anjney [00:34:07]: Nah, that was an, that was an-Swyx [00:34:08]: Administrative CEOAnjney [00:34:09]: It was an administrative five-month gig where Whalen and Anastasios were graduating from their PhDs, and they didn't need a product team. So I helped recruit the head of engineering product and design. But Anastasios has always been the CEO of that company. I played a pinch-hitting I'm an intern. I was CEO intern For five months. -Swyx [00:34:33]: I interviewed him, and he's he's very well-spoken. I think he's a debate, former debate, champion. But also very quantitative and mathematical, which is-Anjney [00:34:41]: He-Swyx [00:34:41]: Such a unicorn.Anjney [00:34:43]: See, what's amazing about him? If you look at his output, he's an output maxer. By the time he was graduating from his PhD, which he only graduated last year, he had published more work with a citation count than, people twice his age. But at the same time, he'd already started a project called LLM Arena that was being used by millions of people As a side project. And time and time again, what I've realized is venture capitalists suck at seeing human beings as, dynamic agents where-Swyx [00:35:14]: They want to put you in a boxAnjney [00:35:15]: They want to put you in a box.Swyx [00:35:15]: This is your thing.Anjney [00:35:16]: So the first time I got introduced to Anastasios, somebody had told me “Oh, he's amazing, but he's a researcher.” I was “what? What do you mean he's a researcher?” That's what-Swyx [00:35:28]: Like he's not a CEO, not a founder.Anjney [00:35:29]: Not a CEO, exactly. I was “Are you crazy? Do you Have you met Dario?” Dario's a scientist. He's gone from zero to, what will soon be a trillion-dollar company in four years. Being a CEO, nominally speaking, is not that hard. Being a good CEO is hard. Being a great CEO actually requires a level of performance that scientists who have already published at the top of their field have accomplished. It is super hard to be a competitive scientist. To publish in academia over the last 20, 30 years, to make it to the top of your discipline at a place like Berkeley, you are a star athlete. Like, you are an athlete of the mind, and you perform at the highest levels. And to get there, whether you're, Anastasios or Whalen at Berkeley, or you are Robin, who-Swyx [00:36:23]: BFL, yeahAnjney [00:36:24]: With Black Forest, who created Stable Diffusion, or if you're, like Guillaume at Meta, who created Llama before he started Mistral. The amount of human leadership you have to demonstrate to get the resources, like get the trust of the organization, publish it, put it up. I would just fund researchers all day Right? If who have contributed already to the field. If they've, if they've put SOTA out there, they're, they're star athletes already. If they haven't done SOTA Look, they can still be good CEOs, but then I find the failure mode is that they just don't want to be CEOs, they primarily want to publish, and that's okay, too. One of the things we do with the AMP Grid is we donate excess compute. We have two nonprofits, like university labs. We carved out like a couple thousand H100s. But I do think there's extraordinary research being done on university campuses. My father-in-law's a physicist. He's a professor. Extraordinary work in physics, and we need that. But if you want to be a CEO, what you need to be willing To do is be super confrontational, outside of science. Like within the scientific community, some of the best researchers are very confrontational about their convictions, right? This architecture is right. To be a great CEO, you basically have to be willing to be confrontational up and down the stack.Swyx [00:37:41]: To your own team.Anjney [00:37:42]: To your own team-Swyx [00:37:43]: To customersAnjney [00:37:43]: Hiring, recruiting customers. Well, I would say, Yeah, pretty much to everyone Everybody. Of course-Swyx [00:37:50]: I see, I feel a little bit of that in my own work, but yeah, I can't imagine the stakes that Dario has had to go through. It's, it's pretty insane.Anjney [00:37:56]: No, I don't think the stakes are that different From how you're feeling it, right? Stakes are personal scaling vectors, right? The stakes that seem so low to you, like having this podcast where you can talk to somebody and just have a you're an extraordinary communicator, right? Like already in this conversation, you've pulled more out of me than most people, and I've been on 12 podcasts in the last two weeks.AI Coachella and First-Principles ThinkingSwyx [00:38:17]: I think I, we've just seen each other enough that there's some base trust.Anjney [00:38:20]: There's base trust.Swyx [00:38:20]: And I think, and I know that you, that I've done my homework and like I know that trust is a big deal for you, so.Anjney [00:38:27]: I think trust is about consistency, and you and I have seen each other In the community for years, right? Like, I remember the first time we met was at NeurIPS in New Orleans. I don't know if you remember that, luncheon.Swyx [00:38:38]: Oh my God.Anjney [00:38:39]: Reiko had set up this Reiko's amazing, and he set up this luncheon and-Swyx [00:38:43]: Yeah, I was “Who's this Discord guy?” I'm “Okay.” But-Anjney [00:38:45]: No, you weren't-Swyx [00:38:46]: You were just “You made some investments.”Anjney [00:38:47]: You were much less polite. You were “Who's this VC?” You're like-Swyx [00:38:51]: No, I Was I? Oh my God.Anjney [00:38:53]: It was-Swyx [00:38:53]: I'm so sorryAnjney [00:38:53]: It was visible on your face.Swyx [00:38:54]: I'm so sorry. But you weren't, you weren't The introduction was bad. I was I didn't know who you were.Anjney [00:39:00]: The, see, this is the thing about context, right? Like, but then I think I heard your accent. And I was “Are you-”Swyx [00:39:06]: Singapore, yeahAnjney [00:39:06]: “Are you Singaporean?” And you're “Yeah.” And I said, “I went to high school, JC, in Singapore.” And then the ice broke. But This is the there are in the scientific community, sometimes the stakes are very high for people who haven't had the emotional, what is called EQ Coaching and mentorship, right? Which is like to have scientific impact, you often need to be a extraordinary emotional, like emotionally in tune person with the folks you're trying to influence. And so what comes so naturally to you is actually a super high stakes thing to other people. And so I wouldn't assume that Dario's more stressed out than you. These things are you'd be surprised how similar and small sometimes the problems are to you That some of the world's biggest, leaders are facing. And that's what I've learned from this class. The guest speakers are Sam, Satya, Jensen.Swyx [00:40:01]: AI Coachella.Anjney [00:40:02]: Yeah. It's AI Coachella, right? So we got to get all the headliners, and they're I'm very lucky that some of these people have either mentored me over the years or I've done business with them. And when you, take the performative stuff out and any assumptions you may have about these people that you read in the press or on Twitter, We're all just humans. We're all trying to get along. And what's so special about this moment is AI is forcing, like scaling, the bitter lesson is forcing a lot of people to revise their assumptions for how the world works and go back to first principles or go and educate themselves. So the kind of people I was, I won't name who this person is, but I was at an event last week in Texas and, ran to somebody who said, “Anjney, I came across the class. What do you think about real time action prediction models?” And I was, don't know how happy it made me feel when they asked me that question. I know they've done the work. They've challenged themselves. I'm, they didn't ask me, “What do you think of world models?” They said, “What do you think of n-”Swyx [00:41:04]: Real time action predictionAnjney [00:41:05]: “action, real time action prediction models?” World models, don't get me wrong, are cool and everything, but you and I both know that is a layer of abstraction that is sometimes not usefully precise enough. Right? Ours-Swyx [00:41:16]: There's like four different kinds of world models.Anjney [00:41:17]: Yes, exactly.Swyx [00:41:18]: We've done the part with general intuition, by the way, which is very focused on, -Anjney [00:41:22]: Oh, cool. Yes. I love Pim. Pim is great. And this is what I love about people who've done that level of work. They realize they're not in competition with people who the rest of the world thinks they're in competition with.Swyx [00:41:34]: Because they're not in the category, they're in the specific thing they're trying to do.Anjney [00:41:37]: They're focused on their mission, and they have a systems understanding of the bottleneck they're trying to solve. And when somebody else says, “I'm working on real time, action prediction models too,” Pim goes, “Oh, I love that person. I want, I can learn from them.” But the minute they're “Oh, that person's a world model person,” it's “like which type of world model person?” But mostly they're just trying to figure out if it's a waste of their time, because we don't have enough time. So, Pim, for example, is super, loves this other company I work with we've talked about called Black Forest Labs. And he's mentioned to me multiple times that he's so, He thinks what Flux is doing is really cool. Andy Blattman came by and spoke in the class. And what I find over and over again is for people who do the work, who can be usefully precise enough about like what is actually going on in the world of frontier research, The sense of camaraderie is still well and alive, but it gets lost sometimes when you have to like abstract The technical complexities in, business terms And then the VCs are “How are you different from that world model?” I'm going to say Where do I even start to explain this stuff? And then the misalignment creeps in.Leading vs. Winning in Frontier AISwyx [00:42:43]: This is good. Yeah, I think, people listening get a sense of, what it is like to operate at a real level, like yourself, rather than at, the journalist level, where you have to sort of put everyone in, a rough category and create a narrative of competition, and who's winning today, who's behind.Anjney [00:42:58]: It-- this idea of winning is so Weird to me.Swyx [00:43:03]: You do want to win. You want you want competitiveness.Anjney [00:43:06]: No, I think you want to lead.Swyx [00:43:07]: You want SOTA.Anjney [00:43:07]: No, I think you want to lead. Yes, so you want to push the frontier. You want to push the SOTA. You want to do something that hasn't been done before. You want to capture value, but you don't want to capture so much value that, people think you're unaligned with your mission or trying to do what's best for the world. You want to capture enough value that you can keep innovating, right? And I think that people want to