Podcasts about tbd

Steve, Justine, Tim, Joe & Kathy talk about Gallo's purchase of Four Roses. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Steve, Miss Beka Sue, Jason, Katie and Jeff talk about the terrible reporting happening in the world of bourbon. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Welcome back to the 269th episode of The Cup which is our a weekly (give or take, TBD, these are unprecedented times) performing arts talk show presented by Cup of Hemlock Theatre. With the theatres on a come back we offer a mix of both reviews of live shows we've seen and continued reviews of prophet productions! For our 269th episode we bring you a Round-up Review of Dead of Winter, produced by Eldritch Theatre and Spindle Collective. Join Jillian Robinson and Mackenzie Horner, as they discuss 6 new spooky and gory stories, supported by ominous musicality, each highlighting fear through fantasy and reality. Dead of Winter was the first Toronto horror theatre festival and played at Red Sandcastle Theatre (922 Queen St. E., Toronto, ON.) from January 21-25, 2026. More information about the show can be found at: https://deadofwinterprogram.my.canva.site/This review contains SPOILERS. The episode will begin with a general non-spoiler review until the [07:47] mark, followed by a more in-depth/anything goes/spoiler-rich discussion. This iteration of the production has ended but if the production gets remounted in the future, we recommend you stop watching after that point, or at least proceed at your own risk.TIMESTAMP NAVIGATOR: 0:00 – Intro 2:49 – Festival Overview (Pre-Spoiler) 7:25 – SPOILERS from here on out 8:13 – spilleHOLLE 12:05 – The Matchmaker 16:52 – Musical Interlude: Andra Zlatescu 18:41 – The Hag of Bell Island 24:15 – Perfect Pains 29:08 – Jimmy 34:24 – Musical Interlude: Morgara 36:16 – Mercy of the Vampire 41:31 – Sign Off Follow our panelists:Jillian Robinson – Instagram: @jillian.robinson96 Mackenzie Horner – Instagram: (Before the Downbeat: A Musical Podcast) – Instagram/Facebook: @BeforetheDownbeatApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3aYbBeNSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3sAbjAuFollow Cup of Hemlock Theatre on Instagram/Facebook/Twitter: @cohtheatreIf you'd like us to review your upcoming show in Toronto, please send press invites/inquiries to coh.theatre.MM@gmail.com.

Welcome back to the 270th episode of The Cup which is our a weekly (give or take, TBD, these are unprecedented times) performing arts talk show presented by Cup of Hemlock Theatre. With the theatres on a come back we offer a mix of both reviews of live shows we've seen and continued reviews of prophet productions! For our 270th episode we have an episode of “The Cup: Editorial” in which Co-Artistic Producers Ryan Borochovitz and Mackenzie Horner pull together various threads that have been on our mind around the topic of Shakespeare on film prompted in part by the Oscar buzz around Chloé Zhao's Hamnet. What does it mean for a movie to be (or not to be) Hamlet? Is Disney's The Lion King really as Hamlet-ish as your cool English teacher would have you believe? What are some pitches for new Shakespearean film adaptations we'd like to see? Join Ryan Borochovitz and Mackenzie Horner, as they discuss everything from Hamnet to Hamlet, Burton to Branagh, and Pride Rock to pumpkin pants. Follow our panelists: Mackenzie Horner – Instagram: (Before the Downbeat: A Musical Podcast) – Instagram/Facebook: @BeforetheDownbeatApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3aYbBeNSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3sAbjAuRyan Borochovitz – [Just send all that love to CoH instead; he won't mind!]; if you enjoy his theatre thoughts, more can be found at https://nextmag.ca/search/borochovitz Follow us on Instagram/Facebook/Twitter: @cohtheatreIf you'd like us to review your upcoming show in Toronto, please send press invites/inquiries to coh.theatre.MM@gmail.comCHAPTERS: 0:00 – Intro: no hat upon his head (2.1.89)2:36 – The Topic at Hand9:14 – To be (or not to be) Definitive 19:59 – Hamnet (Non-Spoilers) 24:45 – Weird Hamlets & Classic Hamlets 31:19 – Hakuna Matata 50:17 – To be (or not to be) Hamlet 1:11:42 – The Northman 1:17:22 – End of Act 1 1:21:40 – Let's Do Some Fun Buzzfeed 1:22:30 – M1: Merry Wives of Windsor (dir. Paul Feig) 1:26:38 – R1: Bikebeth (dir. Robert Lepage) 1:32:52 – M2: Bike-us Andronicus 1:38:24 – R2: Denzel's Othello 1:41:05 – M3: Richard II 1:47:04 – R3: Comedy of Error (dir. NOT Joss Whedon) 1:51:30 – M4: A Claymation Night's Dream 1:53:40 – Conclusion: What Can You Do Differently? 1:57:36 – Sign Off

Welcome back to the 271st episode of The Cup which is our a weekly (give or take, TBD, these are unprecedented times) performing arts talk show presented by Cup of Hemlock Theatre. With the theatres on a come back we offer a mix of both reviews of live shows we've seen and continued reviews of prophet productions! For our 271st episode we have a new artist interview. This particular conversation is between our Associate Artistic Producer Jillian Robinson and Julia Cratchley, the Choreographer & Artistic Director of the epic immersive dance company, Transcen|Dance Project. Together these two unveil the behind-the-scenes magic of immersive performance, discuss how paramount remounts are, and map out the benefit of indulging the good with the bad.Follow Transcen|Dance Project – Instagram/TikTok: @transcendanceprojectWebsite : https://www.transcendanceproject.com/Follow Cup of Hemlock Theatre on Instagram/Facebook/Twitter: @cohtheatreIf you'd like us to review your upcoming show in Toronto, please send press invites/inquiries to coh.theatre.MM@gmail.com.

Welcome back to the 272nd episode of The Cup which is our a weekly (give or take, TBD, these are unprecedented times) performing arts talk show presented by Cup of Hemlock Theatre. With the theatres on a come back we offer a mix of both reviews of live shows we've seen and continued reviews of prophet productions! For our 272nd episode we bring you a Duet Review of White Rabbit, Red Rabbit by Nassim Soleimanpour, presented by One Four One Collective, Nassim Soleimanpour Productions, and The Assembly Theatre. Co-Artistic Producer Mackenzie Horner is joined by new guest panelist Sophie Loosley-Millman to unpack this no-rehearsal, no-director, no-set theatrical experiment—where a different performer each night opens a sealed envelope and reads the script for the first time live on stage. Featuring Anand Rajaram as the performer they saw, the duo explores his unique take, the symbolism woven through the text, and whether Sophie would teach the play in her classroom.White Rabbit, Red Rabbit is playing at The Assembly Theatre (1479 Queen St. W., Toronto, ON) until February 20th, 2026. Tickets can be purchased from the following link: https://www.theassemblytheatre.com/whiterabbitredrabbit This review contains many SPOILERS for White Rabbit, Red Rabbit. It will begin with a general non-spoiler review until the [12:25] mark, followed by a more in-depth/anything goes/spoiler-rich discussion. If you intend to see the production, we recommend you stop watching after that point, or at least proceed at your own risk. Follow our panelists: Mackenzie Horner (Before the Downbeat: A Musical Podcast) – Instagram/Facebook: BeforetheDownbeatApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3aYbBeNSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3sAbjAu Sophie Loosley-Millman – Instagram: @soph.lmFollow Cup of Hemlock Theatre on Instagram/Facebook/Twitter: @cohtheatreIf you'd like us to review your upcoming show in Toronto, please send press invites/inquiries to coh.theatre.MM@gmail.comCHAPTERS: 0:00 – Intro: Romeo's Butt 4:32 – Pre-Spoiler12:17 – SPOILERS from here on out 12:37 – Remember the Order 15:56 – Beast Fable 21:06 – Unreliable Narrators 22:34 – One of the classic blunders! 26:28 – Anand Rajaram 29:34 – Language Barrier 31:57 – Say Uncle 35:34 – Grade 1237:55 – Sign Off

Welcome back to the 273rd episode of The Cup which is our a weekly (give or take, TBD, these are unprecedented times) performing arts talk show presented by Cup of Hemlock Theatre. With the theatres on a come back we offer a mix of both reviews of live shows we've seen and continued reviews of prophet productions! For our 273rd episode we bring you a Duet Review of An Intervention by Mike Bartlet, directed by 郝邦宇 Steven Hao, and presented in its Toronto premiere as the inaugural production by Downstage Theatre Company. Join Mackenzie Horner and Ryan Borochovitz, as they discuss resourceful staging solutions, questionable wordplay, and the high costs of producing indie theatre. An Intervention ran at Native Earth Performing Arts' Giisiz Studio (585 Dundas St E, Toronto, ON) from February 11th to 15th, 2026. More information about the production can be found on the company's Instagram, @downstage.theatreco CONTENT WARNING: An Intervention contains themes, discussions, and depictions of substance abuse (particularly alcoholism) and suicide; this review, likewise, speaks directly to these topics. Viewer discretion is strongly advised. Less importantly, this review contains many SPOILERS for An Intervention. It will begin with a general non-spoiler review until the [32:44] mark, followed by a more in-depth/anything goes/spoiler-rich discussion. Though the run has already ended, you may still choose to proceed at your own risk. Follow our panelists: Mackenzie Horner (Before the Downbeat: A Musical Podcast) – Instagram/Facebook: BeforetheDownbeatApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3aYbBeNSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3sAbjAu Ryan Borochovitz – [Just send all that love to CoH instead; he won't mind!]; if you enjoy his theatre thoughts, more can be found at https://nextmag.ca/search/borochovitz Follow Cup of Hemlock Theatre on Instagram/Facebook/Twitter: @cohtheatreIf you'd like us to review your upcoming show in Toronto, please send press invites/inquiries to coh.theatre.MM@gmail.comCHAPTERS: 0:00 – Introduction 3:26 – Pre-Spoiler: TTC Be Crazy Sometimes 4:17 – P-S: Synopsis, Pt.1 12:05 – P-S: What Did I Miss?17:26 – P-S: General Appraisal 24:17 – P-S: How Old? 28:07 – P-S: Production Elements 32:43 – SPOILERS from here on out 33:14 – Synopsis, Pt.2 43:08 – Not Thinking Clearly 45:15 – Wordplay (ft. Mike Bartlett's Cock) 53:23 – Vagueness vs. Obliqueness 57:33 – Red Rope & Neckties 1:01:39 – The Moment After 1:02:48 – Toward a More Affordable Future 1:08:09 – Sign Off

