Podcasts about TechCrunch

"We didn't have to grow up with that." — Ross Greene, on school shootingsOne of the most persistent worries these days is that our kids aren't okay. With most of the blame, of course, now being placed on the ubiquity of social media. But psychologist Ross W. Greene, author of the bestselling Lost at School, has a new book out today called The Kids Who Aren't Okay which doesn't place all the blame on social media. Indeed he argues that if we focus only on the internet, we'll fail to understand the broader psychological struggle that many of our kids face today.It's not that Greene is in total denial about the destructive nature of social media. But none of his leading reasons for today's crisis in schools are associated with technology. His top three:●      School shootings●      High-stakes testing●      Zero-tolerance policies with a focus on punishment rather than empathyThe new book, Greene impishly promises, has things in it that will offend just about anybody on both the left and right. He calls out teacher unions for failing to support legislation against restraints and seclusions—pinning kids to the ground, dragging them to locked rooms. And he criticizes both parties for bipartisan policies that have made it harder for educators to educate.The definition of good teaching, Greene insists, is meeting every kid where they're at. Standard testing is exactly the opposite. If you try to treat everybody exactly the same, he warns, you will meet nobody where they're at. We need to get busy teaching kids how to collaborate on solving problems, he says—otherwise they'll turn out like us—only worse. Five Takeaways●      Social Media Isn't in the Top Three: Greene's top factors making it harder to be a kid: school shootings, high-stakes testing, and zero-tolerance policies. If we focus only on social media, he says, we'll miss the rest of the picture.●      We're Still Pinning Kids to the Ground: Schools still use restraints and seclusions—pinning kids down, dragging them to locked rooms. Legislation has been available since 2011. The two largest teacher unions have yet to support it.●      High-Stakes Testing Is the Opposite of Good Teaching: Good teaching means meeting every kid where they're at. Telling every kid they have to get over the same bar by the end of the school year is exactly not what the doctor ordered.●      Fairness Means Treating Every Kid Differently: If you try to treat everybody exactly the same, you will meet nobody where they're at. Meeting each kid where they are isn't unfair to the rest—it's fair to everyone.●      This Book Will Offend Just About Anybody: Greene calls out both political parties, teacher unions, and policies on both sides of the aisle. Somebody's got to wade in, he says. Somebody's got to call it. About the GuestRoss W. Greene, PhD is the author of Lost at School and The Explosive Child. He is the founder of the nonprofit Lives in the Balance and the inventor of the Collaborative and Proactive Solutions approach. He has worked with nearly 3,000 kids and their caregivers.ReferencesBooks mentioned:●      The Kids Who Aren't Okay by Ross W. Greene — his new book on reimagining support, belonging, and hope in schools.●      Lost at School by Ross W. Greene — his bestselling earlier work on kids with behavioral challenges.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: The kids who aren't okay (01:17) - Are most kids struggling? (02:51) - Top three factors: Not social media (04:11) - Is this an American problem? (05:15) - Distrust of authorities—even PhDs (06:47) - Which kids are struggling most? (08:04) - Where's the cultural rebellion? (09:55) - Helicopter parenting (11:34) - Wading into the culture wars (13:00) - Restraints and seclusions: We're still pinning kids down (15:10) - Were schools always this punitive? (17:23) - Why teachers are underpaid and leaving (18:57) - Public vs. private schools (19:59) - Is this about money? (21:07) - Every kid is different (24:06) - The problem with 'fairness' (26:27) - Medication: Not black and white (28:34) - Social media: Correlational, not causal (31:54) - What happens to kids who aren't okay?

"I wake up at 3 AM, check my phone to see what fresh hell has come out, and it's usually two words: 'Trump threatens.'" — Peter BaleWe're reversing the lens today. Rather than examining America from the inside, we're peering at it from the outside in—from New Zealand, at the bottom of the world. Peter Bale is a longtime media executive who's had senior positions at CNN, Reuters, and News Corp. He's now back in his native New Zealand, waking up at 3 AM to check his phone. The news, he says, is usually two words: "Trump threatens."Much of our conversation centers on the former NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. She led New Zealand's COVID response, Anthony Fauci style, with daily press conferences and a scientific mastery of the facts. An estimated 20,000 lives were saved. But she also became the target of profound misogyny and physical threats that no New Zealand Prime Minister had ever experienced. She now lives in Boston—teaching at Harvard's Shorenstein Center—because she can't safely live in her own country.Bale describes a dark MAGA-style underbelly in New Zealand that surprised him when he returned after 50 years abroad. Christian nationalists, anti-Maori sentiment, "Christchurch skinheads." US platforms—especially X—have given permission to speak in ways that would have been unacceptable. When the President uses that rhetoric, Bale notes, the permission for personal calumny is quadrupled.We also discuss the Epstein files (the media failed to connect the dots), Will Lewis's destruction of the Washington Post ("utterly reprehensible"), and whether America is finished. Bale's answer: "I don't think America is ever done. Every time people perceive it to be done, it has a political or economic renewal." The question is who comes after Trump—Vance or somebody even more threatening—and who will keep waking Peter Bale at 3 AM. Five Takeaways●      The View from 18,000 Miles Is Punch-Drunk: Bale wakes at 3 AM to check his phone. The news is usually two words: "Trump threatens." Small countries like New Zealand depend on the international rule of law. When that breaks down, they feel it acutely.●      Jacinda Ardern Became New Zealand's Fauci: She led the COVID response with daily press conferences and saved an estimated 20,000 lives. But she became the target of profound misogyny and physical threats. She now lives in Boston because she can't safely live in New Zealand.●      "They Are Us" Was the Right Three Words: After an Australian livestreamed himself killing 51 Muslims in Christchurch, Ardern flew there immediately, wore a head covering, and said of the victims: "They are us." It hung in the air as exactly what needed to be said.●      Trumpism Has Gone International: New Zealand has its own dark underbelly—Christian nationalists, anti-Maori sentiment, "Christchurch skinheads." US platforms have given permission to speak in ways that would have been unacceptable. When the President uses that rhetoric, the permission is quadrupled.●      America Is Never Done: Every time people perceive it to be finished, it has a political or economic renewal. Its ability to rebuild itself constantly is astounding. The question is who comes after Trump—Vance or somebody worse. About the GuestPeter Bale is a longtime media executive based in New Zealand. He has held senior positions at CNN, Reuters, News Corp, and the Center for Public Integrity. He ran WikiTribune and has been a close observer of both American and international media for decades.ReferencesPeople mentioned:●      Jacinda Ardern was Prime Minister of New Zealand during COVID. She now teaches at Harvard's Shorenstein Center because she can't safely live in her own country.●      Mark Carney has articulated what Bale calls the "Carney doctrine"—medium-sized countries standing up to US unilateralism.●      Will Lewis presided over cuts at the Washington Post that Bale calls "utterly reprehensible," including eliminating international bureaus and the books section.●      Michael Wolff has spent three years trying to interest mainstream media in Trump-Epstein connections. Trump's defense: "I'm not a schmuck enough to use email."About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: Reversing the lens (01:00) - Punch-drunk 18,000 miles away (03:00) - The Carney doctrine and standing up to Trump (05:00) - Whatever happened to Jacinda Ardern? (08:00) - Ardern as New Zealand's Fauci (09:00) - The Christchurch mosque shooting: 'They are us' (11:00) - The dark heart of New Zealand politics (13:00) - Has New Zealand caught Trumpism? (15:00) - The collapse of trust in media (16:00) - Peter's role in New Zealand media funding (18:00) - Opinion vs. reporting: What went wrong (21:00) - The Epstein files and media failure (25:00) - Will Lewis and the Washington Post disaster (28:00) - Will America survive? (30:00) - America is never done

"Great minds think alike? It's completely wrong. It's not that great minds think alike; it's that different minds are great." — David OppenheimerIt's diversity week. Yesterday, Brian Soucek argued in favor of what he calls the "opinionated university" to protect free speech. Today David Oppenheimer, law professor at UC Berkeley, on The Diversity Principle: The Story of a Transformative Idea. Oppenheimer reminds us that diversity isn't a modern invention. It traces back to Wilhelm von Humboldt's University of Berlin in 1810, which admitted Catholics and Jews to what would otherwise have been an entirely Protestant institution. And to John Stuart Mill, whose On Liberty—written with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill—might be renamed On Liberty and Diversity.Oppenheimer's case for diversity is partly moral, partly utilitarian. Diverse boards result in more profitable corporations, he says. Diverse science labs make more significant discoveries. Diverse classrooms generate better ideas. The phrase "great minds think alike" is, he says, the product of a poor mind. Different minds are great. That's where the greatness comes from.Oppenheimer takes seriously Clarence Thomas's critique of diversity. Thomas argues that racial diversity assumes Black people all think alike, which is its own form of liberal racism. But Oppenheimer responds by citing Thomas's "brilliant" dissent in Virginia v. Black, where he argued that cross burning isn't political speech but terrorism. That insight, Oppenheimer says, came from Thomas's lived experience as a Black man. The other justices, all white, couldn't see it.The unsung hero in Oppenheimer's history of diversity is Pauli Murray. Born 1910 into the segregated South, Murray coined the term "Jane Crow," influenced Thurgood Marshall's arguments in Brown v. Board, saved the sex discrimination clause in the Civil Rights Act, hired Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the ACLU against the judgment of the men who thought her "meek," and ended her life as an Episcopal priest. Now recognized by the church as a saint, Oppenheimer cites Murray as not just a great theorist of diversity, but also as a paragon of a diverse life. Maybe every week should be diversity week. Five Takeaways●      Different Minds Are Great: The phrase "great minds think alike" is, Oppenheimer says, the product of a poor mind. Different minds are great. That's where their greatness comes from.●      Diversity Traces Back to 1810: Diversity isn't a modern invention. It traces back to Humboldt's University of Berlin in 1810, which admitted Catholics and Jews. Mill's On Liberty might be renamed On Liberty and Diversity.●      Clarence Thomas's Critique Is Serious: Thomas argues that racial diversity assumes Black people all think alike—its own form of liberal racism. But Oppenheimer responds by citing Thomas's own "brilliant" dissent in Virginia v. Black, which came from his lived experience as a Black man.●      Pauli Murray Is the Model of a Great Mind: Murray coined the term "Jane Crow," influenced Thurgood Marshall's arguments in Brown v. Board, saved the sex discrimination clause in the Civil Rights Act, and hired Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Oppenheimer cites her as a paragon of a diverse life.●      Mill Warned Against Majoritarianism: On Liberty is instructive today. When everyone agrees, listen harder to those who disagree. The majority is not only often ill-informed but often wrong. About the GuestDavid Oppenheimer is a Clinical Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law. He is the author of The Diversity Principle: The Story of a Transformative Idea and co-director of a center on comparative equality law. He attended Harvard Law School and spent his final year at Berkeley.ReferencesPeople mentioned:●      John Stuart Mill wrote On Liberty with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill. Oppenheimer argues the book might be renamed On Liberty and Diversity.●      Wilhelm von Humboldt founded the University of Berlin in 1810 on principles of diversity, admitting Catholics and Jews to a Protestant institution.●      Pauli Murray coined "Jane Crow," influenced Thurgood Marshall, saved sex discrimination in the Civil Rights Act, hired RBG, and became an Episcopal saint.●      Charles William Eliot was President of Harvard who brought diversity principles to American higher education, encouraging the "clash of ideas" among undergraduates.●      Clarence Thomas offers a critique of diversity that Oppenheimer takes seriously but ultimately rejects, using Thomas's own dissent in Virginia v. Black.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: A legal week on diversity (01:32) - Diversity traces back to Humboldt's Berlin, 1810 (02:08) - What is diversity? (03:19) - Mill and On Liberty: The philosophy of diversity (05:08) - Great minds don't think alike—different minds are great (06:13) - Mill against the tyranny of the majority (07:23) - Is diversity utilitarian? (09:14) - Charles William Eliot brings diversity to Harvard (11:04) - Harvard vs. Princeton: Who welcomed outsiders? (12:47) - What's the strongest argument against diversity?

Bienvenidos a FailAgain, una newsletter / podcast sobre crear contenido y estrategia.Hay una herramienta que lleva semanas rompiendo internet. Y la mayoría de creadores todavía no saben qué hacer con ella.OpenClawA finales de enero, un proyecto open-source llamado OpenClaw (antes Clawdbot) se convirtió en el repositorio de GitHub que más rápido ha crecido en la historia. 209.000 estrellas en semanas. Cobertura en TechCrunch. Un episodio con Lex Fridman. Y al creador, Peter Steinberger, fichado por OpenAI.¿Qué es?Un agente de IA que vive en tu ordenador, se conecta a tus aplicaciones y ejecuta tareas. Solo. Sin que se lo pidas cada vez.La diferencia clave con ChatGPT: ChatGPT te responde. OpenClaw actúa.Le dices qué quieres que haga, cuándo, y con qué herramientas. Y lo hace. Mientras tú estás haciendo otra cosa. O durmiendo.Llevo semanas mirando qué están haciendo los creadores que se han lanzado antes. Me he recorrido Twitter, Reddit, GitHub, y los vídeos de Matthew Berman, que tiene uno de los canales más detallados sobre el tema en inglés. Y he filtrado los que tienen sentido real para alguien que está construyendo su canal y su newsletter, no para un ingeniero con ocho monitores.Aquí van.0. El punto de partida: tu asistente por TelegramAntes de los casos avanzados, hay uno básico que casi todo el mundo monta primero y que ya justifica por sí solo el setup.Conectas OpenClaw a Telegram. A partir de ahí tienes un asistente al que puedes escribirle como si fuera un compañero: “redáctame una estructura de post sobre…”, “busca información sobre ese creador”, “resúmeme este artículo”. Él responde, ejecuta, y te lo manda de vuelta.La diferencia con usar ChatGPT o Claude es que este te conoce muy bien. Sabe en qué trabajas, cuál es tu audiencia, cómo escribes. No hay que explicarle el contexto cada vez. Y si le dices que recuerde algo, lo tiene en cuenta de cara al futuro.Es el punto de entrada. Una vez lo tienes, lo demás es tirar del hilo.1. El investigador de ideas Imagina que ves un artículo interesante. Lo mandas por Telegram con un simple “idea de vídeo”. En los siguientes minutos, OpenClaw hará lo siguiente:* Busca qué está diciendo la gente en Twitter sobre ese tema* Comprueba si ya lo has tratado antes * Te devuelve un briefing completo: título sugerido, concepto de thumbnail, los primeros 30 segundos del vídeo y una estructura por bloques.Lo que antes llevaba una hora de búsquedas y notas, ahora llega en minutos.Para un creador que trabaja solo, esto es brutal. ¿Cuántas veces has visto algo y has pensado “esto podría ser un contenido” pero no te has lanzado a desarrollarlo? 2. El espía semanalCada semana analiza los canales de tu nicho: qué publicaron, qué les funcionó, qué vídeos están despuntando, qué patrones de título están repitiendo.El valor no es solo saber qué hace la competencia. Es hacerlo de forma sistemática, sin que te cueste tiempo. La mayoría de creadores lo hacemos a mano de vez en cuando, que es lo mismo que no hacerlo. Con esto tienes una foto actualizada del terreno cada lunes. Otra vez lo mismo, ideas frescas que vienen a tu puerta.

