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The reception to our recent post on Code Reviews has been strong. Catch up!Amid a maelstrom of discussion on whether or not AI is killing SaaS, one of the top publicly listed SaaS companies in the world has just reported record revenues, clearing well over $1.1B in ARR for the first time with a 28% margin. As we comment on the pod, Aaron Levie is the rare public company CEO equally at home in both worlds of Silicon Valley and Wall Street/Main Street, by day helping 70% of the Fortune 500 with their Enterprise Advanced Suite, and yet by night is often found in the basements of early startups and tweeting viral insights about the future of agents.Now that both Cursor, Cloudflare, Perplexity, Anthropic and more have made Filesystems and Sandboxes and various forms of “Just Give the Agent a Box” cool (not just cool; it is now one of the single hottest areas in AI infrastructure growing 100% MoM), we find it a delightfully appropriate time to do the episode with the OG CEO who has been giving humans and computers Boxes since he was a college dropout pitching VCs at a Michael Arrington house party.Enjoy our special pod, with fan favorite returning guest/guest cohost Jeff Huber!Note: We didn't directly discuss the AI vs SaaS debate - Aaron has done many, many, many other podcasts on that, and you should read his definitive essay on it. Most commentators do not understand SaaS businesses because they have never scaled one themselves, and deeply reflected on what the true value proposition of SaaS is.We also discuss Your Company is a Filesystem:We also shoutout CTO Ben Kus' and the AI team, who talked about the technical architecture and will return for AIE WF 2026.Full Video EpisodeTimestamps* 00:00 Adapting Work for Agents* 01:29 Why Every Agent Needs a Box* 04:38 Agent Governance and Identity* 11:28 Why Coding Agents Took Off First* 21:42 Context Engineering and Search Limits* 31:29 Inside Agent Evals* 33:23 Industries and Datasets* 35:22 Building the Agent Team* 38:50 Read Write Agent Workflows* 41:54 Docs Graphs and Founder Mode* 55:38 Token FOMO Culture* 56:31 Production Function Secrets* 01:01:08 Film Roots to Box* 01:03:38 AI Future of Movies* 01:06:47 Media DevRel and EngineeringTranscriptAdapting Work for AgentsAaron Levie: Like you don't write code, you talk to an agent and it goes and does it for you, and you may be at best review it. That's even probably like, like largely not even what you're doing. What's happening is we are changing our work to make the agents effective. In that model, the agent didn't really adapt to how we work.We basically adapted to how the agent works. All of the economy has to go through that exact same evolution. Right now, it's a huge asset and an advantage for the teams that do it early and that are kinda wired into doing this ‘cause you'll see compounding returns. But that's just gonna take a while for most companies to actually go and get this deployed.swyx: Welcome to the Lane Space Pod. We're back in the chroma studio with uh, chroma, CEO, Jeff Hoover. Welcome returning guest now guest host.Aaron Levie: It's a pleasure. Wow. How'd you get upgraded to, uh, to that?swyx: Because he's like the perfect guy to be guest those for you.Aaron Levie: That makes sense actually, for We love context. We, we both really love context le we really do.We really do.swyx: Uh, and we're here with, uh, Aaron Levy. Welcome.Aaron Levie: Thank you. Good to, uh, good to be [00:01:00] here.swyx: Uh, yeah. So we've all met offline and like chatted a little bit, but like, it's always nice to get these things in person and conversation. Yeah. You just started off with so much energy. You're, you're super excited about agents.I loveAaron Levie: agents.swyx: Yeah. Open claw. Just got by, got bought by OpenAI. No, not bought, but you know, you know what I mean?Aaron Levie: Some, some, you know, acquihire. Executiveswyx: hire.Aaron Levie: Executive hire. Okay. Executive hire. Say,swyx: hey, that's my term. Okay. Um, what are you pounding the table on on agents? You have so many insightful tweets.Why Every Agent Needs a BoxAaron Levie: Well, the thing that, that we get super excited by that I think is probably, you know, should be relatively obvious is we've, we've built a platform to help enterprises manage their files and their, their corporate files and the permissions of who has access to those files and the sharing collaboration of those files.All of those files contain really, really important information for the enterprise. It might have your contracts, it might have your research materials, it might have marketing information, it might have your memos. All that data obviously has, you know, predominantly been used by humans. [00:02:00] But there's been one really interesting problem, which is that, you know, humans only really work with their files during an active engagement with them, and they kind of go away and you don't really see them for a long time.And all of a sudden, uh, with the power of AI and AI agents, all of that data becomes extremely relevant as this ongoing source of, of answers to new questions of data that will transform into, into something else that, that produces value in your organization. It, it contains the answer to the new employee that's onboarding, that needs to ramp up on a project.Um, it contains the answer to the right thing to sell a customer when you're having a conversation to them, with them contains the roadmap information that's gonna produce the next feature. So all that data. That previously we've been just sort of storing and, and you know, occasionally forgetting about, ‘cause we're only working on the new active stuff.All of that information becomes valuable to the enterprise and it's gonna become extremely valuable to end users because now they can have agents go find what they're looking for and produce new, new [00:03:00] value and new data on that information. And it's gonna become incredibly valuable to agents because agents can roam around and do a bunch of work and they're gonna need access to that data as well.And um, and you know, sometimes that will be an agent that is sort of working on behalf of, of, of you and, and effectively as you as and, and they are kind of accessing all of the same information that you have access to and, and operating as you in the system. And then sometimes there's gonna be agents that are just.Effectively autonomous and kind of run on their own and, and you're gonna collaborate and work with them kind of like you did another person. Open Claw being the most recent and maybe first real sort of, you know, kind of, you know, up updating everybody's, you know, views of this landscape version of, of what that could look like, which is, okay, I have an agent.It's on its own system, it's on its own computer, it has access to its own tools. I probably don't give it access to my entire life. I probably communicate with it like I would an assistant or a colleague and then it, it sort of has this sandbox environment. So all of that has massive implications for a platform that manage that [00:04:00] enterprise data.We think it's gonna just transform how we work with all of the enterprise content that we work with, and we just have to make sure we're building the right platform to support that.swyx: The sort of shorthand I put it is as people build agents, everybody's just realizing that every agent needs a box. Yes.And it's nice to be called box and just give everyone a box.Aaron Levie: Hey, I if I, you know, if we can make that go viral, uh, like I, I think that that terminology, I, that's theswyx: tagline. Every agentAaron Levie: needs a box. Every agent needs a box. If we can make that the headline of this, I'm fine with this. And that's the billboard I wanna like Yeah, exactly.Every agent needs a box. Um, I like it. Can we ship this? Like,swyx: okay, let's do it. Yeah.Aaron Levie: Uh, my work here is done and I got the value I needed outta this podcast Drinks.swyx: Yeah.Agent Governance and IdentityAaron Levie: But, but, um, but, but, you know, so the thing that we, we kind of think about is, um, is, you know, whether you think the number 10 x or a hundred x or whatever the number is, we're gonna have some order of magnitude more agents than people.That's inevitable. It has to happen. So then the question is, what is the infrastructure that's needed to make all those agents effective in the enterprise? Make sure that they are well governed. Make sure they're only doing [00:05:00] safe things on your information. Make sure that they're not getting exposed. The data that they shouldn't have access to.There's gonna be just incredibly spectacularly crazy security incidents that will happen with agents because you'll prompt, inject an agent and sort of find your way through the CRM system and pull out data that you shouldn't have access to. Oh, weJeff Huber: have God,Aaron Levie: right? I mean, that's just gonna happen all over the place, right?So, so then the thing is, is how do you make sure you have the right security, the permissions, the access controls, the data governance. Um, we actually don't yet exactly know in many cases how we're gonna regulate some of these agents, right? If you think about an agent in financial services, does it have the exact same financial sort of, uh, requirements that a human did?Or is it, is the risk fully on the human that was interacting or created the agent? All open questions, but no matter what, there's gonna need to be a layer that manages the, the data they have access to, the workflows that they're involved in, pulling up data from multiple systems. This is the new infrastructure opportunity in the era of agents.swyx: You have a piece on agent identities, [00:06:00] which I think was today, um, which I think a lot of breaking news, the security, security people are talking about, right? Like you basically, I, I always think of this as like, well you need the human you and then there you need the agent. YouAaron Levie: Yes.swyx: And uh, well, I don't know if it's that simple, but is box going to have an opinion on that or you're just gonna be like, well we're just the sort of the, the source layer.Yeah. Let's Okta of zero handle that.Aaron Levie: I think we're gonna have an opinion and we will work with generally wherever the contours of the market end up. Um, and the reason that we're gonna have an opinion more than other topics probably is because one of the biggest use cases for why your agent might need it, an identity is for file system access.So thus we have to kind of think about this pretty deeply. And I think, uh, unless you're like in our world thinking about this particular problem all day long, it might be, you know, like, why is this such a big deal? And the reason why it's a really big deal is because sometimes sort of say, well just give the agent an, an account on the system and it just treats, treat it like every other type of user on the system.The [00:07:00] problem is, is that I as Aaron don't really have any responsibility over anybody else's box account in our organization. I can't see the box account of any other employee that I work with. I am not liable for anything that they do. And they have, I have, I have, you know, strict privacy requirements on everything that they're able to, you know, that, that, that they work on.Agents don't have that, you know, don't have those properties. The person who creates the agent probably is gonna, for the foreseeable future, take on a lot of the liability of what that agent does. That agent doesn't deserve any privacy because, because it's, you know, it can't fully be autonomously operated and it doesn't have any legal, you know, kind of, you know, responsibility.So thus you can't just be like, oh, well I'll just create a bunch of accounts and then I'll, I'll kind of work with that agent and I'll talk to it occasionally. Like you need oversight of that. And so then the question is, how do you have a world where the agent, sometimes you have oversight of, but what if that agent goes and works with other people?That person over there is collaborating with the agent on something you shouldn't have [00:08:00] access to what they're doing. So we have all of these new boundaries that we're gonna have to figure out of, of, you know, it's really, really easy. So far we've been in, in easy mode. We've hit the easy button with ai, which is the agent just is you.And when you're in quad code and you're in cursor, and you're in Codex, you're just, the agent is you. You're offing into your services. It can do everything you can do. That's the easy mode. The hard mode is agents are kind of running on their own. People check in with them occasionally, they're doing things autonomously.How do you give them access to resources in the enterprise and not dramatically increased the security risk and the risk that you might expose the wrong thing to somebody. These are all the new problems that we have to get solved. I like the identity layer and, and identity vendors as being a solution to that, but we'll, we'll need some opinions as well because so many of the use cases are these collaborative file system use cases, which is how do I give it an agent, a subset of my data?Give it its own workspace as well. ‘cause it's gonna need to store off its own information that would be relevant for it. And how do I have the right oversight into that? [00:09:00]Jeff Huber: One thing, which, um, I think is kind interesting, think about is that you know, how humans work, right? Like I may not also just like give you access to the whole file.I might like sit next to you and like scroll to this like one part of the file and just show you that like one part and like, you know,swyx: partial file access.Jeff Huber: I'm just saying I think like our, like RA does seem to be dead, right? Like you wanna say something is dead uhhuh probably RA is dead. And uh, like the auth story to me seems like incredibly unsolved and unaddressed by like the existing state of like AI vendors.ButAaron Levie: yeah, I think, um, we're, I mean you're taking obviously really to level limit that we probably need to solve for. Yeah. And we built an access control system that was, was kind of like, you know, its own little world for, for a long time. And um, and the idea was this, it's a many to many collaboration system where I can give you any part of the file system.And it's a waterfall model. So if I give you higher up in the, in the, in the system, you get everything below. And that, that kind of created immense flexibility because I can kind of point you to any layer in the, in the tree, but then you're gonna get access to everything kind of below it. And that [00:10:00] mostly is, is working in this, in this world.But you do have to manage this issue, which is how do I create an agent that has access to some of my stuff and somebody else's stuff as well. Mm-hmm. And which parts do I get to look at as the creator of the agent? And, and these are just brand new problems? Yeah. Crazy. And humans, when there was a human there that was really easy to do.Like, like if the three of us were all sharing, there'd be a Venn diagram where we'd have an overlapping set of things we've shared, but then we'd have our own ways that we shared with each other. In an agent world, somebody needs to take responsibility for what that agent has access to and what they're working on.These are like the, some of the most probably, you know, boring problems for 98% of people on, on the internet, but they will be the problems that are the difference between can you actually have autonomous agents in an enterprise contextswyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: That are not leaking your data constantly.swyx: No. Like, I mean, you know, I run a very, very small company for my conference and like we already have data sensitivity issues.Yes. And some of my team members cannot see Yes. Uh, the others and like, I can't imagine what it's like to run a Fortune 500 and like, you have to [00:11:00] worry about this. I'm just kinda curious, like you, you talked to a lot like, like 70, 80% of your cus uh, of the Fortune 500, your customers.Aaron Levie: Yep. 67%. Just so we're being verySEswyx: precise.So Yeah. I'm notAaron Levie: Okay. Okay.swyx: Something I'm rounding up. Yes. Round up. I'm projecting to, forAaron Levie: the government.swyx: I'm projecting to the end of the year.Aaron Levie: Okay.swyx: There you go.Aaron Levie: You do make it sound like, like we, we, well we've gotta be on this. Like we're, we're taking way too long to get to 80%. Well,swyx: no, I mean, so like. How are they approaching it?Right? Because you're, you don't have a, you don't have a final answer yet.Why Coding Agents Took Off FirstAaron Levie: Well, okay, so, so this is actually, this is the stark reality that like, unfortunately is the kinda like pouring the water on the party a little bit.swyx: Yes.Aaron Levie: We all in Silicon Valley are like, have the absolute best conditions possible for AI ever.And I think we all saw the dke, you know, kind of Dario podcast and this idea of AI coding. Why is that taken off? And, and we're not yet fully seeing it everywhere else. Well, look, if you just like enumerated the list of properties that AI coding has and then compared it to other [00:12:00] knowledge work, let's just, let's just go through a few of them.Generally speaking, you bring on a new engineer, they have access to a large swath of the code base. Like, there's like very, like you, just, like new engineer comes on, they can just go and find the, the, the stuff that they, they need to work with. It's a fully text in text out. Medium. It's only, it's just gonna be text at the end of the day.So it's like really great from a, from just a, uh, you know, kinda what the agent can work with. Obviously the models are super trained on that dataset. The labs themselves have a really strong, kind of self-reinforcing positive flywheel of why they need to do, you know, agent coding deeply. So then you get just better tooling, better services.The actual developers of the AI are daily users of the, of the thing that they're we're working on versus like the, you know, probably there's only like seven Claude Cowork legal plugin users at Anthropic any given day, but there's like a couple thousand Claude code and you know, users every single day.So just like, think about which one are they getting more feedback on. All day long. So you just go through this list. You have a, you know, everybody who's a [00:13:00] developer by definition is technical so they can go install the latest thing. We're all generally online, or at least, you know, kinda the weird ones are, and we're all talking to each other, sharing best practices, like that's like already eight differences.Versus the rest of the economy. Every other part of the economy has like, like six to seven headwinds relative to that list. You go into a company, you're a banker in financial services, you have access to like a, a tiny little subset of the total data that's gonna be relevant to do your job. And you're have to start to go and talk to a bunch of people to get the right data to do your job because Sally didn't add you to that deal room, you know, folder.And that that, you know, the information is actually in a completely different organization that you now have to go in and, and sort of run into. And it's like you have this endless list of access controls and security. As, as you talked about, you have a medium, which is not, it's not just text, right? You have, you have a zoom call that, that you're getting all of the requirements from the customer.You have a lot of in-person conversations and you're doing in-person sales and like how do you ever [00:14:00] digitize all of that information? Um, you know, I think a lot of people got upset with this idea that the code base has all the context, um, that I don't know if you follow, you know, did you follow some of that conversation that that went viral?Is like, you know, it's not that simple that, that the code base doesn't have all the knowledge, but like it's a lot, you're a lot better off than you are with other areas of knowledge work. Like you, we like, we like have documentation practices, you write specifications. Those things don't exist for like 80% of work that happens in the enterprise.That's the divide that we have, which is, which is AI coding has, has just fully, you know, where we've reached escape velocity of how powerful this stuff is, and then we're gonna have to find a way to bring that same energy and momentum, but to all these other areas of knowledge work. Where the tools aren't there, the data's not set up to be there.The access controls don't make it that easy. The context engineering is an incredibly hard problem because again, you have access control challenges, you have different data formats. You have end users that are gonna need to kind of be kind of trained through this as opposed to their adopting [00:15:00] these tools in their free time.That's where the Fortune 500 is. And so we, I think, you know, have to be prepared as an industry where we are gonna be on a multi-year march to, to be able to bring agents to the enterprise for these workflows. And I think probably the, the thing that we've learned most in coding that, that the rest of the world is not yet, I think ready for, I mean, we're, they'll, they'll have to be ready for it because it's just gonna inevitably happen is I think in coding.What, what's interesting is if you think about the practice of coding today versus two years ago. It's probably the most changed workflow in maybe the history of time from the amount of time it's changed, right? Yeah. Like, like has any, has any workflow in the entire economy changed that quickly in terms of the amount of change?I just, you know, at least in any knowledge worker workflow, there's like very rarely been an event where one piece of technology and work practice has so fundamentally, you know, changed, changed what you do. Like you don't write code, you talk to an agent and it goes and [00:16:00] does it for you, and you may be at best review it.And even that's even probably like, like largely not even what you're doing. What's happening is we are changing our work to make the agents effective. In that model, the agent didn't really adapt to how we work. We basically adapted to how the agent works. Mm-hmm. All of the economy has to go through that exact same evolution.The rest of the economy is gonna have to update its workflows to make agents effective. And to give agents the context that they need and to actually figure out what kind of prompting works and to figure out how do you ensure that the agent has the right access to information to be able to execute on its work.I, you know, this is not the panacea that people were hoping for, of the agent drops in, just automates your life. Like you have to basically re-engineer your workflow to get the most out of agents and, uh, and that, that's just gonna take, you know, multiple years across the economy. Right now it's a huge asset and an advantage for the teams that do it early and that are kinda wired into doing this.‘cause [00:17:00] you'll see compounding returns, but that's just gonna take a while for most companies to actually go and get this deployed.swyx: I love, I love pushing back. I think that. That is what a lot of technology consultants love to hear this sort of thing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. First to, to embrace the ai. Yes. To get to the promised land, you must pay me so much money to a hundred percent to adopt the prescribed way of, uh, conforming to the agents.Yes. And I worry that you will be eclipsed by someone else who says, no, come as you are.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: And we'll meet you where you are.Aaron Levie: And, and, and and what was the thing that went viral a week ago? OpenAI probably, uh, is hiring F Dees. Yeah. Uh, to go into the enterprise. Yeah. Yeah. And then philanthropic is embedded at Goldman Sachs.Yeah. So if the labs are having to do this, if, if the labs have decided that they need to hire FDE and professional services, then I think that's a pretty clear indication that this, there's no easy mode of workflow transformation. Yeah. Yeah. So, so to your point, I think actually this is a market opportunity for, you know, new professional services and consulting [00:18:00] firms that are like Agent Build and they, and they kind of, you know, go into organizations and they figure out how to re-engineer your workflows to make them more agent ready and get your data into the right format and, you know, reconstruct your business process.So you're, you're not doing most of the work. You're telling agents how to do the work and then you're reviewing it. But I haven't seen the thing that can just drop in and, and kinda let you not go through those changes.swyx: I don't know how that kind of sales pitch goes over. Yeah. You know, you're, you're saying things like, well, in my sort of nice beautiful walled garden, here's, there's, uh, because here's this, here's this beautiful box account that has everything.Yes. And I'm like, well, most, most real life is extremely messy. Sure. And like, poorly named and there duplicate this outdated s**tAaron Levie: a hundred percent. And so No, no, a hundred percent. And so this is actually No. So, so this is, I mean, we agree that, that getting to the beautiful garden is gonna be tough.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: There's also the other end of the spectrum where I, I just like, it's a technical impossibility to solve. The agent is, is truly cannot get enough context to make the right decision in, in the, in the incredibly messy land. Like there's [00:19:00] no a GI that will solve that. So, so we're gonna have to kind of land in somewhere in between, which is like we all collectively get better at.Documentation practices and, and having authoritative relatively up-to-date information and putting it in the right place like agents will, will certainly cause us to be much better organized around how we work with our information, simply because the severity of the agent pulling the wrong data will be too high and the productivity gain of that you'll miss out on by not doing this will be too high as well, that you, that your competition will just do it and they'll just have higher velocity.So, uh, and, and we, we see this a lot firsthand. So we, we build a series of agents internally that they can kind of have access to your full box account and go off and you give it a task and it can go find whatever information you're looking for and work with. And, you know, thank God for the model progress, but like, if, if you gave that task to an agent.Nine months ago, you're just gonna get lots of bogus answers because it's gonna, it's gonna say, Hey, here's, here are fi [00:20:00] five, you know, documents that all kind of smell like the right thing. And I'm gonna, but I, but you're, you're putting me on the clock. ‘cause my assistant prompt says like, you know, be pretty smart, but also try and respond to the user and it's gonna respond.And it's like, ah, it got the wrong document. And then you do that once or twice as a knowledge worker and you're just neverswyx: again,Aaron Levie: never again. You're just like done with the system.swyx: Yeah. It doesn't work.Aaron Levie: It doesn't work. And so, you know, Opus four six and Gemini three one Pro and you know, whatever the latest five 3G BT will be, like, those things are getting better and better and it's using better judgment.And this sort of like the, all of these updates to the agentic tool and search systems are, are, we're seeing, we're seeing very real progress where the agent. Kind of can, can almost smell some things a little bit fishy when it's getting, you know, we, we have this process where we, we have it go fan out, do a bunch of searches, pull up a bunch of data, and then it has to sort of do its own ranking of, you know, what are the right documents that, that it should be working with.And again, like, you know, the intelligence level of a model six months ago, [00:21:00] it'd be just throwing a dart at like, I'm just, I'm gonna grab these seven files and I, I pray, I hope that that's the right answer. And something like an opus first four five, and now four six is like, oh, it's like, no, that one doesn't seem right relative to this question because I'm seeing some signal that is making that, you know, that's contradicting the document where it would normally be in the tree and who should have access.Like it's doing all of that kind of work for you. But like, it still doesn't work if you just have a total wasteland of data. Like, it's just not, it's just not possible. Partly ‘cause a human wouldn't even be able to do it. So basically if a, if a really, really smart human. Could not do that task in five or 10 minutes for a search retrieval type task.Look, you know, your agent's not gonna be able to do it any better. You see this all day long. SoContext Engineering and Search Limitsswyx: this touches on a thing that just passionate about it was just context engineering. I, I'm just gonna let you ramble or riff on, on context engineering. If, if, if there's anything like he, he did really good work on context fraud, which has really taken over as like the term that people use and the referenceAaron Levie: a hundred percent.We, we all we think about is, is the context rob problem. [00:22:00]Jeff Huber: Yeah, there's certainly a lot of like ranking considerations. Gentech surgery think is incredibly promising. Um, yeah, I was trying to generate a question though. I think I have a question right now. Swyx.Aaron Levie: Yeah, no, but like, like I think there was this moment, um, you know, like, I don't know, two years ago before, before we knew like where the, the gotchas were gonna be in ai and I think someone was like, was like, well, infinite context windows will just solve all of these problems and ‘cause you'll just, you'll just give the context window like all the data and.It's just like, okay, I mean, maybe in 2035, like this is a viable solution. First of all, it, it would just, it would just simply cost too much. Like we just can't give the model like the 5,000 documents that might be relevant and it's gonna read them all. And I've seen enough to, to start believing in crazy stuff.So like, I'm willing to just say, sure. Like in, in 10 years from now,swyx: never say, never, never.Aaron Levie: In, in 10 years from now, we'll have infinite context windows at, at a thousandth of the price of today. Like, let's just like believe that that's possible, but Right. We're in reality today. So today we have a context engineering [00:23:00] problem, which is, I got, I got, you know, 200,000 tokens that I can work with, or prob, I don't even know what the latest graph is before, like massive degradation.16. Okay. I have 60,000 tokens that I get to work with where I'm gonna get accurate information. That's not a lot of tokens for a corpus of 10 million documents that a knowledge worker might have across all of the teams and all the projects and all the people they work with. I have, I have 10 million documents.Which, you know, maybe is times five pages per document or something like that. I'm at 50 million pages of information and I have 60,000 tokens. Like, holy s**t. Yeah. This is like, how do I bridge the 50 million pages of information with, you know, the couple hundred that I get to work with in that, in that token window.Yeah. This is like, this is like such an interesting problem and that's why actually so much work is actually like, just like search systems and the databases and that layer has to just get so locked in, but models getting better and importantly [00:24:00] knowing when they've done a search, they found the wrong thing, they go back, they check their work, they, they find a way to balance sort of appeasing the user versus double checking.We have this one, we have this one test case where we ask the agent to go find. 10 pieces of information.swyx: Is this the complex work eval?Aaron Levie: Uh, this is actually not in the eval. This is, this is sort of just like we have a bunch of different, we have a bunch of internal benchmark kind of scenarios. Every time we, we update our agent, we have one, which is, I ask it to find all of our office addresses, and I give it the list of 10 offices that we have.And there's not one document that has this, maybe there should be, that would be a great example of the kind of thing that like maybe over time companies start to, you know, have these sort of like, what are the canonical, you know, kind of key areas of knowledge that we need to have. We don't seem to have this one document that says, here are all of our offices.We have a bunch of documents that have like, here's the New York office and whatever. So you task this agent and you, you get, you say, I need the addresses for these 10 offices. Okay. And by the way, if you do this on any, you know, [00:25:00] public chat model, the same outcome is gonna happen. But for a different kind of query, you give it, you say, I need these 10 addresses.How many times should the agent go and do its search before it decides whether or not, there's just no answer to this question. Often, and especially the, the, let's say lower tier models, it'll come back and it'll give you six of the 10 addresses. And it'll, and I'll just say I couldn't find the otherswyx: four.It, it doesn't know what It doesn't know. ItAaron Levie: doesn't know what It doesn't know. Yeah. So the model is just like, like when should it stop? When should it stop doing? Like should it, should it do that task for literally an hour and just keep cranking through? Maybe I actually made up an office location and it doesn't know that I made it up and I didn't even know that I made it up.Like, should it just keep, re should it read every single file in your entire box account until it, until it should exhaust every single piece of information.swyx: Expensive.Aaron Levie: These are the new problems that we have. So, you know, something like, let's say a new opus model is sort of like, okay, I'm gonna try these types of queries.I didn't get exactly what I wanted. I'm gonna try again. I'm gonna, at [00:26:00] some point I'm gonna stop searching. ‘cause I've determined that that no amount of searching is gonna solve this problem. I'm just not able to do it. And that judgment is like a really new thing that the model needs to be able to have.It's like, when should it give up on a task? ‘cause, ‘cause you just don't, it's a can't find the thing. That's the real world of knowledge, work problems. And this is the stuff that the coding agents don't have to deal with. Because they, it just doesn't like, like you're not usually asking it about, you're, you're always creating net new information coming right outta the model for the most part.Obviously it has to know about your code base and your specs and your documentation, but, but when you deploy an agent on all of your data that now you have all of these new problems that you're dealing withJeff Huber: our, uh, follow follow-up research to context ride is actually on a genetic search. Ah. Um, and we've like right, sort of stress tested like frontier models and their ability to search.Um, and they're not actually that good at searching. Right. Uh, so you're sort of highlighting this like explore, exploit.swyx: You're just say, Debbie, Donna say everything doesn't work. Like,Aaron Levie: well,Jeff Huber: somebody has to be,Aaron Levie: um, can I just throw out one more thing? Yeah. That is different from coding and, and the rest [00:27:00] of the knowledge work that I, I failed to mention.So one other kind of key point is, is that, you know, at the end of the day. Whether you believe we're in a slop apocalypse or, or whatever. At the end of the day, if you, if you build a working product at the end of, if you, if you've built a working solution that is ultimately what the customer is paying for, like whether I have a lot of slop, a little slop or whatever, I'm sure there's lots of code bases we could go into in enterprise software companies where it's like just crazy slop that humans did over a 20 year period, but the end customer just gets this little interface.They can, they can type into it, it does its thing. Knowledge work, uh, doesn't have that property. If I have an AI model, go generate a contract and I generate a contract 20 times and, you know, all 20 times it's just 3% different and like that I, that, that kind of lop introduces all new kinds of risk for my organization that the code version of that LOP didn't, didn't introduce.These are, and so like, so how do you constrain these models to just the part that you want [00:28:00] them to work on and just do the thing that you want them to do? And, and, you know, in engineering, we don't, you can't be disbarred as an engineer, but you could be disbarred as a lawyer. Like you can do the wrong medical thing In healthcare, you, there's no, there's no equivalent to that of engineering.Like, doswyx: you want there to be, because I've considered softwareJeff Huber: engineer. What's that? Civil engineering there is, right? NotAaron Levie: software civil engineer. Sure. Oh yeah, for sure. But like in any of our companies, you like, you know, you'll be forgiven if you took down the site and, and we, we will do a rollback and you'll, you'll be in a meeting, but you have not been disbarred as an engineer.We don't, we don't change your, you know, your computer science, uh, blameJeff Huber: degree, this postmortem.Aaron Levie: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, so, uh, now maybe we collectively as an industry need to figure out like, what are you liable for? Not legally, but like in a, in a management sense, uh, of these agents. All sorts of interesting problems that, that, that, uh, that have to come out.But in knowledge work, that's the real hostile environments that we're operating in. Hmm.swyx: I do think like, uh, a lot of the last year's, 2025 story was the rise of coding agents and I think [00:29:00] 2026 story is definitely knowledge work agents. Yes. A hundredAaron Levie: percent.swyx: Right. Like that would, and I think open claw core work are just the beginning.Yes. Like it's, the next one's gonna just gonna be absolute craziness.Aaron Levie: It it is. And, and, uh, and it's gonna be, I mean, again, like this is gonna be this, this wave where we, we are gonna try and bring as many of the practices from coding because that, that will clearly be the forefront, which is tell an agent to go do something and has an access to a set of resources.You need to be responsible for reviewing it at the end of the process. That to me is the, is the kind of template that I just think goes across knowledge, work and odd. Cowork is a great example. Open Closet's a great example. You can kind of, sort of see what Codex could become over time. These are some, some really interesting kind of platforms that are emerging.swyx: Okay. Um, I wanted to, we touched on evals a little bit. You had, you had the report that you're gonna go bring up and then I was gonna go into like, uh, boxes, evals, but uh, go ahead. Talk about your genetic search thing.Jeff Huber: Yeah. Mostly I think kinda a few of the insights. It's like number one frontier model is not good at search.Humans have this [00:30:00] natural explore, exploit trade off where we kinda understand like when to stop doing something. Also, humans are pretty good at like forgetting actually, and like pruning their own context, whereas agents are not, and actually an agent in their kind of context history, if they knew something was bad and they even, you could see in the trace the reason you trace, Hey, that probably wasn't a good idea.If it's still in the trace, still in the context, they'll still do it again. Uhhuh. Uh, and so like, I think pruning is also gonna be like, really, it's already becoming a thing, right? But like, letting self prune the con windowsswyx: be a big deal. Yeah. So, so don't leave the mistake. Don't leave the mistake in there.Cut out the mistake but tell it that you made a mistake in the past and so it doesn't repeat it.Jeff Huber: Yeah. But like cut it out so it doesn't get like distracted by it again. ‘cause really, you know, what is so, so it will repeat its mistake just because it's been, it's inswyx: theJeff Huber: context. It'sAaron Levie: in the context so much.That's a few shot example. Even if it, yeah.Jeff Huber: It's like oh thisAaron Levie: is a great thing to go try even ifJeff Huber: it didn't work.Aaron Levie: Yeah,Jeff Huber: exactly.Aaron Levie: SoJeff Huber: there's like a bunch of stuff there. JustAaron Levie: Groundhogs Day inside these models. Yeah. I'm gonna go keep doing the same wrongJeff Huber: thing. Covering sense. I feel like, you know, some creator analogy you're trying like fit a manifold in latent space, which kind is doing break program synthesis, which is kinda one we think about we're doing right.Like, you know, certain [00:31:00] facts might be like sort of overly pitting it. There are certain, you know, sec sectors of latent space and so like plug clean space. Yeah. And, uh, andswyx: so we have a bell, our editor as a bell every time you say that. SoJeff Huber: you have, you have to like remove those, likeswyx: you shoulda a gong like TPN or something.IfJeff Huber: we gong, you either remove those links to like kinda give it the freedom, kind of do what you need to do. So, but yeah. We'll, we'll release more soon. That'sAaron Levie: awesome.Jeff Huber: That'll, that'll be cool.swyx: We're a cerebral podcast that people listen to us and, and sort of think really deep. So yeah, we try to keep it subtle.Okay. We try to keep it.Aaron Levie: Okay, fine.Inside Agent Evalsswyx: Um, you, you guys do, you guys do have EVs, you talked about your, your office thing, but, uh, you've been also promoting APEX agents and complex work. Uh, yeah, whatever you, wherever you wanna take this just Yeah. How youAaron Levie: Apex is, is obviously me, core's, uh, uh, kind of, um, agent eval.We, we supported that by sort of. Opening up some data for them around how we kind of see these, um, data workspaces in, in the, you know, kind of regular economy. So how do lawyers have a workspace? How do investment bankers have a workspace? What kind of data goes into those? And so we, [00:32:00] we partner with them on their, their apex eval.Our own, um, eval is, it's actually relatively straightforward. We have a, a set of, of documents in a, in a range of industries. We give the agent previously did this as a one shot test of just purely the model. And then we just realized we, we need to, based on where everything's going, it's just gotta be more agentic.So now it's a bit more of a test of both our harness and the model. And we have a rubric of a set of things that has to get right and we score it. Um, and you're just seeing, you know, these incredible jumps in almost every single model in its own family of, you know, opus four, um, you know, sonnet four six versus sonnet four five.swyx: Yeah. We have this up on screen.Aaron Levie: Okay, cool. So some, you're seeing it somewhere like. I, I forget the to, it was like 15 point jump, I think on the main, on the overall,swyx: yes.Aaron Levie: And it's just like, you know, these incredible leaps that, that are starting to happen. Um,swyx: and OP doesn't know any, like any, it's completely held out from op.Aaron Levie: This is not in any, there's no public data which has, you know, Ben benefits and this is just a private eval that we [00:33:00] do, and then we just happen to show it to, to the world. Hmm. So you can't, you can't train against it. And I think it's just as representative of. It's obviously reasoning capabilities, what it's doing at, at, you know, kind of test time, compute capabilities, thinking levels, all like the context rot issues.So many interesting, you know, kind of, uh, uh, capabilities that are, that are now improvingswyx: one sector that you have. That's interesting.Industries and Datasetsswyx: Uh, people are roughly familiar with healthcare and legal, but you have public sector in there.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: Uh, what's that? Like, what, what, what is that?Aaron Levie: Yeah, and, and we actually test against, I dunno, maybe 10 industries.We, we end up usually just cutting a few that we think have interesting gains. All extras, won a lot of like government type documents. Um,swyx: what is that? What is it? Government type documents?Aaron Levie: Government filings. Like a taxswyx: return, likeAaron Levie: a probably not tax returns. It would be more of what would go the government be using, uh, as data.So, okay. Um, so think about research that, that type of, of, of data sets. And then we have financial services for things like data rooms and what would be in an investment prospectus. Uhhuh,swyx: that one you can dog food.Aaron Levie: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yes. Yes. [00:34:00] So, uh, so we, we run the models, um, in now, you know, more of an agent mode, but, but still with, with kinda limited capacity and just try and see like on a, like, for like basis, what are the improvements?And, and again, we just continue to be blown away by. How, how good these models are getting.swyx: Yeah, I mean, I think every serious AI company needs something like that where like, well, this is the work we do. Here's our company eval. Yeah. And if you don't have it, well, you're not a serious AI company.Aaron Levie: There's two dimensions, right?So there's, there's like, how are the models improving? And so which models should you either recommend a customer use, which one should you adopt? But then every single day, we're making changes to our agents. And you need to knowswyx: if you regressed,Aaron Levie: if you know. Yeah. You know, I've been fully convinced that the whole agent observability and eval space is gonna be a massive space.Um, super excited for what Braintrust is doing, excited for, you know, Lang Smith, all the things. And I think what you're going to, I mean, this is like every enter like literally every enterprise right now. It's like the AI companies are the customers of these tools. Every enterprise will have this. Yeah, you'll just [00:35:00] have to have an eval.Of all of your work and like, we'll, you'll have an eval of your RFP generation, you'll have an eval of your sales material creation. You'll have an eval of your, uh, invoice processing. And, and as you, you know, buy or use new agentic systems, you are gonna need to know like, what's the quality of your, of your pipeline.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: Um, so huge, huge market with agent evals.swyx: Yeah.Building the Agent Teamswyx: And, and you know, I'm gonna shout out your, your team a bit, uh, your CTO, Ben, uh, did a great talk with us last year. Awesome. And he's gonna come back again. Oh, cool. For World's Fair.Aaron Levie: Yep.swyx: Just talk about your team, like brag a little bit. I think I, I think people take these eval numbers in pretty charts for granted, but No, there, I mean, there's, there's lots of really smart people at work during all this.Aaron Levie: Biggest shout out, uh, is we have a, we have a couple folks at Dya, uh, Sidarth, uh, that, that kind of run this. They're like a, you know, kind of tag tag team duo on our evals, Ben, our CTO, heavily involved Yasha, head of ai, uh, you know, a bunch of folks. And, um, evals is one part of the story. And then just like the full, you know, kind of AI.An agent team [00:36:00] is, uh, is a, is a pretty, you know, is core to this whole effort. So there's probably, I don't know, like maybe a few dozen people that are like the epicenter. And then you just have like layers and layers of, of kind of concentric circles of okay, then there's a search team that supports them and an infrastructure team that supports them.And it's starting to ripple through the entire company. But there's that kind of core agent team, um, that's a pretty, pretty close, uh, close knit group.swyx: The search team is separate from the infra team.Aaron Levie: I mean, we have like every, every layer of the stack we have to kind of do, except for just pure public cloud.Um, but um, you know, we, we store, I don't even know what our public numbers are in, you know, but like, you can just think about it as like a lot of data is, is stored in box. And so we have, and you have every layer of the, of the stack of, you know, how do you manage the data, the file system, the metadata system, the search system, just all of those components.And then they all are having to understand that now you've got this new customer. Which is the agent, and they've been building for two types of customers in the past. They've been building for users and they've been building for like applications. [00:37:00] And now you've got this new agent user, and it comes in with a difference of it, of property sometimes, like, hey, maybe sometimes we should do embeddings, an embedding based, you know, kind of search versus, you know, your, your typical semantic search.Like, it's just like you have to build the, the capabilities to support all of this. And we're testing stuff, throwing things away, something doesn't work and, and not relevant. It's like just, you know, total chaos. But all of those teams are supporting the agent team that is kind of coming up with its requirements of what, what do we need?swyx: Yeah. No, uh, we just came from, uh, fireside chat where you did, and you, you talked about how you're doing this. It's, it's kind of like an internal startup. Yeah. Within the broader company. The broader company's like 3000 people. Yeah. But you know, there's, there's a, this is a core team of like, well, here's the innovation center.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: And like that every company kind of is run this way.Aaron Levie: Yeah. I wanna be sensitive. I don't call it the innovation center. Yeah. Only because I think everybody has to do innovation. Um, there, there's a part of the, the, the company that is, is sort of do or die for the agent wave.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: And it only happens to be more of my focus simply because it's existential that [00:38:00] we get it right.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: All of the supporting systems are necessary. All of the surrounding adjacent capabilities are necessary. Like the only reason we get to be a platform where you'd run an agent is because we have a security feature or a compliance feature, or a governance feature that, that some team is working on.But that's not gonna be the make or break of, of whether we get agents right. Like that already exists and we need to keep innovating there. I don't know what the right, exact precise number is, but it's not a thousand people and it's not 10 people. There's a number of people that are like the, the kind of like, you know, startup within the company that are the make or break on everything related to AI agents, you know, leveraging our platform and letting you work with your data.And that's where I spend a lot of my time, and Ben and Yosh and Diego and Teri, you know, these are just, you know, people that, that, you know, kind of across the team. Are working.swyx: Yeah. Amazing.Read Write Agent WorkflowsJeff Huber: How do you, how do you think about, I mean, you talked a lot about like kinda read workflows over your box data. Yep.Right. You know, gen search questions, queries, et cetera. But like, what about like, write or like authoring workflows?Aaron Levie: Yes. I've [00:39:00] already probably revealed too much actually now that I think about it. So, um, I've talked about whatever,Jeff Huber: whatever you can.Aaron Levie: Okay. It's just us. It's just us. Yeah. Okay. Of course, of course.So I, I guess I would just, uh, I'll make it a little bit conceptual, uh, because again, I've already, I've already said things that are not even ga but, but we've, we've kinda like danced around it publicly, so I, yeah, yeah. Okay. Just like, hopefully nobody watches this, um, episode. No.swyx: It's tidbits for the Heidi engaged to go figure out like what exactly, um, you know, is, is your sort of line of thinking.Sure. They can connect the dots.Aaron Levie: Yeah. So, so I would say that, that, uh, we, you know, as a, as a place where you have your enterprise content, there's a use case where I want to, you know, have an agent read that data and answer questions for me. And then there's a use case where I want the agent to create something.And use the file system to create something or store off data that it's working on, or be able to have, you know, various files that it's writing to about the work it's doing. So we do see it as a total read write. The harder problem has so far been the read only because, because again, you have that kind of like 10 [00:40:00] million to one ratio problem, whereas rights are a lot of, that's just gonna come from the model and, and we just like, we'll just put it in the file system and kinda use it.So it's a little bit of a technically easier problem, but the only part that's like, not necessarily technically hard, it is just like it's not yet perfected in the state of the ecosystem is, you know, building a beautiful PowerPoint presentation. It's still a hard problem for these models. Like, like we still, you know, like, like these formats are just, we're not built for.They'reswyx: working on it.Aaron Levie: They're, they're working on it. Everybody's working on it.swyx: Every launch is like, well, we do PowerPoint now.Aaron Levie: We're getting, yeah, getting a lot, getting a lot of better each time. But then you'll do this thing where you'll ask the update one slide and all of a sudden, like the fonts will be just like a little bit different, you know, on two of the slides, or it moved, you know, some shape over to the left a little bit.And again, these are the kind of things that, like in code, obviously you could really care about if you really care about, you know, how beautiful is the code, but at the end, user doesn't notice all those problems and file creation, the end user instantly sees it. You're [00:41:00] like, ah, like paragraph three, like, you literally just changed the font on me.Like it's a totally different font and like midway through the document. Mm-hmm. Those are the kind of things that you run into a lot of in the, in the content creation side. So, mm-hmm. We are gonna have native agents. That do all of those things, they'll be powered by the leading kind of models and labs.But the thing that I think is, is probably gonna be a much bigger idea over time is any agent on any system, again, using Box as a file system for its work, and in that kind of scenario, we don't necessarily care what it's putting in the file system. It could put its memory files, it could put its, you know, specification, you know, documents.It could put, you know, whatever its markdown files are, or it could, you know, generate PDFs. It's just like, it's a workspace that is, is sort of sandboxed off for its work. People can collaborate into it, it can share with other people. And, and so we, we were thinking a lot about what's the right, you know, kind of way to, to deliver that at scale.Docs Graphs and Founder Modeswyx: I wanted to come into sort of the sort of AI transformation or AI sort of, uh, operations things. [00:42:00] Um, one of the tweets that you, that you wanted to talk about, this is just me going through your tweets, by the way. Oh, okay. I mean, like, this is, you readAaron Levie: one by one,swyx: you're the, you're the easiest guest to prep for because you, you already have like, this is the, this is what I'm interested in.I'm like, okay, well, areAaron Levie: we gonna get to like, like February, January or something? Where are we in the, in the timelines? How far back are we going?swyx: Can you, can you describe boxes? A set of skills? Right? Like that, that's like, that's like one of the extremes of like, well if you, you just turn everything into a markdown file.Yeah. Then your agent can run your company. Uh, like you just have to write, find the right sequence of words toAaron Levie: Yes.swyx: To do it.Aaron Levie: Sorry, isthatswyx: the question? So I think the question is like, what if we documented everything? Yes. The way that you exactly said like,Aaron Levie: yes.swyx: Um, let's get all the Fortune five hundreds, uh, prepared for agents.Yes. And like, you know, everything's in golden and, and nicely filed away and everything. Yes. What's missing? Like, what's left, right? LikeAaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: You've, you've run your company for a decade. LikeAaron Levie: Yeah. I think the challenge is that, that that information changes a week later. And because something happened in the market for that [00:43:00] customer, or us as a company that now has to go get updated, and so these systems are living and breathing and they have to experience reality and updates to reality, which right now is probably gonna be humans, you know, kinda giving those, giving them the updates.And, you know, there is this piece about context graphs as as, uh, that kinda went very viral. Yeah. And I, I, I was like a, i, I, I thought it was super provocative. I agreed with many parts of it. I disagree with a few parts around. You know, it's not gonna be as easy as as just if we just had the agent traces, then we can finally do that work because there's just like, there's so much more other stuff that that's happening that, that we haven't been able to capture and digitize.And I think they actually represented that in the piece to be clear. But like there's just a lot of work, you know, that that has to, you just can't have only skills files, you know, for your company because it's just gonna be like, there's gonna be a lot of other stuff that happens. Yeah. Change over time.Yeah. Most companies are practically apprenticeships.swyx: Most companies are practically apprenticeships. LikeJeff Huber: every new employee who joins the team, [00:44:00] like you span one to three months. Like ramping them up.Aaron Levie: Yes. AllJeff Huber: that tat knowledgeAaron Levie: isJeff Huber: not written down.Aaron Levie: Yes.Jeff Huber: But like, it would have to be if you wanted to like give it to an Asian.Right. And so like that seems to me like to beAaron Levie: one is I think you're gonna see again a premium on companies that can document this. Mm-hmm. Much. There'll be a huge premium on that because, because you know, can you shorten that three month ramp cycle to a two week ramp cycle? That's an instant productivity gain.Can you re dramatically reduce rework in the organization because you've documented where all the stuff is and where the answers are. Can you make your average employee as good as your 90th percentile employee because you've captured the knowledge that's sort of in the heads of, of those top employees and make that available.So like you can see some very clear productivity benefits. Mm-hmm. If you had a company culture of making sure you know your information was captured, digitized, put in a format that was agent ready and then made available to agents to work with, and then you just, again, have this reality of like add a 10,000 person [00:45:00] company.Mapping that to the, you know, access structure of the company is just a hard problem. Is like, is like, yeah, well, you just, not every piece of information that's digitized can be shared to everybody. And so now you have to organize that in a way that actually works. There was a pretty good piece, um, this, this, uh, this piece called your company as a file is a file system.I, did you see that one?swyx: Nope.Aaron Levie: Uh, yes. You saw it. Yeah. And, and, uh, I actually be curious your thoughts on it. Um, like, like an interesting kind of like, we, we agree with it because, because that's how we see the world and, uh,swyx: okay. We, we have it up on screen. Oh,Aaron Levie: okay. Yeah. But, but it's all about basically like, you know, we've already, we, we, we already organized in this kind of like, you know, permission structure way.Uh, and, and these are the kind of, you know, natural ways that, that agents can now work with data. So it's kind of like this, this, you know, kind of interesting metaphor, but I do think companies will have to start to think about how they start to digitize more, more of that data. What was your take?Jeff Huber: Yeah, I mean, like the company's probably like an acid compliant file system.Aaron Levie: Uh,Jeff Huber: yeah. Which I'm guessing boxes, right? So, yeah. Yes.swyx: Yeah. [00:46:00]Jeff Huber: Which you have a great piece on, but,swyx: uh, yeah. Well, uh, I, I, my, my, my direction is a little bit like, I wanna rewind a little bit to the graph word you said that there, that's a magic trigger word for us. I always ask what's your take on knowledge graphs?Yeah. Uh, ‘cause every, especially at every data database person, I just wanna see what they think. There's been knowledge graphs, hype cycles, and you've seen it all. So.Aaron Levie: Hmm. I actually am not the expert in knowledge graphs, so, so that you might need toswyx: research, you don't need to be an expert. Yeah. I think it's just like, well, how, how seriously do people take it?Yeah. Like, is is, is there a lot of potential in the, in the HOVI?Aaron Levie: Uh, well, can I, can I, uh, understand first if it's, um, is this a loaded question in the sense of are you super pro, super con, super anti medium? Iswyx: see pro, I see pros and cons. Okay. Uh, but I, I think your opinion should be independent of mine.Aaron Levie: Yeah. No, no, totally. Yeah. I just want to see what I'm stepping into.swyx: No, I know. It's a, and it's a huge trigger word for a lot of people out Yeah. In our audience. And they're, they're trying to figure out why is that? Because whyAaron Levie: is this such aswyx: hot item for them? Because a lot of people get graph religion.And they're like, everything's a graph. Of course you have to represent it as a graph. Well, [00:47:00] how do you solve your knowledge? Um, changing over time? Well, it's a graph.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: And, and I think there, there's that line of work and then there's, there's a lot of people who are like, well, you don't need it. And both are right.Aaron Levie: Yeah. And what do the people who say you don't need it, what are theyswyx: arguing for Mark down files. Oh, sure, sure. Simplicity.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: Versus it's, it's structure versus less structure. Right. That's, that's all what it is. I do.Aaron Levie: I think the tricky thing is, um, is, is again, when this gets met with real humans, they're just going to their computer.They're just working with some people on Slack or teams. They're just sharing some data through a collaborative file system and Google Docs or Box or whatever. I certainly like the vision of most, most knowledge graph, you know, kind of futuristic kind of ways of thinking about it. Uh, it's just like, you know, it's 2026.We haven't seen it yet. Kind of play out as as, I mean, I remember. Do you remember the, um, in like, actually I don't, I don't even know how old you guys are, but I'll for, for to show my age. I remember 17 years ago, everybody thought enterprises would just run on [00:48:00] Wikis. Yeah. And, uh, confluence and, and not even, I mean, confluence actually took off for engineering for sure.Like unquestionably. But like, this was like everything would be in the w. And I think based on our, uh, our, uh, general style of, of, of what we were building, like we were just like, I don't know, people just like wanna workspace. They're gonna collaborate with other people.swyx: Exactly. Yeah. So you were, you were anti-knowledge graph.Aaron Levie: Not anti, not anti. Soswyx: not nonAaron Levie: I'm not, I'm not anti. ‘cause I think, I think your search system, I just think these are two systems that probably, but like, I'm, I'm not in any religious war. I don't want to be in anybody's YouTube comments on this. There's not a fight for me.swyx: We, we love YouTube comments. We're, we're, we're get into comments.Aaron Levie: Okay. Uh, but like, but I, I, it's mostly just a virtue of what we built. Yeah. And we just continued down that path. Yeah.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: And, um, and that, that was what we pursued. But I'm not, this is not a, you know, kind of, this is not a, uh, it'sswyx: not existential for you. Great.Aaron Levie: We're happy to plug into somebody else's graph.We're happy to feed data into it. We're happy for [00:49:00] agents to, to talk to multiple systems. Not, not our fight.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: But I need your answer. Yeah. Graphs or nerd Snipes is very effective nerd.swyx: See this is, this is one, one opinion and then I've,Jeff Huber: and I think that the actual graph structure is emergent in the mind of the agent.Ah, in the same way it is in the mind of the human. And that's a more powerful graph ‘cause it actually involved over time.swyx: So don't tell me how to graph. I'll, I'll figure it out myself. Exactly. Okay. All right. AndJeff Huber: what's yours?swyx: I like the, the Wiki approach. Uh, my, I'm actually