lead, they don't really This idea of winning and losing, again, I love Jensen. He's a, he's a leader. The mindset that he talked about on Dwarkesh's podcast, right? He's “I didn't wake up with a loser mindset.” I think that was awesome, right? Because he's, he's an engineer. Dwarkesh has done the work. So there's at least-- even though the, to me, it was very obvious they're talking about the same thing, they just passed each other. They just had to basically, Jensen has this, five-layer cake abstraction of how the industry works. And Dwarkesh had, I think from that podcast, had more of, a pre-training, mid-training, post-training systems loop concept.Swyx [00:44:04]: It's just a factor of who he talks to, right? Again, it's very clear.Anjney [00:44:06]: It's the systems It's the abstraction, the mental models, the It's the whole-- Dude, so much of the problem in the world is reasoning by analogy. And then the assumptions that are held invisibly.Swyx [00:44:19]: Yeah, I've, I've said, this is actually the best time in human history for first principles thinkers. Because everything you think will happen is actually now coming true.Anjney [00:44:28]: Correct. And the venture capital community is, notorious for this, where people look-- In times of uncertainty, they, cling to axioms that ended up being true from the previous era, and they kind of like proclaim them with confidence as if they're truths, but they're not. And it's very important to see the distinction between a heuristic and an axiom. An axiom can be proven-Swyx [00:44:55]: Like from internal consistency point of viewAnjney [00:44:56]: With internal consistency. A heuristic is a way you kind of a shortcut. And my God, the number of people I have had to put up with over the last few years who proclaim-- use heuristics As axioms to judge people, to judge which companies are going to succeed or the number of people who are “Oh, yeah, Anthropic, they're just training models right now,” but this one continue.Swyx [00:45:22]: Because that's a B2B SaaS?Anjney [00:45:23]: Yeah, the, like Which over the fullness of time, if you squint at it, maybe. But the way you arrive there is so important that you can-- you just, you can dismiss people. Here's what happened, right? What happened is Anthropic basically achieved takeoff in October of last year. That training run-Swyx [00:45:41]: Whatever, three seven?Anjney [00:45:42]: I forget the numbers now, but whatever that checkpoint was-Swyx [00:45:45]: We saw the cognition.Anjney [00:45:46]: Yeah. Right? You probably-- The, to those of us in the community, especially once post-training was done and it was released in December-Swyx [00:45:52]: Yeah. Can I sneak a sneaky question in there? I don't know if you have a perspective, maybe you don't, I just The number one question is how did Anthropic crack coding, right? Because Claude One, Claude Two, okay, like it was part of it, but it wasn't a big deal. And the leading hypothesis, it's a lucky dice roll that was then compounded, right? Like it was like Mildly better, but then they saw it and they were “Okay, let's really invest.”How Anthropic Cracked CodingAnjney [00:46:17]: I had this very annoying teacher. I went to this boarding school called Rishi Valley in India, which is like this, bird preserve. It's like three hundred and fifty acres of bird preserve in rural India, and there was no technology for seven years. There was this teacher, I won't name them, but they would have this-- I hated it every time he said this to me. He was “Luck fa-favors the prepared mind,” which is like a common saying, but the way he delivered it, always grated me, ‘cause he was always I was always one of those kids who got, a good grade without trying very hard. ‘Cause like high middle school is not that hard if you, if you're generally, paying attention and so on. And there was this one time where I-- But then I would get an eighty percent grade, and he would keep pushing me to say “The reason you didn't get the ninety-five plus percent is because you're not that lucky.” And I would say, “What do you mean?” ‘Cause I would think that I deserved that grade, and I would sometimes argue with him. And he'd say, “You didn't have a prepared mind. If you want to get lucky again “ There was basically one time where I got like ninety-five or ninety-six on this, on this subject, and I, now that I felt entitled. I was “Okay, I'm going to keep doing this,” and I didn't. And then he was “Luck favors a prepared mind. You got lucky last time, but you got to stay prepared.” And I didn't understand what he meant. Now, as I'm older, I'm okay, these adults actually knew a thing or two. Anthropic has been the most prepared company for four years. And so then when the right, context data comes in, the right developers start sending in, the right context diffs, Sure, you could say you got lucky, but if you ask me, they're pr-pretty damn prepared with paranoia for like four years. And you have to remember, it was so hard for them to get going early on that they had to do so much more with so much less that you just have to be prepared to be so efficient.Swyx [00:48:06]: Yes. There's numbers on their burn compared to OpenAI. I've, I've written about it, but they are so much more efficient in their, in their tech stack.Anjney [00:48:14]: It's not even It's not funny.Swyx [00:48:14]: Not even close.Anjney [00:48:15]: Yeah. But it's so clear, right? Like how to output max for the world. They have been prepared, and you could call that luck, but Luck favors the prepared mind.Culture, Hardship, and Anthropic's P0Swyx [00:48:25]: This is one of those things that I was going over some of your old lectures and, you were data, people think it's a moat and actually it's culture and actually it's team Actually. And I, it's-- there's different levels of moats, and this is the ultimate one that determines everything else. Which you can then compoundAnjney [00:48:43]: You're saying culture is the ultimate moat? Yeah. But the thing about culture is it's very fragile. So moats, I don't think they're-- there's very few moats I found that are actually moats. They're-- It's, it's a nice concept, but in reality, you have to replenish your culture. Ben Horowitz was, the speaker in CS153 on Tuesday, and I asked him this question about the culture bottleneck in teams because, there are several AI teams-Swyx [00:49:09]: His book, Hard Things About Hard ThingsAnjney [00:49:11]: Hard Thing About Hard Things. But more concretely, there are so many AI labs today that have all the cash they need, they have all the compute they need, and they're still not able to ship anything SOTA. And then you start seeing people leave and so on, and my diagnosis, it's, is it's the culture. And so I asked him, Ben, they're-- He's been one of the most aggressive investors in AI labs. He goes back to this thing which resonates in my mind a lot. It-- When I used to work at a16z, I would, book a conference room, and right outside the conference room, which is closest to the toilet ‘cause it was the fastest way for me to go use the bathroom between Zoom meetings-Swyx [00:49:45]: Oh my God, I'll put maxing my toilet optimization. Okay, never mind.Anjney [00:49:48]: It was not healthy in hindsight, but maybe this is TMI. But anyway, outside that conference on the wall was this quote that was printed that said, “Culture is not a set of beliefs, it's a set of actions.” And it's by Bushido, is this, Japanese philosopher. And if you stop taking the actions that demonstrate the mission alignment to what you've said to your team and to your-- the world matters to you, then your culture starts to fray. So it's not actually a moat, I would say. It's a very brittle, fragile thing that requires daily tending to like a garden. But if you figure out the system to keep that garden tended, which I think ultimately comes down to knowing yourself ‘cause you most naturally, if you're authentic and so on, you'll naturally make trade-offs that seem effortless to you, but that reinforce your culture. And then That becomes this very hard thing for other people to catch up to. And at Anthropic, from day one, there was this mission like-- missionary like zeal and belief that, hey, these capabilities will scale. These systems are stochastic, not deterministic. There will be error bars, and until we crack interpretability, there's risk. And at some point, people will go-- stop using Claude just for coding. They'll use it in some mission-critical context where there's-- it'll throw off a bug, and then people are going to come blame them, and they want to be on the right side of history where they said, “Yes, this is a powerful technology. We think it's going to change the world, And we want to be very measured and scientific about the fact that, ‘Hey, guys, these are stats models, statistical models.' That's how statistics works.” ultimately, when you're training neural nets, it is just a statistical system. And I think that Belief that safety is important and that it might seem toy-like in the early days, and sometimes, you could say, “Anjney, they totally over-exaggerated the risk,” like two years ago when they said, “Let's not launch Claude One,” or whatever. Well, okay, maybe in hindsight, but hindsight is twenty/twenty. And at the time, they didn't know how that model would be used, and to them it felt existential if somebody came and said, “You weren't responsible. It-- This wrote a bug.” The liability associated with that is massive. So how do you prevent against that? Well, day in, day out, you say safety. And when you start deviating from that, you have the team hold you accountable, you have the world hold you accountable, and I think that becomes a moat over time. At some point, that moat will get challenged and so on, and then it become fragile. I hope it endures because that's the beauty of having founders run the show, ‘cause they can make really hard trade-offs to do mission alignment. The hardest part is in the earliest days when you don't have a group of people who are going through difficulty, stress, crisis together, then your culture doesn't get defined sharply enough, and that's what I'm worried about right now, is there's so much money going to these labs. There's no hardship. There's no-Swyx [00:52:50]: To anyone who knowsAnjney [00:52:51]: There's no to anyone who knows. And that, in hindsight, was a feature, not a bug for Anthropic. The number of people who said no, the number of people who said, “Sorry, we're all doing investors in OpenAI,” that is competitive difference. It forces you to really understand, what is the hill you want to die on at the expense of everything else. What's the P zero? And there, P zero from day one was coding. The reason, the mechanism system there was if we crack coding, Then we will crack AGI. Our mission is AGI. We want to get there safely. If we focus on codin