"They are changing venture capital from a 30% tax to 0% tax. If Robinhood succeeds, it makes Sequoia and Andreessen's business model untenable." — Keith TeareThe Silicon Gods must have their blood. And they've finally come for the funders of disruption, the venture capitalists, who are now being disrupted by something called Public Venture Capital (PVC). That, at least, is the view of That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare, who leads his newsletter this week with Robinhood's new venture fund. This new stock-trading app for millennials is going after Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz—not by competing on deal flow, but by charging 0% carry instead of 20-30%. Robinhood promises it blows the doors off traditional venture capital.But Keith urges caution over PVCs. Robinhood is packaging late-stage private assets—companies like Databricks that would have IPO'd years ago but are staying private longer. By the time retail investors get access, employees are already cashing out through tender offers because they think the peak is near. The poster child: Figma, which did secondaries at $12 billion after Adobe's $20 billion acquisition failed. A lot of (dumb) people bought at the top and are now slightly less stupid.Fortunately, this week's tech roundup isn't just about get-rich-quick investment schemes. We also discuss Yasha Mounk's sobering experiment: he asked AI to write a political philosophy paper and found it "depressingly good"—publishable in an academic journal. Keith reframes this supposed "death of the humanities" as automation, not democratization. The humans aren't being leveled up; they're masquerading as producers while AI does the work. But craft still matters. When technology relieves humans of the mundane, he hopes, it elevates the special.Lastly but not least, we get to the abundance debate. Peter Diamandis and Singularity University have promised something called "exponential abundance" by 2035. Keith is sympathetic. I am not. The only thing I'm willing to guarantee is that we'll still be talking abundantly about abundance in 2035. And that the Silicon Valley Gods will have their blood. Five Takeaways●      Robinhood Is Charging 0% Carry: Sequoia and Andreessen take 20-30% of profits. Robinhood takes nothing. If they scale, the traditional VC model becomes untenable.●      But You're Buying at the Top: These are late-stage assets. Employees are selling through tender offers because they think peak valuation is near. Ask the people who bought Figma at $12 billion.●      AI Is Automating the Humanities: Yasha Mounk found AI could write "depressingly good" political philosophy. This isn't democratization—it's humans masquerading as producers.●      Craft Still Retains Its Power: Technology relieves humans of the mundane—and elevates the special. Creativity that breaks through will always command attention.●      The Abundance Debate Continues: Diamandis says abundance by 2035. Keith agrees land is already abundant. Andrew calls this "such a stupid thing to say." About the GuestKeith Teare is the publisher of That Was The Week and Executive Chairman of SignalRank. He is a serial entrepreneur and longtime observer of Silicon Valley. Keith joins Keen On America every Saturday for The Week That Was.ReferencesCompanies mentioned:●      Robinhood is launching a publicly listed venture fund, raising up to $1 billion at $25/share with 0% carry. They already have $340 million in assets including Databricks.●      Figma is cited as a cautionary tale: after Adobe's failed $20 billion acquisition, it did secondaries at $12 billion—many bought at the top.●      Polymarket is a prediction market platform that Robinhood has responded to by adding prediction markets to its offerings.People mentioned:●      Yasha Mounk wrote about AI writing "depressingly good" political philosophy papers that could be published in academic journals.●      Peter Diamandis and Dr. Alexander Wisner-Gross of Singularity University argue that exponential abundance is coming by 2035.●      Packy McCormick wrote about power in the age of intelligence.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: If it's Saturday, it must be revolution (02:11) - Robinhood's venture fund announcement (03:17) - What is Robinhood's day job? (07:43) - Secondary markets and tender offers (10:33) - Democratization or late-stage risk? (14:09) - Is Robinhood just gambling? (16:08) - Private vs. public market returns (19:02) - Is finance merging with betting? (24:23) - Blowing the doors off Sequoia and Andreessen (26:27) - Yasha Mounk: AI automating the humanities (28:47) - Where does power go in the age of AI? (30:42) - Craft retains its power (31:33) - The abundance debate (34:00) - Is land abundant? Andrew loses patience (00:00) - Chapter 15 (00:00) - Chapter 16 (00:00) - Introduction: If it's Saturday, it must be revolution (02:11) - Robinhood's venture fund announcement (03:17) - What is Robinhood's day job? (07:43) - Secondary markets and tender offers (10:33) - Democratization or late-stage risk? (14:09) - Is Robinhood just gambling? (16:08) - Private vs. public market returns (19:02) - Is finance merging with betting? (24:23) - Blowing the doors off Sequoia and Andreessen (26:27) - Yasha Mounk: AI automating the humanities

"150 universities have adopted neutrality policies just since October 7th. I'm on the losing end of this trend." — Brian SoucekUniversities keep claiming what they see as the moral high ground of neutrality. But Brian Soucek, who holds the MLK chair at UC Davis School of Law, believes that's a dangerous myth. In his new book, The Opinionated University: Academic Freedom, Diversity, and the Myth of Neutrality in American Higher Education, Soucek argues in favor of the biased university. His argument is that even (or, perhaps, particularly) when universities stay quiet, they're actually taking sides through their policies, their hiring, their building names, their actions. Silence isn't neutral. It's ideological.This fetish with neutrality is gaining in popularity, Soucek warns. Since October 7th, an estimated 150 universities have adopted neutrality pledges—pushed by well-funded efforts from the Goldwater Institute and others. Every pledge has a vague moral carve-out: universities will still speak when their "mission is at stake." But everyone has a mission and they are all different. That's the whole point. Soucek claims the moral high ground of pluralism. That's why he wants Boston College to be different from Yale, UC Davis different from University of Austin. The flattening of higher education into some imagined neutral sameness is what terrifies this classical liberal.The real crisis, Soucek insists, isn't self-censoring students or woke professors. It's the external threat of federal funding cuts, hostile state legislatures, a Trump administration that has declared DEI illegal without exactly making it so. Universities are staying quiet because, as one UC president put it, "We don't want to be the tallest nail." But Harvard's faculty spoke out through the AAUP, and it changed the conversation. For Soucek, silence isn't safety. It's surrender. Eventually everyone will become the tallest nail. And will be flattened by a hammer-wielding ideological foe.On the promise or threat of AI, Soucek is blunt: the idea of objective algorithms deciding what statues to take down or what books to read sounds to him "completely dystopian." We'd lose something essential if we stopped allowing communities to make these contested decisions differently, he says. For Soucek, that's not a bug of an otherwise unbiased university. It's the feature of any credible institute of higher learning. Five Takeaways●      Neutrality Is a Myth: Universities claim neutrality but act in non-neutral ways—through policies, hiring, building names. Silence is a choice, not an absence of choice.●      150 Universities Signed Neutrality Pledges Since October 7th: Well-funded efforts from the Goldwater Institute are pushing this flattening of higher education. Soucek sees himself on the losing end.●      The External Threats Are the Real Crisis: Not self-censoring students. Federal funding cuts are existential. Universities are staying quiet so as not to be "the tallest nail."●      Pluralism, Not Homogeneity: Different universities should have different missions. That's why University of Austin is fine. New College Florida—where changes were imposed from above—is a disaster.●      AI Objectivity Is Dystopian: Letting algorithms decide which statues to take down or which books to read? We'd lose something essential. Contested decisions should stay contested. About the GuestBrian Soucek is Professor of Law and holds the Martin Luther King Jr. Chair at UC Davis School of Law. He is the author of The Opinionated University: Academic Freedom, Diversity, and the Myth of Neutrality in American Higher Education. He earned his JD from Yale Law School and his undergraduate degree from Boston College.ReferencesConcepts mentioned:●      The Kalven Report was a 1967 University of Chicago faculty report on institutional neutrality. It's been revived by organizations pushing neutrality pledges.●      The Goldwater Institute has funded efforts to get university boards to adopt neutrality policies modeled on the Kalven Report.●      Heterodox Academy is a campus speech advocacy organization that estimated 150 universities adopted neutrality policies since October 7th.●      FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) conducts surveys on campus self-censorship that Soucek references.Universities mentioned:●      University of Austin is a new university founded by tech figures with a consciously different mission. Soucek supports its existence as an example of pluralism.●      New College Florida was transformed by Governor DeSantis and Chris Rufo. Soucek calls it a disaster—changes imposed from above, not through shared governance.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: The myth of neutrality (02:18) - A challenge to both Left and Right (03:15) - Is there really a free speech crisis? (05:33) - Who wants the neutral university? (06:48) - The Kalven Report and Goldwater Institute (07:54) - October 7th and Gaza (09:22) - Where does intolerance come from? (10:00) - Can courts be neutral? (11:24) - DEI and the university's mission (14:04) - Should universities speak out against Trump? (15:53) - Does the university tilt Left? (17:03) - MLK and the right to break unjust laws (20:13) - The myth ...

"72% of Americans say they hate big corporations—including Republicans." — Charles DerberIt's not just the right that's reacting against liberal democracy. Some progressives are also embracing populism. Charles Derber, longtime professor of sociology at Boston College, has a new book called Fighting Oligarchy: How Positive Populism Can Reclaim America. Rather than a dirty word, he argues, populism is an inevitable political response to the brutality of today's economy. We're in a disguised depression, he fears. Sixty percent of Americans say they feel one paycheck away from oblivion.72% of Americans say they hate big corporations, Derber reminds us. Not just Democrats—Republicans too. Such hostility to large capitalist enterprises thus represents a kind of political supermajority. And Derber, a man of the left, sees this as fertile ground for what he calls positive populism. It's a politics that connects economic grievance to democratic renewal, the way the 1890s Populists did, the way the New Deal did, the way Martin Luther King did when he insisted you couldn't fight for civil rights without fighting against war and capitalism.But can positive populism coexist with American capitalism? Derber says no. American capitalism is too oligarchic, too individualistic, too hostile to collective identity. It's not compatible with positive populism and thus, in Derber's mind at least, not compatible with survival. But that doesn't involve a Soviet-style elimination of the free market. It means something more like Northern European social democracy: strong unions, universal healthcare, a government that actually intervenes on behalf of ordinary people.The trap, Derber warns, is nostalgia for the pre-Trump era. Going back to the supposedly "consensus" years of Bush, Obama and Clinton is a circuitous way of getting to another Trump. Today's street demonstrators—from Minneapolis to Los Angeles to New York City—understand this. According to Derber, demonstrations against ICE and MAGA are associating the immigration crackdowns with corporate oligarchy, and authoritarian political power with the economic power of big capitalism.And so positive populism will prevail. At least according to Charles Derber. Fight the oligarchy! Five Takeaways●      We're in a Disguised Depression: Sixty percent of Americans say they feel one paycheck away from disaster. This isn't radical rhetoric—it's mainstream public opinion.●      Hatred of Corporations Is Bipartisan: 72-73% of Americans—including Republicans—say they hate big corporations. Derber sees this as fertile ground for positive populism.●      Positive Populism Has Precedents: The 1890s Populists united white and Black workers. The New Deal gave ordinary people a stake. MLK linked civil rights to economics. These are the models.●      Going Back to Pre-Trump Is a Trap: If Democrats return to Bush-Obama-Clinton centrism, they'll get another Trump. The resistance understands this. The establishment doesn't.●      American Capitalism Is Incompatible: Positive populism can't coexist with American-style oligarchic capitalism. It needs transformation—not elimination of markets, but European-style social democracy. About the GuestCharles Derber is a professor of sociology at Boston College and author of more than twenty books, including Fighting Oligarchy: How Positive Populism Can Reclaim America and Bonfire: American Sociocide, Broken Relationships, and the Quest for Democracy. He is an old friend of Keen on America.ReferencesPeople mentioned:●      Pepper Culpepper is an Oxford political scientist whose book Billionaire Backlash argues that backlash against billionaires could strengthen democracy.●      Hélène Landemore is a Yale political scientist whose book Politics without Politicians makes the case for direct democracy.●      William Jennings Bryan ran for President four times on a populist platform but, Derber argues, sold out the movement's anti-corporate thrust.●      Martin Luther King Jr. argued that civil rights couldn't be separated from economic justice and opposition to war—a form of positive populism.●      Bernie Sanders and AOC are examples of positive populists within the Democratic Party today.Historical references:●      The 1890s Populist Movement united farmers and workers against the first Gilded Age oligarchy. Lawrence Goodwyn called it "the democratic moment."●      The New Deal represented a form of positive populism with significant government intervention in markets and encouragement of union organizing.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:

“That's the thing that's maybe getting lost in some of the fear mongering around it is that, it's not the easy way out. It doesn't mean that you don't have to do the work. It means that when you do the work, the work actually makes the difference.” —Aja BeckettFood noise can sit in the back of the mind all day, from planning the next meal at breakfast to carrying quiet shame after every snack. In a culture that moralizes weight and labels bodies as failures, real medical treatment for obesity often gets buried under hot takes about shortcuts and cheating. This conversation brings the lived reality of GLP-1 medication into the light, with honesty about both relief and responsibility.Aja Beckett shares decades of struggling with obesity, endless diets, and that constant mental hum around food, then walks through how starting a GLP-1 weight loss drug shifted cravings, energy, and hope. Her experience led to building Shotsy, a companion app that tracks doses, side effects, and progress for people on GLP-1 medications.Press play to hear how this new class of medications is reshaping daily life, mindset, and digital tools around obesity care, including:What GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy actually do in the bodyThe difference between “food noise” and genuine hungerWhy weight loss drugs are not a lazy shortcut or moral failureHow mental health, cravings, and compulsive behaviors often change on GLP-1sThe cost, access, and safety concerns around weight loss injections and pillsHow a GLP-1 tracking app grew from one person's spreadsheet into a fast-growing productWhat long-term obesity treatment and maintenance can realistically look likeConnect with Heather:WebsiteLinkedInInstagramFacebookYouTubeEpisode Highlights:01:11 Meet Aja Beckett: Founder of Shotsy & GLP‑1 Success Story04:43 Discovering Ozempic & a Difficult Doctor's Visit07:35 Beyond Weight Loss: GLP‑1, Mental Health & Addictive Behaviors10:43 Losing 90 Pounds: From Obesity to Healthy BMI13:30 Do You Still Have to Eat Healthy & Work Out on GLP‑1?16:21 When the Food Noise Stops: First Days on GLP‑119:37 Super Bowl Snacks, Portion Control & Balanced Indulgence22:12 Body Dysmorphia in Bigger & Smaller Bodies26:00 Safety vs Affordability: Regulation, Shortages & DIY Risks32:09 Introducing Shotsy: The GLP‑1 Companion App Idea39:50 Why Tools Like Shotsy Matter for Accountability & Tracking42:21 GLP‑1 Isn't the “Easy Way Out”: Doing the Work & Seeing ResultsResources:

"American culture likes martyrs, not marchers." — David Masciotra, quoting Jesse JacksonA couple of days ago, a great American died. Jesse Jackson was 84. He was somebody. Even Donald Trump acknowledged the passing of "a good man"—which, as my guest today notes, Jackson probably wouldn't have appreciated. David Masciotra is the author of I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters, one of the most readable biographies of the African-American leader. Having spent six years covering him and more than 100 hours in conversation, he called Jackson a friend.Masciotra borrows from Jackson on Americans preferring martyrs to marchers. It's easy to celebrate him now that he's gone. But when Jesse was being Jesse—battling economic apartheid, registering millions of voters, building a Rainbow Coalition—he had many critics and enemies, including some of those hypocrites now praising him.Jackson's legacy is vast. After King's death, he focused on economic justice, securing thousands of jobs for Black workers and entrepreneurs. He ran for President twice, nearly winning the 1988 nomination. He pushed for proportional delegate allocation—without which Obama would never have won in 2008. He debated David Duke and, in Masciotra's words, "reduced him to a sputtering mess." He was the first presidential candidate to fully support gay rights. He slept beside gay men dying of AIDS in hospices. He marched with Latino immigrants from California into Mexico.But perhaps most relevant today: Jackson showed how to build a coalition that transcended racial politics without ignoring race. "If we leave the racial battleground to find economic common ground," MLK's spiritual successor insisted, "we can reach for moral higher ground." That's the populist strategy Masciotra believes the Democrats need now—a vision, he fears, trapped between the identitarian politics of its left and the milquetoast neoliberalism of its right flank. Five Takeaways●      Martyrs, Not Marchers: American culture celebrates civil rights leaders after they're dead. When Jackson was hard at it, he had enemies—including some now praising him.●      Jackson Made Obama Possible: Jackson pushed for proportional delegate allocation. Without it, Obama—who won small states—would never have beaten Clinton in 2008.●      Jackson Debated David Duke: And reduced him to a sputtering mess. Duke's response: "Jackson's intelligence isn't typical of Blacks." Jackson believed refusing debate only empowers enemies.●      Race and Class Are Linked: Jackson showed you can't substitute race for class or use race to erase class. Leave the racial battleground for economic common ground.●      Visionaries Win the Marathon: Jackson often lost the sprint but won the marathon. His Rainbow Coalition vision is what Democrats need now—and keep fumbling. About the GuestDavid Masciotra is a cultural critic, journalist, and author of I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters. He spent six years covering Jackson and more than 100 hours in conversation with him. He is an old friend of Keen on America.ReferencesPeople mentioned:●      Martin Luther King Jr. was Jackson's mentor. Jackson was an aide to King and was with him on the balcony the day he was assassinated.●      David Duke, former KKK leader, debated Jackson in 1988. Jackson wiped the floor with him.●      W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington represent a historic dichotomy in Black political thought. Jackson occupied space between positions.●      Rosa Parks was eulogized by Jackson, who noted that she succeeded simply because "she was available."●      Robert Kennedy shared Jackson's universal vision of coalition-building across racial lines.Organizations mentioned:●      Operation PUSH was Jackson's organization focused on economic justice for Black Americans.●      The Rainbow Coalition was Jackson's political movement seeking to unite Americans across race and class.Further reading:●      Masciotra's UnHerd piece: "Jesse Jackson Transcended America's Racial Politics"About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: A great man died (01:14) - Martyrs, not marchers (02:49) - Jackson in the context of King (05:07) - The Booker T.–Du Bois dichotomy (08:14) - Did Jackson make Obama possible? (11:15) - The marathon, not the sprint (13:25) - How a white guy from Chicago became Jackson's biographer (16:32) - Jackson vs. David Duke (20:43) - I Am Somebody: the origin (24:06) - Transcending racial politics (30:26) - The Rainbow Coalition as progressive populism (33:23) - What Jackson teaches us about leadership (36:26) - Will Jackson be remembered?  

"It truly is becoming a desert right now for book publicists." — Bethanne PatrickA couple of weeks ago, there was an "absolute bloodbath" at The Washington Post with hundreds of workers laid off and the book section totally gutted. Ron Charles, the beloved fiction editor, is gone. So is Becca Rothfeld, who described it in The New Yorker as "The Death of Book World." Today I'm talking to Keen on America's resident book expert, Bethanne Patrick of the LA Times, about what this latest bloodbath means not just for readers and writers, but also for the future of literary culture.The news is pretty grim. Patrick points out that we used to have a general public reading newspapers and general interest magazines like Time & Newsweek for guidance about what to read. Now we've splintered into much narrower reading groups, each told to care only about what they already care about. The New York Times might be thriving, but its dominance isn't healthy. No writer wants to hear, "The Times didn't pick up your book, so there won't be a review at all." Meanwhile, mass-market paperbacks are dying and while Patrick is unsentimental about their physical quality, she nonetheless bemoans the demise of a mainstream reading culture.There is, however, some good literary news. Spotify has struck a deal with Bookshop.org to sell physical books—enabling us to click a link while listening to a podcast and then buy the book, with proceeds supporting independent bookstores. And audiobooks are booming. Patrick defends them vigorously, citing research that shows listening to them stimulates the same part of the brain as the act of reading. When her husband discovered audiobooks, Patrick reports, he started reading longer books and, perhaps not uncoincidentally, more women novelists.And then, last but certainly not least, there's AI. ElevenLabs is doubling down on AI-generated audiobooks—cheaper, faster, and increasingly hard to distinguish from human narrators. Patrick is conflicted. She narrated Life B, her own memoir, and loved it. But the middle market is disappearing from audiobooks too: soon we'll have winner-take-all celebrity narrators at the top, crappy AI bots at the bottom, and nothing in between. It's the enshittification of books. Jeff Bezos is presumably fine with all of this. Someone's taking care of the bottom line somewhere—maybe his delightful new wife's plastic surgeon. About the GuestBethanne Patrick is the book critic of the LA Times and author of the memoir Life B: Overcoming Double Consciousness. She has written for The Washington Post, NPR, and numerous other publications. She is Keen on America's resident book expert.ReferencesPeople mentioned:●      Ron Charles was the fiction books editor at The Washington Post. Patrick counts him as a dear friend. He has since started his own Substack.●      Becca Rothfeld wrote "The Death of Book World" for The New Yorker and is author of All Things Are Too Small. She was also laid off from the Post.●      Colleen Hoover is the self-published author of It Ends with Us. Patrick notes she's "doing just fine without mass-market paperbacks."●      Maria Adelmann is the author of The Adjunct, which Patrick is currently reading and recommends.Publications and companies mentioned:●      The Washington Post gutted its book coverage in what Patrick calls "a big blow for the literary world."●      Bookshop.org is partnering with Spotify to sell physical books, with proceeds benefiting independent bookstores.●      ElevenLabs is an AI company doubling down on AI-generated audiobooks with various tiers of service.●      Libby is the app where many young readers now discover audiobooks through their libraries.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: The Washington Post bloodbath (02:57) - Maybe Jeff Bezos's wife's plastic surgeon (03:35) - Do we need generalized criticism? (05:55) - The end of mass-market paperbacks (09:51) - Colleen Hoover is doing just fine (10:55) - Is New York Times dominance good? (13:21) - Flocking to Substack (15:38) - The LA Times and California stories (17:02) - Spotify's deal with Bookshop.org (20:50) - Are audiobooks real reading? (23:59) - ElevenLabs and AI audiobooks (28:33) - Enshittification and the shrinking middle (31:26) - Social media's uncertain future (35:12) - What Bethanne is reading  

The big regulatory guns are out for Grok. Memory chip shortage now hit the Steam Deck. Manus is already coming to your favorite messaging app. Turns out Buy Now Pay Later really works for vacations. And another lengthy AI essay, this time detailing what it's doing, and has the potential to do to SaaS companies. EU privacy watchdog opens probe into Elon Musk's X over sexualised AI images (FT) Valve's Steam Deck OLED will be ‘intermittently' out of stock because of the RAM crisis (The Verge) Raspberry Pi soars 40% as CEO buys stock, AI chatter builds (Reuters) Meta-owned Manus launches AI agents on Telegram (SiliconRepublic) Airbnb expands its “Reserve Now, Pay Later” globally (TechCrunch) 10 Years Building Vertical Software: My Perspective on the Selloff (@nicbstme) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"I'm much more likely to protest when I feel responsible—when violence is being done in my name." — Bruce RobbinsAs always, the media is full of stories about political protest. A Columbia University Gaza protester held by ICE claims to have been chained to her bed after a seizure. Our friends at FIRE are addressing the right to demonstrate against ICE in a house of worship. Obama is arguing that ICE demonstrators should have the right to demonstrate on the streets of Minneapolis. The US government, meanwhile, cheers protesters on the Iranian streets while cracking down on protesters at home. Today's guest isn't shy at pointing out that contradiction.Bruce Robbins is a professor at Columbia—ground zero for the Gaza encampments of 2024—and his new book Who's Allowed to Protest? argues against those who protest the protesters. Conservatives like David Brooks, Musa al-Gharbi, and others have dismissed campus demonstrators as "spoiled rich kids at elite schools" who are "just doing this to feel morally superior." Robbins points out that the same argument was used against Vietnam protesters in the 60s, against Greta Thunberg's climate activism, and against anyone whose cause appears in any way utopian. This reactionary critique never changes: they're privileged, they're not starving, so ignore their hypocritical whining.What drives people to protest? Robbins says it's a sense of moral responsibility. He confesses that he's much more likely to get off his couch when violence is done in his name—particularly as a Jew or an American. And he makes an interesting broader argument: that the conservative attack on student "elites" dangerously conflates educated elites with moneyed elites. The firefighters in LA were an elite team, he reminds us. Scientists are elites. We need expertise, Columbia's Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities says. The question is who controls this expert knowledge and who pays for it.I think Bruce Robbins has a point here. But some American student protesters, especially the Gaza crowd, do make themselves vulnerable to critics like Brooks and al-Gharbi. As I suggested to Robbins, if these smart kids at Columbia want to protest, then they should be smart about it. Especially by recognizing the moral complexities of the Palestine-Israel issue and by being able to convincingly explain why they chose to protest this injustice over everything else. About the GuestBruce Robbins is the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the author of Atrocity: A Literary History and numerous other books. His new book is Who's Allowed to Protest? (2026). He succeeded Edward Said in the Old Dominion chair.ReferencesPeople mentioned:●      David Brooks wrote about "America Needing a Mass Movement"—though apparently not an anti-Israel one. Robbins finds his dismissal of protesters hypocritical.●      Musa al-Gharbi is the author of We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, which Robbins takes issue with.●      Edward Said held the Old Dominion chair before Robbins and was a visible Palestinian presence at Columbia. His office was trashed multiple times and he received death threats.●      Mahmoud Khalil was a Columbia student arrested in his apartment lobby in front of his pregnant wife, jailed for 104 days, released by court order, and is now facing re-arrest.●      Bari Weiss, now head of CBS News, tried to get Palestinian professors fired when she was a Columbia undergraduate, sponsored by the David Project.●      Greta Thunberg faces the same "spoiled rich kids" critique that Gaza protesters face. Robbins sees the same silencing tactic applied to any protest that seems "disinterested."●      Greg Lukianoff and FIRE are mentioned as free speech absolutists.Events mentioned:●      Columbia 1968 preceded May 1968 in Paris. Apparently the Paris students asked Columbia students for advice on what to do after occupying a building.●      The Columbia encampments of April 2024 made the university ground zero for Gaza protest in America.●      Robbins was found guilty by Columbia for taking students to visit the encampment during his class on representations of atrocity.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotifyChapters:(00:00) - Introduction: Headlines full of protest (02:07) - The double standard on protest (03:32) - Lika Cordia and Mahmoud Khalil (05:46) - Is this just a Columbia issue? (07:44) - Brooks, al-Gharbi, and the broader argument (09:12) - Greta Thunberg and the spoiled-kids critique (10:11) - Do leftists have the same authoritarian impulse? (12:19) - Not rights but attention (13:09) - The 60s parallel: Vietnam and Oedipal nonsense (14:50) - Why Columbia became ground zero (16:47) - Bari Weiss and the David Project (19:03) - Bruce is found guilty (23:38) - Iran, Sudan, and what gets us off the couch (28:18) - Elite firefighters and respect for expertise (31:18) - Do protesters need to be better i...