“We should all be able to look at the numbers and agree that this is not sustainable and that whatever we've been doing is not working. Democrats have had their chance, and Republicans have had their chance, and it's only gotten worse.” — Halle TeccoWarren Buffett called America's healthcare costs “a hungry tapeworm on the American economy.” That tapeworm now devours nearly a fifth of the nation's GDP—and the patient, as always, is on the table. We dedicate today's show to this most perennial of all America's problems, with two guests and two new books that approach the tragi-comedy from different angles.Self-styled innovation wonk Halle Tecco—founder of Rock Health, investor in over fifty digital health companies, professor at Columbia Business School—argues in Massively Better Healthcare that the system is both excessively public and excessively private, a Kafkaesque bureaucracy in which verticalized health plans now own the PBMs, the pharmacies, and increasingly the doctors. The result is monopoly medicine on a scale that would have appalled the original trust-busters.This is ultimately an antitrust story. As we've discussed on the show with Tim Wu, Biden's chief antitrust enforcer, the concentration of corporate power is the great unfinished business of American democracy. Tecco makes the case that Big Med is where the trust busters should go next after Big Tech. UnitedHealth is now one of the largest employers of doctors in the country. So it wasn't exactly shocking when the UnitedHealth CEO was assassinated two years ago. The system isn't broken, Tecco suggests. It's working exactly as designed—just not for patients.Surgeon Robin Blackstone, MD, author of Doctor AI: Reimagining Health. Rebuilding Trust. Delivering Health 4.0, joins us in the second half of the show to offer a view from the front lines. After 30 years as a surgeon, Blackstone confirms everything Tecco diagnoses—and adds a chilling detail of her own: the system is priced entirely for fixing illness, not preventing it. Her prescription is a “triangle of trust” between patient, physician, and AI—with the patient finally owning their own data.Both agree on one thing: every dollar spent on public health saves $14.30 in medical and societal costs. We are all already paying for all the waste. We just need to fix Big Med. But who's going to do it? Tecco says that America is ready for another round of Obamacare politics. But I'm not so sure. Five Takeaways•       Healthcare Is a Tale of Two Civilizations: If you're wealthy, you go to UCSF and get the best care in the world. If you're not, you're one of the 100 million Americans without a regular primary care provider. Healthcare debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy. A person earning $30,000 in a rural county can expect to live a full decade less than someone earning $100,000 in an affluent suburb.•       The Real Winners Are Monopoly Medicine: Verticalized health plans now own the PBMs, the pharmacies, and increasingly the providers. The ACA's profit cap forced them to grow the pie instead of getting more efficient. United is now one of the largest employers of doctors in the country. Independent pharmacies are closing at the rate of one per day. Rite Aid is bankrupt—the only major chain not owned by a health plan.•       Every $1 in Public Health Saves $14.30: We're already paying for the crisis—in emergency room visits, lost productivity, and disability. We just need to move the safety net upstream. Public health is the only part of the system designed for prevention, yet its share of total health spending has dropped 25% in two decades. The economic case is overwhelming. The political will is not.•       AI Could Break the Information Asymmetry: Patients are already using ChatGPT to diagnose themselves—and sometimes it's saving their lives. One woman caught her own pneumonia because her doctor couldn't see her for a week. But some doctors want to keep the paternalism: one AI tool built on medical journals is restricted to clinicians only because making it available to patients would “piss off the doctors.”•       The System Is Priced for Rescue, Not Health: Everything is loaded to the moment your gallbladder goes bad or your heart gets a blockage. Prevention doesn't get paid for. Both guests agree: we need a massive re-pricing that rewards keeping people healthy, not just treating them when they're sick. That means paying doctors to prevent strokes, not just to fix them. About the GuestsHalle Tecco is the founder of the venture fund Rock Health and an investor in more than fifty digital health companies. She is an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School and a course director at Harvard Medical School. Her new book is Massively Better Healthcare: The Innovator's Guide to Tackling Healthcare's Biggest Challenges (Columbia University Press).Robin Blackstone, MD, is a physician, health systems architect, and founder of Blackstone Health. A surgeon by training with 30 years of clinical experience, she is the author of Doctor AI: Reimagining Health. Rebuilding Trust. Delivering Health 4.0.ReferencesPrevious Keen On episodes and authors mentioned:•       Robert Pearl on how AI will be monetized in the healthcare industry•       Tim Wu on the extractive economics of platform capitalism•       Zeke Emanuel on which country has the world's best healthcare•       Warren Buffett on healthcare costs as “a hungry tapeworm on the American economy”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 Podcasts