This conversation on how we're going to power the AI data center buildout is between US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Scott Nolan, Founder and CEO of General Matter.

"There was no company to invest in. It would have to be started."Scott Nolan spent all of 2023 looking for a company solving America's nuclear fuel crisis. When he couldn't find one, he started General Matter instead. The US once supplied 86% of the world's enriched uranium. Today it has zero. Russia controls half the market, with China accelerating fast.General Matter just closed a $900M DOE contract and a $2.4B EXIM financing deal to supply Japan, announced the same week the Strait of Hormuz closed.In this episode, Scott makes the case that nuclear fuel is the linchpin of the entire energy transition, and that getting it wrong is a national security issue not just for America but for every allied nation.He shares:How America handed the uranium market to Russia without anyone noticingThe SpaceX playbook applied to nuclear enrichmentWhat the $2.4B US-Japan deal means for energy securityWhy Japan keeps falling into the same energy trapWhat the next five years at General Matter actually look likeWill the west be able to regain its control?Connect with Scott Nolan:https://x.com/ScottNolanhttps://x.com/generalmatterConnect James Riney:https://x.com/james_rineyhttps://x.com/coral_capitalIf you're working on something ambitious or Building with Japan, we'd love to hear from you!Get in touch with us here: https://coralcap.co/?lang=en