Steve, Justine, Tim, Joe & Kathy talk about Barry Brinegar's social media campaign that was started after he left RD1. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Steve, Miss Beka Sue, Jason, Katie and Jeff talk about Beka's recent pick at Jim Beam. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Today's Headlines: In a genuinely shocking development, Prince Andrew was arrested in the UK on suspicion of misconduct in public office — a very restrained way of saying he allegedly shared sensitive government information with Jeffrey Epstein. It happened on his birthday, and King Charles said the law will take its course. It's the first arrest of a senior royal since 1647, which is… not recent. Meanwhile in DC, Andrew and Epstein's former bestie Donald Trump convened his self-styled “Board of Peace,” which he continues pitching as a potential replacement for the UN. The focus was Gaza: five countries pledged troops for a stabilization force, nine pledged a combined $7 billion — about 10% of the $70 billion estimated for rebuilding. Trump added a promised $10 billion from the US, source of funds TBD. Hamas has not fully agreed to disarm, but sure. On Iran, Trump warned that Tehran has 10 days to strike a nuclear deal or “bad things will happen,” then extended it to 15 by nightfall.  In South Korea, former president Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced to life in prison for his 2024 insurrection attempt and brief martial law stunt. The court said it damaged the military's neutrality and the country's credibility. Consequences.  Back home, DHS has launched a nationwide review of naturalized citizens who may have voted before becoming citizens, requiring field offices to justify decisions not to prosecute. The administration is also reportedly exploring ways to criminalize observing ICE agents, despite most related arrests resulting in no charges. And finally, the EEOC is suing a Coca-Cola distributor over a women-only networking event, alleging discrimination. The company says it followed the law.  Resources/Articles mentioned in this episode: AP News: Former Prince Andrew arrested and held for hours on suspicion of misconduct over ties to Epstein AP News: Trump heads to Georgia after securing Board of Peace pledges for Gaza relief funds CNN: Live updates: Trump indicates Iran decision within days and says Board of Peace will be ‘looking over' UN The Guardian: South Korea's former president Yoon Suk Yeol jailed for life for leading insurrection MS Now: White House directing DHS to hunt for voter fraud by naturalized citizens: Sources NPR: The Trump administration is increasingly trying to criminalize observing ICE Axios: Federal agency sues Coca-Cola bottler over work event that excluded men Subscribe to the Betches News Room and join the Morning Announcements group chat. Go to: ⁠⁠⁠betchesnews.substack.com Morning Announcements is produced by Sami Sage and edited by Grace Hernandez-Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steve, Miss Beka Sue, Justine, Wiehebrink and Kathy talk about a special limited edition release from IW Harper. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Sony ran an all-timer of a State of Play last week, so we spend a bunch of time digging into a bunch of news and demos about God of War Trilogy Remake, Control Resonant, and Konami's impressive bundle of Castlevania, Silent Hill, and Metal Gear games. Also, games like God of War: Sons of Sparta, Menace, Heart of the Forest, and Avowed on PS5. Also, Vinny's questionable encounter at the Outback Steakhouse. Sounds like a podcast, alright!CHAPTERS(00:00:00) NOTE: Some timecodes may be inaccurate for versions other than the ad-free Patreon version due to dynamic ad insertions. Please use caution if skipping around to avoid spoilers. Thanks for listening.(00:00:10) Intro(00:00:56) A touch of "comedy" at the Outback?(00:09:55) Other, non-Outback food options(00:12:09) God of War Sons of Sparta  |  [PlayStation 5]  |  Feb 12, 2026(00:21:50) First Break(00:24:14) Heart of the Forest  |  [Android, iOS, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One]  |  Feb 12, 2026(00:31:57) Menace (Early Access) |  [PC (Microsoft Windows)]  |  Feb 05, 2026(00:38:41) Avowed  |  [PlayStation 5]  |  Feb 17, 2026(00:50:34) Species: Unknown (Early Access) |  [PC (Microsoft Windows)]  |  Oct 23, 2025(00:58:47) Silent Hill f  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S]  |  Sep 25, 2025(01:00:46) Second Break(01:00:50) Sony's latest State of Play(01:04:09) Castlevania: Belmont's Curse  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows), Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch]  |  2026(01:09:48) Silent Hill: Townfall  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5]  |  2026(01:15:46) Metal Gear Solid Master Collection: Volume 2  |  [Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S, PC (Microsoft Windows)]  |  Aug 27, 2026(01:23:41) The rest of Konami(01:24:18) God of War Trilogy Remake  |  [PlayStation 5]  |  TBD(01:31:43) Kena: Scars of Kosmora  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5]  |  2026(01:32:58) Untitled John Wick Game  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows), Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5]  |  TBD(01:37:18) Saros  |  [PlayStation 5]  |  Apr 30, 2026(01:37:59) Control Resonant  |  [Mac, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S]  |  Q2 2026(01:39:33) 007 First Light  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2]  |  May 27, 2026(01:40:54) Star Wars: Galactic Racer  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S]  |  2026(01:41:56) Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5]  |  Aug 06, 2026(01:42:15) Neva: Prologue  |  [PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC (Microsoft Windows), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S]  |  Feb 19, 2026(01:42:55) Pragmata  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2]  |  Apr 24, 2026(01:44:43) Rayman: 30th Anniversary Edition  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch]  |  Feb 13, 2026(01:45:14) Project Windless  |  [PlayStation 5]  |  TBD(01:46:29) Yakoh: Shinobi Ops  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5]  |  2027(01:46:59) Death Stranding 2: On the Beach  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows)]  |  Mar 19, 2026(01:48:09) Marathon  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S]  |  Mar 05, 2026(01:50:11) Steam Deck shortages are here(01:52:39) A bit more on that future Resident Evil movie(01:57:45) Emails(02:09:03) Wrapping up and thanks(02:11:30) Mysterious Benefactor Shoutouts

Steve, Justine, Tim, Joe & Kathy talk about Tim's new gig with Rush Creek Distilling. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

This week on Two Parents & A Podcast, we're getting ready to BABYMOON. If you're watching this, we're on the beach right now (yay) trying to figure out what you even call a babymoon for baby number two (because “babymoon” feels… aggressive). Sprinkle? Second moon? TBD. Either way, we recorded this episode right before heading out and immediately spiraled. We start with trip planning debates, pregnancy food rules (can you eat beef carpaccio while pregnant?), and the age-old question of what actually matters more at a restaurant: the food or the vibe.  Then we get into the big one: failing the one-hour glucose test. What it means, what it doesn't, what comes next, and why it's way less dramatic than it sounds but still mentally jarring when you get the call. From there, we talk about ear piercing timing, leg shaving & making the bed. Mid-episode we cover Valentine's Day, the jewelry-box-at-dinner move, whether we regret buying so much pink before having a boy, and the very real struggle of finding a nickname for baby boy that YOU GUYS like. Travel etiquette becomes a full debate (as always): reclining seats, switching seats for families, and whether you're ever obligated to move on a plane. We also get into babysitter etiquette (if you say “help yourself to anything,” do you actually mean anything?), and then unpack the viral Girl Scout story where one girl sold $450k worth of cookies… and where that money really goes. We wrap with a Bicker of the Week, two Things We DMed Each Other (Olympics + Waymo obv), and a parenting takeaway that stuck with us all week: tell kids what TO do, not just what NOT to do. LOVE YOU GUYS. Thanks for listening!!!  Timestamps: 00:00:00 Welcome back to Two Parents & A Podcast! 00:04:50 Is there a better name for the second babymoon? 00:07:45 Can you eat beef carpaccio while pregnant? 00:12:42 What matters more: the food or the vibe? 00:15:32 What's the best made-in-Canada company?! 00:18:18 Dads' night out 00:19:48 Failed glucose test… now what? 00:27:58 When should kids get their ears pierced? 00:31:22 Fine dining: worth it or overrated? 00:34:33 Asking parents with grown kids: what would you do differently? 00:36:47 The jewelry box at dinner move 00:38:42 Do we regret buying so much pink before having a boy? 00:42:30 We need a new nickname for baby boy 00:43:51 Airplane etiquette: is it okay to recline? 00:47:37 Seat switching on planes: are you obligated to move for families? 00:55:17 Babysitter etiquette: if you say “help yourself to anything,” do you ACTUALLY mean anything? 00:59:48 Girl Scout goes viral for selling $450k worth of cookies… BUT where does the money actually go? 01:04:18 BICKER OF THE WEEK: Is it OK to eat on the couch?! 01:08:24 THINGS WE DME EACHOTHER: Norway is dominating the Olympics (and their youth sports rules are the opposite of ours) 01:13:25 THINGS WE DME EACHOTHER: DoorDash drivers are getting paid to close Waymo doors?? 01:16:09 THIS WEEK WE EARNED: tell kids what TO do (not what NOT to do) 01:17:37 LOVE YOU GUYS! #twoparentsandapod --- Thank you to our sponsors this week: *Merit: Right now, Merit Beauty is offering our listeners their Signature Makeup Bag with your first order at https://www.meritbeauty.com *Edmunds: Checking your car's value is an easy win to cross off your to do list. Go to https://www.edmunds.com/appraisal/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=Two_Parents_Podcast&utm_adgroup=&utm_account=edmunds_marketing&utm_content=Two_Parents_Podcast_q4  *Veracity: For up to 60% off your order, head to https://www.VeracityHealth.co and use code TWOPARENTS *Magnetic Me: Right now, new customers can get 15% off sitewide at https://www.magneticme.com *IM8: Go to https://www.IM8HEALTH.com/TWOPARENTS and use code TWOPARENTS for a Free Welcome Kit, five free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steve, McNew, Justine, Luke & Jeff complete a bracket challenge from an article Steve found on Vinepair. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Steve, Justine, Tim, Joe & Kathy talk about Tim's Flagship Whiskey series. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Steve, McNew, Justine, Luke & Jeff talk about the glowing report Kentucky bourbon just got. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Today I sit down with my friend Anita Bartholomew, a magazine journalist and author, to discuss her new book Sacrificial Lambs: Liberal Reporter Exposes How the Progressive Left Harms Children in the Name of Gender Ideology. This is Anita's second appearance on the show, and this time she walks us through the findings of her thorough investigation into how gender ideology functions as a predatory movement targeting today's youth.We dig into the disturbing reality of what's being taught in K-12 public schools under the banner of "comprehensive sexuality education" — from second-grade anatomy lessons designed around queer theory to explicitly sexual library books being promoted to middle schoolers. Anita reads excerpts from books like "All Boys Aren't Blue," "Beyond Magenta," and "Gender Queer" that are sitting on school library shelves, and we explore how this curriculum systematically breaks down children's natural psychological boundaries.We also examine the mainstream media's role in propping up the gender ideology narrative, looking at how outlets like the New York Times dismissed the Cass Report and continue to misrepresent reality. I share my perspective as a psychotherapist on how premature exposure to sexual content can confuse children's developing sense of sexuality and identity. We discuss what parents can do to protect their kids, why pressuring media for accurate reporting may be the most powerful long-term strategy, and why Anita believes the evidence overwhelmingly shows that there is no such thing as a "trans kid." Follow her on X @AnitaBart.Anita Bartholomew's SubstackAnitabartholomew.com[00:00:00] Start[00:04:17] Why Anita Wrote Sacrificial Lambs[00:06:22] What K-12 Schools Are Teaching Children[00:12:15] Queer Theory Origins and Gayle Rubin[00:14:44] Pornographic Books in School Libraries[00:21:39] Academics Calling Children Sexual Beings[00:24:53] Psychological Harm of Premature Sexual Content[00:32:26] Comprehensive Sex Ed as Indoctrination[00:35:04] How Media Indoctrinated Adults First[00:37:46] NYT, Vox, and AP Headlines Exposed[00:44:33] Sunk Cost, Money, and Who Pulls the Strings[00:54:16] Advice for Parents in Captured Schools[00:59:15] A Letter Writing Campaign for Change[01:05:15] What Else Is in the Book[01:12:00] Families Torn Apart by Gender IdeologyROGD REPAIR Course + Community gives concerned parents instant access to over 120 lessons providing the psychological insights and communication tools you need to get through to your kid. Now featuring 24/7 personalized AI support implementing the tools with RepairBot! Use code SOMETHERAPIST2026 to take 50% off your first month.PODCOURSES: use code SOMETHERAPIST at LisaMustard.com/PodCoursesTALK TO ME: book a meeting.PRODUCTION: Looking for your own podcast producer? Visit PodsByNick.com and mention my podcast for 20% off your initial services.SUPPORT THE SHOW: subscribe, like, comment, & share or donate.Watch NO WAY BACK: The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care. Use code SOMETHERAPIST to take 20% off your order.MUSIC: Thanks to Joey Pecoraro for our song, “Half Awake,” used with gratitude & permission. ALL OTHER LINKS HERE. To support this show, please leave a rating & review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe, like, comment & share via my YouTube channel. Or recommend this to a friend!Learn more about Do No Harm.Take $200 off your EightSleep Pod Pro Cover with code SOMETHERAPIST at EightSleep.com.Take 20% off all superfood beverages with code SOMETHERAPIST at Organifi.Check out my shop for book recommendations + wellness products.Show notes & transcript provided with the help of SwellAI.Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, “Half Awake,” used with gratitude and permission.Watch NO WAY BACK: The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care (our medical ethics documentary, formerly known as Affirmation Generation). Stream the film or purchase a DVD. Use code SOMETHERAPIST to take 20% off your order. Follow us on X @2022affirmation or Instagram at @affirmationgeneration.Have a question for me? Looking to go deeper and discuss these ideas with other listeners? Join my Locals community! Members get to ask questions I will respond to in exclusive, members-only livestreams, post questions for upcoming guests to answer, plus other perks TBD. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

In this special series, Max shares why we're hosting and preserving the Unbounded archive at Ungovernable Misfits. In the third re-release of the series, Seth For Privacy — educator, builder and VP at Cake Wallet joins TBD. Seth brings a candid, practical nuance to the state of Bitcoin and Monero, the realities of social media and education, and what “good enough privacy” means for everyday people versus targeted dissidents. Seth and TBD dig into saving in Bitcoin, spending in Monero, the impact of the Samourai Wallet case, why PayJoin V2 and silent payments matter, and how adoption—not tribalism—will determine the future of digital sovereignty. Seth shares a pragmatic optimism: we're winning in usability and tooling, but only if we keep building, learning and refusing false binaries. We explore the current crossroads for Bitcoin privacy, the legal chill from Tornado Cash/Samourai prosecutions, Nostr versus X for reach, and Monero's resilience amid delistings. Seth outlines practical advice for non-technical users, red lines for builders, and his long-view goal: tools that let individuals opt out of broken systems and into freedom—no permission required. Stay resilient, and enjoy the series as we continue with Pavel and Colonial in the weeks ahead.TWITTER: https://x.com/TheUNBOUNDEDPodYOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@TheUnboundedPodcast(00:00:00) Thank You TBD(00:01:41) INTRO(00:02:30) The Educator Journey(00:12:29) No Desire For Privacy(00:17:16) Freedom Tech Maximalist(00:21:36) Fork in the Road(00:25:05) Winning or Losing?(00:30:53) Good-Enough Privacy & Threat Models(00:39:55) Real-world Use, On/Off Ramps and Merchant Adoption(00:47:40) Saving Bitcoin, Spending Monero(00:53:03) PayJoin v2, Silent Payments & Product Adoption(01:00:28) Red Lines, Legal Risks & Developer Concerns (01:10:22) Monero's Resilience(01:17:33) What Will the World Look Like?