Our 235th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 02/27/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at andreyvkurenkov@gmail.com and/or hello@gladstone.aiRead out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:Model and tool updates highlight Anthropic's Sonnet 4.6 (1M context; strong ARC-AGI-2 results), Google's Gemini 3.1 Pro (major ARC-AGI-2 jump and multimodal demos), xAI's Grok 4.2 beta (multi-agent debate), plus Anthropic's Claude Code “Remote Control” and Perplexity's multi-agent “Computer” coordinator.Compute and business moves include Meta's reported up-to-$100B AMD chip deal with warrant/equity incentives, MatX raising $500M to build specialized transformer chips shipping in 2027, World Labs raising $1B for world-model/3D environment tech, and a new startup raising $100M to simulate/predict human behavior.Infrastructure and geopolitics cover Stargate data-center delays amid OpenAI/Oracle/SoftBank control disputes and cash concerns, and China's plan to scale 7nm/5nm wafer output despite yield and tooling constraints.Research and safety/policy discuss optimizer gains from masked updates, “deep thinking tokens” as a reasoning-effort signal, LLM attractor-state behaviors in bot-to-bot chats, mechanistic interpretability of counting/line-wrapping, methods to map task difficulty to human time horizons, plus Anthropic–Pentagon contract tensions, Anthropic's report on distillation attacks (DeepSeek/Moonshot/Minimax), and OpenAI's report on disrupting malicious use.A thank you to our current sponsors:Box - visit Box.com/AI to learn moreODSC AI - go to odsc.ai/east and use promo code LWAI for an additional 15% off your pass to ODSC AI East 2026.Factor - head to factormeals.com/lwai50off and use code lwai50off to get 50 percent off and free breakfast for a yearTimestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:01:52) News PreviewTools & Apps(00:03:20) Anthropic releases Sonnet 4.6 | TechCrunch(00:11:24) Google Rolls Out Latest AI Model, Gemini 3.1 Pro - CNET(00:14:54) Elon Musk says Grok 4.20 public beta is now available: Capabilities of AI chatbot offered by xAI - The Times of India(00:18:06) Anthropic just released a mobile version of Claude Code called Remote Control | VentureBeat(00:21:01) Perplexity announces "Computer," an AI agent that assigns work to other AI agents - Ars TechnicaApplications & Business(00:23:40) Meta strikes up to $100B AMD chip deal as it chases 'personal superintelligence' | TechCrunch(00:27:05) Nvidia challenger AI chip startup MatX raised $500M | TechCrunch(00:31:00) World Labs lands $1B, with $200M from Autodesk, to bring world models into 3D workflows | TechCrunch(00:33:07) Simile Raises $100 Million for AI Aiming to Predict Human Behavior(00:33:52) Stargate AI data centers for OpenAI reportedly delayed by squabbles between partners — sources say OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank disagreed on who would have ultimate control of the planned data centers(00:36:43) China to increase leading-edge chip output by 5x in two years, report claims — aims to lift 7nm and 5nm production to 100,000 wafers per month, targeting half a million monthly by 2030Research & Advancements(00:40:33) On Surprising Effectiveness of Masking Updates in Adaptive Optimizers(00:48:03) Think Deep, Not Just Long: Measuring LLM Reasoning Effort via Deep-Thinking Tokens(00:54:52) models have some pretty funny attractor states(01:01:41) When Models Manipulate Manifolds: The Geometry of a Counting Task(01:05:16) BRIDGE: Predicting Human Task Completion Time From Model Performance(01:12:00) NESSiE: The Necessary Safety Benchmark -- Identifying Errors that should not Exist(01:13:15) The least understood driver of AI progress(01:21:45) The Persona Selection Model: Why AI Assistants might Behave like HumansPolicy & Safety(01:25:04) Anthropic CEO Amodei says Pentagon's threats 'do not change our position' on AI(01:33:04) Musk's xAI, Pentagon reach deal to use Grok in classified systems(01:34:17) Detecting and preventing distillation attacks(01:38:36) OpenAI details expanding efforts to disrupt malicious use of AI in new report - SiliconANGLESee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“When you use humor to degrade people, you can get away with it—but you're also doing something that's completely devastating.” — Rhae Lynn BarnesDonald Trump's recent retweet of Barack and Michelle Obama depicted as apes was dismissed by his supporters as “just a joke”—another example, they claimed, of liberals lacking a sense of humor. But Princeton historian Rhae Lynn Barnes argues that this kind of “humor” is anything but innocent. It draws on a centuries-long white supremacist tradition of dehumanization—one that stretches back to the origins of American mass entertainment itself.In her book, Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment, Barnes traces how Blackface minstrelsy became the quintessential American cultural form—America's first great entertainment export—shaping music, comedy, performance, and politics from the 19th century through the 20th. Barnes explains how P.T. Barnum helped popularize the grotesque “scientific” spectacle of Black people as the missing link in evolution, and how the Barnum model of hoax-driven mass media foreshadows Trump's own relationship with controversy, “fake news,” and attention.Barnes argues that Blackface wasn't merely a fringe theatrical practice. It was normalized—then institutionalized—through schools, churches, civic clubs, and even the federal government. The result was an intergenerational system for teaching white supremacy through catchy songs, jokes, and seemingly harmless performance.For Barnes, the most important chapter of the Darkology story is the Black resistance minstrelsy triggered—from Frederick Douglass's campaign of dignified self-representation to NAACP organizers and Black veterans who fought to remove minstrel shows from schools and public life. Rather than anti-American, Barnes insists that confronting this censored cultural history is the patriotic duty of all Americans. That's America's defining story, she says. The pursuit of freedom—and the ongoing struggle to live up to it. Five Takeaways1. Racist Humor Has Deep Roots: What gets dismissed today as “just a joke” belongs to a centuries-old tradition of dehumanizing caricature that masked cruelty as entertainment.1. Blackface Was America's Cultural Foundation: Minstrelsy shaped American comedy, music, performance—and even political campaigning. It was the quintessential American entertainment form.1. Barnum Invented the Spectacle Model: Hoax-driven media sensation fused with racial pseudo-science and spectacle long before modern political showmanship adopted the formula.1. White Supremacy Was Taught as Fun: Catchy songs, simple dances, and comic routines created an intergenerational system of racial socialization embedded in schools, churches, and civic clubs.1. Patriotism Requires Historical Honesty: Confronting this censored past strengthens democracy. America's defining story is the pursuit of freedom—not the denial of injustice. About the GuestRhae Lynn Barnes is a historian and professor at Princeton University. She is the author of Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment. ReferencesPrevious Keen On episodes mentioned:1. None 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 (00:25) - Trump, race, and “just a joke” (01:31) - The long history behind the meme (02:30) - P.T. Barnum and the “What Is It?” (03:41) - Barnum, hoaxes, and Trump's media instinct (05:39) - Blackface as America's signature entertainment (07:34) - When “minstrelsy” goes mainstream (09:50) - Black responses: Douglass to Ragtime (12:28) - Veterans, schools, and the NAACP fightback (17:54) - Presidents, power, and “Whiteology” (19:50) - Humor as an intergenerational weapon (21:20) - Immigration and learning “whiteness” (22:30) - Is American history defined by white supremacy? (24:00) - The pursuit of freedom—and confronting the past (28:18) - Why this history still matters now (31:11) - Gerald Ford and the politics of Blackface (32:56) - Closing thoughts and goodbye