Scott Nolan spent 12 years at Founders Fund looking for the most important problems that no one else was funding. Then he found a problem so critical, and so ignored, that he couldn't find a company to back. So he started one. General Matter is rebuilding US uranium enrichment. The United States was the world leader in enrichment through the 1980s and then stopped entirely. Today roughly a quarter of US enriched uranium comes from Russia, a ban on those imports takes full effect in 2028, and the advanced reactors everyone is counting on to power the next wave of data centers have no reliable domestic fuel source. Scott believes enrichment is the single bottleneck to a nuclear future, and that the window to solve it is narrow. The conversation covers how Peter Thiel influenced him, why being in love with an idea is dangerous for investors but required for founders, and what it actually takes to rebuild an industrial capability the country let atrophy for 40 years. Please enjoy my conversation with Scott Nolan. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.  ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠. ----- ⁠Ramp's⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, ⁠Vanta⁠ continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Visit ⁠vanta.com/invest⁠.  ----- ⁠WorkOS⁠ is a developer platform that enables SaaS companies to quickly add enterprise features to their applications. Visit⁠⁠ ⁠WorkOS.com⁠⁠⁠ to transform your application into an enterprise-ready solution in minutes, not months. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- ⁠Ridgeline⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgelineapps.com⁠. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:45) Guest Intro: Scott Nolan (00:03:36) SpaceX, Founders Fund & General Matter (00:08:04) What Scott learned from Peter Thiel (00:10:05) The "Avoid Trends" Concept (00:10:55) Finding Important Problems No One Is Working On (00:17:32) Gut v. Intuition (00:18:49) Valuation, Competition & Capital Intensity (00:20:20) Founders Fund Strategy (00:21:06) The Steeper the Up Round, the Greater the Undervaluation (00:21:41) Being in Love with the Problem (00:26:07) Governments, Technology & History (00:28:54) Lessons from SpaceX and Elon (00:29:42) Vertical Integration (00:33:07) The Role of Energy in Civilization (00:37:36) State & Direction of US Energy (00:38:58) Why Nuclear? (00:42:20) Taxonomy of Advanced Reactors (00:45:33) The BYOE Concept (00:46:50) What Could Make Advanced Reactors Fail? (00:48:04) General Matter: Product, Business & Company (00:50:12) Enrichment & Weapons-Grade Uranium (00:56:45) North Star Metric (01:01:05) Building a Great Enduring Company (01:04:01) How Scott Runs the Company (01:06:11) Overcoming Irrational Fears About Nuclear (01:08:25) Why Aren't There More Founders Funds? (01:10:03) Operating vs. Investing (01:11:56) Kindest Thing

Even as momentum grows for U.S. nuclear, the fuel supply chain is often overlooked. This dynamic is shifting as the industry wakes up to critical choke points and a heavy reliance on countries like Russia for enrichment. As America aims to reduce geopolitical dependency in energy, fixing these domestic gaps has become a strategic priority. In this episode — a companion to a separate episode of Catalyst focused on nuclear waste — Shayle Kann speaks with Scott Nolan, the CEO of General Matter. The company is focused on enrichment, one of the most acute risk areas in the supply chain. Shayle and Scott also discuss the big-picture state of nuclear fuel, from mining to advanced reactor requirements. The two cover topics like: The five-step nuclear fuel supply chain America's continued reliance on Russian enrichment: The history of enrichment decline in the US The "chicken or egg" problem for advanced reactors Distinctions between LEU and HALEU fuel Enrichment's toll-service business model The strategic importance of General Matter's enrichment facility in Paducah, Kentucky Catalyst: The state and future of nuclear waste Catalyst: The path to market for new nuclear reactors Catalyst: The US nuclear groundswell Open Circuit: Inside Meta's massive nuclear push Open Circuit: Fear and loathing at the Department of Energy Latitude Media: What TerraPower's big milestone says about future nuclear projects Latitude Media: Commonwealth Fusion Systems launches digital twin with Nvidia and Siemens Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. Catalyst is brought to you by FischTank PR, an award-winning climate and energy tech, renewables, and sustainability-focused PR firm dedicated to elevating the work of both early-stage and established companies. Learn more about their PR approach and how they can support your company's messaging by visiting fischtankpr.com. Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com.

The history of uranium enrichment, early days of SpaceX, how Peter Thiel thinks.

Scott Nolan is the CEO of General Matter, enriching uranium in America to reshore domestic nuclear fuel capacity and power the American energy production needed to lead in AI, manufacturing, and other critical industries. General Matter is backed by Founders Fund, the first institutional investor in SpaceX, Palantir, and Anduril.Scott is also a partner at Founders Fund, where for the past 13 years he led hardtech investments across energy, infrastructure, manufacturing, aerospace, and defense. Companies Scott has worked with include SpaceX, Neuralink, Crusoe Energy, Planet Labs, The Boring Company, Nubank, Impulse Space, and Radiant Nuclear. Previously, Scott was an early engineer at SpaceX, where he helped develop the Merlin engine systems and Dragon capsule. He earned his Master's and Bachelor's degrees in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University, and his MBA from Stanford University. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://www.americanfinancing.net/srs nmls 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org https://www.tryarmra.com/srs https://www.betterhelp.com/srs This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp — give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. https://www.shawnlikesgold.com https://www.drinkhoist.com - USE CODE SRS https://www.patriotmobile.com/srs https://www.rocketmoney.com/srs Scott Nolan Links: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottpnolan X - https://x.com/ScottNolan General Matter - https://www.generalmatter.com  X - https://x.com/generalmatter  Founders Fund - https://foundersfund.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