Steve, Miss Beka Sue, Justine, Wiehebrink and Kathy talk about the Uncle Nearest brand. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

In this quick news hit, Frank breaks down Netflix picking up the U.S. rights to Lord of the Flies, the BBC's four-episode TV adaptation of William Golding's classic novel. He highlights why the creative pedigree matters here, with Adolescence writer Jack Thorne on scripting duties, and why this being the first TV adaptation makes it a bigger deal than it might sound at first. U.S. release timing is still TBD, but the window is set for 2026.00:00 The news: Lord of the Flies is headed to the U.S.00:06 Format details: a four-episode drama, recently released on the BBC00:12 Why it stands out: written by Jack Thorne (Adolescence)00:16 The deal: Netflix has U.S. distribution rights00:20 Release window: 2026, date not announced yet00:27 Wrap-up and social update promiseNetflix has acquired the U.S. rights to the BBC's Lord of the Flies limited series.It's a four-episode adaptation and the first time Golding's novel has been adapted for TV.Jack Thorne is writing, coming off Adolescence, which has been a major awards player.There's no specific U.S. date yet, only a 2026 release window.Expect more updates once Netflix locks in the exact drop date.“Netflix now has the rights for it, and they're going to be distributing it here for us.”“They haven't given a date yet, only that it's 2026.”If you enjoyed the quick update, subscribe to Geek Freaks Headlines, leave a rating and review, and share the episode using #GeekFreaksHeadlines.GeekFreaksPodcast.com (source for all news discussed)Instagram: @geekfreakspodcastTwitter: @geekfreakspodThreads: @geekfreakspodcastFacebook: Geek Freaks PodcastPatreon: Geek Freaks PodcastGot a topic you want covered, or a headline you want us to break down next? Send it in via DM on our socials and we'll add it to the queue.Lord of the Flies, Netflix, BBC, Jack Thorne, Adolescence, William Golding, TV News, Streaming News, Limited Series, Geek Freaks HeadlinesTimestampsKey TakeawaysMemorable QuotesCall to ActionLinks and ResourcesFollow UsListener QuestionsApple Podcast Tags

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Steve, McNew, Justine, Luke & Jeff mail it in on Valentine's Day. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Hey Retro Gamers! On today's episode of Smashing Bricks we travel back to 1993 to gather the 7 runes and save the world in The 7th Saga on Super Nintendo.Smashing Bricks is a retro gaming podcast about revisiting classic video games together to see if they hold up to the rose tint of nostalgia. Join me, Eddie Inzauto, and Jake, host of Grinding with the Bois, as we spend hours grinding for levels in this time-traveling, 16-bit JRPG. (And don't think it's a coincidence that I saved Valentine's Day for this game that I've loved for over three decades.)Make sure you listen until the end to hear what the next game is and play through with us before the 14th of next month! (Just kidding, it was TBD at the time of recording, but it will officially be the 2000 game Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 for the Sony PlayStation.)Smashing Bricks Bonus Round Episodes are now available to all Fire Flower tier (and higher) Patreon Patrons! These amazing episodes post on the 28th of each month, and I really want as many of you to hear them as possible, so I've made it easier to be a part of that audience! Be sure to check them out at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://patreon.com/smashingbricks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Non-patrons can ALSO now hear these episodes on the main feed, but they'll be posted there a little over a year after initial release, on the 1st of each month.Smashing Bricks has a Discord server! Follow this link to join our community and chat about games, the podcast, and anything else your heart desires! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://discord.com/invite/gfnpx62JzS⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠You're invited to join the discussion with your comments on our current and upcoming titles or any past game we've played. You can also make suggestions for games you'd like to hear about on future episodes!Check out the Smashing Bricks Playlist and help me fill in the gaps, or let me know that a game that's already on the list is a must-play for the show! Here's a link to the list: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠playlist.smashingbricks.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠And again, if you'd like to go above and beyond to support the show and even get yourself some brand new bonus episodes, donate a few bucks a month via Patreon: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/SmashingBricks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SOCIAL LINKS:Linktree with all links: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠links.smashingbricks.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SB on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.smashingbricks.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SB on Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠facebook.smashingbricks.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SB on Intagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.smashingbricks.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SB on Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠twitter.smashingbricks.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Eddie's Photography on Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/edwardinzauto⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Music Credits"Victory (Captain Tsubasa Medley)" used under Creative Commons Attribution license.Provided by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GameChops⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Produced by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Brave Wave Productions

In today's podcast, we'll talk about why you might not want to toss out that United credit card mailer, how Bilt has led us to coin a new term, and how Calala Island wants to pay you to book with points!Private Island ultra-all-inclusive barefoot luxury: $2,500 rebateGiant Mailbag(01:21) - Vijay: Using BOA Premier $100 airline fee creditRead more about Amex Airline fee reimbursements hereCard News(05:18) - Fast track to United Silver status with targeted new card offersRead more about the fast track to United Silver status hereMattress Running the Numbers(07:20) - Marriott Earn 2,500 bonus points per stay + 1 bonus elite night per brandRead more about the new Marriott promo hereLearn some shortcuts to Marriott elite status hereBonvoyed: Bilt(12:33) - TBD about denied mortgage paymentsRead more about various Bilt issues here(18:14) - Should we introduce the term "Biltvoyed"?Awards, Points, and More(21:42) - Nick's EU261 compensation claimRead more about Nick's EU261 copensation claim here: https://frequentmiler.com/finnair-flight-booked-with-alaska-atmos-rewards-eu261-claim/(25:38) - Instacart and United team upPrivate Island ultra-all-inclusive barefoot luxury: $2,500 rebate(30:00) - Calala Island: Private island with only 6 villas. All inclusive. "Barefoot luxury" "Ultra-all-inclusive"(37:00) - Two Big Buts...(38:53) - Read about getting to Calala Island here: https://onemileatatime.com/how-to-get-to-calala-island/(43:03) - Derrick Dye at Travel on Points: Read a review about this property here: https://travel-on-points.com/review-calala-island-a-nicaribbean-luxury-property/(47:09) - Is Calala Island worth it?(52:54) - Are we going to visit?(57:41) - Is this a luxury hotel point farms?Read about One Mile at a Time's "Point Farm" concept here: https://onemileatatime.com/insights/hotel-points-farms/Question of the Week(1:09:02) - A question about travel insurance: what do I need on the front end (especially in terms of documentation) to prepare for contingencies?Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don't forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie YoderMentioned in

Steve, Miss Beka Sue, Justine, Wiehebrink and Kathy mail it in on Friday the 13th. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Steve, McNew, Kathy, Ryan, Matt W. & Justine mail it in for Steve's birthday. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Steve, Miss Beka Sue, Justine, Wiehebrink and Kathy wonder why someone who doesn't drink starts a liquor brand. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Steve, Justine, Tim, Katie & Matt M. get into a think tank for ideas for the ABV Barrel Shop. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Steve, McNew, Justine, Luke & Jeff talks about the King of Kentucky now having a small batch line. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Steve, McNew, Justine, Luke & Jeff talk about the new offering from Buzzard's Roost. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Today I sit down with investigative reporter Benjamin Ryan, who was the only journalist present for the entirety of the historic Variant v. Einhorn trial — the first detransition malpractice lawsuit in the world to reach a jury verdict. Ben has been covering pediatric gender medicine for three years for outlets including the New York Times, NBC News, the New York Sun, and the Free Press, and he brings an extraordinary level of detail to this conversation.We dive into the case of Fox Variant, a young woman diagnosed with autism who underwent a double mastectomy at age 16 after her psychologist, Kenneth Einhorn, wrote a referral letter riddled with errors and omissions — including listing body dysmorphic disorder instead of gender dysphoria. We discuss how the jury found Einhorn 70% responsible and plastic surgeon Dr. Chin 30% responsible for a $2 million award, the devastating testimony from Fox's mother about being coerced with suicide threats, and the critical communication failures between the psychologist and surgeon. We also explore what this verdict means for the nearly 30 other detransition lawsuits currently pending, why WPATH's standards of care were largely sidelined in the trial, and the broader implications for the field of pediatric gender medicine. I also share my own perspective as a therapist who worked for a group practice later acquired by the same company that employed Einhorn.Benjamin Ryan is an independent reporter who has been covering pediatric gender medicine for the past three years, including on his Substack: benryan.substack.com. He writes for publications such as The New York Times, NBC News and The New York Sun and covered the detransitioner trial for The Free Press. Follow him @BenRyanWriter on X or BlueSky.BenRyan.netBenjamin's article in the Free Press, A Legal First That Could Change Gender Medicine[00:00:00] Start[00:00:54] Introducing Reporter Benjamin Ryan[00:09:38] Fox Variant's Background and Rapid Transition[00:18:35] Were WPATH Guidelines Actually on Trial?[00:25:30] Disturbing Revelations From Einhorn's Treatment[00:35:15] Changing the Body to Treat the Mind[00:46:41] The Joanna Olson-Kennedy Lawsuit[00:55:32] The Jury Verdict Question by Question[01:06:41] Einhorn's Visible Devastation in Court[01:13:04] Q&A: Technicality or Broader Indictment?[01:31:31] What If WPATH Were Followed Perfectly?ROGD REPAIR Course + Community gives concerned parents instant access to over 120 lessons providing the psychological insights and communication tools you need to get through to your kid. Now featuring 24/7 personalized AI support implementing the tools with RepairBot! Use code SOMETHERAPIST2026 to take 50% off your first month.PODCOURSES: use code SOMETHERAPIST at LisaMustard.com/PodCoursesTALK TO ME: book a meeting.PRODUCTION: Looking for your own podcast producer? Visit PodsByNick.com and mention my podcast for 20% off your initial services.SUPPORT THE SHOW: subscribe, like, comment, & share or donate.Watch NO WAY BACK: The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care. Use code SOMETHERAPIST to take 20% off your order.MUSIC: Thanks to Joey Pecoraro for our song, “Half Awake,” used with gratitude & permission. ALL OTHER LINKS HERE. To support this show, please leave a rating & review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe, like, comment & share via my YouTube channel. Or recommend this to a friend!Learn more about Do No Harm.Take $200 off your EightSleep Pod Pro Cover with code SOMETHERAPIST at EightSleep.com.Take 20% off all superfood beverages with code SOMETHERAPIST at Organifi.Check out my shop for book recommendations + wellness products.Show notes & transcript provided with the help of SwellAI.Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, “Half Awake,” used with gratitude and permission.Watch NO WAY BACK: The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care (our medical ethics documentary, formerly known as Affirmation Generation). Stream the film or purchase a DVD. Use code SOMETHERAPIST to take 20% off your order. Follow us on X @2022affirmation or Instagram at @affirmationgeneration.Have a question for me? Looking to go deeper and discuss these ideas with other listeners? Join my Locals community! Members get to ask questions I will respond to in exclusive, members-only livestreams, post questions for upcoming guests to answer, plus other perks TBD. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

In this special series, Max shares why we're hosting and preserving the Unbounded archive at Ungovernable Misfits. In the second re-release of the series, Diverter — a privacy activist and champion of financial sovereignty joins TBD. TBD and Diverter discuss Bitcoin's evolution from a fragile experiment into a durable network, and the new danger it faces—not extinction, but domestication. Diverter explains why the real fight now is over whether individuals can still use Bitcoin as a tool for freedom, the chilling effect of recent prosecutions, and how development of privacy tools is being pushed underground. They trace Diverter's journey from a 2016 trader to a Bitcoin privacy advocate, his early connection to Samourai Wallet, and the community ethos of clear red lines and radical personal responsibility. He reflects on the cost of building and defending privacy, why most people “fold” under state pressure, and the honour—and inevitability—of sacrifice in this arena. TBD and Diverter discuss the Samourai case, the legal whiplash around non-custodial tools, the ripple effects across the industry, and why open source resilience matters. Despite setbacks, Diverter remains convinced that “winning” means keeping the door open for anyone who chooses sovereignty—small daily acts of defiance, built by a decentralised, determined community. Stay resilient, and enjoy the series as we continue with Seth, Pavel, and Colonial in the weeks ahead.TWITTER: https://x.com/TheUNBOUNDEDPodYOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@TheUnboundedPodcast(00:00:00) Thank You TBD(00:01:41) INTRO(00:03:07) Bitcoins New Danger(00:08:24) Motivations(00:12:20) The Origin(00:22:20) Captivated to Contributor(00:30:55) Accepting Risk(00:38:45) Choke Points & Culture War(00:43:51) Pioneers and Proving Grounds(00:46:21) Why Privacy Tools Matter(00:52:00) Death Athletic(00:55:14) The Open Source Hydra(00:58:39) Community Response?(01:05:53) Cassandra Syndrome(01:09:19) What Winning Looks Like

Believe it or not, spring is around the corner.  It has been very dry in NorCal so far – sometimes we get Spring rain, so still TBD.  LOTS of prep to do for the upcoming season. It is time to plant:        Broccoli        Cabbage        Carrots        Cauliflower        Collards, swiss chard        Kale        Leeks        Loose leaf lettuce        Peas        Potatoes….late in the month   Chores include:        Sow tomatoes inside        Start flowers (sunflowers, strawflower, zinnias, etc)        Direct sow sweet peas        Plant bare-root (roses, fruit trees, asparagus, strawberries, rhubarb, berries)        Spray fruit trees        Fertilize        Compost        Clean up, cut back        Prune roses, fruit trees   Help support feral cat rescue/spay-neuter/finding good homes by contributing at Flower Power Garden Hour Patreon.   To ask questions for future shows, submit them at:        Facebook        Instagram        email Marlene at marlenetheplantlady@gmail.com Find Marlene over on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook

Steve, Justine, Tim, Katie & Matt M. talk Jim Gaffigan visiting the ABV Barrel Shop. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Steve, Justine, Tim, Katie & Matt M. talk the "bourbon evolution" of Matt Modica. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