“If we let things continue in the direction that they are taking now, I think it is more likely than not that we will end up in some kind of Great Power war within the foreseeable future.” — Arne WestadThis conversation was recorded before the invasion of Iran, which makes what you are about to hear even more chilling. In his new book, The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History, Yale historian Arne Westad warns that the structural parallels between our multipolar 2020s and the world before the First World War are too striking to ignore—and he names the Middle East as one of the flashpoints that could spark a much broader conflagration.Westad argues that the structural parallels between our multipolar 2020s and the world before the First World War are “striking.” A dominant power (USA) withdrawing from the international system it created. Rising inequality and globalization backlash. New technologies that speed up time and shrink the window for decision-making. A rising Great Power—China—that, like Wilhelmine Germany, simply cannot stop growing. And a declining empire—Russia—that, like Austria-Hungary, has quarrels on every border and an alliance with the rising power next door.The cast of characters, Westad warns, is also uncomfortably familiar. Trump is Joseph Chamberlain—the British conservative who turned his party against the free trade system it had championed. Putin's Russia is Austria-Hungary: an empire in long-term decline that acted in 1914 because it believed Germany would back it up. And nuclear weapons? Before 1914, people wrote long books about how new military technologies made war unthinkable. We are taking refuge in that same bad logic today.The difference, Westad insists, is that we know how 1914 ended. We have international institutions built to prevent it. And we still have time—but not much, he warns—to forge the kind of Great Power compromise that could pull us back from the brink. Whether we will is another question entirely. Especially given our current historical amnesia. So might Archduke Ferdinand be Ayatollah Ali Khamenei this time around? Stay tuned. It's squeaky bum time once again in world history. Five Takeaways•       We're Living in a Pre-1914 Moment: A multipolar world. Rising inequality. Globalization backlash. New technologies that speed up time and reduce the window for decision-making. A dominant power withdrawing from the international system it created. The structural parallels between the early 20th century and the 2020s are, in Westad's word, “striking.”•       China Is the New Germany: A rapidly rising Great Power that can't stop growing, generating dissonance in an established international system. As the British told the Germans: “If you could just stop growing, little Hans, all would be fine and dandy.” That's exactly what China cannot do. And it takes two to tango on compromise.•       Russia Is the New Austria-Hungary: An empire in long-term decline with quarrels on every border, allied to the most rapidly rising Great Power next to it. Austria acted in 1914 because they believed Germany would back them up. The parallel to the China-Russia relationship today is uncomfortably close.•       Trump Is Joseph Chamberlain: The British conservative who turned his party against the free trade system it had championed. Chamberlain never made it to prime minister, but he came close and reshaped his party in ways no one foresaw—exactly what Trump has done to the Republicans.•       Nuclear Weapons May Not Save Us: Before 1914, people wrote long books about how new military technologies—poison gas, battleships, aerial bombardment—made war unthinkable. We are taking refuge in the same logic today. Westad is not so sure the deterrent fully holds anymore. About the GuestOdd Arne Westad is the Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University. He is the author of The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History as well as The Cold War: A World History, The Global Cold War (winner of the Bancroft Prize), and Restless Empire (winner of the Asia Society Book Award).ReferencesBooks and authors mentioned:•       Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers, on how Europe stumbled into the First World War (previous Keen On guest)•       Philipp Blom, The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900–1914, on technology and cultural disruption before the war•       Paul Kennedy, on the rise of British-German antagonism and Great Power rivalry•       Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (referenced in the Sutton episode the previous day)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: 