Episode Info Wayne Slavin is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sure, a VC backed insurtech startup. Prior to Sure he was the VP of Product Management at Tapingo, TechCrunch's Most Innovative Company of 2013. His other past projects and companies include NetStumbler, a consumer app with more than 1.5 billion downloads, the Barnes & Noble Nook eBook reader, Buddy Media (now part of salesforce), and BackupRight the enterprise SaaS company he sold in 2012. He has a Masters Degree from Columbia University. You can see Wayne from his appearance on the show in April of 2024 in the final episode of Season 5. Episode Overview: SURE's Role: SURE provides the technology infrastructure and services that enable large brands, including Fortune 500 companies and major auto manufacturers, to launch and manage their own digital insurance businesses. This allows these brands to control the customer experience and build long-term, durable insurance operations. Embedded Insurance: The trend of "embedded insurance" is driven by the fact that insurance is often a necessary component of a core product (like cars or homes) or can be a friction point in a sale. Companies are recognizing the value of offering insurance directly to their customers to enhance the overall experience and capture economic benefits. The "One-Stop-Shop" Vision: Many large consumer brands aim to be a comprehensive provider for their customers, whether it's for car ownership, homeownership, or financial well-being. Insurance is a natural extension of this strategy, allowing them to create a complete ecosystem around their core offerings. Structural Advantage: Brands that already have a customer base have a significant advantage. Acquiring these customers for insurance purposes costs them next to nothing, giving them better economics than external insurance providers. Evolution of SURE: Over the past year, SURE has focused on helping its partners achieve "permanence" in their insurance offerings. This means enabling them to build stable, long-term insurance programs that are not subject to the fluctuating appetites or market conditions of traditional insurers. Challenges for Traditional Insurers: The existing insurance industry has had ample opportunity to improve its technology and customer experience but has largely failed to do so. This has created an opening for new models. The "Build vs. Buy" Dilemma: While some companies attempt to build their own insurance carriers, this is capital-intensive and distracts from their core business. Partnering with a third-party carrier often results in a loss of control over customer experience and technology, leading to suboptimal outcomes. SURE's Sweet Spot: SURE offers a middle ground, enabling brands to have their own differentiated insurance programs with control and economic upside without the need to become full-fledged insurers or rely on inadequate partnerships with traditional carriers. Speed to Market: SURE can bring partners to market with approved insurance products in as little as 90 days, or even faster for simpler offerings, demonstrating a significant advantage over the lengthy internal development times typical for such initiatives. Industry Inertia: The insurance industry often suffers from a lack of incentive for long-term growth and innovation. Decisions are often based on avoiding blame (omission vs. commission) rather than proactively pursuing new opportunities. This makes it difficult for established players to adapt to new models. The Future of Insurance Distribution: The future will likely involve insurance being more deeply integrated into the customer journey, moving away from discrete purchases and towards seamless, embedded solutions. The current models of comparison engines and traditional carrier partnerships are becoming less relevant. Investor Appetite: There is a significant appetite from investors like private equity and sovereign wealth funds for insurance-like returns, especially for well-defined, scalable programs that leverage existing customer bases. This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance book series (future-of-insurance.com) from Bryan Falchuk. Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes. Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.

Our 235th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 01/02/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekinai.com and/or hello@gladstone.aiRead out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:* Major model launches include Anthropic's Opus 4.6 with a 1M-token context window and “agent teams,” OpenAI's GPT-5.3 Codex and faster Codex Spark via Cerebras, and Google's Gemini 3 Deep Think posting big jumps on ARC-AGI-2 and other STEM benchmarks amid criticism about missing safety documentation.* Generative media advances feature ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 text-to-video with high realism and broad prompting inputs, new image models Seedream 5.0 and Alibaba's Qwen Image 2.0, plus xAI's Grok Imagine API for text/image-to-video.* Open and competitive releases expand with Zhipu's GLM-5, DeepSeek's 1M-token context model, Cursor Composer 1.5, and open-weight Qwen3 Coder Next using hybrid attention aimed at efficient local/agentic coding.* Business updates include ElevenLabs raising $500M at an $11B valuation, Runway raising $315M at a $5.3B valuation, humanoid robotics firm Apptronik raising $935M at a $5.3B valuation, Waymo announcing readiness for high-volume production of its 6th-gen hardware, plus industry drama around Anthropic's Super Bowl ad and departures from xAI.Timestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:02:03) Sponsor Break(00:05:33) Response to listener commentsTools & Apps(00:07:27) Anthropic releases Opus 4.6 with new 'agent teams' | TechCrunch(00:11:28) OpenAI's new GPT-5.3-Codex is 25% faster and goes way beyond coding now - what's new | ZDNET(00:25:30) OpenAI launches new macOS app for agentic coding | TechCrunch(00:26:38) Google Unveils Gemini 3 Deep Think for Science & Engineering | The Tech Buzz(00:31:26) ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 Might be the Best AI Video Generator Yet - TechEBlog(00:35:14) China's ByteDance, Alibaba unveil AI image tools to rival Google's popular Nano Banana | South China Morning Post(00:36:54) DeepSeek boosts AI model with 10-fold token addition as Zhipu AI unveils GLM-5 | South China Morning Post(00:43:11) Cursor launches Composer 1.5 with upgrades for complex tasks(00:44:03) xAI launches Grok Imagine API for text and image to videoApplications & Business(00:45:47) Nvidia-backed AI voice startups ElevenLabs hits $11 billion valuation(00:52:04) AI video startup Runway raises $315M at $5.3B valuation, eyes more capable world models | TechCrunch(00:54:02) Humanoid robot startup Apptronik has now raised $935M at a $5B+ valuation | TechCrunch(00:57:10) Anthropic says 'Claude will remain ad-free,' unlike an unnamed rival | The Verge(01:00:18) Okay, now exactly half of xAI's founding team has left the company | TechCrunch(01:04:03) Waymo's next-gen robotaxi is ready for passengers — and also 'high-volume production' | The VergeProjects & Open Source(01:04:59) Qwen3-Coder-Next: Pushing Small Hybrid Models on Agentic Coding(01:08:38) OpenClaw's AI 'skill' extensions are a security nightmare | The VergeResearch & Advancements(01:10:40) Learning to Reason in 13 Parameters(01:16:01) Reinforcement World Model Learning for LLM-based Agents(01:20:00) Opus 4.6 on Vending-Bench – Not Just a Helpful AssistantPolicy & Safety(01:22:28) METR GPT-5.2(01:26:59) The Hot Mess of AI: How Does Misalignment Scale with Model Intelligence and Task Complexity?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"We are still dealing with a system which tolerates rampant abuse of accused people." — Emily Galvin AlmanzaBack in April 2024, we interviewed Thelton Henderson, one of the first African American federal judges in America. What disturbed me about our conversation was that even though Henderson grew up in the late Jim Crow era, he didn't seem to think that America is a profoundly more just place now than it was back then. Today's guest clerked for Judge Henderson, and her new book suggests he's right.Emily Galvin Almanza is a public defender turned activist, and The Price of Mercy is her data-driven indictment of a criminal justice system that, as she puts it, "tolerates rampant abuse of accused people, tolerates the blatantly racist application of the law, and tolerates a total lack of transparency." According to Almanza, the numbers are damning: 80% of cases are misdemeanors. 80% of people prosecuted are poor enough to need a public defender. 70% of people in jail haven't been convicted—they just can't afford bail. California's gang database was 99% people of color, she says, and famously included literal babies listed as having "admitted their gang affiliation."And here's both the good and bad news: crime is actually down. If you're under 50, she notes, you're living through the safest period of your lifetime. The solutions aren't mysterious either—housing reduces arrest rates by 80%, after-school programs cut youth violent crime in half. That's all good news for us. But it remains bad for those being unjustifiably prosecuted. We just lack the political will to implement what works. And as Galvin Almanza points out, this isn't a federal issue: 87% of prisoners are in jail on state charges. Change happens at the local level—DAs, sheriffs, state legislatures. The fixes, she says, are realizable. We just need the collective political will. That's the price of mercy in America today.About the GuestEmily Galvin Almanza is Executive Director of Partners for Justice and teaches at Stanford Law School. A former public defender, she clerked for Judge Thelton Henderson. Her new book is The Price of Mercy: Unfair Trials, a Violent System, and a Public Defender's Search for Justice in America (2026).ReferencesPeople mentioned:●      Thelton Henderson was one of the first African American federal judges in America, a civil rights pioneer for whom Galvin Almanza clerked.●      Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, blurbed the book. Galvin Almanza agrees "without hesitation" that we're living in a new Jim Crow system.●      Alec Karakatsanis coined the term "copaganda" for media narratives that undermine smarter criminal justice solutions.●      Clara Shortridge Foltz was a 19th-century lawyer who coined the phrase "free and equal justice" and pioneered the public defender system.●      Andrew Ferguson of GW University appeared on the show recently with a book warning about surveillance.Key statistics from the book:●      80% of cases in the system are misdemeanors—trespassing, driving without a license, fare evasion.●      80% of people prosecuted are poor enough to be assigned a public defender.●      70% of people in jail haven't been convicted—they're awaiting trial and can't afford bail.●      87% of prisoners are there on state charges, not federal—making this a local issue.●      Every year of incarceration shaves two years off a person's expected lifespan.●      Being incarcerated cuts a person's expected lifetime earnings in half.●      Giving an unhoused person housing reduces their chances of future arrest by 80%.●      After-school programs can reduce youth involvement in violent crime by 50%.Concepts discussed:●      Cash bail is a $2 billion per year industry in America. Most civilized countries don't allow you to buy your freedom back from the government.●      "Failure to protect" laws criminalize women who are present while an abusive partner also abuses their child—charging victims as perpetrators.●      Self-defense laws were "designed with two men fighting in an alley in mind"—making them nearly useless for abused women who fight back.●      Gang databases in California were 99% people of color and included babies listed as having "admitted their gang affiliation."About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotifyChapters:(00:00) - Introduction: Thelton Henderson (02:22) - Has anything changed since the 1960s? (03:31) - Why isn't there more outrage? (05:46) - Michelle Alexander and the New Jim Crow (08:52) - Why is the system this way? (10:49) - Democrats vs. Republicans on criminal justice (13:14) - Breaking the cycle of poverty and criminalization (16:53) - Crime is actually going down (19:15) - Peeing on your stoop is a sex crime (19:59) - Women in the system: failure to protect (23:09) - Moving past punishment (26:06) - Nobody wants to marginalize the police (28:16) - Black Lives Matter and the march toward justice (29:32) - The Minneapolis killings (33:04) - Two Americas: Epstein and cash bail (39:10) - Can technology help? (41:20) - The price of mercy

What is it like to build one of Africa's leading tech media platforms while also moving up in the corporate fintech world? Benjamin Dada, founder of Condia (formerly benjamindada.com), joins us to share his story of balancing two careers, facing identity challenges, and making tough choices between passion and profit.Benjamin's path has been far from ordinary. He got into tech journalism by chance after tweeting at Bella Roase , and has since become a well-known voice in African fintech. He talks openly about growing Condia to reach over a million readers each year, all while holding full-time roles at companies like Softcom, Stitch, and Moniepoint. He also shares what it's like to be seen only as a media person, even though he's also an experienced product manager, partnerships lead, and fintech operator.In this honest conversation, Benjamin talks about the challenges of building in public, why he decided to rebrand from Benjamindada.com to Condia after six years, and how he managed employee turnover while bootstrapping. He also explains why he hasn't raised funding, even as competitors grow with venture capital. Benjamin shares his views on why media businesses in Africa often struggle financially, what he's learned from being both an employer and an employee, and why he thinks all fintech companies will eventually focus on remittances.You'll hear practical advice on handling corporate politics when you have a public profile, why talented team members sometimes leave, and how founders can get media coverage. Benjamin also talks about what it takes to keep journalistic integrity while working in the industry you report on. He shares his thoughts on being a generalist versus a specialist, why he chose a corporate career over media for quicker financial rewards, and the cross-border payments trend he nearly started a company around.This isn't a typical founder interview. It's a lesson in juggling priorities, building with limited resources, staying independent in a world full of venture-backed companies, and figuring out your identity when you don't fit into one category. Whether you're a founder learning about media, a journalist building your own platform, or someone managing more than one career, this conversation will make you rethink what success and identity mean, and what it takes to truly own your story.Benjamin shares frameworks on outcome-focused work versus activity, the importance of high agency in both startups and corporate environments, practical advice on building personal brands for founders, and why exchange programs between media and startups might solve the ongoing tension between the two ecosystems. He also discusses his proudest moments covering stories like the NSA protests, major fintech regulatory changes, and investigative pieces that earned citations from Financial Times and TechCrunch.Some of the main topics include moving through the fintech world from payments to cross-border remittances, understanding IMTO licenses and payment service provider rules, handling large-scale forex trading, creating content marketing strategies that boost email open rates, managing products in enterprise fintech, and exploring the less visible sides of African tech media.If you've ever wanted to know how to build two careers at once, keep your editorial independence while working in the same industry, or turn a personal blog into a well-known media brand without outside funding, this conversation has answers you won't find anywhere else.