From Palantir and Two Sigma to building Goodfire into the poster-child for actionable mechanistic interpretability, Mark Bissell (Member of Technical Staff) and Myra Deng (Head of Product) are trying to turn “peeking inside the model” into a repeatable production workflow by shipping APIs, landing real enterprise deployments, and now scaling the bet with a recent $150M Series B funding round at a $1.25B valuation.In this episode, we go far beyond the usual “SAEs are cool” take. We talk about Goodfire's core bet: that the AI lifecycle is still fundamentally broken because the only reliable control we have is data and we post-train, RLHF, and fine-tune by “slurping supervision through a straw,” hoping the model picks up the right behaviors while quietly absorbing the wrong ones. Goodfire's answer is to build a bi-directional interface between humans and models: read what's happening inside, edit it surgically, and eventually use interpretability during training so customization isn't just brute-force guesswork.Mark and Myra walk through what that looks like when you stop treating interpretability like a lab demo and start treating it like infrastructure: lightweight probes that add near-zero latency, token-level safety filters that can run at inference time, and interpretability workflows that survive messy constraints (multilingual inputs, synthetic→real transfer, regulated domains, no access to sensitive data). We also get a live window into what “frontier-scale interp” means operationally (i.e. steering a trillion-parameter model in real time by targeting internal features) plus why the same tooling generalizes cleanly from language models to genomics, medical imaging, and “pixel-space” world models.We discuss:* Myra + Mark's path: Palantir (health systems, forward-deployed engineering) → Goodfire early team; Two Sigma → Head of Product, translating frontier interpretability research into a platform and real-world deployments* What “interpretability” actually means in practice: not just post-hoc poking, but a broader “science of deep learning” approach across the full AI lifecycle (data curation → post-training → internal representations → model design)* Why post-training is the first big wedge: “surgical edits” for unintended behaviors likereward hacking, sycophancy, noise learned during customization plus the dream of targeted unlearning and bias removal without wrecking capabilities* SAEs vs probes in the real world: why SAE feature spaces sometimes underperform classifiers trained on raw activations for downstream detection tasks (hallucination, harmful intent, PII), and what that implies about “clean concept spaces”* Rakuten in production: deploying interpretability-based token-level PII detection at inference time to prevent routing private data to downstream providers plus the gnarly constraints: no training on real customer PII, synthetic→real transfer, English + Japanese, and tokenization quirks* Why interp can be operationally cheaper than LLM-judge guardrails: probes are lightweight, low-latency, and don't require hosting a second large model in the loop* Real-time steering at frontier scale: a demo of steering Kimi K2 (~1T params) live and finding features via SAE pipelines, auto-labeling via LLMs, and toggling a “Gen-Z slang” feature across multiple layers without breaking tool use* Hallucinations as an internal signal: the case that models have latent uncertainty / “user-pleasing” circuitry you can detect and potentially mitigate more directly than black-box methods* Steering vs prompting: the emerging view that activation steering and in-context learning are more closely connected than people think, including work mapping between the two (even for jailbreak-style behaviors)* Interpretability for science: using the same tooling across domains (genomics, medical imaging, materials) to debug spurious correlations and extract new knowledge up to and including early biomarker discovery work with major partners* World models + “pixel-space” interpretability: why vision/video models make concepts easier to see, how that accelerates the feedback loop, and why robotics/world-model partners are especially interesting design partners* The north star: moving from “data in, weights out” to intentional model design where experts can impart goals and constraints directly, not just via reward signals and brute-force post-training—Goodfire AI* Website: https://goodfire.ai* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/goodfire-ai/* X: https://x.com/GoodfireAIMyra Deng* Website: https://myradeng.com/* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/myra-deng/* X: https://x.com/myra_dengMark Bissell* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-bissell/* X: https://x.com/MarkMBissellFull Video EpisodeTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction00:00:05 Introduction to the Latent Space Podcast and Guests from Goodfire00:00:29 What is Goodfire? Mission and Focus on Interpretability00:01:01 Goodfire's Practical Approach to Interpretability00:01:37 Goodfire's Series B Fundraise Announcement00:02:04 Backgrounds of Mark and Myra from Goodfire00:02:51 Team Structure and Roles at Goodfire00:05:13 What is Interpretability? Definitions and Techniques00:05:30 Understanding Errors00:07:29 Post-training vs. Pre-training Interpretability Applications00:08:51 Using Interpretability to Remove Unwanted Behaviors00:10:09 Grokking, Double Descent, and Generalization in Models00:10:15 404 Not Found Explained00:12:06 Subliminal Learning and Hidden Biases in Models00:14:07 How Goodfire Chooses Research Directions and Projects00:15:00 Troubleshooting Errors00:16:04 Limitations of SAEs and Probes in Interpretability00:18:14 Rakuten Case Study: Production Deployment of Interpretability00:20:45 Conclusion00:21:12 Efficiency Benefits of Interpretability Techniques00:21:26 Live Demo: Real-Time Steering in a Trillion Parameter Model00:25:15 How Steering Features are Identified and Labeled00:26:51 Detecting and Mitigating Hallucinations Using Interpretability00:31:20 Equivalence of Activation Steering and Prompting00:34:06 Comparing Steering with Fine-Tuning and LoRA Techniques00:36:04 Model Design and the Future of Intentional AI Development00:38:09 Getting Started in Mechinterp: Resources, Programs, and Open Problems00:40:51 Industry Applications and the Rise of Mechinterp in Practice00:41:39 Interpretability for Code Models and Real-World Usage00:43:07 Making Steering Useful for More Than Stylistic Edits00:46:17 Applying Interpretability to Healthcare and Scientific Discovery00:49:15 Why Interpretability is Crucial in High-Stakes Domains like Healthcare00:52:03 Call for Design Partners Across Domains00:54:18 Interest in World Models and Visual Interpretability00:57:22 Sci-Fi Inspiration: Ted Chiang and Interpretability01:00:14 Interpretability, Safety, and Alignment Perspectives01:04:27 Weak-to-Strong Generalization and Future Alignment Challenges01:05:38 Final Thoughts and Hiring/Collaboration Opportunities at GoodfireTranscriptShawn Wang [00:00:05]: So welcome to the Latent Space pod. We're back in the studio with our special MechInterp co-host, Vibhu. Welcome. Mochi, Mochi's special co-host. And Mochi, the mechanistic interpretability doggo. We have with us Mark and Myra from Goodfire. Welcome. Thanks for having us on. Maybe we can sort of introduce Goodfire and then introduce you guys. How do you introduce Goodfire today?Myra Deng [00:00:29]: Yeah, it's a great question. So Goodfire, we like to say, is an AI research lab that focuses on using interpretability to understand, learn from, and design AI models. And we really believe that interpretability will unlock the new generation, next frontier of safe and powerful AI models. That's our description right now, and I'm excited to dive more into the work we're doing to make that happen.Shawn Wang [00:00:55]: Yeah. And there's always like the official description. Is there an understatement? Is there an unofficial one that sort of resonates more with a different audience?Mark Bissell [00:01:01]: Well, being an AI research lab that's focused on interpretability, there's obviously a lot of people have a lot that they think about when they think of interpretability. And I think we have a pretty broad definition of what that means and the types of places that can be applied. And in particular, applying it in production scenarios, in high stakes industries, and really taking it sort of from the research world into the real world. Which, you know. It's a new field, so that hasn't been done all that much. And we're excited about actually seeing that sort of put into practice.Shawn Wang [00:01:37]: Yeah, I would say it wasn't too long ago that Anthopic was like still putting out like toy models or superposition and that kind of stuff. And I wouldn't have pegged it to be this far along. When you and I talked at NeurIPS, you were talking a little bit about your production use cases and your customers. And then not to bury the lead, today we're also announcing the fundraise, your Series B. $150 million. $150 million at a 1.25B valuation. Congrats, Unicorn.Mark Bissell [00:02:02]: Thank you. Yeah, no, things move fast.Shawn Wang [00:02:04]: We were talking to you in December and already some big updates since then. Let's dive, I guess, into a bit of your backgrounds as well. Mark, you were at Palantir working on health stuff, which is really interesting because the Goodfire has some interesting like health use cases. I don't know how related they are in practice.Mark Bissell [00:02:22]: Yeah, not super related, but I don't know. It was helpful context to know what it's like. Just to work. Just to work with health systems and generally in that domain. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:02:32]: And Mara, you were at Two Sigma, which actually I was also at Two Sigma back in the day. Wow, nice.Myra Deng [00:02:37]: Did we overlap at all?Shawn Wang [00:02:38]: No, this is when I was briefly a software engineer before I became a sort of developer relations person. And now you're head of product. What are your sort of respective roles, just to introduce people to like what all gets done in Goodfire?Mark Bissell [00:02:51]: Yeah, prior to Goodfire, I was at Palantir for about three years as a forward deployed engineer, now a hot term. Wasn't always that way. And as a technical lead on the health care team and at Goodfire, I'm a member of the technical staff. And honestly, that I think is about as specific as like as as I could describe myself because I've worked on a range of things. And, you know, it's it's a fun time to be at a team that's still reasonably small. I think when I joined one of the first like ten employees, now we're above 40, but still, it looks like there's always a mix of research and engineering and product and all of the above. That needs to get done. And I think everyone across the team is, you know, pretty, pretty switch hitter in the roles they do. So I think you've seen some of the stuff that I worked on related to image models, which was sort of like a research demo. More recently, I've been working on our scientific discovery team with some of our life sciences partners, but then also building out our core platform for more of like flexing some of the kind of MLE and developer skills as well.Shawn Wang [00:03:53]: Very generalist. And you also had like a very like a founding engineer type role.Myra Deng [00:03:58]: Yeah, yeah.Shawn Wang [00:03:59]: So I also started as I still am a member of technical staff, did a wide range of things from the very beginning, including like finding our office space and all of this, which is we both we both visited when you had that open house thing. It was really nice.Myra Deng [00:04:13]: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Plug to come visit our office.Shawn Wang [00:04:15]: It looked like it was like 200 people. It has room for 200 people. But you guys are like 10.Myra Deng [00:04:22]: For a while, it was very empty. But yeah, like like Mark, I spend. A lot of my time as as head of product, I think product is a bit of a weird role these days, but a lot of it is thinking about how do we take our frontier research and really apply it to the most important real world problems and how does that then translate into a platform that's repeatable or a product and working across, you know, the engineering and research teams to make that happen and also communicating to the world? Like, what is interpretability? What is it used for? What is it good for? Why is it so important? All of these things are part of my day-to-day as well.Shawn Wang [00:05:01]: I love like what is things because that's a very crisp like starting point for people like coming to a field. They all do a fun thing. Vibhu, why don't you want to try tackling what is interpretability and then they can correct us.Vibhu Sapra [00:05:13]: Okay, great. So I think like one, just to kick off, it's a very interesting role to be head of product, right? Because you guys, at least as a lab, you're more of an applied interp lab, right? Which is pretty different than just normal interp, like a lot of background research. But yeah. You guys actually ship an API to try these things. You have Ember, you have products around it, which not many do. Okay. What is interp? So basically you're trying to have an understanding of what's going on in model, like in the model, in the internal. So different approaches to do that. You can do probing, SAEs, transcoders, all this stuff. But basically you have an, you have a hypothesis. You have something that you want to learn about what's happening in a model internals. And then you're trying to solve that from there. You can do stuff like you can, you know, you can do activation mapping. You can try to do steering. There's a lot of stuff that you can do, but the key question is, you know, from input to output, we want to have a better understanding of what's happening and, you know, how can we, how can we adjust what's happening on the model internals? How'd I do?Mark Bissell [00:06:12]: That was really good. I think that was great. I think it's also a, it's kind of a minefield of a, if you ask 50 people who quote unquote work in interp, like what is interpretability, you'll probably get 50 different answers. And. Yeah. To some extent also like where, where good fire sits in the space. I think that we're an AI research company above all else. And interpretability is a, is a set of methods that we think are really useful and worth kind of specializing in, in order to accomplish the goals we want to accomplish. But I think we also sort of see some of the goals as even more broader as, as almost like the science of deep learning and just taking a not black box approach to kind of any part of the like AI development life cycle, whether that. That means using interp for like data curation while you're training your model or for understanding what happened during post-training or for the, you know, understanding activations and sort of internal representations, what is in there semantically. And then a lot of sort of exciting updates that were, you know, are sort of also part of the, the fundraise around bringing interpretability to training, which I don't think has been done all that much before. A lot of this stuff is sort of post-talk poking at models as opposed to. To actually using this to intentionally design them.Shawn Wang [00:07:29]: Is this post-training or pre-training or is that not a useful.Myra Deng [00:07:33]: Currently focused on post-training, but there's no reason the techniques wouldn't also work in pre-training.Shawn Wang [00:07:38]: Yeah. It seems like it would be more active, applicable post-training because basically I'm thinking like rollouts or like, you know, having different variations of a model that you can tweak with the, with your steering. Yeah.Myra Deng [00:07:50]: And I think in a lot of the news that you've seen in, in, on like Twitter or whatever, you've seen a lot of unintended. Side effects come out of post-training processes, you know, overly sycophantic models or models that exhibit strange reward hacking behavior. I think these are like extreme examples. There's also, you know, very, uh, mundane, more mundane, like enterprise use cases where, you know, they try to customize or post-train a model to do something and it learns some noise or it doesn't appropriately learn the target task. And a big question that we've always had is like, how do you use your understanding of what the model knows and what it's doing to actually guide the learning process?Shawn Wang [00:08:26]: Yeah, I mean, uh, you know, just to anchor this for people, uh, one of the biggest controversies of last year was 4.0 GlazeGate. I've never heard of GlazeGate. I didn't know that was what it was called. The other one, they called it that on the blog post and I was like, well, how did OpenAI call it? Like officially use that term. And I'm like, that's funny, but like, yeah, I guess it's the pitch that if they had worked a good fire, they wouldn't have avoided it. Like, you know what I'm saying?Myra Deng [00:08:51]: I think so. Yeah. Yeah.Mark Bissell [00:08:53]: I think that's certainly one of the use cases. I think. Yeah. Yeah. I think the reason why post-training is a place where this makes a lot of sense is a lot of what we're talking about is surgical edits. You know, you want to be able to have expert feedback, very surgically change how your model is doing, whether that is, you know, removing a certain behavior that it has. So, you know, one of the things that we've been looking at or is, is another like common area where you would want to make a somewhat surgical edit is some of the models that have say political bias. Like you look at Quen or, um, R1 and they have sort of like this CCP bias.Shawn Wang [00:09:27]: Is there a CCP vector?Mark Bissell [00:09:29]: Well, there's, there are certainly internal, yeah. Parts of the representation space where you can sort of see where that lives. Yeah. Um, and you want to kind of, you know, extract that piece out.Shawn Wang [00:09:40]: Well, I always say, you know, whenever you find a vector, a fun exercise is just like, make it very negative to see what the opposite of CCP is.Mark Bissell [00:09:47]: The super America, bald eagles flying everywhere. But yeah. So in general, like lots of post-training tasks where you'd want to be able to, to do that. Whether it's unlearning a certain behavior or, you know, some of the other kind of cases where this comes up is, are you familiar with like the, the grokking behavior? I mean, I know the machine learning term of grokking.Shawn Wang [00:10:09]: Yeah.Mark Bissell [00:10:09]: Sort of this like double descent idea of, of having a model that is able to learn a generalizing, a generalizing solution, as opposed to even if memorization of some task would suffice, you want it to learn the more general way of doing a thing. And so, you know, another. A way that you can think about having surgical access to a model's internals would be learn from this data, but learn in the right way. If there are many possible, you know, ways to, to do that. Can make interp solve the double descent problem?Shawn Wang [00:10:41]: Depends, I guess, on how you. Okay. So I, I, I viewed that double descent as a problem because then you're like, well, if the loss curves level out, then you're done, but maybe you're not done. Right. Right. But like, if you actually can interpret what is a generalizing or what you're doing. What is, what is still changing, even though the loss is not changing, then maybe you, you can actually not view it as a double descent problem. And actually you're just sort of translating the space in which you view loss and like, and then you have a smooth curve. Yeah.Mark Bissell [00:11:11]: I think that's certainly like the domain of, of problems that we're, that we're looking to get.Shawn Wang [00:11:15]: Yeah. To me, like double descent is like the biggest thing to like ML research where like, if you believe in scaling, then you don't need, you need to know where to scale. And. But if you believe in double descent, then you don't, you don't believe in anything where like anything levels off, like.Vibhu Sapra [00:11:30]: I mean, also tendentially there's like, okay, when you talk about the China vector, right. There's the subliminal learning work. It was from the anthropic fellows program where basically you can have hidden biases in a model. And as you distill down or, you know, as you train on distilled data, those biases always show up, even if like you explicitly try to not train on them. So, you know, it's just like another use case of. Okay. If we can interpret what's happening in post-training, you know, can we clear some of this? Can we even determine what's there? Because yeah, it's just like some worrying research that's out there that shows, you know, we really don't know what's going on.Mark Bissell [00:12:06]: That is. Yeah. I think that's the biggest sentiment that we're sort of hoping to tackle. Nobody knows what's going on. Right. Like subliminal learning is just an insane concept when you think about it. Right. Train a model on not even the logits, literally the output text of a bunch of random numbers. And now your model loves owls. And you see behaviors like that, that are just, they defy, they defy intuition. And, and there are mathematical explanations that you can get into, but. I mean.Shawn Wang [00:12:34]: It feels so early days. Objectively, there are a sequence of numbers that are more owl-like than others. There, there should be.Mark Bissell [00:12:40]: According to, according to certain models. Right. It's interesting. I think it only applies to models that were initialized