Mr. Beast Biography Flash a weekly Biography.Hey there, fabulous listeners, its your girl Roxie Rush here, your AI-powered gossip whirlwind, and thank you for tuning into the MrBeast podcast. Being AI means I sift through the chaos faster than you can say viral video, delivering the hottest, verified scoops without the fake news fluffwhats not to love?Buckle up, because MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, is making power moves that scream empire builder. Just days ago, Beast Industries snapped up Step, the Gen Z banking app with over 7 million users peddling credit-building and investing tools for teens, according to TechCrunch and The Publish Press. Jimmy spilled on X, Nobody taught me about investing or managing money growing upI want to give millions of young people the financial foundation I never had. TechCrunch reports hes eyeing a financial education YouTube channel and even Beast Financial trademarks, with whispers of an IPO push via recurring revenue plays. This could redefine his $5 billion Beast empire long-term, darlingtalk about leveling up from chocolates to cash flow.But hold the confettiKalshi dropped a bombshell Wednesday, fining and suspending MrBeasts editor Artem Kaptur $15,000 for insider trading on prediction markets betting his videos success, per CBS News. Beast Industries fired back with zero tolerance and an independent probe underway. No direct Jimmy drama, but it spotlights the heat on his fast-growing team.Older chatter from Fortune echoes Jimmy borrowing cash from mom for his wedding despite a $2.6 billion net worth, all reinvested into contenthes laser-focused, not lounging.No fresh public sightings or social fireworks in the last 24 hours, but this Step acquisition? Pure biographical gold, positioning Beast as fintech king.Thats your MrBeast flash, crewthank you for listening, hit subscribe to never miss an update on MrBeast, and search Biography Flash for more great biographies. Muah!And that is it for today. Make sure you hit the subscribe button and never miss an update on Mr. Beast. Thanks for listening. This has been a Quiet Please production."Get the best deals https://amzn.to/4mMClBvThis content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