"From an AI research perspective, this is nothing novel," one expert told TechCrunch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"Two years from now, all white-collar jobs may be gone." — Dario Amodei (via Keith Teare)Keith Teare leads this week's tech roundup with a video he made on Google's Veo: one glass half-full of water, another half-full of spiders. It's a metaphor for the AI moment. The water represents the tools released in the past two weeks—Anthropic's Claude 4.6, OpenAI's CodeX 5.3—which Keith calls "beyond belief." The spiders represent the fear, which he acknowledges is not irrational. But maybe spiders are the wrong metaphor. Maybe we're the frogs being slowly boiled, not noticing the temperature rise until it's too late.The trigger was Matt Schumer's viral essay "Something Big is Happening," which got 50 million views by telling engineers to become AI experts immediately or become irrelevant. Keith tested the thesis: he built venturebets.io, a prediction market, in a single day. He automated That Was The Week so completely that his weekly workflow dropped from six hours to under one. But then Dario Amodei and Satya Nadella both said the quiet part loud: in two years, there may be no white-collar jobs left. Keith's response? The glass doesn't contain jobs—it contains the future of life. And he'd rather have time to make videos of spiders crawling out of glasses than spend six hours curating links. The rest of us may not have the luxury of choosing. About the GuestKeith Teare is a serial entrepreneur and investor, founder of SignalRank, and author of the newsletter That Was The Week. He co-hosts the weekly tech roundup on Keen On America.ReferencesEssays discussed:●      Matt Schumer's "Something Big is Happening" went viral with 50 million views, arguing that engineers must become AI experts immediately or face obsolescence.●      Noah Smith published two essays: "The Fall of the Nerds" and "You Are No Longer the Smartest Type of Thing on Earth," arguing that humanity's destiny is now mostly out of our own hands.●      Josh Tyrangiel wrote "America Isn't Ready for What AI Will Do to Jobs" in The Atlantic.●      The Financial Times published "Anthropic's Breakout Moment" on the company's enterprise momentum.Tools and companies mentioned:●      Claude 4.6 from Anthropic and CodeX 5.3 from OpenAI represent a "step change" in agentic AI—you give tasks, not prompts, and sub-agents complete them autonomously.●      Google Veo is Google's video generation tool, which Keith used to create the glass-half-full-of-spiders metaphor.●      Polymarket and Kalshi are prediction markets that Keith's new venturebets.io aims to match in quality.People mentioned:●      Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, predicted that white-collar jobs may be gone in two years.●      Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, echoed Amodei's prediction about the end of white-collar work.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotifyChapters:(00:00) - The glass half-full of spiders (01:30) - Matt Schumer's viral essay (03:15) - Every week is the biggest week in AI (04:30) - Claude 4.6 and CodeX 5.3: a step change (06:00) - Keith builds a prediction market in a day (07:45) - Fear is a bad operating system (09:30) - What's actually changed with That Was The Week? (12:00) - Trusting the algorithm to read for you (14:00) - Noah Smith: You're no longer the smartest thing on Earth (16:00) - The rabbit vs. the tiger (17:30) - Google's quantum computer and parallel universes (19:00) - America isn't ready for what AI will do to jobs (20:30) - Amodei and Nadella: two years to no white-collar jobs (22:00) - What's in the glass is the future of life (24:00) - Anthropic's breakout moment (26:00) - Claude Code vs. CodeX: Keith switches sides

"She's a ten to me and that's the part that matters." — Paul EastwickIf it's Valentine's Day, we must be talking about love. Paul Eastwick studies attraction and relationships at UC Davis, and his new book Bonded by Evolution takes aim at the "old science" that treated romance like a competitive market where everyone gets assigned a number. The incels, of course, ran with that research to compound their paranoia about the other sex. Eastwick says they got it wrong—and so, with the exception of Paul Eastwick, did most academics.When two people look at the same photograph and make a hot-or-not judgment, Eastwick explains, they only agree about 65% of the time. After they've known the person for months, agreement drops to barely better than a coin flip. So there isn't any universal hierarchy of desirability. What's real is that some people will think you're an 8 and others will think you're a 3—and that quirky disagreement explains most of what happens in the science of attraction. The problem is that dating apps make everything feel like they're in a market, thereby filtering out the "slow burn" people who need time to grow on you. Eastwick's advice, therefore, is forget swiping, reboot your social networks, throw candle lit dinner parties where nobody knows each other. It's more democratic, it takes longer, and it actually works. Happy V day everyone.About the GuestPaul Eastwick is Professor of Psychology at UC Davis, where he studies attraction and close relationships. He is the author of Bonded by Evolution: The New Science of Love and Connection (2026) and co-host of the podcast Love Factually with Eli Finkel.ReferencesConcepts discussed:●      The mating market hypothesis treats attraction like an economic exchange where people are assigned desirability values and seek partners at their "level"—an idea Eastwick argues is far more limited than academics have assumed.●      Limerence is the academic term for the intense, obsessive early stage of romantic attraction—what we might call infatuation or passion.●      The Dunbar number (~150) represents the cognitive limit on stable social relationships—roughly the size of hunter-gatherer groups where our mating psychology evolved.●      Pair bonding emerged in human evolution about two million years ago as brain size increased and children required longer periods of intensive parental investment.●      Attachment theory describes the deep bonds that form when we trust someone to have our back, celebrate our successes, and support us through difficulty.Evolution and mating:●      Human males became smaller relative to females and lost their sharp canines as women selected for men who were safe around babies—"the evolved male is the good caregiver and good dad."●      Unlike gorillas with their harem-style mating, humans shifted toward pair bonding because helpless infants with expanding brains needed investment from both parents.●      Polyamory research shows that people can form genuine attachment bonds with multiple partners—trust, wellbeing, and attachment levels match or exceed monogamous couples.Also mentioned:●      Eli Finkel is Eastwick's co-host on the Love Factually podcast and author of The All-or-Nothing Marriage.●      When Harry Met Sally (1989) depicts "one of the most beautiful friendships on screen," according to Eastwick, and holds up well on the friends-to-lovers pathway.●      Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996) was the subject of a recent Love Factually episode—"that MTV style of filmmaking" with Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio.●      The incel and manosphere communities have taken 1990s attraction research and "run with it in some strange and unjustified ways."About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify

Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent this week on Tech News Weekly! A Stanford graduate built a matchmaking algorithm that's sweeping across the Stanford campus. Is social media "clinically addictive"? Discord announced an age-verification process that sparked privacy concerns among users. And the Virtual Boy is back? Amanda talks about an AI-powered dating app that was developed by a Stanford graduate and how dating for young adults is becoming more driven by tech. Mikah talks about the social media addiction trial and comments made by Instagram's CEO, Adam Mosseri. Emma Roth of The Verge joins the show to talk about Discord's age verification mandate that has sparked huge user privacy concerns, especially following a data breach the company suffered last year. And Scott Stein of CNET stops by to share his thoughts and time with Nintendo's revival of Virtual Boy as a replica accessory for the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling Guests: Emma Roth and Scott Stein Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: preview.modulate.ai bitwarden.com/twit joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT

Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent this week on Tech News Weekly! A Stanford graduate built a matchmaking algorithm that's sweeping across the Stanford campus. Is social media "clinically addictive"? Discord announced an age-verification process that sparked privacy concerns among users. And the Virtual Boy is back? Amanda talks about an AI-powered dating app that was developed by a Stanford graduate and how dating for young adults is becoming more driven by tech. Mikah talks about the social media addiction trial and comments made by Instagram's CEO, Adam Mosseri. Emma Roth of The Verge joins the show to talk about Discord's age verification mandate that has sparked huge user privacy concerns, especially following a data breach the company suffered last year. And Scott Stein of CNET stops by to share his thoughts and time with Nintendo's revival of Virtual Boy as a replica accessory for the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling Guests: Emma Roth and Scott Stein Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: preview.modulate.ai bitwarden.com/twit joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT

Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent this week on Tech News Weekly! A Stanford graduate built a matchmaking algorithm that's sweeping across the Stanford campus. Is social media "clinically addictive"? Discord announced an age-verification process that sparked privacy concerns among users. And the Virtual Boy is back? Amanda talks about an AI-powered dating app that was developed by a Stanford graduate and how dating for young adults is becoming more driven by tech. Mikah talks about the social media addiction trial and comments made by Instagram's CEO, Adam Mosseri. Emma Roth of The Verge joins the show to talk about Discord's age verification mandate that has sparked huge user privacy concerns, especially following a data breach the company suffered last year. And Scott Stein of CNET stops by to share his thoughts and time with Nintendo's revival of Virtual Boy as a replica accessory for the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling Guests: Emma Roth and Scott Stein Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: preview.modulate.ai bitwarden.com/twit joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT

Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent this week on Tech News Weekly! A Stanford graduate built a matchmaking algorithm that's sweeping across the Stanford campus. Is social media "clinically addictive"? Discord announced an age-verification process that sparked privacy concerns among users. And the Virtual Boy is back? Amanda talks about an AI-powered dating app that was developed by a Stanford graduate and how dating for young adults is becoming more driven by tech. Mikah talks about the social media addiction trial and comments made by Instagram's CEO, Adam Mosseri. Emma Roth of The Verge joins the show to talk about Discord's age verification mandate that has sparked huge user privacy concerns, especially following a data breach the company suffered last year. And Scott Stein of CNET stops by to share his thoughts and time with Nintendo's revival of Virtual Boy as a replica accessory for the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling Guests: Emma Roth and Scott Stein Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: preview.modulate.ai bitwarden.com/twit joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT

Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent this week on Tech News Weekly! A Stanford graduate built a matchmaking algorithm that's sweeping across the Stanford campus. Is social media "clinically addictive"? Discord announced an age-verification process that sparked privacy concerns among users. And the Virtual Boy is back? Amanda talks about an AI-powered dating app that was developed by a Stanford graduate and how dating for young adults is becoming more driven by tech. Mikah talks about the social media addiction trial and comments made by Instagram's CEO, Adam Mosseri. Emma Roth of The Verge joins the show to talk about Discord's age verification mandate that has sparked huge user privacy concerns, especially following a data breach the company suffered last year. And Scott Stein of CNET stops by to share his thoughts and time with Nintendo's revival of Virtual Boy as a replica accessory for the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling Guests: Emma Roth and Scott Stein Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: preview.modulate.ai bitwarden.com/twit joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT

"How can you not be a populist in this day and age?" — Hélène LandemoreIn February 2020, The New Yorker profiled a Yale professor making the case for citizen rule. Six years later, that political scientist, Hélène Landemore, has a new book entitled Politics Without Politicians arguing that politics should be "an amateur sport instead of an expert's job" and that randomly selected citizen assemblies should replace representative democracy. Landemore calls it "jury duty on steroids."Landemore draws on her experience observing France's Citizens' Conventions on both climate and end-of-life issues to now direct Connecticut's first state-level citizen assembly. We discuss why the Greeks used lotteries instead of elections, what G.K. Chesterton meant by imagining democracy as a "jolly hostess," and why she has sympathy for the anti-Federalists who lost the argument about the best form of American government to Madison. When I ask if she's comfortable being called a populist, she doesn't flinch: "If the choice is between populist and elitist, I don't know how you can not be a populist." From the Damon Wells'58 Professor of Political Science at Yale, this might sound a tad suicidal. At least professionally. But Landemore's jolly argument for a politics without politicians is the type of message that will win elections in our populist age.About the GuestHélène Landemore is the Damon Wells'58 Professor of Political Science at Yale University. She is the author of Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule (2026) and Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (2020).ReferencesThinkers discussed:●      G.K. Chesterton was the British essayist who defined democracy as an "attempt, like that of a jolly hostess, to bring the shy people out"—a vision Landemore finds more inspiring than technical definitions about elite selection.●      James Madison and the Federalists designed a republic meant to filter popular passions through elected representatives; Landemore has sympathy for their anti-Federalist opponents who wanted legislatures that looked like "a mini-portrait of the people."●      Alexis de Tocqueville warned about the dangers of trusting ordinary people—a caution Landemore pushes back against, arguing that voters respond to the limited choices they're given.●      Max Weber wrote "Politics as a Vocation" (1919), arguing that politics requires a special calling; Landemore questions whether it should be a profession at all.●      Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his concept of the general will has been blamed for totalitarian impulses; Landemore rejects the comparison, insisting her vision preserves liberal constitutional frameworks.●      Joseph Schumpeter defined democracy as "a method for elite selection"—precisely the technocratic framing Landemore wants to overturn.Citizen assembly experiments mentioned:●      The Irish Citizens' Assembly on abortion (2016-2017) is often cited as proof that randomly selected citizens can deliberate on divisive issues and reach workable conclusions.●      The French Citizens' Convention on End-of-Life (2022-2023) found common ground between pro- and anti-euthanasia factions by focusing on palliative care—a case Landemore observed firsthand.●      The French Citizens' Convention for Climate (2019-2020) brought 150 randomly selected citizens together to propose climate policy; participants were paid 84-95 Euros per day.●      The Connecticut citizen assembly on local public services, planned for summer 2026, will be the first state-level citizen assembly in the United States. Landemore is directing its design.Also mentioned:●      Zephyr Teachout is the left-wing populist who called Landemore a "reluctant populist."●      Oliver Hart (Harvard) and Luigi Zingales (Chicago) are economists working with Landemore to apply the citizen assembly model to corporate governance reform.●      The Council of 500 was the Athenian deliberative body whose members were selected by lottery, with a rotating chair appointed daily.●      John Stuart Mill is the liberal theorist whose emphasis on minority rights raises the question of whether Landemore's majoritarianism is illiberal. She says no.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotifyChapters:(00:00) - Chapter 1 (00:00) - Six years from New Yorker profile to book (01:14) - Politics as amateur sport (02:08) - What the Greeks got right (04:03) - Citizen assemblies: jury duty on steroids (06:21) - The Yale professor who speaks for ordinary people (07:11) - Rousseau and the age of innocence (08:41) - The gerontocracy problem (09:33) - Do we need a communitarian impulse? (11:30) - Experts on tap, not on top (15:15) - The reluctant populist (17:01) - Can we trust ordinary people? (19:11) - How it works at scale (23:14) - Why professional politicians are failing (26:15) - Max Weber and politics as vocation (29:08) - Leaders who emerge organically (30:04) - Rejecting Madison and the Federalists (32:26) - Finding common intere...

Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent this week on Tech News Weekly! A Stanford graduate built a matchmaking algorithm that's sweeping across the Stanford campus. Is social media "clinically addictive"? Discord announced an age-verification process that sparked privacy concerns among users. And the Virtual Boy is back? Amanda talks about an AI-powered dating app that was developed by a Stanford graduate and how dating for young adults is becoming more driven by tech. Mikah talks about the social media addiction trial and comments made by Instagram's CEO, Adam Mosseri. Emma Roth of The Verge joins the show to talk about Discord's age verification mandate that has sparked huge user privacy concerns, especially following a data breach the company suffered last year. And Scott Stein of CNET stops by to share his thoughts and time with Nintendo's revival of Virtual Boy as a replica accessory for the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling Guests: Emma Roth and Scott Stein Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: preview.modulate.ai bitwarden.com/twit joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT

Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent this week on Tech News Weekly! A Stanford graduate built a matchmaking algorithm that's sweeping across the Stanford campus. Is social media "clinically addictive"? Discord announced an age-verification process that sparked privacy concerns among users. And the Virtual Boy is back? Amanda talks about an AI-powered dating app that was developed by a Stanford graduate and how dating for young adults is becoming more driven by tech. Mikah talks about the social media addiction trial and comments made by Instagram's CEO, Adam Mosseri. Emma Roth of The Verge joins the show to talk about Discord's age verification mandate that has sparked huge user privacy concerns, especially following a data breach the company suffered last year. And Scott Stein of CNET stops by to share his thoughts and time with Nintendo's revival of Virtual Boy as a replica accessory for the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling Guests: Emma Roth and Scott Stein Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: preview.modulate.ai bitwarden.com/twit joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT

Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent this week on Tech News Weekly! A Stanford graduate built a matchmaking algorithm that's sweeping across the Stanford campus. Is social media "clinically addictive"? Discord announced an age-verification process that sparked privacy concerns among users. And the Virtual Boy is back? Amanda talks about an AI-powered dating app that was developed by a Stanford graduate and how dating for young adults is becoming more driven by tech. Mikah talks about the social media addiction trial and comments made by Instagram's CEO, Adam Mosseri. Emma Roth of The Verge joins the show to talk about Discord's age verification mandate that has sparked huge user privacy concerns, especially following a data breach the company suffered last year. And Scott Stein of CNET stops by to share his thoughts and time with Nintendo's revival of Virtual Boy as a replica accessory for the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling Guests: Emma Roth and Scott Stein Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: preview.modulate.ai bitwarden.com/twit joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT

"I will say that QAnon was right and I was wrong." — Pepper CulpepperFrom Bannon and Trump to Summers, Gates, Blavatnik and Chomsky, the Epstein scandal has revealed elites of all ideological stripes behaving shamefully together. The Oxford political scientist Pepper Culpepper argues this is exactly the kind of corporate scandal that can save democracy—not despite its ugliness, but because of it. His new co-authored book, Billionaire Backlash, shows how scandals activate "latent opinion," bringing long-simmering public concerns to the surface and triggering society-wide demand for regulation. We discuss why Cambridge Analytica led to California privacy law, how Samsung's bribery scandal sparked Korea's Candlelight Protests, and why China's authoritarian approach to corporate malfeasance actually undermines trust.Culpepper, himself the Blavatnik Professor of Government at Oxford's Blavatnik School, acknowledges an uncomfortable truth. "I would say that QAnon was right," he admits, "and I was wrong." The specifics might have been fantasy, but the underlying suspicion about elite corruption was justified. And policy entrepreneurs—obsessive individuals who channel public outrage into actual legislation—matter more than we think. For Culpepper, billionaire backlash isn't a threat to democracy—it might actually be what saves it.About the GuestPepper Culpepper is Vice Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. He is the co-author, with Taeku Lee of Harvard, of Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How It Could Save Democracy (2026).ReferencesScandals discussed:●      The Epstein scandal revealed that elites across politics, finance, and academia were connected to Jeffrey Epstein's network of abuse—vindicating populist suspicions that "the system is broken."●      Cambridge Analytica (2018) exposed how Facebook leaked data on 90 million users, leading to the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act in the EU, and California's privacy regulations.●      The Samsung bribery scandal in South Korea led to the Candlelight Protests and President Park Geun-hye's resignation, demonstrating how corporate scandals can strengthen civil society.●      The 2008 Chinese milk scandal killed six infants due to melamine contamination; the government's cover-up during the Beijing Olympics destroyed public trust in domestic food safety.●      Volkswagen's Dieselgate scandal showed how companies cheat on regulations, bringing latent concerns about corporate behavior to the surface.Policy entrepreneurs mentioned:●      Carl Levin was a US Senator from Michigan who shepherded the Goldman Sachs hearings and contributed to the Dodd-Frank Act.●      Margrethe Vestager served as EU Competition Commissioner and pushed for the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act.●      Max Schrems is an Austrian privacy activist who, as a student, discovered Facebook retained his deleted messages and eventually brought down the US-EU data transfer agreement.●      Alastair Mactaggart is a California property developer who pushed through the state's privacy regulations when federal action proved impossible.●      Zhao Lianhai was a Chinese activist who tried to organize parents after the 2008 milk scandal; the government arrested and imprisoned him.Concepts discussed:●      Latent opinion refers to concerns people hold in the back of their minds that aren't front-of-mind until a scandal brings them to the surface.●      The Thermidor reference is to the French Revolutionary period when the radical Jacobins were overthrown—Culpepper suggests a controlled version might benefit democracy.●      The muckrakers were Progressive Era journalists whose exposés led to reforms like the Food and Drug Administration.Also mentioned:●      Michael Sandel is a Harvard political philosopher known for arguing that "there shouldn't be a price on everything."●      Patrick Radden Keefe wrote Empire of Pain, the definitive account of the Sackler family and the opioid epidemic.●      Lee Jae-yong is the heir apparent to Samsung, implicated in the bribery scandal.●      Parasite, Squid Game, and No Other Choice are Korean cultural works that critique the country's relationship with its conglomerates.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotifyChapters:(00:00) - (00:22) - The Epstein opportunity (01:21) - Elite overreach exposed (03:12) - Scandals without partisan charge (05:04) - The Vice Dean's credibility problem (06:21) - Latent opinion explained (09:39) - Is there anything wrong with being a billionaire? (11:47) - American vs. European scandals (14:48) - Saving democracy vs. saving capitalism (17:05) - Corporate scandals and economic vitality (18:33) - Policy entrepreneurs: Carl Levin and Margrethe Vestager (19:54...

"You either need to call it fascism or you need to invent a new word with more or less the same meaning." — Jonathan RauchJonathan Rauch's viral Atlantic essay has reignited the debate over what to call the Trump administration. Having previously settled on "semi-fascist," Rauch now argues that Trump ticks all 18 boxes on his checklist of fascist characteristics — from the glorification of violence and territorial ambitions to Carl Schmitt's philosophy of "enemies, not adversaries." We spar over whether the term obscures more than it reveals: Is this really fascism, or just authoritarianism with American characteristics? The conversation sharpens around Minneapolis, where citizens were shot face down, and the government initially denied it happened. You don't do that to win votes, Rauch argues — you do it because you believe that's how the social contract should work. He predicts Trump will fail to turn America into a fascist country but warns that institutions like the newly expanded ICE will outlast this administration. About the GuestJonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. He is the author of nine books, including The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth (2021), Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy (2025), and Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought (1993). He received the 2005 National Magazine Award.ReferencesThinkers discussed:·      Carl Schmitt was a Nazi political theorist whose "friend-enemy distinction" argued that politics is fundamentally about identifying and crushing enemies, not managing disagreements with adversaries.·      George Orwell wrote in his 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language" that "the word 'fascism' has now no meaning except insofar as it signifies something not desirable."·      Hannah Arendt was a German-American political theorist and refugee from Nazi Germany whose book The Origins of Totalitarianism examined both Nazism and Stalinism, preferring "totalitarianism" to "fascism" as the more encompassing term.Historical figures:·      Benito Mussolini invented the term "fascism" (from the Latin fasces, a bundle of rods symbolizing collective strength) and ruled Italy as dictator from 1922 to 1943.·      Francisco Franco ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975. Whether he was truly a fascist or merely an authoritarian remains debated; he never got along well with Hitler and outlasted the fascist era by three decades.·      Viktor Orbán is the prime minister of Hungary whose systematic capture of media, courts, and civil society has become known as the "Orbán playbook" — a template Rauch argues the Trump administration is following.Contemporary figures mentioned:·      Stephen Miller is a senior advisor to Trump who declared that "force is the iron law of the world" and told progressives "you are nothing" at a memorial service where the widow of the deceased had just offered Christian forgiveness to an assassin.·      Russell Vought is the director of the Office of Management and Budget, identified by Rauch as one of the younger ideologues building Trumpism into something more like a coherent ideology.·      Chris Rufo is a conservative activist and culture war strategist who has employed what Rauch calls "revolutionary language" in his campaigns against universities and public institutions.Essays and books mentioned:·      "Politics and the English Language" (1946) is Orwell's essay arguing that the corruption of language enables the corruption of politics, and that vague or meaningless words like "fascism" make clear thinking impossible.·      The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) is Hannah Arendt's study of Nazism and Stalinism as parallel forms of total domination, examining how mass movements, propaganda, and terror enable regimes to control entire societies.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - (00:13) - The viral essay (02:10) - Why Rauch changed his mind (03:41) - Fascism vs. authoritarianism (05:54) - Carl Schmitt and "enemies not adversaries" (06:14) - Orwell on the word "fascism" (09:12) - Can old people be fascists? (11:51) - Blood and soil nationalism (14:14) - Minneapolis (17:51) - Kristallnacht comparisons (20:07) - The postmodern right (26:34) - Following the money (32:05) - ICE as paramilitary force

"The black market exists only because we decided that this form of trade should be illegal." — Scott EdenIn October 2019, tech executive Tushar Atre was abducted from his oceanfront home in Santa Cruz and found murdered on his own property in the redwoods — shot execution-style, hands bound. He had spent barely three years in the cannabis business. Scott Eden's new book traces how a charismatic Silicon Valley entrepreneur, seeking to "disrupt" the newly legal weed industry, found himself entangled with an array of colorful and dangerous characters — hippie do-gooders, black-market operators, and stone-cold killers. We discuss the permeable divide between legal and illegal cannabis, why the industry has been an economic disaster for most founders, and whether America's half-pregnant approach to legalization created the conditions for Tushar's death. A California story about ambition, love, and the darker edges of the American dream.About the GuestScott Eden is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work has appeared in ESPN The Magazine, GQ, Wired, Inc., and The Atavist. His story "The Prosecution of Thabo Sefolosha" won a 2017 New York Press Club Award and a National Association of Black Journalists award for investigative reporting. He is the author of Touchdown Jesus (Simon & Schuster, 2005) and the new A Killing in Cannabis.References:People discussed:Tushar Atre — tech executive and cannabis entrepreneur; murdered October 1, 2019Rachael Lynch — cannabis grower from the Emerald Triangle; Atre's business partner and loverKen Kesey — author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Merry Pranksters; La Honda cabin in the Santa Cruz MountainsSean Parker — Napster founder, early Facebook investor; bankrolled Proposition 64Travis Kalanick — Uber founder; comparison to Atre's brash, edge-seeking styleTony Hsieh — Zappos founder; tragic death; Silicon Valley hipster executive archetypePlaces:Pleasure Point, Santa Cruz — oceanfront neighborhood; famous surf break; Atre's homeEmerald Triangle — Humboldt, Mendocino, Trinity counties; America's cannabis heartlandLegal and historical:Proposition 64 (2016) — California ballot initiative legalizing recreational cannabisProposition 215 (1996) — earlier medical marijuana law; the "215 era"About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotifyChapters:(00:13) - America's war on drugs (02:03) - The victim: Tushar Atre (05:27) - Prop 64 and the gold rush (08:15) - The counterculture connection (11:13) - The permeable divide (14:43) - Tech bros living on the edge (17:10) - Steve Jobs, Burning Man, and weed money (18:07) - The murder (20:06) - Rachael Lynch (22:39) - Economic collapse (25:31) - Half-pregnant prohibition (31:45) - The paranoia problem

"We all love Thomas Paine. We just wish we liked him." — Jonathan TurleyJonathan Turley's new book asks a deceptively simple question: why did the American Revolution become the longest-running successful democracy while the French Revolution devoured itself? The answer, he argues, lies in Madison's "auxiliary precautions" — constitutional safeguards designed not to eliminate rage but to channel it. Turley draws a direct line from Robespierre to today's calls to pack the Supreme Court and abolish the Senate, warning that removing those precautions invites the same mobocracy that sent the Jacobins to the guillotine. But the real provocation comes in the book's second half: with AI and robotics threatening mass unemployment, America may soon face a "kept population" — citizens subsidized by the state who lose their vital relationship to productivity and self-governance. We discuss Thomas Paine (brilliant about humanity, clueless about humans), why rage itself isn't the enemy, and whether the republic built to handle the 18th century can survive the 21st.About the GuestJonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University Law School. A legal analyst for CBS, NBC, BBC, and Fox News over three decades, he is the author of The Indispensable Right (a bestseller) and the new Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.Chapters:00:01:14 The uniqueness of the American RevolutionTwo revolutions, two outcomes; Thomas Paine and James Madison as the twin geniuses00:03:53 Paine vs. Madison on democracyPaine wanted direct democracy; it nearly got him guillotined in France00:05:54 Robespierre's transformationThe ACLU lawyer who came to believe "terror is virtue"00:09:01 Thomas Paine: the penman of the revolutionFrom complete failure to revolutionary genius in two years00:11:46 Slavery and the revolution's contradictionsWhy people preferred Jefferson to Paine00:15:43 Franklin's greatest achievementSeeing something in "that heap of human wreckage"00:18:07 What was unique about American rageNot the rage itself, but the system designed to handle it00:25:08 The "New Jacobins"Calls to pack the Supreme Court and abolish the Senate00:26:40 Rage on both sides"Your rage is righteous, their rage is dangerous"00:30:47 AI and the "kept population"Mass unemployment and the citizen's relationship to the state00:39:26 "Gynan" jobsHomocentric industries like psychiatry and education that AI can't replace00:45:00 Why the American Republic is still the best modelDecentralization over EU-style centralizationReferencesFigures discussed:Thomas Paine — arrived in America "barely alive," became the penman of the revolution in two yearsJames Madison — designed the "auxiliary precautions" that prevented American democracy from devouring itselfBenjamin Franklin — paid for Paine's passage to America, saw genius in "that heap of human wreckage"Maximilien Robespierre — began as an advocate for due process, ended declaring "terror is virtue"Jean-Paul Marat — radical journalist, killed by Corday in his bathtub (he bathed constantly due to a skin disease)Charlotte Corday — Republican who assassinated Marat; Robespierre and Danton watched her executionGeorges Danton — joined the moderate Girondin wing; executed by the revolution he helped createArt:The Death of Marat (1793) — Jacques-Louis David's painting of Marat's assassination; David was himself a JacobinHistorical events:The Battle of Fort Wilson (1779) — Philadelphia mob attacked founder James Wilson's home; several killedThe Reign of Terror (1793–94) — nearly all Jacobin leaders guillotined, including Danton and RobespierreBooks mentioned:The Wealth of Nations (1776) — Adam Smith; embraced by the founders as "the perfect companion to their political theory"The Federalist Papers (1787–88) — Hamilton, Madison, and JayAbout Keen On America Nobody asks more impertinent questions than the Anglo-American writer, filmmaker and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Andrew Keen. In Keen On America , Andrew brings his sharp Transatlantic wit to the forces reshaping the United States — hosting daily interviews with leading thinkers and writers about American history, politics, technology, culture, and business. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify

"I didn't use my own software this week because the OpenAI agents were better. And that's me retiring my own software." — Keith TeareSomething broke this week. Both Anthropic and OpenAI launched multi-agent systems—"agent swarms"—that don't just assist with tasks but replace custom-built software entirely. The market noticed: Adobe, Salesforce, Workday, and other legacy SaaS companies saw their stocks collapse in what some are calling a trillion-dollar selloff. Keith Teare joins Andrew Keen on Super Bowl weekend to unpack what may be the most consequential week in AI since ChatGPT launched.The conversation ranges from the Anthropic-OpenAI advertising spat (Dario Amodei's Super Bowl ad vs. Sam Altman's "online tantrum") to the deeper structural shifts: Microsoft and Amazon becoming utilities, Google betting $185 billion on an AI-first pivot, and Elon Musk merging SpaceX with xAI to put data centers in space. Along the way, Teare and Keen debate whether the AI race is a myth or a wacky race, whether venture capital is in crisis, and what happens to human labor when agents do the work.About the GuestKeith Teare is a British-American entrepreneur, investor, and technology analyst. He co-founded RealNames Corporation, a pioneering internet company, and later served as Executive Chairman of TechCrunch. He is the founder of That Was The Week and SignalRank, and publishes a widely-read weekly newsletter on technology, venture capital, and the business of innovation. He brings four decades of experience in Silicon Valley to his analysis of the AI revolution.Chapters:00:00 Super Bowl and the Anthropic ad The spat between Dario Amodei and Sam Altman01:09 "Fundamentally dishonest" Keith's take on the ad war and who's really Dick Dastardly05:47 Anthropic's breakout week Claude Opus 4.6 and the agent swarm launch06:48 OpenAI Codex Multiple agents collaborating on tasks in 10-15 minutes07:42 "It replaces software" Keith retires his own custom-built tools08:16 The trillion-dollar selloff Adobe, Salesforce, Workday, PayPal collapse11:02 Infrastructure vs. innovation Microsoft and Amazon become "utilities"11:45 Google's $185 billion bet Pivoting from hybrid to AI-first13:15 The SpaceX/xAI merger Musk's plan for space-based data centers15:18 The AI wacky race Kimi, OpenAI, Anthropic leapfrog Google17:03 Does AI make us smarter? Leverage tools, not intelligence18:53 AI growing up, CEOs not The adolescence of the industry21:06 US job openings hit five-year low The coming labor crisis22:44 The VC crisis Five funds sucking the air out of the room25:04 Palantir and Anduril The winners in defense AI25:42 Facebook as laggard Huge revenues, no AI momentum26:41 The Washington Post crisis "Boogeyman journalism" and partisan media29:23 Ads in AI Paid links vs. enshittification31:26 Spotify's innovation Physical book + audiobook bundle32:32 Startup of the week Cursor for CRM, $20M from Sequoia33:45 Om Malik on the end of software distribution From CDs to app stores to self-made35:41 Super Bowl prediction Seattle vs. New England36:02 Closing "That really was the week in tech"Links & ReferencesMentioned in this episode:That Was The Week newsletter by Keith TeareAnthropic's Super Bowl ad and ad-free pledge (CNBC)Sam Altman's response to Anthropic ads (TechCrunch)SpaceX acquires xAI in $1.25 trillion merger (CNBC)The Washington Post layoffs and crisis (Poynter)Om Malik on the evolution of software distributionOpenAI Codex app launch (OpenAI)About Keen On America Nobody asks more impertinent questions than the Anglo-American writer, filmmaker and SiliconValley entrepreneur Andrew Keen. In Keen On America , Andrew brings his sharp Transatlanticwit to the forces reshaping the United States — hosting daily interviews with leading thinkersand writers about American history, politics, technology, culture, and business. With nearly2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the mostprolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.Website | Substack | YouTube

Our 233rd episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 01/30/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekinai.com and/or hello@gladstone.aiRead out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:Google introduces Gemini AI agent in Chrome for advanced browser functionality, including auto-browsing for pro and ultra subscribers.OpenAI releases ChatGPT Translator and Prism, expanding its applications beyond core business to language translation and scientific research assistance.Significant funding rounds and valuations achieved by startups Recursive and New Rofo, focusing on specialized AI chips and optical processors respectively.Political and social issues, including violence in Minnesota, prompt tech leaders in AI like Ade from Anthropic and Jeff Dean from Google to express concerns about the current administration's actions.Timestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / BanterTools & Apps(00:04:09) Google adds Gemini AI-powered ‘auto browse' to Chrome | The Verge(00:07:11) Users flock to open source Moltbot for always-on AI, despite major risks - Ars Technica(00:13:25) Google Brings Genie 3 'World Building' Experiment to AI Ultra Subscribers - CNET(00:16:17) OpenAI's ChatGPT translator challenges Google Translate | The Verge(00:18:27) OpenAI launches Prism, a new AI workspace for scientists | TechCrunchApplications & Business(00:19:49) Exclusive: China gives nod to ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent to buy Nvidia's H200 chips - sources | Reuters(00:22:55) AI chip startup Ricursive hits $4B valuation 2 months after launch(00:24:38) AI Startup Recursive in Funding Talks at $4 Billion Valuation - Bloomberg(00:27:30) Flapping Airplanes and the promise of research-driven AI | TechCrunch(00:31:54) From invisibility cloaks to AI chips: Neurophos raises $110M to build tiny optical processors for inferencing | TechCrunchProjects & Open Source(00:35:34) Qwen3-Max-Thinking debuts with focus on hard math, code(00:38:26) China's Moonshot releases a new open-source model Kimi K2.5 and a coding agent | TechCrunch(00:46:00) Ai2 launches family of open-source AI developer agents that adapt to any codebase - SiliconANGLE(00:47:46) Tiny startup Arcee AI built a 400B-parameter open source LLM from scratch to best Meta's LlamaResearch & Advancements(00:52:53) Post-LayerNorm Is Back: Stable, ExpressivE, and Deep(00:58:00) [2601.19897] Self-Distillation Enables Continual Learning(01:03:04) [2601.20802] Reinforcement Learning via Self-Distillation(01:05:58) Teaching Models to Teach Themselves: Reasoning at the Edge of LearnabilityPolicy & Safety(01:09:13) Amodei, Hoffman Join Tech Workers Decrying Minnesota Violence - BloombergSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What kind of leadership can hold a fractured democracy together?About the GuestStephen Schlesinger is an American historian, author, and foreign policy analyst. The son of Arthur Schlesinger Jr.—Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and special assistant to President John F. Kennedy—and grandson of Arthur Schlesinger Sr., he grew up at the centre of one of America's most distinguished intellectual families. Schlesinger is the author of Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations, and has written widely on American foreign policy and international institutions. He knew both John and Robert Kennedy personally, and brings a rare insider perspective to the history of American liberalism.About This Episode"He went around the table asking us, 'Do you still believe in God?' — this was 1967, he was already being considered for the presidency. Why would a man of this intensity and ambition be talking about these issues?" - Stephen Schlesinger After two days exploring the surveillance state and the ethics of unmasking—with Andrew Guthrie Ferguson on how your data will be used against you and Christopher Mathias on the fight to expose the radical right—Andrew Keen steps back to ask a larger question: What kind of leadership can hold a fractured democracy together?Stephen Schlesinger joins the show from the Upper West Side of New York to offer a historian's perspective—and a personal one. From his father's role in Camelot to his own memories of playing touch football with Bobby Kennedy at Hickory Hill, Schlesinger reflects on what made the Kennedy brothers effective leaders in a divided country, and what lessons their example holds for progressives today. The conversation moves from the founding of the republic (one-third pro-British) through the Civil War to the present fracture, and asks whether elections remain democracy's "great solver"—or whether something has fundamentally changed.Chapters:00:00 Introduction On the road in New York, beside Columbia University01:10 What Has Happened to America? Schlesinger's 250-year view of national fracture03:40 The One-Third Fracture Why a leader with minority support cannot impose ideology on 330 million05:15 Elections as the Great Solver Except for the Civil War, the ballot box has resolved every American crisis07:30 An Intellectual Aristocracy Harvard, the Schlesinger legacy, and the view from inside the American elite10:45 The Romance of Camelot Meeting JFK, the magnetism of youth, and the television presidency14:20 Bobby's Vulnerability The dinner where RFK asked, “Do you still believe in God?”17:45 Touch Football at Hickory Hill Bobby's toughness and the bullet pass Schlesinger had to catch20:30 Jackie vs. Hickory Hill Two styles of Kennedy parenting22:15 Composed Jack, Emotional Bobby Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s perspective on the two brothers24:40 The Assassinations The White House, Lyndon Johnson's motorcade, and the bar exam Schlesinger failed28:15 Could Bobby Have Won? Humphrey, the nomination, and what might have been30:30 The Kennedys and Internationalism From Joe Kennedy's isolationism to JFK's UN vision and RFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis34:00 Chris Matthews and the Bobby Kennedy CenentaryLessons for Today36:30 The Perpetual Civic DutyWhy each generation must defend constitutional freedoms anew38:45 ClosingAdvice to grandchildren and the enduring fight for democracyLinks & ReferencesMentioned in this episode:Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations by Stephen SchlesingerA Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House by Arthur Schlesinger Jr.Robert Kennedy: His Life by Evan ThomasBobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit by Chris MatthewsThe Power and the Glory by Graham Greene — the novel Bobby Kennedy mentioned reading at a 1967 dinner Schlesinger attendedWhy England Slept by John F. Kennedy (1940)Previous episode: Andrew Guthrie Ferguson on Your Data Will Be Used Against You (Episode 2794)About Keen On America Nobody asks more impertinent questions than the Anglo-American writer, filmmaker and SiliconValley entrepreneur Andrew Keen. In Keen On America , Andrew brings his sharp Transatlanticwit to the forces reshaping the United States — hosting daily interviews with leading thinkersand writers about American history, politics, technology, culture, and business. With nearly2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the mostprolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.Website | Substack | YouTube

The Friday Five for February 6, 2026: IntegrityCONNECT Question Educational Resources for Insurance Agents Government Funding Bill Update Luffu AI for Family Caregivers ACA Enrollment Comparison   Get Connected:

A man was convicted by his own heartbeat — and that's just the beginning of our digital dystopia.About the GuestAndrew Guthrie Ferguson is Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School and a national expert on surveillance technologies, policing, and criminal justice. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute and the author of the PROSE Award–winning The Rise of Big Data Policing. His new book, Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance (NYU Press, March 2026), examines how smart devices and digital surveillance are transforming criminal prosecution — and what the law must do to catch up.About This EpisodeFollowing yesterday's conversation with Christopher Mathias about doxxing and the ethics of unmasking, Andrew Keen turns to the legal side of the same question: what happens when the data we generate about ourselves becomes evidence? Andrew Guthrie Ferguson joins the show from Washington, D.C. to discuss his new book — a deeply researched investigation into how pacemakers, smartphones, smart cars, and doorbell cameras are being used to convict people in court, and why the law has almost nothing to say about it.The conversation moves from a man convicted by his own heartbeat to AI-powered real-time crime centres, from Eric Schmidt's infamous privacy defence to masked ICE agents in Minneapolis, and from Bentham's panopticon to Ferguson's proposed “tyrant test” — a framework for designing data protections by imagining the worst leader with access to your most intimate information.Chapters:00:00 Introduction: Digital privacy and unmasking The theme of digital privacy and what it means to be unmasked in a data-driven world01:25 Meet Andrew Guthrie Ferguson Introducing the guest and his new book on privacy, surveillance, and the law02:10 The Dual-Edged Sword of Digital Devices How our everyday devices expose everyone and the complicated trade-offs that creates03:40 From “Don't Be Ashamed” to Privacy Nuance The shift from early Silicon Valley privacy optimism to a more complex reality04:45 Regulating Government, Not Google Ferguson's focus on keeping personal data out of court rather than off corporate servers05:55 The Pacemaker Data Court Case How personal medical device data was used as evidence in a criminal trial07:30 Convicted by His Own Heartbeat An arson and insurance fraud case where heart-rate data contradicted the suspect's story09:40 Google's Three-Part Warrant System How tech companies helped shape rules for law enforcement access to location data11:15 The Fourth Amendment Digital Gap What reasonable expectations of privacy mean in the modern digital environment12:45 Digital Privileges and Intimate Data Whether certain types of personal data should be legally protected like confidential relationships14:20 Surveillance Battles on the Ground Protests, law enforcement, and the evolving intelligence dynamic in Minneapolis16:05 “Just Doing Our Job” and State Surveillance The common defence of surveillance practices and why it remains controversial18:10 The Texas Drone Fleet Drones as first responders and the expansion of aerial policing technology20:45 Real-Time Crime Centers and Mass Cameras Integrated camera networks, data fusion, and the lack of clear oversight22:50 The Tyrant Test for Privacy Laws Designing privacy protections assuming the worst possible leader has access to the data25:15 AI Supercharges Surveillance How artificial intelligence turns ordinary cameras into powerful tracking tools27:30 AI-Assisted Police Reports Using body-camera audio and AI tools to generate reports and the implications for justice29:10 No Turning Back From Technology Why abandoning digital tools isn't realistic and why new laws may be needed instead31:15 Closing: Every Smart Device Is Surveillance The idea that modern connected devices inherently function as surveillance toolsLinks & ReferencesMentioned in this episode:Your Data Will Be Used Against You — NYU PressAndrew Guthrie Ferguson — GW Law School faculty pagePerplexity for Public Safety — free AI tool for law enforcementPrevious episode: Christopher Mathias on To Catch a Fascist (Episode 2793)Carpenter v. United States (2018) — Supreme Court ruling on cell-site location data and the Fourth AmendmentAbout Keen On America Nobody asks more impertinent questions than the Anglo-American writer, filmmaker and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Andrew Keen. In Keen On America , Andrew brings his sharp Transatlantic wit to the forces reshaping the United States — hosting daily interviews with leading thinkersand writers about American history, politics, technology, culture, and business. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.Website | Substack | YouTube