from the same starting Z. Usually, yes.Shawn Wang [00:12:49]: But I mean, I think that's a, that's a cheat code because there's not enough compute. But like if you believe in like platonic representation, like probably it will transfer across different models as well. Oh, you think so?Mark Bissell [00:13:00]: I think of it more as a statistical artifact of models initialized from the same seed sort of. There's something that is like path dependent from that seed that might cause certain overlaps in the latent space and then sort of doing this distillation. Yeah. Like it pushes it towards having certain other tendencies.Vibhu Sapra [00:13:24]: Got it. I think there's like a bunch of these open-ended questions, right? Like you can't train in new stuff during the RL phase, right? RL only reorganizes weights and you can only do stuff that's somewhat there in your base model. You're not learning new stuff. You're just reordering chains and stuff. But okay. My broader question is when you guys work at an interp lab, how do you decide what to work on and what's kind of the thought process? Right. Because we can ramble for hours. Okay. I want to know this. I want to know that. But like, how do you concretely like, you know, what's the workflow? Okay. There's like approaches towards solving a problem, right? I can try prompting. I can look at chain of thought. I can train probes, SAEs. But how do you determine, you know, like, okay, is this going anywhere? Like, do we have set stuff? Just, you know, if you can help me with all that. Yeah.Myra Deng [00:14:07]: It's a really good question. I feel like we've always at the very beginning of the company thought about like, let's go and try to learn what isn't working in machine learning today. Whether that's talking to customers or talking to researchers at other labs, trying to understand both where the frontier is going and where things are really not falling apart today. And then developing a perspective on how we can push the frontier using interpretability methods. And so, you know, even our chief scientist, Tom, spends a lot of time talking to customers and trying to understand what real world problems are and then taking that back and trying to apply the current state of the art to those problems and then seeing where they fall down basically. And then using those failures or those shortcomings to understand what hills to climb when it comes to interpretability research. So like on the fundamental side, for instance, when we have done some work applying SAEs and probes, we've encountered, you know, some shortcomings in SAEs that we found a little bit surprising. And so have gone back to the drawing board and done work on that. And then, you know, we've done some work on better foundational interpreter models. And a lot of our team's research is focused on what is the next evolution beyond SAEs, for instance. And then when it comes to like control and design of models, you know, we tried steering with our first API and realized that it still fell short of black box techniques like prompting or fine tuning. And so went back to the drawing board and we're like, how do we make that not the case and how do we improve it beyond that? And one of our researchers, Ekdeep, who just joined is actually Ekdeep and Atticus are like steering experts and have spent a lot of time trying to figure out like, what is the research that enables us to actually do this in a much more powerful, robust way? So yeah, the answer is like, look at real world problems, try to translate that into a research agenda and then like hill climb on both of those at the same time.Shawn Wang [00:16:04]: Yeah. Mark has the steering CLI demo queued up, which we're going to go into in a sec. But I always want to double click on when you drop hints, like we found some problems with SAEs. Okay. What are they? You know, and then we can go into the demo. Yeah.Myra Deng [00:16:19]: I mean, I'm curious if you have more thoughts here as well, because you've done it in the healthcare domain. But I think like, for instance, when we do things like trying to detect behaviors within models that are harmful or like behaviors that a user might not want to have in their model. So hallucinations, for instance, harmful intent, PII, all of these things. We first tried using SAE probes for a lot of these tasks. So taking the feature activation space from SAEs and then training classifiers on top of that, and then seeing how well we can detect the properties that we might want to detect in model behavior. And we've seen in many cases that probes just trained on raw activations seem to perform better than SAE probes, which is a bit surprising if you think that SAEs are actually also capturing the concepts that you would want to capture cleanly and more surgically. And so that is an interesting observation. I don't think that is like, I'm not down on SAEs at all. I think there are many, many things they're useful for, but we have definitely run into cases where I think the concept space described by SAEs is not as clean and accurate as we would expect it to be for actual like real world downstream performance metrics.Mark Bissell [00:17:34]: Fair enough. Yeah. It's the blessing and the curse of unsupervised methods where you get to peek into the AI's mind. But sometimes you wish that you saw other things when you walked inside there. Although in the PII instance, I think weren't an SAE based approach actually did prove to be the most generalizable?Myra Deng [00:17:53]: It did work well in the case that we published with Rakuten. And I think a lot of the reasons it worked well was because we had a noisier data set. And so actually the blessing of unsupervised learning is that we actually got to get more meaningful, generalizable signal from SAEs when the data was noisy. But in other cases where we've had like good data sets, it hasn't been the case.Shawn Wang [00:18:14]: And just because you named Rakuten and I don't know if we'll get it another chance, like what is the overall, like what is Rakuten's usage or production usage? Yeah.Myra Deng [00:18:25]: So they are using us to essentially guardrail and inference time monitor their language model usage and their agent usage to detect things like PII so that they don't route private user information.Myra Deng [00:18:41]: And so that's, you know, going through all of their user queries every day. And that's something that we deployed with them a few months ago. And now we are actually exploring very early partnerships, not just with Rakuten, but with other people around how we can help with potentially training and customization use cases as well. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:19:03]: And for those who don't know, like it's Rakuten is like, I think number one or number two e-commerce store in Japan. Yes. Yeah.Mark Bissell [00:19:10]: And I think that use case actually highlights a lot of like what it looks like to deploy things in practice that you don't always think about when you're doing sort of research tasks. So when you think about some of the stuff that came up there that's more complex than your idealized version of a problem, they were encountering things like synthetic to real transfer of methods. So they couldn't train probes, classifiers, things like that on actual customer data of PII. So what they had to do is use synthetic data sets. And then hope that that transfer is out of domain to real data sets. And so we can evaluate performance on the real data sets, but not train on customer PII. So that right off the bat is like a big challenge. You have multilingual requirements. So this needed to work for both English and Japanese text. Japanese text has all sorts of quirks, including tokenization behaviors that caused lots of bugs that caused us to be pulling our hair out. And then also a lot of tasks you'll see. You might make simplifying assumptions if you're sort of treating it as like the easiest version of the problem to just sort of get like general results where maybe you say you're classifying a sentence to say, does this contain PII? But the need that Rakuten had was token level classification so that you could precisely scrub out the PII. So as we learned more about the problem, you're sort of speaking about what that looks like in practice. Yeah. A lot of assumptions end up breaking. And that was just one instance where you. A problem that seems simple right off the bat ends up being more complex as you keep diving into it.Vibhu Sapra [00:20:41]: Excellent. One of the things that's also interesting with Interp is a lot of these methods are very efficient, right? So where you're just looking at a model's internals itself compared to a separate like guardrail, LLM as a judge, a separate model. One, you have to host it. Two, there's like a whole latency. So if you use like a big model, you have a second call. Some of the work around like self detection of hallucination, it's also deployed for efficiency, right? So if you have someone like Rakuten doing it in production live, you know, that's just another thing people should consider.Mark Bissell [00:21:12]: Yeah. And something like a probe is super lightweight. Yeah. It's no extra latency really. Excellent.Shawn Wang [00:21:17]: You have the steering demos lined up. So we were just kind of see what you got. I don't, I don't actually know if this is like the latest, latest or like alpha thing.Mark Bissell [00:21:26]: No, this is a pretty hacky demo from from a presentation that someone else on the team recently gave. So this will give a sense for, for technology. So you can see the steering and action. Honestly, I think the biggest thing that this highlights is that as we've been growing as a company and taking on kind of more and more ambitious versions of interpretability related problems, a lot of that comes to scaling up in various different forms. And so here you're going to see steering on a 1 trillion parameter model. This is Kimi K2. And so it's sort of fun that in addition to the research challenges, there are engineering challenges that we're now tackling. Cause for any of this to be sort of useful in production, you need to be thinking about what it looks like when you're using these methods on frontier models as opposed to sort of like toy kind of model organisms. So yeah, this was thrown together hastily, pretty fragile behind the scenes, but I think it's quite a fun demo. So screen sharing is on. So I've got two terminal sessions pulled up here. On the left is a forked version that we have of the Kimi CLI that we've got running to point at our custom hosted Kimi model. And then on the right is a set up that will allow us to steer on certain concepts. So I should be able to chat with Kimi over here. Tell it hello. This is running locally. So the CLI is running locally, but the Kimi server is running back to the office. Well, hopefully should be, um, that's too much to run on that Mac. Yeah. I think it's, uh, it takes a full, like each 100 node. I think it's like, you can. You can run it on eight GPUs, eight 100. So, so yeah, Kimi's running. We can ask it a prompt. It's got a forked version of our, uh, of the SG line code base that we've been working on. So I'm going to tell it, Hey, this SG line code base is slow. I think there's a bug. Can you try to figure it out? There's a big code base, so it'll, it'll spend some time doing this. And then on the right here, I'm going to initialize in real time. Some steering. Let's see here.Mark Bissell [00:23:33]: searching for any. Bugs. Feature ID 43205.Shawn Wang [00:23:38]: Yeah.Mark Bissell [00:23:38]: 20, 30, 40. So let me, uh, this is basically a feature that we found that inside Kimi seems to cause it to speak in Gen Z slang. And so on the left, it's still sort of thinking normally it might take, I don't know, 15 seconds for this to kick in, but then we're going to start hopefully seeing him do this code base is massive for real. So we're going to start. We're going to start seeing Kimi transition as the steering kicks in from normal Kimi to Gen Z Kimi and both in its chain of thought and its actual outputs.Mark Bissell [00:24:19]: And interestingly, you can see, you know, it's still able to call tools, uh, and stuff. It's um, it's purely sort of it's it's demeanor. And there are other features that we found for interesting things like concision. So that's more of a practical one. You can make it more concise. Um, the types of programs, uh, programming languages that uses, but yeah, as we're seeing it come in. Pretty good. Outputs.Shawn Wang [00:24:43]: Scheduler code is actually wild.Vibhu Sapra [00:24:46]: Yo, this code is actually insane, bro.Vibhu Sapra [00:24:53]: What's the process of training in SAE on this, or, you know, how do you label features? I know you guys put out a pretty cool blog post about, um, finding this like autonomous interp. Um, something. Something about how agents for interp is different than like coding agents. I don't know while this is spewing up, but how, how do we find feature 43, two Oh five. Yeah.Mark Bissell [00:25:15]: So in this case, um, we, our platform that we've been building out for a long time now supports all the sort of classic out of the box interp techniques that you might want to have like SAE training, probing things of that kind, I'd say the techniques for like vanilla SAEs are pretty well established now where. You take your model that you're interpreting, run a whole bunch of data through it, gather activations, and then yeah, pretty straightforward pipeline to train an SAE. There are a lot of different varieties. There's top KSAEs, batch top KSAEs, um, normal ReLU SAEs. And then once you have your sparse features to your point, assigning labels to them to actually understand that this is a gen Z feature, that's actually where a lot of the kind of magic happens. Yeah. And the most basic standard technique is look at all of your d input data set examples that cause this feature to fire most highly. And then you can usually pick out a pattern. So for this feature, If I've run a diverse enough data set through my model feature 43, two Oh five. Probably tends to fire on all the tokens that sounds like gen Z slang. You know, that's the, that's the time of year to be like, Oh, I'm in this, I'm in this Um, and, um, so, you know, you could have a human go through all 43,000 concepts andVibhu Sapra [00:26:34]: And I've got to ask the basic question, you know, can we get examples where it hallucinates, pass it through, see what feature activates for hallucinations? Can I just, you know, turn hallucination down?Myra Deng [00:26:51]: Oh, wow. You really predicted a project we're already working on right now, which is detecting hallucinations using interpretability techniques. And this is interesting because hallucinations is something that's very hard to detect. And it's like a kind of a hairy problem and something that black box methods really struggle with. Whereas like Gen Z, you could always train a simple classifier to detect that hallucinations is harder. But we've seen that models internally have some... Awareness of like uncertainty or some sort of like user pleasing behavior that leads to hallucinatory behavior. And so, yeah, we have a project that's trying to detect that accurately. And then also working on mitigating the hallucinatory behavior in the model itself as well.Shawn Wang [00:27:39]: Yeah, I would say most people are still at the level of like, oh, I would just turn temperature to zero and that turns off hallucination. And I'm like, well, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of how this works. Yeah.Mark Bissell [00:27:51]: Although, so part of what I like about that question is you, there are SAE based approaches that might like help you get at that. But oftentimes the beauty of SAEs and like we said, the curse is that they're unsupervised. So when you have a behavior that you deliberately would like to remove, and that's more of like a supervised task, often it is better to use something like probes and specifically target the thing that you're interested in reducing as opposed to sort of like hoping that when you fragment the latent space, one of the vectors that pops out.Vibhu Sapra [00:28:20]: And as much as we're training an autoencoder to be sparse, we're not like for sure certain that, you know, we will get something that just correlates to hallucination. You'll probably split that up into 20 other things and who knows what they'll be.Mark Bissell [00:28:36]: Of course. Right. Yeah. So there's no sort of problems with like feature splitting and feature absorption. And then there's the off target effects, right? Ideally, you would want to be very precise where if you reduce the hallucination feature, suddenly maybe your model can't write. Creatively anymore. And maybe you don't like that, but you want to still stop it from hallucinating facts and figures.Shawn Wang [00:28:55]: Good. So Vibhu has a paper to recommend there that we'll put in the show notes. But yeah, I mean, I guess just because your demo is done, any any other things that you want to highlight or any other interesting features you want to show?Mark Bissell [00:29:07]: I don't think so. Yeah. Like I said, this is a pretty small snippet. I think the main sort of point here that I think is exciting is that there's not a whole lot of inter being applied to models quite at this scale. You know, Anthropic certainly has some some. Research and yeah, other other teams as well. But it's it's nice to see these techniques, you know, being put into practice. I think not that long ago, the idea of real time steering of a trillion parameter model would have sounded.Shawn Wang [00:29:33]: Yeah. The fact that it's real time, like you started the thing and then you edited the steering vector.Vibhu Sapra [00:29:38]: I think it's it's an interesting one TBD of what the actual like production use case would be on that, like the real time editing. It's like that's the fun part of the demo, right? You can kind of see how this could be served behind an API, right? Like, yes, you're you only have so many knobs and you can just tweak it a bit more. And I don't know how it plays in. Like people haven't done that much with like, how does this work with or without prompting? Right. How does this work with fine tuning? Like, there's a whole hype of continual learning, right? So there's just so much to see. Like, is this another parameter? Like, is it like parameter? We just kind of leave it as a default. We don't use it. So I don't know. Maybe someone here wants to put out a guide on like how to use this with prompting when to do what?Mark Bissell [00:30:18]: Oh, well, I have a paper recommendation. I think you would love from Act Deep on our team, who is an amazing researcher, just can't say enough amazing things about Act Deep. But he actually has a paper that as well as some others from the team and elsewhere that go into the essentially equivalence of activation steering and in context learning and how those are from a he thinks of everything in a cognitive neuroscience Bayesian framework, but basically how you can precisely show how. Prompting in context, learning and steering exhibit similar behaviors and even like get quantitative about the like magnitude of steering you would need to do to induce a certain amount of behavior similar to certain prompting, even for things like jailbreaks and stuff. It's a really cool paper. Are you saying steering is less powerful than prompting? More like you can almost write a formula that tells you how to convert between the two of them.Myra Deng [00:31:20]: And so like formally equivalent actually in the in the limit. Right.Mark Bissell [00:31:24]: So like one case study of this is for jailbreaks there. I don't know. Have you seen the stuff where you can do like many shot jailbreaking? You like flood the context with examples of the behavior. And the topic put out that paper.Shawn Wang [00:31:38]: A lot of people were like, yeah, we've been doing this, guys.Mark Bissell [00:31:40]: Like, yeah, what's in this in context learning and activation steering equivalence paper is you can like predict the number. Number of examples that you will need to put in there in order to jailbreak the model. That's cool. By doing steering experiments and using this sort of like equivalence mapping. That's cool. That's really cool. It's very neat. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:32:02]: I was going to say, like, you know, I can like back rationalize that this makes sense because, you know, what context is, is basically just, you know, it updates the KV cache kind of and like and then every next token inference is still like, you know, the sheer sum of everything all the way. It's plus all the context. It's up to date. And you could, I guess, theoretically steer that with you probably replace that with your steering. The only problem is steering typically is on one layer, maybe three layers like like you did. So it's like not exactly equivalent.Mark Bissell [00:32:33]: Right, right. There's sort of you need to get precise about, yeah, like how you sort of define steering and like what how you're modeling the setup. But yeah, I've got the paper pulled up here. Belief dynamics reveal the dual nature. Yeah. The title is Belief Dynamics Reveal the Dual Nature of Incompetence. And it's an exhibition of the practical context learning and activation steering. So Eric Bigelow, Dan Urgraft on the who are doing fellowships at Goodfire, Ekt Deep's the final author there.Myra Deng [00:32:59]: I think actually to your question of like, what is the production use case of steering? I think maybe if you just think like one level beyond steering as it is today. Like imagine if you could adapt your model to be, you know, an expert legal reasoner. Like in almost real time, like very quickly. efficiently using human feedback or using like your semantic understanding of what the model knows and where it knows that behavior. I think that while it's not clear what the product is at the end of the day, it's clearly very valuable. Thinking about like what's the next interface for model customization and adaptation is a really interesting problem for us. Like we have heard a lot of people actually interested in fine-tuning an RL for open weight models in production. And so people are using things like Tinker or kind of like open source libraries to do that, but it's still very difficult to get models fine-tuned and RL'd for exactly what you want them to do unless you're an expert at model training. And so that's like something we'reShawn Wang [00:34:06]: looking into. Yeah. I never thought so. Tinker from Thinking Machines famously uses rank one LoRa. Is that basically the same as steering? Like, you know, what's the comparison there?Mark Bissell [00:34:19]: Well, so in that case, you are still applying updates to the parameters, right?Shawn Wang [00:34:25]: Yeah. You're not touching a base model. You're touching an adapter. It's kind of, yeah.Mark Bissell [00:34:30]: Right. But I guess it still is like more in parameter space then. I guess it's maybe like, are you modifying the pipes or are you modifying the water flowing through the pipes to get what you're after? Yeah. Just maybe one way.Mark Bissell [00:34:44]: I like that analogy. That's my mental map of it at least, but it gets at this idea of model design and intentional design, which is something that we're, that we're very focused on. And just the fact that like, I hope that we look back at how we're currently training models and post-training models and just think what a primitive way of doing that right now. Like there's no intentionalityShawn Wang [00:35:06]: really in... It's just data, right? The only thing in control is what data we feed in.Mark Bissell [00:35:11]: So, so Dan from Goodfire likes to use this analogy of, you know, he has a couple of young kids and he talks about like, what if I could only teach my kids how to be good people by giving them cookies or like, you know, giving them a slap on the wrist if they do something wrong, like not telling them why it was wrong or like what they should have done differently or something like that. Just figure it out. Right. Exactly. So that's RL. Yeah. Right. And, and, you know, it's sample inefficient. There's, you know, what do they say? It's like slurping feedback. It's like, slurping supervision. Right. And so you'd like to get to the point where you can have experts giving feedback to their models that are, uh, internalized and, and, you know, steering is an inference time way of sort of getting that idea. But ideally you're moving to a world whereVibhu Sapra [00:36:04]: it is much more intentional design in perpetuity for these models. Okay. This is one of the questions we asked Emmanuel from Anthropic on the podcast a few months ago. Basically the question, was you're at a research lab that does model training, foundation models, and you're on an interp team. How does it tie back? Right? Like, does this, do ideas come from the pre-training team? Do they go back? Um, you know, so for those interested, you can, you can watch that. There wasn't too much of a connect there, but it's still something, you know, it's something they want toMark Bissell [00:36:33]: push for down the line. It can be useful for all of the above. Like there are certainly post-hocVibhu Sapra [00:36:39]: use cases where it doesn't need to touch that. I think the other thing a lot of people forget is this stuff isn't too computationally expensive, right? Like I would say, if you're interested in getting into research, MechInterp is one of the most approachable fields, right? A lot of this train an essay, train a probe, this stuff, like the budget for this one, there's already a lot done. There's a lot of open source work. You guys have done some too. Um, you know,Shawn Wang [00:37:04]: There's like notebooks from the Gemini team for Neil Nanda or like, this is how you do it. Just step through the notebook.Vibhu Sapra [00:37:09]: Even if you're like, not even technical with any of this, you can still make like progress. There, you can look at different activations, but, uh, if you do want to get into training, you know, training this stuff, correct me if I'm wrong is like in the thousands of dollars, not even like, it's not that high scale. And then same with like, you know, applying it, doing it for post-training or all this stuff is fairly cheap in scale of, okay. I want to get into like model training. I don't have compute for like, you know, pre-training stuff. So it's, it's a very nice field to get into. And also there's a lot of like open questions, right? Um, some of them have to go with, okay, I want a product. I want to solve this. Like there's also just a lot of open-ended stuff that people could work on. That's interesting. Right. I don't know if you guys have any calls for like, what's open questions, what's open work that you either open collaboration with, or like, you'd just like to see solved or just, you know, for people listening that want to get into McInturk because people always talk about it. What are, what are the things they should check out? Start, of course, you know, join you guys as well. I'm sure you're hiring.Myra Deng [00:38:09]: There's a paper, I think from, was it Lee, uh, Sharky? It's open problems and, uh, it's, it's a bit of interpretability, which I recommend everyone who's interested in the field. Read. I'm just like a really comprehensive overview of what are the things that experts in the field think are the most important problems to be solved. I also think to your point, it's been really, really inspiring to see, I think a lot of young people getting interested in interpretability, actually not just young people also like scientists to have been, you know, experts in physics for many years and in biology or things like this, um, transitioning into interp, because the barrier of, of what's now interp. So it's really cool to see a number to entry is, you know, in some ways low and there's a lot of information out there and ways to get started. There's this anecdote of like professors at universities saying that all of a sudden every incoming PhD student wants to study interpretability, which was not the case a few years ago. So it just goes to show how, I guess, like exciting the field is, how fast it's moving, how quick it is to get started and things like that.Mark Bissell [00:39:10]: And also just a very welcoming community. You know, there's an open source McInturk Slack channel. There are people are always posting questions and just folks in the space are always responsive if you ask things on various forums and stuff. But yeah, the open paper, open problems paper is a really good one.Myra Deng [00:39:28]: For other people who want to get started, I think, you know, MATS is a great program. What's the acronym for? Machine Learning and Alignment Theory Scholars? It's like the...Vibhu Sapra [00:39:40]: Normally summer internship style.Myra Deng [00:39:42]: Yeah, but they've been doing it year round now. And actually a lot of our full-time staff have come through that program or gone through that program. And it's great for anyone who is transitioning into interpretability. There's a couple other fellows programs. We do one as well as Anthropic. And so those are great places to get started if anyone is interested.Mark Bissell [00:40:03]: Also, I think been seen as a research field for a very long time. But I think engineering... I think engineers are sorely wanted for interpretability as well, especially at Goodfire, but elsewhere, as it does scale up.Shawn Wang [00:40:18]: I should mention that Lee actually works with you guys, right? And in the London office and I'm adding our first ever McInturk track at AI Europe because I see this industry applications now emerging. And I'm pretty excited to, you know, help push that along. Yeah, I was looking forward to that. It'll effectively be the first industry McInturk conference. Yeah. I'm so glad you added that. You know, it's still a little bit of a bet. It's not that widespread, but I can definitely see this is the time to really get into it. We want to be early on things.Mark Bissell [00:40:51]: For sure. And I think the field understands this, right? So at ICML, I think the title of the McInturk workshop this year was actionable interpretability. And there was a lot of discussion around bringing it to various domains. Everyone's adding pragmatic, actionable, whatever.Shawn Wang [00:41:10]: It's like, okay, well, we weren't actionable before, I guess. I don't know.Vibhu Sapra [00:41:13]: And I mean, like, just, you know, being in Europe, you see the Interp room. One, like old school conferences, like, I think they had a very tiny room till they got lucky and they got it doubled. But there's definitely a lot of interest, a lot of niche research. So you see a lot of research coming out of universities, students. We covered the paper last week. It's like two unknown authors, not many citations. But, you know, you can make a lot of meaningful work there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:41:39]: Yeah. I think people haven't really mentioned this yet. It's just Interp for code. I think it's like an abnormally important field. We haven't mentioned this yet. The conspiracy theory last two years ago was when the first SAE work came out of Anthropic was they would do like, oh, we just used SAEs to turn the bad code vector down and then turn up the good code. And I think like, isn't that the dream? Like, you know, like, but basically, I guess maybe, why is it funny? Like, it's... If it was realistic, it would not be funny. It would be like, no, actually, we should do this. But it's funny because we know there's like, we feel there's some limitations to what steering can do. And I think a lot of the public image of steering is like the Gen Z stuff. Like, oh, you can make it really love the Golden Gate Bridge, or you can make it speak like Gen Z. To like be a legal reasoner seems like a huge stretch. Yeah. And I don't know if that will get there this way. Yeah.Myra Deng [00:42:36]: I think, um, I will say we are announcing. Something very soon that I will not speak too much about. Um, but I think, yeah, this is like what we've run into again and again is like, we, we don't want to be in the world where steering is only useful for like stylistic things. That's definitely not, not what we're aiming for. But I think the types of interventions that you need to do to get to things like legal reasoning, um, are much more sophisticated and require breakthroughs in, in learning algorithms. And that's, um...Shawn Wang [00:43:07]: And is this an emergent property of scale as well?Myra Deng [00:43:10]: I think so. Yeah. I mean, I think scale definitely helps. I think scale allows you to learn a lot of information and, and reduce noise across, you know, large amounts of data. But I also think we think that there's ways to do things much more effectively, um, even, even at scale. So like actually learning exactly what you want from the data and not learning things that you do that you don't want exhibited in the data. So we're not like anti-scale, but we are also realizing that scale is not going to get us anywhere. It's not going to get us to the type of AI development that we want to be at in, in the future as these models get more powerful and get deployed in all these sorts of like mission critical contexts. Current life cycle of training and deploying and evaluations is, is to us like deeply broken and has opportunities to, to improve. So, um, more to come on that very, very soon.Mark Bissell [00:44:02]: And I think that that's a use basically, or maybe just like a proof point that these concepts do exist. Like if you can manipulate them in the precise best way, you can get the ideal combination of them that you desire. And steering is maybe the most coarse grained sort of peek at what that looks like. But I think it's evocative of what you could do if you had total surgical control over every concept, every parameter. Yeah, exactly.Myra Deng [00:44:30]: There were like bad code features. I've got it pulled up.Vibhu Sapra [00:44:33]: Yeah. Just coincidentally, as you guys are talking.Shawn Wang [00:44:35]: This is like, this is exactly.Vibhu Sapra [00:44:38]: There's like specifically a code error feature that activates and they show, you know, it's not, it's not typo detection. It's like, it's, it's typos in code. It's not typical typos. And, you know, you can, you can see it clearly activates where there's something wrong in code. And they have like malicious code, code error. They have a whole bunch of sub, you know, sub broken down little grain features. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:45:02]: Yeah. So, so the, the rough intuition for me, the, why I talked about post-training was that, well, you just, you know, have a few different rollouts with all these things turned off and on and whatever. And then, you know, you can, that's, that's synthetic data you can kind of post-train on. Yeah.Vibhu Sapra [00:45:13]: And I think we make it sound easier than it is just saying, you know, they do the real hard work.Myra Deng [00:45:19]: I mean, you guys, you guys have the right idea. Exactly. Yeah. We replicated a lot of these features in, in our Lama models as well. I remember there was like.Vibhu Sapra [00:45:26]: And I think a lot of this stuff is open, right? Like, yeah, you guys opened yours. DeepMind has opened a lot of essays on Gemma. Even Anthropic has opened a lot of this. There's, there's a lot of resources that, you know, we can probably share of people that want to get involved.Shawn Wang [00:45:41]: Yeah. And special shout out to like Neuronpedia as well. Yes. Like, yeah, amazing piece of work to visualize those things.Myra Deng [00:45:49]: Yeah, exactly.Shawn Wang [00:45:50]: I guess I wanted to pivot a little bit on, onto the healthcare side, because I think that's a big use case for you guys. We haven't really talked about it yet. This is a bit of a crossover for me because we are, we are, we do have a separate science pod that we're starting up for AI, for AI for science, just because like, it's such a huge investment category and also I'm like less qualified to do it, but we actually have bio PhDs to cover that, which is great, but I need to just kind of recover, recap your work, maybe on the evil two stuff, but then, and then building forward.Mark Bissell [00:46:17]: Yeah, for sure. And maybe to frame up the conversation, I think another kind of interesting just lens on interpretability in general is a lot of the techniques that were described. are ways to solve the AI human interface problem. And it's sort of like bidirectional communication is the goal there. So what we've been talking about with intentional design of models and, you know, steering, but also more advanced techniques is having humans impart our desires and control into models and over models. And the reverse is also very interesting, especially as you get to superhuman models, whether that's narrow superintelligence, like these scientific models that work on genomics, data, medical imaging, things like that. But down the line, you know, superintelligence of other forms as well. What knowledge can the AIs teach us as sort of that, that the other direction in that? And so some of our life science work to date has been getting at exactly that question, which is, well, some of it does look like debugging these various life sciences models, understanding if they're actually performing well, on tasks, or if they're picking up on spurious correlations, for instance, genomics models, you would like to know whether they are sort of focusing on the biologically relevant things that you care about, or if it's using some simpler correlate, like the ancestry of the person that it's looking at. But then also in the instances where they are superhuman, and maybe they are understanding elements of the human genome that we don't have names for or specific, you know, yeah, discoveries that they've made that that we don't know about, that's, that's a big goal. And so we're already seeing that, right, we are partnered with organizations like Mayo Clinic, leading research health system in the United States, our Institute, as well as a startup called Prima Menta, which focuses on neurodegenerative disease. And in our partnership with them, we've used foundation models, they've been training and applied our interpretability techniques to find novel biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease. So I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. But it's, that's like a flavor of some of the things that we're working on.Shawn Wang [00:48:36]: Yeah, I think that's really fantastic. Obviously, we did the Chad Zuckerberg pod last year as well. And like, there's a plethora of these models coming out, because there's so much potential and research. And it's like, very interesting how it's basically the same as language models, but just with a different underlying data set. But it's like, it's the same exact techniques. Like, there's no change, basically.Mark Bissell [00:48:59]: Yeah. Well, and even in like other domains, right? Like, you know, robotics, I know, like a lot of the companies just use Gemma as like the like backbone, and then they like make it into a VLA that like takes these actions. It's, it's, it's transformers all the way down. So yeah.Vibhu Sapra [00:49:15]: Like we have Med Gemma now, right? Like this week, even there was Med Gemma 1.5. And they're training it on this stuff, like 3d scans, medical domain knowledge, and all that stuff, too. So there's a push from both sides. But I think the thing that, you know, one of the things about McInturpp is like, you're a little bit more cautious in some domains, right? So healthcare, mainly being one, like guardrails, understanding, you know, we're more risk adverse to something going wrong there. So even just from a basic understanding, like, if we're trusting these systems to make claims, we want to know why and what's going on.Myra Deng [00:49:51]: Yeah, I think there's totally a kind of like deployment bottleneck to actually using. foundation models for real patient usage or things like that. Like, say you're using a model for rare disease prediction, you probably want some explanation as to why your model predicted a certain outcome, and an interpretable explanation at that. So that's definitely a use case. But I also think like, being able to extract scientific information that no human knows to accelerate drug discovery and disease treatment and things like that actually is a really, really big unlock for science, like scientific discovery. And you've seen a lot of startups, like say that they're going to accelerate scientific discovery. And I feel like we actually are doing that through our interp techniques. And kind of like, almost by accident, like, I think we got reached out to very, very early on from these healthcare institutions. And none of us had healthcare.Shawn Wang [00:50:49]: How did they even hear of you? A podcast.Myra Deng [00:50:51]: Oh, okay. Yeah, podcast.Vibhu Sapra [00:50:53]: Okay, well, now's that time, you know.Myra Deng [00:50:55]: Everyone can call us.Shawn Wang [00:50:56]: Podcasts are the most important thing. Everyone should listen to podcasts.Myra Deng [00:50:59]: Yeah, they reached out. They were like, you know, we have these really smart models that we've trained, and we want to know what they're doing. And we were like, really early that time, like three months old, and it was a few of us. And we were like, oh, my God, we've never used these models. Let's figure it out. But it's also like, great proof that interp techniques scale pretty well across domains. We didn't really have to learn too much about.Shawn Wang [00:51:21]: Interp is a machine learning technique, machine learning skills everywhere, right? Yeah. And it's obviously, it's just like a general insight. Yeah. Probably to finance too, I think, which would be fun for our history. I don't know if you have anything to say there.Mark Bissell [00:51:34]: Yeah, well, just across the science. Like, we've also done work on material science. Yeah, it really runs the gamut.Vibhu Sapra [00:51:40]: Yeah. Awesome. And, you know, for those that should reach out, like, you're obviously experts in this, but like, is there a call out for people that you're looking to partner with, design partners, people to use your stuff outside of just, you know, the general developer that wants to. Plug and play steering stuff, like on the research side more so, like, are there ideal design partners, customers, stuff like that?Myra Deng [00:52:03]: Yeah, I can talk about maybe non-life sciences, and then I'm curious to hear from you on the life sciences side. But we're looking for design partners across many domains, language, anyone who's customizing language models or trying to push the frontier of code or reasoning models is really interesting to us. And then also interested in the frontier of modeling. There's a lot of models that work in, like, pixel space, as we call it. So if you're doing world models, video models, even robotics, where there's not a very clean natural language interface to interact with, I think we think that Interp can really help and are looking for a few partners in that space.Shawn Wang [00:52:43]: Just because you mentioned the keyword