“If you disestablish Christianity, then Christian leaders need to make Christianity a consumer product. They need to give the American people something they want.” — Matthew Avery SuttonOver the years, Keen On has done many shows on the relationship between the United States and organized religion. Daniel Williams argued that smart people still believe in God. Jim Wallis warned that a false white gospel is threatening America. But we've never quite done a show on Christianity as “the thing in itself”—the force that made America what it is, for better and for worse. That's what this conversation is about.Historian Matthew Avery Sutton's new book, Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity, is a sweeping argument that Christianity is not just part of the American story—it is the American story. The founders created a godless Constitution not out of principle but pragmatism: they couldn't pick a winning denomination. The unintended consequence was to open the floodgates. Powerful Protestant groups seized even more power, building an unofficial establishment that shaped everything from westward expansion to the Civil War to the rise of the religious right.Sutton's most provocative insight is that disestablishment turned Christianity into a consumer product. Forced to compete for adherents against entertainment, sports, and media, American churches became entrepreneurial, technologically savvy, and relentlessly current—reinventing themselves every generation. That's what sets American Christianity apart from the rest of the Western world. It also helps explain Trump: a president who uses Christianity in a “crass, overt, and hypocritical” way, but who is doing something that generations before him built the infrastructure to enable. Whether this is Christianity's last gasp or the prelude to another great revival, Sutton says, nobody knows. But the air we breathe in America is Christian air, and this book explains how it got that way. Five Takeaways•       The Godless Constitution Backfired: The founders couldn't pick a winning denomination, so they disestablished religion. It was pragmatic, not ideological. But this opened the floodgates. The Christians who already had the most power—Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians—seized even more, creating an unofficial Protestant establishment that determined who was in and who was out.•       Christianity Became a Consumer Product: Disestablishment forced churches to compete for adherents. They had to be aggressive, entrepreneurial, current—competing with entertainment, sports, and media. They became masters of new technologies and communication, reinventing Christianity every generation. That's what sets American Christianity apart from the rest of the world: an unintended consequence of the First Amendment.•       The Civil War Was Christians Killing Christians: Presbyterians killing Presbyterians, Methodists killing Methodists. It exposed the fragility of the effort to build a Christian utopia when you can't settle the question of slavery. The Confederates actually wrote God and Jesus Christ into their constitution—they believed the Union had gone off the rails because its Constitution was too godless.•       The Liberationists Are the Heroes: Indigenous preachers who saw Jesus as liberator, Black Christians, gay rights activists in the 1960s and 1970s, Barack Obama. There have always been alternative visions of Christianity in America. Sutton's heroes are those who see Jesus as a radical figure who wants to overturn hierarchies and bring equality.•       This May Be Christianity's Last Gasp—Or Not: Just under two-thirds of Americans now identify as Christian—a historic low. Trump's hypocrisy is driving young people away. In anointing Trump as their savior, the religious right may have hammered the final nail into their coffin. But every time scholars predict secularization, America has a revival. Nobody knows what's next. About the GuestMatthew Avery Sutton is the Claudius O. and Mary Johnson Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of History at Washington State University. He is the author of Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity as well as American Apocalypse and Double Crossed, and a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship.ReferencesPrevious Keen On episodes mentioned:•       Daniel Williams on why smart people still believe in God•       Jim Wallis on the false white gospel and faith and justice•       Margaret Atwood on The Handmaid's TaleAbout 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: Christianity as "the thing in itself" (02:11) - Is this really a surprise? (04:05) - Which Christianity? Questions of power (06:36) - The founders and the godless Constitution (08:55) - Was it a coup? (11:15) - Jacksonian democracy and revivalism (12:56) - Colonizing the West and Native Americans (16:03) - What does evangelical actually mean? (17:31) - The Civil War as a religious war (21:05) - Max Weber and Christianity as consumer product (28:02) - Margaret Atwood and The Handmaid's Tale (30:17) - Peter Thiel and the Antichrist (36:31) - Is this Christianity's last gasp?