US President Donald Trump has signed a series of executive orders titled Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base, Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy and Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with the goal of "re-establishing the United States as the global leader in nuclear energy".The aim is to increase US nuclear energy capacity from 100GW to 400GW by 2050, including the Department of Energy (DOE) prioritising work "with the nuclear energy industry to facilitate 5 gigawatt of power uprates to existing nuclear reactors and have 10 new large reactors with complete designs under construction by 2030".Explanations of each of the executive orders was given as they were presented to the president to add his signature in the Oval Office. In this episode we play pretty much the whole of that event. As well as the US President, you'll hear from Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, who is also Chairman of the National Energy Dominance Council, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Joe Dominguez, CEO of Constellation Energy, Maria Korsnick, CEO of the Nuclear energy Institute, Jacob DeWitte, founder and CEO of Oklo and Scott Nolan of uranium enrichment company General Matter.World Nuclear News's Claire Maden drills into more of the detail of the announcements, and Jonathan Cobb, senior programme lead, climate, at World Nuclear Association then assesses the broader implications of the US adopting the goal of quadrupling its nuclear energy capacity.Key links to find out more:World Nuclear NewsReinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial BaseNuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory CommissionEmail newsletter:Sign up to the World Nuclear News daily or weekly news round-upsContact info:alex.hunt@world-nuclear.orgEpisode credit:  Presenter Alex Hunt. Co-produced and mixed by Pixelkisser Production

Scott Nolan tells us what he thinks about the Elon-haters and how Founders Fund is unique in their investing approach. Scott, a partner at Founders Fund, has been there 12 years and was one of the first hires at SpaceX.

We have another hour of great new music to share with you on Episode 656 of Folk Roots Radio. As always, most of the music we play is actually self-released, and this time around it is all be Canadian artists. Join us as we check out the latest releases from Noah Derksen, Stephen Hardy Palmer, Doug Cox & Linda McRae, Del Barber, Natalie MacMaster & Donnell Leahy, Tara MacLean, Moonfruits, Scott Nolan, Peach & Quiet, Peach & Quiet, Maggie Fraser, Eliza Mary Doyle, Whitehorse, Pete Eastmure, The Pairs and Boy Golden. Enjoy! If you like the artists you hear on this show and want to support them, don't just stream their music – BUY their music, and then you'll really make a difference to their income at a time when it is becoming much more difficult to make a living as a musician. Folk Roots Radio is a labour of love - a full time hobby. If you enjoy this episode, please consider giving us a 'LIKE' and leaving a review/comment on your podcast provider and sharing the episode on social media. We'll love you for it! Check out the full playlist on the website: https://folkrootsradio.com/folk-roots-radio-episode-656-were-all-about-the-music-the-long-run-edition/

Join us on Episode 654 of Folk Roots Radio for another hour of the latest new releases. This time around they are all by Canadian artists and we feature new music from Justin Rutledge, Jason Collett, Del Barber, Kristen Martell, Natalie MacMaster & Donnell Leahy, Doug Cox & Linda McRae, Kate Weekes, Whitehorse, Adrian Sutherland, Payadora Tango Ensemble, Sultans of String, Scott Nolan (with Glenn Buhr), Big Little Lions, Joe Nolan, The Franklin Electric and Youngtree & The Blooms. Enjoy! If you like the artists you hear on this show and want to support them, don't just stream their music – BUY their music, and then you'll really make a difference to their income at a time when it is becoming much more difficult to make a living as a musician. Folk Roots Radio is a labour of love - a full time hobby. If you enjoy this episode, please consider giving us a 'LIKE' and leaving a review/comment on your podcast provider and sharing the episode on social media. We'll love you for it! Check out the full playlist on the website: https://folkrootsradio.com/folk-roots-radio-episode-654-were-all-about-the-music-youre-worth-it-edition/

It's (almost) the end of the year, so I decided to turn my annual year-end "favourite local albums" list into a podcast!Here's part two -- the top five of my overall top 15 -- in an overstuffed episode that includes clips from interviews with a number of artists who made the list, and much more. Part one, numbers 6 through 15, can be heard here. Part two includes releases by KEN mode, Christine Fellows, Age of Self, Jacob Brodovsky, and Scott Nolan. As mentioned in the intro, I'm sure I've missed some great stuff, both on this episode and the first one, and there are also a lot of albums I didn't consider for 2022 -- mainly stuff that came out too late this year for me to fully absorb. Records that came out on streaming this year but have physical copies in 2023 count as "2023" releases as well. This episode brought to you by our pals at Devine Shirt Company, who have brand new Witchpolice merch in the works! Watch for that! Huge thanks to everyone who supports the podcast on Patreon! You can help out for as little as $1 a month if you like the show and want to throw some change in the guitar case! You can also throw a one-time tip via Buymeacoffee. As always, if you like the podcast, please tell a friend or 20! Rate and review on your podcast player of choice! Word of mouth is still the main way Witchpolice Radio reaches new ears.

Lid Dixon on Ken's Think Tank Season 6, Episode 16https://kensthinktank.com Lid Dixon sings his version of “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart” – a song written by Scott Nolan and the second-place winner at the International Songwriting Competition in 2008, in the Americana category.Thanks sooo much for listening to the podcast version of Ken's Think Tank! In order to make this broadcast possible, we rely on the generosity of sponsors just like this one: Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Golden Door. Visit KenCollinsMarketing.com today for more great content from Ken's Think Tank and Male Encounters of the Life Kind.We are a digital marketing company that helps small business owners get more customers. We handle everything from Logo Design and Website Design, hosting, & support to Local Search Engine Optimization and more!Support the show

Scott Nolan is one of Winnipeg's finest singer-songwriters, and on Sept. 3 he performed an intimate little set to a small crowd in my backyard. This isn't a regular podcast -- it's audio from Scott's live show, featuring musical highlights that make up about half of his total set. Scott was on a regular interview episode of the podcast back in May, talking about his gorgeous new record with composer/arranger Glenn Buhr, The Suburb Beautiful. To hear more of Scott Nolan on the podcast, check out episode #367 (March 2019) and #521 (Sept. 2021). Back to your regularly-scheduled interview show next week! This episode brought to you by our pals at Devine Shirt Company, who have brand new Witchpolice merch in the works! Watch for that! Huge thanks to everyone who supports the podcast on Patreon! You can help out for as little as $1 a month if you like the show and want to throw some change in the guitar case! You can also throw a one-time tip via Buymeacoffee. As always, if you like the podcast, please tell a friend or 20! Rate and review on your podcast player of choice! Word of mouth is still the main way Witchpolice Radio reaches new ears. Thanks for listening!