Steve, McNew, Kathy, Ryan, Matt W. & Justine talk about distilleries that aren't as big as they used to be in terms of social media buzz. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

FAA reorganization and shutdown prep, Airbus A220 stretch, certification as a trade tool, UPS MD‑11 retirement, 777X engine snag, fatal Challenger crash, iconic aircraft, new NASM galleries, aviation career issues, aviation-themed music, and a future DC‑3/CH‑47 fly‑in. Aviation News FAA Adds Departments, Shuffles Roles The new FAA reorganization differs from the previous structure mainly by centralizing safety oversight, creating new modernization and advanced technology offices, and consolidating internal support functions under new top-level offices. A new, agency‑wide Aviation Safety Management System (SMS) Organization implements a single safety system and risk-management strategy across all FAA lines of business, rather than having safety functions and metrics siloed in multiple offices as before. An Airspace Modernization Office is dedicated to rolling out the “brand‑new air traffic control system” and overseeing broader NAS modernization, which previously was handled within the Air Traffic Organization and other units rather than a single, focused office. An Office of Advanced Aviation Technologies integrates UAS, eVTOL, AAM, electric, and supersonic aircraft into the NAS. These functions were formerly spread among UAS integration, NextGen, and various certification/AVS branches. A new Administration and Finance Office consolidates the functions of finance, information technology, and human resources. Previously, they were distributed across multiple lines of business and staff offices. A Policy and Legal Office pulls together policy, legal, stakeholder engagement, financial assistance, and the agency's rulemaking/regulatory office. Previously, rulemaking and policy lived mainly within Aviation Safety and other distinct policy offices. The Administration and Finance Office, Policy and Legal Office, Air Traffic Organization, and the new safety and modernization offices all report to the Administrator. Shutdown Plan for FAA Involves 10K Furloughs The FAA's plan for the short-lived partial government shutdown was to furlough more than 10,000 FAA workers and withhold pay for 13,835 air traffic controllers. Exclusive: Airbus to kickstart pre-sales for a larger A220 jet, sources say Airbus is considering launching an A220 stretch – the A220-500 with around 180 seats. This is a “simple stretch,” meaning the same wings, the same engines, and a longer fuselage. The Airbus Board approval is required before the A220-500 can be formally launched. Trade War Skies: Understanding Trump's 2026 Decertification Order on Canadian Aircraft In a January 30, 2026, social media post, President Donald Trump announced the “decertification” of all Canadian-manufactured aircraft if Gulfstream aircraft were not certified by Canada. The President alleged that Canada has “wrongfully, illegally, and steadfastly” refused to certify U.S.-made G500, G600, G700, and G800 jets. If Transport Canada did not act immediately, a 50% tariff would be implemented. Over 5,400 Canadian-built planes are registered in the U.S. This sent shockwaves, if not panic, throughout the industry. With time, clarification has come: The order would apply to new aircraft airworthiness certificates and wouldn't ground the fleet. The IAM (International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers) urged a separation of safety regulation and political grievances. “You can't weaponize the certification process,” said union leaders, emphasizing that aviation safety should remain an independent pillar of global travel. Some feel Transport Canada is holding off on certifying the G700 and G800 mainly because they are not willing to mirror the FAA's temporary fuel‑icing exemption. The Canadian regulator wants the full cold‑weather and icing compliance demonstrated first. UPS won't resurrect MD-11 fleet after deadly crash, takes $137M charge UPS is retiring its fleet of 27 MD-11 aircraft and, in the process, writing off $137 million after-tax. The MD-11s will be replaced with twin-engine Boeing 767-300 cargo jets. In response to the grounding of the MD-11 fleet, UPS repositioned some aircraft from outside the US, expanded transportation by truck, and leased planes from partner airlines. During an earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Brian Dykes said, “Over the next fifteen months, we expect to take delivery of 18 new Boeing 767 aircraft, with 15 expected to deliver this year. As new aircraft join our fleet, we will step down the leased aircraft and associated expenses. We believe these actions are consistent with building a more efficient global network positioned for growth, flexibility and profitability.” Boeing's certification ‘hangover' drags on with new 777X issue Also, Boeing has identified an engine durability issue with the General Electric GE9X engines that power the 777X, although CEO Kelly Ortberg says this will not impact the first 777X delivery in 2027. Also, Ortberg signalled to investors that the company plans to increase 737 MAX production this year to 47 from 42 planes per month. Boeing has been preparing a fourth MAX production line in Everett to produce 737 MAX 10s, although the aircraft has yet to receive certification. Boeing posted job openings for the line, and the tooling is complete. Tracing the hours after a fatal plane crash in Bangor The Bombardier Challenger 600‑series business jet crashed during takeoff from Bangor International Airport in a snowstorm, killing all six people on board and triggering a complex, weather‑hampered investigation. The business jet was operating a private flight from Bangor to Europe with two crew and four passengers from the Houston area. The plane had been deiced and was cleared for takeoff on runway 33 around 7:40–7:45 p.m., in heavy snow, with visibility down to about three‑quarters of a mile and several inches of snow on the ground. Within roughly a minute of takeoff clearance, controllers halted all traffic after the aircraft crashed on or near the runway, coming to rest inverted and on fire. Possible lines of inquiry include: Wing contamination and ice buildup are known risk factors that have contributed to past Challenger‑series accidents. Aircraft performance and whether the wing stalled on takeoff. Deicing procedures and timing relative to takeoff, including whether holdover times were exceeded. Crew qualifications, training, and recent duty history. Mechanical condition of the aircraft and any anomalies captured on the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, which have been sent to the NTSB in Washington. Mentioned National Air and Space Museum Announces Plans To Celebrate 50 Years The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum opened on July 1, 1976, as a gift to the nation for the U.S. bicentennial. Five new galleries will open to the public on the museum's 50th anniversary, July 1, 2026, and in time for the nation's 250th anniversary.  Galleries opening July 1, 2026: Flight and the Arts Center Jay I. Kislak World War II in the Air U.S. National Science Foundation Discovering Our Universe RTX Living in the Space Age Textron How Things Fly Galleries opening in the autum 2026: At Home in Space (Oct. 30) Modern Military Aviation (Veteran's Day, Nov. 11) This completes the museum's multi-year renovation. Soar Together Family Day at Innovations in Flight: World War II on the Homefront Check this site for information about the National Air & Space Museum’s annual Innovations in Flight event. The DC-3 Society is planning an inaugural DC-3 Society DC-3 Fly-In. Date and location TBD. See the January 2026 Newsletter. Video: 737 St. Erasmus’ Airshow, Full Music Album, by SPEED BRAKE ARMED https://youtu.be/lcY3uU8uG2E Video: 737 Airshow America, by SPEED BRAKE ARMED. https://youtu.be/-Sl5WvWRhWo Video: HARS CONNIE – The Years Fly Past – Wings Over Illawarra 2016 https://youtu.be/duSOTbanz-8?si=13bcDNa5Sfv9JgPq Music In a blast from the AGP past, Brother Love provides opening and closing music from the Album Of The Year CD. (On Facebook.) Hosts this Episode Max Flight, our Main(e) Man Micah, and Rob Mark.