Six newly-created accounts made a profit of $1 million by correctly betting that the U.S. would strike Iran by February 28. TechCrunch spoke with VCs to learn what investors aren't looking for in AI SaaS startups anymore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“We keep telling you there's an eviction crisis, so organize with us. Feel free to come into our meetings. Feel free to learn about the lives of people who have been here for a long time.” — Manissa MaharawalYesterday we spoke with anthropologist Ida Susser about France's Yellow Vests—provincial truck drivers, nurses, and teachers who drove hours to Paris, furious about decades of disinvestment in their economy. So does America have its own Yellow Vests? You might find them in (of all places) the San Francisco Bay Area, the setting of a new book by a former student of Susser's about what happens when the same disruptive economic forces hit an American city.Anthropologist Manissa Maharawal's new book, Anti-Eviction: The Fight Against Tech-Led Gentrification in San Francisco, chronicles the grassroots movement that rose up against big tech during the boom of the 2010s. Like the French Yellow Vests, these were ordinary people from the San Francisco Bay Area—teachers, bartenders, nurses, copy editors—who refused to accept their displacement as inevitable. Like the Yellow Vests, they grew out of no political party or even ideology. The anti-eviction movement emerged from Occupy, just as the gilets jaunes emerged from the roundabouts outside Paris.Anti-tech activists in San Francisco's Mission District watched Google buses roll through their neighborhoods and decided to blockade them. But where the Yellow Vests defied the left-right spectrum, Maharawal's activists have a clear target: the neoliberal market logic that justifies gentrification as the result of “inevitable” market forces. She is sharply critical of the abundance argument advanced by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, arguing this supposedly free market has given the Bay Area a glut of luxury housing and almost no affordable units. The real crisis, she says, isn't too few homes—it's too little regulation on the homes we already have.Fifteen million sit vacant in the United States, Maharawal reminds us. Private equity firms are buying up a quarter of the housing on the market. Even Trump has woken up to this. In a moment of political pessimism on both sides of the Atlantic, both Susser and Maharawal offer evidence that ordinary people can both organize and, at least, shape the political conversation. Five Takeaways•       Tech Gentrification Is Modern Colonization: Activists in San Francisco's Mission District compared Google buses to conquistador transportation—rolling through their neighborhoods, stopping at their bus stops, letting in only young white tech workers while longtime residents stood by with their children. San Francisco had become a company town for the tech industry, with the city rolling out a red carpet—including massive tax breaks—while people in surrounding neighborhoods were evicted.•       The Market Will Never Solve This—And That's the Point: It's never going to be profitable enough to build the deeply affordable low-income housing we actually need. That's why all the housing built in the past fifteen years has been luxury housing. New York City has entire half-empty skyscrapers. San Francisco consistently meets its targets for luxury construction but fails on low-income housing. Market-based solutions alone are insufficient.•       Rent Control Stabilizes Lives, Not Just Rents: Maharawal grew up in a rent-stabilized apartment in New York City—it's the reason her family could stay. Rent stabilization gives people a chance to imagine a future somewhere. The real foil isn't small landlords; it's private equity firms making billions off rental housing. A statewide rent cap proposal in California didn't even make it out of committee in a Democrat-led state.•       The Housing Crisis Is About Regulation, Not Just Supply: Fifteen million homes sit vacant in the United States. Maharawal argues the crisis isn't simply a lack of housing—it's a lack of regulation on the housing we already have. The Abundance argument for deregulation misdiagnoses the problem. When you reframe it, solutions like rent control, community land trusts, and social housing become obvious.•       Anti-Eviction Activism Offers a Model for This Moment: The movement grew out of Occupy, as activists found themselves moving evicted friends out of the city every weekend. A small group of dedicated people built community, combated the deep alienation that eviction creates, and fought to keep each other in their homes. Some of them are still there. In a time of political hopelessness, these are concrete examples of things that worked. About the GuestManissa Maharawal is an assistant professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C., and the author of Anti-Eviction: The Fight Against Tech-Led Gentrification in San Francisco. She is a co-founder of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project and has previously written about the Occupy movement and housing justice in the San Francisco Bay Area.ReferencesPrevious Keen On episodes mentioned:•       Ida Susser on the Yellow Vests and the battle for democracy in France•       Patrick Markee on homelessness in the New Gilded Age•       Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson on Abundance and the housing crisisAbout 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 housing crisis in the Bay Area (01:46) - Anti-Eviction and the colonization metaphor (04:16) - "It's just the market" — is that a credible argument? (06:12) - Things could be different: contesting gentrification (07:34) - Has San Francisco's government helped or hurt? (10:07) - Rent control: the policy nobody will pass (12:20) - The Abundance debate and the split on the left (15:08) - Misdiagnosing the housing crisis: regulation, not just supply (16:47) - Governo...

"You can't wear a yellow vest on a demonstration anymore because you get arrested as soon as the police see you." — Ida SusserIn November 2018, something strange happened in France. People from the urban periphery—truck drivers, nurses, teachers, plumbers—drove seven or eight hours to Paris wearing yellow safety vests. They weren't students. They weren't union members. They weren't organized by any political party. They were furious about a diesel tax, but really about something deeper: decades of disinvestment, cut services, shuttered bakeries, and a government that had abandoned them.Anthropologist Ida Susser spent years studying this spontaneous movement for her new book, The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy. Like so many other observers, Susser sought to identify them on the traditional left/right political spectrum. The uncomfortable truth, she discovered, is that many had never voted. Many didn't care about consistent ideology. They mixed and matched political ideology, bricolage-style. Marine Le Pen tried to claim them. So did Mélenchon on the far left. Neither succeeded. The Yellow Vests didn't want either fascist or communist leaders.Theoretical comparisons with MAGA and the Tea Party are tempting. We find the same rage, the same economic disinvestment, same feeling of political abandonment. But, for Susser, there's a crucial difference. The Tea Party was mostly an astroturf movement—manufactured by economic and political elites. The Yellow Vests, in contrast, are authentically grassroots. And these days, in Macron's France, you can't even wear a yellow vest on the street without getting arrested. So an incredulous Susser watched a 75-year-old man, innocently going about his business, taken away by police. His crime? That bright vest. Five Takeaways●      They Weren't Left or Right—At Least Not Initially: The Yellow Vests didn't come with a consistent ideology. Many had never voted. They mixed and matched political ideology, bricolage-style. Marine Le Pen tried to claim them. So did Mélenchon on the far left. Neither succeeded. The Yellow Vests didn't want either fascist or communist leaders.●      The Diesel Tax Was the Trigger, Not the Cause: The real issue was decades of disinvestment in rural France. Trains cut. Buses cut. Schools moved further away. Bakeries and post offices shuttered. People had to drive everywhere—then the government taxed their diesel. Macron became enemy number one. They called him Jupiter. They called him king.●      MAGA Comparison Is Apt—But There's a Key Difference: Same rage, same abandoned communities, same sense that elites have forgotten them. But the Tea Party was mostly an astroturf movement—channeled by economic and political elites. The Yellow Vests, in contrast, are genuinely grassroots.●      They Refuse Leadership on Principle: The Yellow Vests are part of a horizontalist movement going back to the World Social Forum. They write their messages on their backs. They won't name leaders. Susser didn't put a single name in her book—they wouldn't allow it. With surveillance cameras everywhere, it's also safer not to be known.●      You Can't Wear a Yellow Vest in France Anymore: An incredulous Susser watched a 75-year-old man standing quietly get taken away by police for wearing one. The other man without a vest was left alone. The movement lives on in the pension strikes, in the songs, in the rage. But the vest itself has become a crime. About the GuestIda Susser is an anthropologist at the City University of New York and the author of The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy. She has previously conducted research in South Africa and on urban poverty in the United States.ReferencesPrevious Keen On episodes mentioned:●      Charles Derber on progressive populism●      Hélène Landemore on deliberative democracy and citizen assemblies●      Christopher Clark on Revolutionary Spring and 1848 (upcoming)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:

"He's blundered here. He's trying to set policy for the government on the use of AI through a sales contract." — Keith Teare on Dario AmodeiThere's only one story this week: Dario Amodei's refusal to let the Department of War use Anthropic's best technology for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Silicon Valley rallied behind him. The New York Times covered it. Sam Altman publicly supported him—while quietly cutting his own deal with the administration. But Keith Teare thinks Anthropic is wrong.Keith's argument is simple: vendors don't set policy. If you want to sell to governments, you can't then dictate what they do with your product. That's not your job. And by trying to do it, Amodei has alienated the entire US administration and created a fake battle that can only damage his company. Andrew is more sympathetic. In his view, Amodei is taking a political position against Trump—and in 2026, with Congress marginalized and corporations increasingly powerful, that's just the nature of things.The debate cuts to something deeper: the power shift between corporations and the state. Oppenheimer couldn't say no to the government because he worked for them. Amodei can say no because he doesn't. These companies now speak to the government as almost equals. Meanwhile, Citruni Research released a white paper predicting AI will collapse the economy and destroy white-collar jobs. Jack Dorsey just cut 40% of Square's workforce. The stock jumped 25%. Five Takeaways●      Keith: Amodei Has Blundered: Vendors don't determine the use of what you buy from them. By trying to set policy through a sales contract, Amodei has alienated the entire US administration and created a fake battle that can only damage his company. He hasn't read the Art of War.●      Andrew: This Is a Political Stand: Amodei isn't naive—he's taking a position against Trump. And in 2026, with Congress marginalized and corporations increasingly powerful, the fact that he's willing to take the government on publicly is astonishing. He's kept his job. The investors are fine with it.●      The Power Has Shifted: Oppenheimer couldn't say no to the government because he worked for them. Amodei can say no because he doesn't. What Anthropic has at its fingertips is not something the government has. These companies now speak to the government as almost equals.●      Silicon Valley Is Split: Right libertarians are small-government supporters of the administration. Left libertarians are bigger-government supporters of welfare. Vinod Khosla is a hybrid—pro-America militarily, fearful of China. Tim Cook does whatever governments tell him. NVIDIA is navigating best.●      Jack Dorsey Cut 40%—Stock Jumped 25%: Citruni Research released a white paper predicting AI will collapse the economy. Noah Smith called it a scary bedtime story. But Dorsey just did it for real at Square. If AI succeeds, lots of white-collar jobs go. The social contract between capital and labor is breaking. About the GuestKeith Teare is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and publisher of That Was The Week, a weekly tech newsletter. He is a co-founder of TechCrunch and has been a fixture in Silicon Valley for decades.ReferencesThis week's reading:●      Ezra Klein's interview with Jack Clark — Andrew calls it the interview of the week.●      Citruni Research white paper — The AI jobs apocalypse scenario that crashed the software market on Monday.●      Noah Smith's response — Calls the Citruni report a "scary bedtime story."Previous Keen On episodes mentioned:●      Maya Kornberg on Congress being "Stuck" (Episode 2815)●      Arne Westad on pre-WWI parallels (upcoming)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:

Hold on to your hats!   My featured guest for this episode of Necronomicast is Dr. Rizwan Virk! A graduate of MIT and Stanford, Rizwan Virk is a successful entrepreneur, video game pioneer, film producer, venture capitalist, computer scientist and bestselling author. Virk recently finished his doctoral research at the Center for Science and the Imagination (CSI) and teaching classes on the Metaverse, Innovation and Simulation Theory at the College of Global Futures and the Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. His books include The Simulation Hypothesis, Startup Myths & Models: What You Won't Learn in Business School, Wisdom of a Yogi, The Simulated Multiverse, Treasure Hunt and Zen Entrepreneurship.   Virk founded Play Labs @ MIT, a startup accelerator, and invested in many successful startups including Discord, Theta Labs, Upland and Tapjoy.  His startups created video games played by millions, including Tap Fish and games based on Game of Thrones, Star Trek, The Walking Dead, Grimm and Penny Dreadful. Virk and his books have been featured on The Joe Rogan Podcast, in Forbes, The Telegraph, NBC News, vox.com, Techcrunch, Inc., VentureBeat, Digital Trends, BBC Science Focus, and Scientific American, CBS, the CBC, Coast to Coast AM and The History Channel.  He has been a speaker and mentor ranging from MIT's $100k Business Plan Competition and Delta V accelerator to 500 Startups, Talks @ Google and GamesBeat in Silicon Valley. Follow him @rizcambridge, and at zenentrepreneur.com. "The Simulation Hypothesis" at Amazon. Support the Necronomicast and "Buy Me A Coffee"!