The subject of a documentary entitled, Visiting Day, Scott Nolan was close to his incarcerated cousin, Patrick Nolan, who founded what is known today as Inside Circle. Their relationship, kept alive through letters, conversations and occasional visits, influenced Scott's work and inspired him to make art and music with incarcerated people. Tune in for a conversation loaded with rich, humorous stories and unexpected insights from a perceptive artist. This lively interview goes deep into the meaning of Inside Circle's work and illuminates how to make it real in our lives and our hearts.

The great Winnipeg songwriter Scott Nolan is back on the podcast! We talked about ‘The Suburb Beautiful’, his upcoming collaboration with composer/arranger Glenn Buhr (June 12 at the West End Cultural Centre), combining his interests in music, collage and poetry, and so much more. This episode brought to you by our pals at Devine Shirt Company! Huge thanks to everyone who supports the podcast on Patreon! You can help out for as little as $1 a month if you like the show and want to throw some change in the guitar case! You can also throw a one-time tip via Buymeacoffee. As always, if you like the podcast, please tell a friend or 20! Rate and review on your podcast player of choice! Word of mouth is still the main way Witchpolice Radio reaches new ears. Thanks for listening!

On this week's episode of Fire of Genius, Audio Editor Chris McMillan sits down with 2L associate Scott Nolan to discuss his note titled Encouraging Public Access to Pharmaceuticals Through Modified Protection of Clinical Trial Data. Scott's note was presumed by the journal and will be published next year in volume 12 of IP Theory.

On episode 74 of Welcome To The Winners Circle, Derek Pang and co-host Bianca Léger interview Scott Nolan (IG: @scott_nolan_langrud_music, www.scottnolan.ca) a well-known and well-traveled musician. He's a Canadian singer/songwriter who's spent years touring the America south, and he's also a visual artist, poet, and charismatic story-teller; a prairie shaman, full of wisdom and humour. Most recently, he's created the theme music for David Suzuki's new podcast and has just completed his long-awaited new album titled The Suburb Beautiful to be released in 2022. Here are some of the subjects we touched on: - What he loves about his world right now. - Living with generalized anxiety disorder. - How music saved his life. - Being mentored by letters from his imprisoned cousin. - Visiting Folsom State Prison to perform, lead workshops and how this experience has profoundly changed him. - The origin story re: how he fell in love with music. - Cannabis as a tool. - Authenticity. - Poetry. - How Yoga came into his life. - Being present. - Breakups. - Collage art. - Moving on. - His advise to young artists. - Storytelling. - Sharing his songs. - Overcoming fear. - Love. - What “winning” means to him. - A random phone call from Winston Wuttunee and the golden wisdom shared. - Mentoring others. - The greatest life lesson he's learnt so far. - ”Old Friends”. I hope you guys enjoy this podcast as much as we did. We are all on the same path, The Hero's Journey, just at different points along the way. Thank you so much for listening! Connect with us on Instagram: WTTWC Podcast: @wttwc Derek Pang - @pangyoga Bianca Léger - @bee.leger https://www.welcometothewinnerscircle.com

I was fortunate enough to sit down and talk with Scott Nolan. I’m a big fan of his and it was so much fun to get to interview him. Scott’s an accomplished singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Winnipeg, Canada. He has a very rare and unique sound that I absolutely love and I hope you will too. Scott has worked with artists such as Adam Carroll, Mary Gauthier, Hayes Carll, and Fred Eaglesmith among others. Not only is Scott an amazing singer-songwriter, he’s also an astounding poet and collage artist. He has a book of poetry entitled The Moon Was a Feather and he posts his collage art regularly on his Facebook and Instagram. Scott’s a very interesting guy and I can’t wait to see what he’s gonna do next. As always email me at jack@jackbarksdale.com for questions or show ideas.

www.talkandrockpod.com"As I have mentioned before, with the podcast I have been able to be more open minded to any and all music. I have started listening to more folk and singer songwriter music and I stumbled across the music of Scott Nolan. During the interview I got to talk to Scott about not only his musical but also his artistic approach to things. He has been involved with the Winnipeg music scene for quite some time now, has released a book of poetry and more recently started creating collage art. I hope you enjoy this interview as we have more great ones on the way."Listen to Scott Nolan here: https://scottnolan.bandcamp.com/-GMH© 2021 Talk and Rock With GMH

Scott Nolan has forged a career as a rootsy, rockin' singer/songwriter and bandleader. He released a string of increasingly interesting and acclaimed albums, culminating with an album called Silverhill, which was recorded with American roots supergroup Willie Sugarcapps in 2015. Scott's highest-profile successes though have come through other artists. He toured for a long time alongside his longtime drummer and friend Joanna Miller backing up Mary Gauthier. His work was championed by Hayes Carll, who recorded Scott's song "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart," and has performed it around the world, singing Scott's praises wherever he goes. These days, Scott is busiest with the recording studio he built in his back yard, called The Song Shop. There, he recorded an album with Ben de la Cour, who you heard on the show in episode 5, and a number of other artists, including William Prince, who's gone on to huge success in Canada and internationally. For Prince's second record, Reliever, made with the help of a huge international label, he had the opportunity to record with one of the biggest name producers in roots music, Dave Cobb, but split the recording and producing with Scott here in Winnipeg, which says a lot about the value and importance of Scott's touch. He also has a book of poetry out, called The Moon Was a Feather. He's recently developed a skill and a fondness for collage art, and has been very active creating collages daily. more info and music credits: https://wp.me/pcKqe1-3A

In this episode, Tampa Tones, Cody G, Bucco the Bruce, & A Katz, the KREW - are here to bring you a fantastic episode! They are joined by the Brother in Law of Mike Evans, huge UFC fan, and Texas resident, Scott Nolan. First, help Scott with a great cause - donate to Texas today! https://www.gofundme.com/f/2ab7r448io?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet We also chatter about: - Scotts life as a Tom Brady Fan, a Special gift for Scott from Tom Brady, Super Bowl 55 stories in Florida, & so much more! Follow us on Youtube & Twitter today @Buccateers Catch our episode with Stank Bastard of the Loose Cannons Podcast anywhere below: Proud members of the TSPN - The Time Skew Podcast Network Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Tq2...​... Listen on Breaker: https://www.breaker.audio/3-buccateer...​Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/.../episod...​... Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/.../aHR0c...​... Listen on Radio Public: https://radiopublic.com/buccateers-po...