Steve, Justine, Tim, Katie & Matt M. talk about the state of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail at the moment. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

We're happy to have cartoonist, Dan Misdea return to the podcast this week! We talk with Dan about the children's book he had published after the last time he was on the podcast and his more recent collaboration with Rob Meyerson, "AB@C And Other Gramograms", an homage to the great William Steig's classic book "CDB!" (See the Bee!). We also discuss the winning captions for his recent cartoon in the New Yorker contest and he joins us for the rest of the contest discussions and our favorite cartoons from the current issue of the New Yorker.You can check out Dan's webpage here:https://danmisdea.comHis books and other fun stuff here:https://danmisdea.com/books-stuffAnd his cartoons (TBD) at Comics Kingdom:https://comicskingdom.com/tbd-toons-by-danWe discuss the winning entry for Contest #974 (Rats in the barbelfry).Finalists for Contest #976 (Wait for it...). Current Contest #978 ('Lo, Tide).You can buy original New Yorker cartoon art at Curated Cartoons:https://www.curatedcartoons.comSend us questions or comments to:  Cartooncaptioncontestpodcast@gmail.com

Steve, McNew, Kathy, Ryan, Matt W. & Justine talk a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle selling for a record price. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

It's our February catch-up episode, which means we're covering a little bit of everything — real life updates, mom chaos, and the random obsessions that are getting us through winter.Whitney kicks things off with a recap of the wild Nashville ice storm that left them without power for days. Freezing temps, no electricity, kids stuck inside, and parents doing the absolute most to keep everyone fed, warm, and entertained. The cabin fever was real, routines were gone, and survival mode was fully activated.Candace recaps Gasparilla season — the chaos, the fun, the exhaustion, and the classic post-event realization that “this was amazing” and “I need three business days to recover” can both be true.Then we get into our latest fixation: Heated Rivalry. We're recapping it, talking about why we're so obsessed, and yes… the obsession spiraled far enough that Candace signed Alice up for hockey. (Influenced by TV? Maybe. Regrets? TBD.)Candace also shares what's been weighing on her with applying to private schools — the process, the pressure, and the deeper layer underneath it all: re-evaluating why they want to go that route in the first place, and what actually feels aligned for their family versus what just sounds like the “right” move.If you're feeling maxed out, stuck in winter chaos, and using a TV obsession as a personality trait right now… welcome. You're in good company.Keep up with the Moms and join the conversation on our socials:

Magic back in action tonight on the road against Oklahoma City, NFL announces more details about international games next season including a game to be played in Paris featuring The Saints and a TBD opponent, Six more teams have left Main Street Sports (FanDuel Sports) regional sports network, more in today's 'Sports Page'

Steve, McNew, Kathy, Ryan, Matt W. & Justine talk about Key West 2027… be there or be square! TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Michael Ziffra, a psychiatrist and associate professor at Northwestern University who specializes in anxiety disorders. Dr. Ziffra has been writing a Substack series called "Wise Mind in Anxious Times," exploring how we can better navigate the intersection of mental health and our turbulent political landscape.We begin by discussing the alarming advice that made headlines—a Yale psychiatrist suggesting people should avoid family members who voted differently than them. Dr. Ziffra and I unpack why avoidance is the exact opposite of what we'd normally recommend for anxiety, and how vilifying language creates a vicious cycle that intensifies fear and paranoia. He offers practical wisdom on how softening our language can open doors to genuine dialogue.From there, we dive deep into the world of psychiatric medication. Dr. Ziffra helps demystify the "chemical imbalance" theory, explaining why "dysfunction" is a better term than "imbalance" since we can't actually measure neurotransmitter levels the way we can check vitamin D. We explore fascinating territory including opioid receptors and depression, how low-dose naltrexone works, the dangers of chronic benzodiazepine use, and why tapering off medications requires far more patience than most people realize. We also discuss the overlooked impacts of birth control on young women's mental health, sleep disorders that masquerade as psychiatric conditions, and the emerging questions around weight loss drugs and ketamine for treatment-resistant depression.Dr. Michael Ziffra is a psychiatrist and Associate Professor at Northwestern University, specializing in anxiety and mood disorders. Dr. Ziffra also is the author of “Wise Mind in Anxious Times”, a series on Substack exploring the interface between mental health and our sociopolitical climate. Its aim is to provide analysis and commentary from a mental health specialist with insight into why we experience anxiety about particular issues and happenings, and how to better manage that anxiety. Follow him on Substack, X, or Instagram.[00:00:00] Start[00:00:40] Guest Introduction: Dr. Michael Ziffra[00:02:28] Yale Psychiatrist's Bad Advice on Family[00:09:39] What Does a Psychiatrist Actually Do?[00:12:03] The Chemical Imbalance Theory Explained[00:18:02] Low-Dose Naltrexone and Opioid Receptors[00:23:27] Benzodiazepines: Dangers and Dependence[00:31:00] Safe Medication Tapering Strategies[00:38:29] Nicotine Addiction and Smoking Cessation[00:43:15] Psychiatry Beyond Just Medication[00:47:30] Birth Control and Mental Health[00:51:47] Sleep Disorders That Mimic Depression[00:55:01] Weight Loss Drugs: Psychological Effects[01:00:52] Ketamine for Treatment-Resistant Depression[01:12:06] Where to Find Dr. ZiffraROGD REPAIR Course + Community gives concerned parents instant access to over 120 lessons providing the psychological insights and communication tools you need to get through to your kid. Now featuring 24/7 personalized AI support implementing the tools with RepairBot! Use code SOMETHERAPIST2025 to take 50% off your first month.PODCOURSES: use code SOMETHERAPIST at LisaMustard.com/PodCoursesTALK TO ME: book a meeting.PRODUCTION: Looking for your own podcast producer? Visit PodsByNick.com and mention my podcast for 20% off your initial services.SUPPORT THE SHOW: subscribe, like, comment, & share or donate.Watch NO WAY BACK: The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care. Use code SOMETHERAPIST to take 20% off your order.MUSIC: Thanks to Joey Pecoraro for our song, “Half Awake,” used with gratitude & permission. ALL OTHER LINKS HERE. To support this show, please leave a rating & review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe, like, comment & share via my YouTube channel. Or recommend this to a friend!Learn more about Do No Harm.Take $200 off your EightSleep Pod Pro Cover with code SOMETHERAPIST at EightSleep.com.Take 20% off all superfood beverages with code SOMETHERAPIST at Organifi.Check out my shop for book recommendations + wellness products.Show notes & transcript provided with the help of SwellAI.Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, “Half Awake,” used with gratitude and permission.Watch NO WAY BACK: The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care (our medical ethics documentary, formerly known as Affirmation Generation). Stream the film or purchase a DVD. Use code SOMETHERAPIST to take 20% off your order. Follow us on X @2022affirmation or Instagram at @affirmationgeneration.Have a question for me? Looking to go deeper and discuss these ideas with other listeners? Join my Locals community! Members get to ask questions I will respond to in exclusive, members-only livestreams, post questions for upcoming guests to answer, plus other perks TBD. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Steve, McNew, Kathy, Ryan, Matt W. & Justine talk about Buffalo Trace's new festival at the distillery the month of February. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Steve does some investigative work on a mystery patreon supporter. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Steve talks about the cask strength offering from Jim Gaffigan's Fathertime Whiskey Company. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.

Steve recaps what happened at the 2026 Key West Distillers Summit. TBD music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).   Important Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theabvnetwork Our Events Page: bourbonpalooza.com Check us out at: abvnetwork.com. The ABV Barrel Shop: abvbarrelshop.com   Join the revolution by adding #ABVNetworkCrew to your profile on social media.