Welcome to another episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, featuring the legendary Ray Wang. In this memorable conversation, Christopher and Ray dive deep into the latest developments shaping the world of technology, business, and careers. From dissecting recent tech earnings from giants like Apple, Meta, Tesla and Microsoft to sharing insights from Davos and contemplating the implications of AI for the future of work and entrepreneurship. This episode delivers high-caliber analysis and practical takeaways for anyone navigating today’s rapidly evolving landscape. You're listening to Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different. We are the real dialogue podcast for people with a different mind. So get your mind in a different place, and hey ho, let's go. Lessons from Davos and the New Economic Realities Returning from a bustling Davos, Ray Wang shares his observations on how global leaders and executives are tackling an era defined by uncertainty, rapid technology adoption and a relentless pursuit of efficiency. One of Ray's core takeaways is the prevailing theme of “margin compression,” where even the world's largest corporations are working harder than ever just to achieve modest growth. Companies are now measured by their ability to scale exponentially, as illustrated by India's ISRO launching rockets at a fraction of NASA's cost, fundamentally altering competitive dynamics across industries. Ray explains that the rise of AI turbocharges this transformation by opening up “infinite possibilities.” Companies no longer just compete on physical or financial assets, but on their ability to harness vast data resources, quickly innovate and make sharp strategic choices about what problems to solve—and, crucially, what not to do. Privacy challenges, especially for companies like Apple, arise in this new era, making it difficult to deliver world-class AI solutions while maintaining rigorous data protection standards. Both Christopher and Ray emphasize that managing growth, inflation and investment are more complex than ever, with the U.S. outpacing much of the world in GDP growth, yet operating in a global environment rife with policy and market uncertainties. AI, Tech Earnings, and the Rise of the New IPO Era The conversation pivots to the massive investment and exuberance surrounding generative AI and tech infrastructure. Ray points out that while there are fears about overbuilding capacity or creating a circular funding loop among AI companies, there is still significant real opportunity. The current phase has seen enormous capital pour into building data centers and scalable AI platforms. Landmark IPOs from OpenAI, Databricks and others are expected to reshape the tech landscape. Despite market fluctuations and some outsized reactions to earnings, the fundamentals for big tech remain robust. Companies like Apple have solidified their status as luxury brands, even as others like Tesla and Meta retool and pivot to sustain long-term relevance and unlock new revenue streams such as robotics and energy. At the structural level, venture capital itself is in flux. Many VC firms have become indistinguishable from private equity, constrained both by too much and too little available capital relative to the demands of today's tech startups. The gap between small angel, family office, or solo GP funds and the mega funds has widened so much that the “middle” has all but disappeared. It is now entirely possible for one-person companies, through the leverage of AI and autonomous agents, to achieve scale and revenues previously thought impossible. Ray predicts it is likely we will see a single founder build a billion-dollar annual revenue company within the next five years, echoing the democratization and disruption that generative AI promises. Building Legendary Companies and Careers in the Age of AI Christopher and Ray close their discussion by exploring what all these rapid changes mean for leaders and individuals. For CEOs and entrepreneurs, the formula for thriving is clear but audacious. Leaders must design their companies to be fully autonomous and authentic, constantly reinventing their business as if they were attempting to disrupt themselves. Boards need to be stacked with people who grasp the new fundamentals: margin compression, exponential scale, and infinite possibilities brought by AI. Combining domain expertise with technical agility is more critical than ever, as the fusion of seasoned judgment and lightning-fast, innovative execution is where breakthroughs occur. On a personal level, Ray stresses that knowledge and execution are becoming commodities, rapidly automated by advances in AI. To stay relevant, individuals must become “macro analysts,” adept at synthesizing big ideas and patterns, deeply immersed in experimenting with new technologies and surrounded by others who are passionate about their own crafts. The traditional playbooks for career building, education, and even family strategies are being rewritten in real-time. The U.S. faces global competition for talent and innovation, and entrepreneurial energy is no longer confined to Silicon Valley or New York. The nature of immigration, investment and even educational choices must be reconsidered for new generations. In a world where the location and structure of opportunity are shifting, only those who embrace change, foster diverse collaborations and pursue purpose will continue to define the next era of legendary achievement. As both Christopher and Ray reflect, living and leading like Rob Burgess—embracing boldness, curiosity and authenticity—remains the path to being truly legendary in this rapidly changing world. To hear more from Ray Wang and his updates on the world of Tech and AI, download and listen to this episode. Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and authors a business strategy and technology blog that has received millions of page views per month.  Wang also serves as a non-resident Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council's GeoTech Center. Since 2003, Ray has delivered thousands of live and virtual keynotes around the world that are inspiring and legendary. Wang has spoken at almost every major tech conference. His ground-breaking bestselling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015.  Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business titled, Everybody Wants to Rule the World will be released July 2021 by Harper Collins Leadership. Wang is well quoted and frequently interviewed in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business News, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, CGTN America, Bloomberg, Tech Crunch, ZDNet, Forbes, and Fortune.  He is one of the top technology analysts in the world. Links Follow Ray Wang! Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | Constellation Research | DisrupTV We hope you enjoyed this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!

For episode 674 of the BlockHash Podcast, host Brandon Zemp is joined by Les Borsai, a Los Angeles-based serial technology entrepreneur, former music promoter and manager, and advisor in the cryptocurrency, blockchain and music-technology industries. He is the Co-founder of Wave Digital Assets.Sitting at the cross-section of entertainment and economics his entire career, Borsai recognized that crypto was the next big cultural and financial revolution early on, taking on an advisor role to Ripple Labs in 2013, and becoming one of the earliest investors in Ethereum, XRP, Tezos, and NFTs. In 2018, he became a Co-Founder at Wave Digital Assets, a digital asset management firm where he leads strategic initiatives across the crypto and digital asset ecosystem. Borsai previously managed artists such as Wynonna Judd and Jason Mraz. Borsai is an author at Spin Magazine, and has been featured in a variety of top-tier global publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Forbes, CNBC, TechCrunch, CNN, and The Hollywood Reporter. 

PR feels like an unquantifiable luxury when you're trying to hit profitability. But Harrison Duhr has helped hundreds of startups use media to drive actual business outcomes - fundraising, hiring top talent, and landing ideal customers.As Head of North American Brand at London and Partners, Harrison's secured coverage in CNBC, Bloomberg, Fortune, and TechCrunch for startups scaling between the UK and US. But his approach completely flips the traditional PR playbook.Here's what makes this different:Harrison's not talking about press releases or chasing tier-one publications on day one. He's showing you how the PR landscape has fundamentally shifted - and why the independent media trend is where smart founders are focusing their energy now.You'll learn:Why Wall Street Journal coverage isn't the right first move (and what actually builds momentum)The independent media opportunity that's wide open right now - and why journalist-turned-founders are your ideal partnersHow to build PR relationships that tangibly support fundraising rounds, customer acquisition, and hiringThe one tactic that puts you in rooms with investors and ideal customers without any cold outreachWhy testing your narrative internally comes before pitching externallyThe cultural nuance between pitching in New York vs. London that trips up most foundersThe reality check: This isn't quick-win PR. Harrison built a Bloomberg partnership over 8 months. But those relationships compound - they drive business outcomes, not just vanity metrics.If you've been treating PR as "nice to have," this episode shows you exactly how to make it drive revenue.One action: Listen to the end for Harrison's single recommendation every founder should act on immediately.Questions? Email hello@peereffect.com or find us on LinkedIn.More from James: Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com

An anti-fascist spy handed American officials evidence of murderous intent from a Nazi planning server — and they declined to act.About the GuestChristopher Mathias is a journalist covering the far right, formerly a senior reporter at HuffPost, with work appearing in The Guardian, The Nation, MSNBC, Zeteo, and WNYC. His reporting has helped unmask white supremacist cops, soldiers, teachers, and politicians, and he was a Deadline Awards finalist for feature writing. He is originally from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and lives in New York. His new book, To Catch a Fascist: The Fight to Expose the Radical Right (Atria Books), is out now.About the EpisodeDays after Jonathan Rauch's influential Atlantic essay announced he'd moved from fascism skeptic to fascism believer, Christopher Mathias joins the show to discuss his new book — a deeply reported investigation into the decentralized network of anti-fascist activists who infiltrate, monitor, and expose neo-Nazis and white supremacists operating in positions of power across America.The conversation quickly moves beyond whether Trump is a fascist to the harder questions his book raises: Who gets to decide who is exposed? What rights to privacy do members of extremist groups retain? Is unmasking community self-defense or vigilantism? And does the same logic that justifies exposing a neo-Nazi EMT extend to the tens of thousands of ICE agents now conducting raids on American streets?Timeline00:00 Introduction Jonathan Rauch's Atlantic essay and the renewed fascism debate01:10 Meet Christopher Mathias Introducing the book and the journalist behind it01:45 The Greenville Moment When Mathias first used “fascist” in a headline after watching Trump whip a crowd into chanting “Send her back”02:40 Defining the F-Word Fascism as a right-wing politics of domination; Langston Hughes recognizing it in the 1930s before the word arrived04:15 The Hard Question If MAGA is a fascist movement, are the 70-plus million who voted for Trump fascists too?05:55 The Worst of the Worst Why the book targets explicit neo-Nazis in positions of power, not ordinary Trump supporters08:15 Who Decides? Privacy, accountability, and whether everyone at Charlottesville deserves exposure10:45 Antifascist Amnesty Leave the movement and we leave you alone; return and we publish12:30 The Equivalence Trap Why Mathias rejects the idea that this is just radicals exposing radicals14:05 From Neo-Nazis to ICE How anti-fascist tactics are now used to identify masked federal agents17:15 Where Does It End? Drawing lines between violent enforcement and bureaucratic participation19:40 “Just Following Orders” Why some orders shouldn't be followed, and the occupation of Minneapolis21:30 The Battle Over Shame Competing databases, surveillance, and what America should be ashamed of23:15 The Spy Who Warned Charlottesville An infiltrator uncovers plans for violence that officials ignore26:00 Minneapolis as Model “We protect us” and a blueprint for grassroots resistance28:45 The Underground War Intelligence, counterintelligence, and the personal cost of exposure30:30 Closing Fascism as a snake eating its own tail and the urgent task of limiting the damageLinks & ReferencesMentioned in this episode:Jonathan Rauch, “Yes, It's Fascism” — The Atlantic (January 2026)To Catch a Fascist: The Fight to Expose the Radical Right by Christopher Mathias (Atria Books, February 2026)Christopher Mathias reporting archiveFollow Christopher Mathias: BlueSky | XAbout Keen On America Nobody asks more impertinent questions than the Anglo-American writer, filmmaker and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Andrew Keen. In Keen On America , Andrew brings his sharp Transatlantic wit to the forces reshaping the United States — hosting daily interviews with leading thinkersand writers about American history, politics, technology, culture, and business. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.Website | Substack | YouTubeWebsite | Substack | YouTube

The investment comes from backers including the Qatar Investment Authority as demand for chips beyond Nvidia soars and as Qatar aims to build out its AI infrastructure. Also, To build and sell more of its autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), Apeiron Labs recently closed a $9.5 million Series A round led by Dyne Ventures, RA Capital Management Planetary Health and S2G Investments, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. Assembly Ventures, Bay Bridge Ventures, and TFX Capital participated. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, we chat with Terri Burns! Terri is the founder of Type Capital, an early-stage venture firm focused on being the first check for ambitious founders at pre-seed and seed. Most recently, she was a partner at GV, where she made history as the firm's youngest partner and its first-ever Black female partner, with a focus on digital consumer and emerging technology.During her time at GV, Terri led and supported investments that went on to raise follow-on capital from top-tier firms and achieve meaningful exits, including the social app HAGS, which was acquired by Snapchat. She's also an active angel investor and cofounder of an angel collective that has backed companies like Clubhouse.Terri's impact extends well beyond investing. She's a Forbes 30 Under 30 awardee for Venture Capital, a three-time co-chair of Fortune Magazine's Brainstorm Tech Conference, and a frequent speaker at institutions like Stanford GSB and Harvard Business School. Her work has been featured in publications including Vogue, Fortune, and TechCrunch.Before venture, Terri began her career as an associate product manager at Twitter, studied computer science at NYU, and today serves on NYU's Board of Trustees.✨ This episode is presented by Brex.Brex: brex.com/trailblazerspodThis episode is supported by RocketReach, Gusto, OpenPhone & Athena.RocketReach: rocketreach.co/trailblazersGusto: gusto.com/trailblazersQuo: Quo.com/trailblazersAthena: athenago.me/Erica-WengerFollow Us!Terri Burns: @tcburning @thetrailblazerspod: Instagram, YouTube, TikTokErica Wenger: @erica_wenger

edited picture from Lars H Knudsen: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-close-up-shot-of-a-llama-7845603/ Published 2 February 2026 e541 with Michael and Michael – Stories and discussion on AI with local Claude (and Clawdbot, Moltbot & openclaw), collaborative agents, 25 cent physical microtransactions ( quarters ), invisibility cloaks, LEGO SmartPlay and a whole lot more. Michael and Michael get things rolling with a series of intriguing innovations in local AI.  First up is a local instantiation of Claude via Ollama – see notes below for the installation instructions if you care to give this a shot.  Then, the team checks out Trae for it's orchestration capabilities. Michael M makes the mistake of trying out one of these innovations while recording the show and nearly crashes his machine.  Then a discussion on the startup Humans& and how this company is planning for how human + digital combinations will power the future.  The post from Thomas Ricouard illustrates how agents are collaborating with one another.  Michael and Michael stay at the surface level on the whole clawdbot —> moltbot —> openclaw story which has been rapidly evolving this past week while still marveling at the speed of movement. Switching then to the makers making things, there is a fantastic example of how to enable the original microtransaction for current software.  How?  Implementing the hardware mechanism for accepting a quarter to allow the game player to continue.  Next, from MIT, a significant improvement on the umbrella by using a quadcopter and computer vision tracker to create a flying mobile shelter that protects the user from the elements.  And then, a story about an invisibility cloak from Duke in the news this week, which harkens back years – check the show notes below for prior discussions on this capability. LEGO has announced a new innovation – the SMART Play system, replete with SMART Bricks, SMART Tags and SMART Minifigures.  It will be so intriguing to see how this fits in with the LEGO robotics, FIRST LEGO League and more.  The longer arc going back to LEGO Serious Play may provide some hints. Michael and Michael wrap things up with another long arc from the show – Doom running on a plethora of devices and screens.  This time?  Doom on earbuds.  Check out the links and discussion for more. Are you considering trying out openclaw.ai ?  Why or why not?  Have your openclaw (or other) bots