Ben de la Cour (www.bendelacour.com) has had an interesting life, to say the least. His official bio says, “After playing New York City dives like CBGBs with his brother a decade before he could legally drink, he had already stuffed himself into a bottle of bourbon and pulled the cork in tight over his head by the time he was twenty one. There were arrests, homes in tough neighborhoods all over the world, countless false starts as well as stays in psychiatric hospitals and rehabs as Ben battled with mental health and substance abuse issues.” These days, he's a folk-rockin' singer/songwriter living in Nashville, TN. Last year he released one of the finest records I heard all year (and I hear a lot of them!) Shadow Land was recorded here in Winnipeg with Scott Nolan during the polar vortex of 2019. During the course of our chat, we talked all about releasing a fabulous album during a pandemic and Ben spoke very honestly and openly about his struggles with substance abuse and mental illness. Music credits: God's Only Son, The Last Chance Farm, and Shadow Land can be found on Ben's album Shadow Land, which I highly recommend purchasing from Bandcamp.

We were feelin' the love this week...Happy Valentines Day! This week's show is all about love: being in love, longing for love, old fashioned love, the truth of love, brotherly love, loving yourself, and loving home. Tune in and share the love with us! Featuring tracks by Joel Plaskett, Scott Nolan, John Prine, David Hawkins, Corin Raymond, Ruth Moody, Jake Feeney, The Good Lovelies, Drew McIvor, Trent Severn, JD Edwards, Christine Lavin, Dala and a new release from Justin Rutledge!

Fr. Scott Nolan denies Holy Communion to a parishioner because of a public lifestyle choices.  It’s challenging to be a pastor. It takes courage to preach, practice and apply the Catholic Church’s teachings in pastoral settings.  How would you approach this pastoral situation?  

It's a great conversation with one of my favourite songwriters, [Scott Nolan](http://www.scottnolan.ca/), who was last on the podcast in spring 2019. We talked about his upcoming residency at the Park Theatre with composer[Glenn Buhr](http://glennbuhr.com/), his recent interest in collage art, and a whole heckuva lot more. This episode brought to you by the Gumshoe Strut's new [Heartbeat EP](http://thegumshoestrut.bandcamp.com/album/heartbeat-ep), and by [Sean Burns](http://seanburns.bandcamp.com/), whose new album of truckin' songs is raising funds for Times Change(d), where it was recorded. Check out our pals at the [Beer Boutique](http://www.facebook.com/beerboutiquewpg/)! Join us at the third annual [Manitoba Podcast Festival](http://www.facebook.com/mbpodfest/), which takes place entirely online, Sept. 26-27! Huge thanks to everyone who supports the podcast on [Patreon](http://www.patreon.com/witchpolice). You can help out for as little as $1 a month if you like the show and want to throw some change in the guitar case!

It's a great conversation with one of my favourite songwriters, Scott Nolan, who was last on the podcast in spring 2019. We talked about his upcoming residency at the Park Theatre with composerGlenn Buhr, his recent interest in collage art, and a whole heckuva lot more. This episode brought to you by the Gumshoe Strut’s new Heartbeat EP, and by Sean Burns, whose new album of truckin’ songs is raising funds for Times Change(d), where it was recorded. Check out our pals at the Beer Boutique! Join us at the third annual Manitoba Podcast Festival, which takes place entirely online, Sept. 26-27! Huge thanks to everyone who supports the podcast on Patreon. You can help out for as little as $1 a month if you like the show and want to throw some change in the guitar case!

“Old Souls” with Scott Nolan “I have this theory that you get quieter as you get better.” On this special episode of Sunday Verse, William speaks with a special guest Scott Nolan, the producer of Reliever and co-writer of “Old Souls”. The two talk Song Shop and cover collaboration, confidence and the connection between William’s tattoo and Scott’s words. Two voices on the airwaves share one conversation.

On the eve of the release of his latest solo record The Unconquerable Past, Stephen Fearing walks Terry through a few songs on the new record. We'll hear 3 tracks from the album: "Christine," "Stay with Me," and "Someone Else's Shoes". The pair discuss Stephen's collaboration with producer Scott Nolan, and co-writes with Andy White and Tom Wilson. Plus, Stephen gives us an update on the forthcoming Blackie and the Rodeo Kings record. 

Singer-songwriter [Scott Nolan](http://scottnolan.ca/) is set to release his debut book of poetry, *Moon Was a Feather*, with a launch event [April 5 at McNally Robinson.](http://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/event-17161/Scott-Nolan----Book-Launch#.XI2-9yJKjIV) We talk about the inspiration behind the book, the differences between writing poems and writing songs, how he found a place of peace with his creativity after years of struggling with the music industry, and much more. This episode was brought to you by our friends at the [SUNWOLF](http://thesunwolflabel.com/) label, who are releasing the debut by Katie & the Wolves March. 22, as well as by Winnipeg's finest venue, [the Park Theatre](http://myparktheatre.com/). Thanks to everyone who has supported the podcast thus far. Thanks to supporters like you, we can keep churning out interviews twice a week! If you like the show, please head down to [patreon.com/witchpolice](http://www.patreon.com/witchpolice) and for as little as a $1 month (less than 12 cents an episode), you can help keep the lights on!

Singer-songwriter Scott Nolan is set to release his debut book of poetry, Moon Was a Feather, with a launch event April 5 at McNally Robinson. We talk about the inspiration behind the book, the differences between writing poems and writing songs, how he found a place of peace with his creativity after years of struggling with the music industry, and much more. This episode was brought to you by our friends at the SUNWOLF label, who are releasing the debut by Katie & the Wolves March. 22, as well as by Winnipeg’s finest venue, the Park Theatre. Thanks to everyone who has supported the podcast thus far. Thanks to supporters like you, we can keep churning out interviews twice a week! If you like the show, please head down to patreon.com/witchpolice and for as little as a $1 month (less than 12 cents an episode), you can help keep the lights on!

Logan McKillop is renowned for his work as a guitarist. However, he’s also a pretty fine songwriter in his own right. Logan’s just released “Anchorless” the beautiful follow-up to his debut from 2013, “Prairie Sky”, an album that focused on natural beauty and prairie life. The new album “Anchorless”, rather than focusing on landscapes and wide open spaces, shares heartfelt stories about people, life’s challenges and family members that have touched his own life. Co-produced with Scott Nolan at the Song Shop in Winnipeg, the new recording features support from some of the top players on the Manitoba music scene and a musical palette that includes a string section, piano, drums, bass, pedal steel, vibraphone, clarinet, banjo, mandolin, and some great harmonies. It’s clear that putting this album together was a labour of love. Logan McKillop sat down with Jan Hall from Folk Roots Radio at the 2018 Folk Music Ontario conference to chat about the new album. For more information about the music of Logan McKillop visit http://loganmckillop.com. Music: Logan McKillop “Mother’s love”, “Anchorless” and “There He Goes” from “Anchorless” (2019, Self).

00:00 - Vacation / Relationship disasters -- Our guest is Tim Dyckert, who hails from our affiliate station in Vancouver, CKNW. He's part of a podcast called "Coffee Never Means Coffee", and in Episode 18, he tells his story of when he took a bus to Winnipeg to see his girlfriend, and the whole thing fell apart. 36:47 - Some movie theatres in Mexico and the U.S. are going entirely-kid friendly, complete with jungle gyms! Good idea? Bad idea? Do we need more kid-friendly places like this, or less? 53:47 - Matthew Lawrence with SOSRI -- The South Osborne Syrian Refugee Initiative has announced a benefit concert to be held Thursday, April 6th at the Park Theatre featuring Winnipeg musicans JD Edwards, Scott Nolan and Katie Murphy. 63:24 - More on kid-friendly places, and bringing your kids to places that others might find odd. 72:26 - Hockey Canada is putting age-appropriate programming at the forefront for the 2017-18 season, with a new policy that mandates cross-ice and half-ice hockey for initiation-aged players (5 & 6) -- Our guest is Corey McNabb, director of Hockey Development Programs with Hockey Canada. 84:11 - Where's my remote control? Age of Electric trivia / giveaway 87:48 - Richard Cloutier & Julie Buckingham tee up THE NEWS, then more texts on taking your kids to places others might find odd, like a Bomber game.

Alex Austin founder & CEO of branch metrics who is joined by founders fund partner and former spacex engineer scott nolan.    alex received an MS in Electrical Engineering & an MBA from stanford. In between degrees, he spent five years building a solar panel manufacturing facility from scratch in Santa Clara. While at stanford business school Alex also built an SDK for Android and iOS that is now live on over seven million phones world wide. Alex is now the CEO of Branch Metrics, taking the lessons he learned as a mobile app developer to building a mobile linking platform that helps apps grow and give their users better experiences.   Scott Nolan is a Partner at Founders Fund, where he focuses on investments in technology-driven companies across sectors including energy, biotechnology, aerospace, healthcare and advanced manufacturing.  Prior to Founders Fund, Scott was an early employee at SPACEX.  There, he helped develop the propulsion systems used on the Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Dragon vehicles and was responsible for the Dragon capsule’s thermal and environmental control subsystems. Lets listen into Alex and Scott’s conversation from our Silicon Valley chapter

Amongst the responsibilities the Fr. Scott Nolan juggles is that of Chaplain at West Catholic High School. Fr. Nolan discusses that role with us this week. To learn more about our work, visit our web site, catholicforuminc.org, or share our page on Facebook (facebook.com/catholicforuminc).

Jeremy’s along to spread some holiday cheer (and spit out some rather controversial statements near the end of the show. I think he must be adopted.) We’ve got some holiday favourites and some of this week’s upcoming shows to preview!

Jeremy’s along to spread some holiday cheer (and spit out some rather controversial statements near the end of the show. I think he must be adopted.) We’ve got some holiday favourites and some of this week’s upcoming shows to preview!

November is the month of non-stop live shows in Winnipeg, so we’ve got a bunch more to preview this week! Get on out there and enjoy some of the best live music in the world as it’s passing through our city! One of the most exciting is the return of Oh Susanna and her Namedropper collaborator Jim Bryson! A chat with Suzie, tonight.

November is the month of non-stop live shows in Winnipeg, so we’ve got a bunch more to preview this week! Get on out there and enjoy some of the best live music in the world as it’s passing through our city! One of the most exciting is the return of Oh Susanna and her Namedropper collaborator Jim Bryson! A chat with Suzie, tonight.

More big shows coming up to preview, and speaking of big, we’ve got BIG news about who’s joining us for Pledge-O-Rama next week! We’ve also got some time to slip in some great new releases as well.

More big shows coming up to preview, and speaking of big, we’ve got BIG news about who’s joining us for Pledge-O-Rama next week! We’ve also got some time to slip in some great new releases as well.

It’s Pledge-O-Rama time once again! All year long we try to give you, the listener, the best music, interviews, and information. One week a year, we rely on you to help us, and the time has come. We’ve got lots to give away, lots to celebrate, and some very special guests along to sing for your pledges! There’s a brand new supergroup in town called Leaf Rapids, which is made up of Devin & Keri Latimer (of Nathan) and Scott Nolan & Joanna Miller! They’re here to play publicly for the FIRST TIME EVER! Now there’s something worth supporting!

It’s Pledge-O-Rama time once again! All year long we try to give you, the listener, the best music, interviews, and information. One week a year, we rely on you to help us, and the time has come. We’ve got lots to give away, lots to celebrate, and some very special guests along to sing for your pledges! There’s a brand new supergroup in town called Leaf Rapids, which is made up of Devin & Keri Latimer (of Nathan) and Scott Nolan & Joanna Miller! They’re here to play publicly for the FIRST TIME EVER! Now there’s something worth supporting!

We’ve got upcoming shows out the wazoo, and plenty to celebrate and look forward to! Somehow, we still got a little off track (we’re good at that around here) and headed down to Buddy & Julie’s place for a spell.

We’ve got upcoming shows out the wazoo, and plenty to celebrate and look forward to! Somehow, we still got a little off track (we’re good at that around here) and headed down to Buddy & Julie’s place for a spell.

A celebration of Scott Nolan, Tom Petty, and the man of my dreams, Bob Schneider. (You’ll have to listen for the story behind that one!) We’ve also got some of the Best of 2013 and some pop/rockin’ classics!

A celebration of Scott Nolan, Tom Petty, and the man of my dreams, Bob Schneider. (You’ll have to listen for the story behind that one!) We’ve also got some of the Best of 2013 and some pop/rockin’ classics!

Upcoming shows! New music! Fun stuff! Oh my!

Upcoming shows! New music! Fun stuff! Oh my!

A slightly abbreviated episode tonight so we can dash off to see Mary Gauthier w/Scott Nolan & Joanna Miller! We celebrate the all-too-short career of a band we love, Joy Kills Sorrow, as they prepare to move on to other projects. We’ve also got some leftover Valentines’ Day music courtesy of the Sweetheart compilation series.