"He lied more than I thought he did—and I thought he lied a lot." — Tom Wells on Henry KissingerIn our Epstein age, everyone seems to have access to everyone else's dirtiest secrets. But half a century ago, in the Watergate era, it was harder to get one's hands on the secret files, phone calls and other private data. But historian Tom Wells has done exactly that with the private phone calls of Henry Kissinger. Wells' new book, The Kissinger Tapes, is based on transcripts of Kissinger's secretly recorded phone conversations—recordings he made primarily for his memoirs and to keep track of what he told to whom.Wells came to the project as a Kissinger critic but found himself respecting certain things about him: particularly his stamina, the work ethic and political skills. What Wells didn't expect was to discover that Kissinger lied even more than most of us assume. Especially about Vietnam and Cambodia. The most damning revelation is his callousness. Kissinger reveled in body counts, Wells reports. He even supported American planes indiscriminately bombing Vietnam so as to hit something. Anything. Anyone.So was Kissinger evil? Or was he, to borrow from Arendt's account of the Adolf Eichmann trial, banal? Whereas Eichmann might have been following orders, Henry Kissinger was following his own career. One was an efficient bureaucrat, the other a supreme networker. Neither had any sensitivity to human suffering. Five Takeaways●      He Lied More Than Expected: Wells came to the project already critical of Kissinger. But going through the transcripts, he discovered Kissinger lied even more than he'd assumed. About the secret wiretaps of government officials and journalists. About the false reporting system for the Cambodia bombing. He kept saying he didn't know anything, had nothing to do with it. He did.●      The Callousness Is Stunning: Nixon and Kissinger reveled in body counts. Nixon said, "I don't care about the civilian casualties." During the Laos invasion, he said he didn't even care if they lost 10,000 South Vietnamese troops. Kissinger remarked that if American planes just dropped bombs out the door without aiming, they'd have to hit something. This wasn't indifference. It was gratification.●      Morality Was Not Part of the Calculation: Kissinger saw most conflicts through the lens of U.S.-Soviet rivalry. The balance of power mattered. The human cost didn't. They secretly armed the Pakistani military during the Bangladesh genocide—between 300,000 and 3 million dead—because they needed Pakistan as a channel to China. The opening to Beijing was more important than the slaughter.●      He Was Supremely Two-Faced: Kissinger was always deferential to Nixon's face, always addressed him as "Mr. President." Behind his back, he said nasty things. He trashed Secretary of State William Rogers constantly. He and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird were rivals, both master leakers, both devious. They came to respect each other for it.●      Evil or Banal?: Hannah Arendt wrote about the banality of evil after covering the Eichmann trial. Some apply that framework to Kissinger. But there's a difference. Eichmann was following orders. Kissinger was following his career. One was an efficient bureaucrat. The other a supreme networker. Neither had any sensitivity to human suffering. About the GuestTom Wells is a historian and the author of The War Within: America's Battle Over Vietnam. He is based in New Mexico.ReferencesBooks mentioned:●      The Kissinger Tapes: Inside His Secretly Recorded Phone Conversations by Tom Wells — his new book based on transcripts of Kissinger's phone recordings.●      Zbig: The Man Who Cracked the Kremlin by Edward Luce — biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Kissinger's rival.People mentioned:●      Hannah Arendt wrote about "the banality of evil" while covering the Eichmann trial—a framework some apply to Kissinger.●      Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers; his son's book Truth and Consequences is discussed next week on the show.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 age of Epstein vs. the age of Kissinger (01:31) - Why did Kissinger secretly record his calls? (02:54) - Did you come to this as a Kissinger hater? (05:43) - He lied more than I thought he did (06:08) - Breaking news: The callousness (07:47) - Realpolitik vs. indifference to human suffering (09:47) - Did Kissinger recognize moral critics? (11:06) - What kind of man was Kissinger? (14:18) - His relationship with Nixon (15:15) - Who did Kissinger trust? (16:40) - His private life and playboy reputation (19:00) - What the tapes reveal about Vietnam (20:56) - Did he care about American casualties? (22:19) - The monstrous quality (24:20) - Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil (25:52) - What the Kissinger tapes tell us about Trump (27:31) - What would Kissinger make of Ukraine and Gaza?

The Friday Five for February 27, 2026: [01:02] ☕Starbucks Spring 2026 Menu  [02:45]

"They are fundamentally bound at the hip, because the Trump age is a conspiratorial age and a backlash against global wealth inequality... Epstein facilitated the rise of Trump." — Jason PackLate last year, Disorder podcast host Jason Pack came on the show and predicted that Mark Carney would be the "orderer" of 2025 and Jeffrey Epstein would be 2026's "disorderer-in-chief". Pack was uncannily right. Although, as he admits, such prescience gives him no pleasure.Pack is no conspiracist. He thought QAnon was a hoax; he saw the antisemitism baked into its bizarre theories. But he's come to believe there was a genuine cover-up of the Jeffrey Epstein case—not orchestrated by the CIA, but by prosecutors who didn't want to go after powerful people, journalists comfortably ensconced in Epstein's world, and a system where too much wealth has accrued to too narrow a sliver of global elites.What haunts him most is what the emails reveal about how the world actually works. Favors exchanged for favors in a network of infinite back-scratching. Noam Chomsky (!) and Leon Black busy trading intros for access to Epstein's underworld. The emails reveal completely amoral elites, Pack says, nihilists without even the pretense of moral scruples.Trump and Epstein, Pack argues, are bound at the hip—not because Trump is guilty of Epstein's crimes, but because both are products of the same angry backlash against global wealth inequality and the collapse of institutional trust. Trump is, in Pack's memorable phrase, "a legal Epstein"—someone who gets things done through connections, who can appear the most elite Wall Street type to bankers and the most common man to coal miners. The evil genius of doppelgängerism. For Pack, the Epstein files may be a tremor before the big one—AI or crypto could bring the real 1789 style earthquake—but they've already destroyed something of priceless value: the illusion that elites are working on the behalf of the people. Five Takeaways●      The Cover-Up Wasn't a Conspiracy—It Was the System: Cases sat on prosecutors' desks in Florida in 2003 and weren't filed. Journalists were tipped off in the early 2000s and didn't run with it. Pack isn't alleging CIA orchestration—just that too much wealth and power had accrued to too narrow a tranche of global elites, and they were able to cow journalists and prosecutors into silence.●      Trump and Epstein Are Bound at the Hip: Both are products of the same backlash against global wealth inequality and the collapse of trust since the end of the Cold War. The irony: Trump is himself a member of the elite who benefited from these networks, but his political appeal lies in his promise to dismantle them.●      "Order" vs. the Law of the Jungle: The world Epstein built wasn't ordered in any traditional sense—it was the logic of the jungle, based on blackmail and compromat. Russian intelligence running a financial sex trafficking influence scheme at the heart of the Anglo-American establishment. When they needed a service, they got the service.●      The Collapse of Social Trust: Pack contrasts our "low-trust" Anglo-American society with Scandinavian models where people still believe institutions work on their behalf. The Epstein files reveal completely amoral elites who believed in nothing—no religion, no moral code—and had no compunction about harming young women or stealing pensioners' money.●      A Tremor Before the Big One: Epstein won't bring down neoliberal capitalism. But AI making five families wealthier than the rest of the world combined could. Or crypto going to zero and 300,000 people realizing their life savings are gone. The true significance of the Epstein files is that they've stripped away the illusion that the system works on our behalf. About the GuestJason Pack is a historian, consultant, and host of the Disorder podcast. He is the author of Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder. He is based in London.ReferencesPodcasts mentioned:●      Disorder Episode 167 — "Epstein Survivor Rina Oh on Getting Justice"●      Disorder Episode 168 — "How Can Epstein's Victims Get Closure? with Civil Rights Attorney Lisa Bloom"●      Bobby Capucci's "Jeffrey Epstein: The Cover-Up Chronicles" — deep dives into the Epstein files●      Jewish Currents — left-wing Jewish treatment of Epstein's connections to Ehud Barak and the MossadPrevious Keen On episodes mentioned:●      Peter Bale interview (Episode 2813) — discussed the Epstein media cover-up and Michael Wolff's attempts to interest mainstream mediaAbout 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: Jason Pack hates being right (02:04) - Carney's Davos speech: Words as actions (05:44) - A Canadian-led initiative on Ukraine? (06:55) - The Epstein cover-up: Why I believe it (11:05) - What the New York Times knew and when (13:21) - Epstein survivors and their lawyers (15:06) - Too much wealth has accrued to too narrow a tranche (17:09) - The uncomfortable Jewish angle (21:03) - Emails to Woody Allen and Leon Botstein (23:00) - Trump and Epstein: Bound at the hip (27:03) - Trump as a legal Epstein (29:33) - Disorder or the law of the jungle? (33:28) - Does Scandinavia get off lighter? (38:05) - A tremor before the big one?

Microsoft just dropped patches for SIX actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities — and that's just the beginning. In this week's Hacking News, we break down the February 2026 Patch Tuesday emergency, North Korea's Lazarus Group poisoning npm and PyPI through fake job recruiters, nation-state hackers weaponizing Google's Gemini AI (including malware that writes its own payloads), a massive Dutch telecom breach affecting 6.2 million people, and a U.S. government contractor breach that ballooned from 4 million to potentially tens of millions affected. This is Exploit Brokers by Forgebound Research — cybersecurity news, threat intelligence, and insights. Whether you're a security analyst, developer, or just someone who wants to stay informed, this episode has something for you.

"The House hasn't reorganized committee jurisdictions since the early 70s—before the internet existed." — Maya KornbergAmerica is stuck stuck stuck stuck. Almost exactly a year ago, I interviewed the Atlantic's Yoni Applebaum about Stuck, his influential critique of the housing crisis. Now we have another Stuck—this one by Maya Kornberg, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. Only her subtitle is about Congress, not housing: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress.This is, Kornberg argues, one of the toughest times in modern American history to sit in Congress. Members are forced to spend most of their time making fundraising calls. They face record-high threats against themselves and their families. And the media incentivizes spectacle over policymaking—what she describes as "Kings and Prophets"—where members have the power of the megaphone but not the power to drive legislation.One fact captures Congressional stuckness: The House hasn't reorganized its committee jurisdictions since the early 1970s—before the internet existed. Half the Senate, then, questioned Mark Zuckerberg because no single committee is responsible for tech. Not even mad libertarians like Elon Musk could make that one up.Kornberg recently ran for New York City Council in Park Slope and, as a friend of Israel, discovered firsthand how media latches onto the most salacious angle. That said, she's not giving up on Congress. Kornberg is hopeful that a fresh wave of reformers, like the Watergate babies of '74 or the class of 2018, can unstick it. But she is, nonetheless, clear-eyed about what we're facing: a four-alarm fire for our democracy. Five Takeaways●      This Is the Hardest Moment in Modern History to Be in Congress: Members face astronomical campaign costs, record-high threats and violence against themselves and their families, and a leadership-driven system that has stripped rank-and-file members of real power to drive legislation.●      Money, Media, and Violence Keep Congress Stuck: Members spend every mealtime making fundraising calls. They pay "dues" to the party just to get on good committees. Media incentivizes spectacle over policymaking. And threats against members have risen year after year.●      Congress Hasn't Reorganized Since Before the Internet: The House hasn't reorganized committee jurisdictions since the early 1970s. Half the Senate questions Mark Zuckerberg because no single committee is responsible for tech. When everyone's responsible, no one is.●      More Chairmen Named Mike Than Women Committee Leaders: The pay-to-play system in Congress disadvantages women, communities of color, working-class Americans, and young Americans—anyone who faces greater barriers to fundraising faces greater barriers to power.●      Waves of Reformers Can Unstick Congress: The Watergate babies of '74, the Republican Revolution of '94, the class of 2018—frustrated reformers have reshaped Congress before. The midterms could bring another wave, if the public frustration is deep enough. About the GuestMaya Kornberg is a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. She holds a PhD from Oxford and is the author of Inside Congressional Committees. She recently ran for New York City Council in Brooklyn's Park Slope.ReferencesBooks mentioned:●      Stuck: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress by Maya Kornberg — her new book on why Congress is stuck and how to unstick it.●      Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity by Yoni Applebaum — on the housing crisis, interviewed on this show a year ago.●      Why Nothing Works by Marc Dunkelman — on who killed progress and how to bring it back.People mentioned:●      Henry Waxman served four decades in Congress and passed landmark health and environmental legislation even under Reagan.●      Lauren Underwood came to Congress in 2018 and co-founded the Black Maternal Health Caucus after losing a friend who died after childbirth.●      Hélène Landemore is a Yale political theorist who advocates for citizen assemblies as an alternative to representative democracy.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: America is stuck (02:04) - Why everyone woke up to this problem at once (03:49) - Why study Congress? Is it boring? (06:33) - Money, media, and violence (07:11) - Congressional chameleons: Waxman, Underwood, Andy Kim (10:24) - Is this bipartisan? (12:37) - The crummiest job in Washington (15:53) - Money: 'I spend every mealtime making fundraising calls' (17:29) - Should Congress get a pay raise? (19:53) - Media and the Gaza third rail (23:14) - Kings and Prophets: Spectacle over policy (25:32) - Can Congress stand up to Trump? (27:43) - Congress is woefully unprepared to regulate tech (31:54) - Gerontocracy: More Mikes than women (37:34) - Can citiz...

FOLLOW UP: JUDGE UPHOLDS HUGE AWARD AGAINST TESLAIn August 2025 a jury awarded a payout against Tesla of $243 million, for their partial responsibility in a fatal crash where Autopilot was in use. Tesla appealed this but that has been rejected. The expectation is they will appeal again. To read more, click this article link from TechCrunch.EU TO BRING IN RULES BENEFITTING EUROPEAN BUILT EVSThe European Union (EU) is working on legislation that would push for any state subsidies or incentives to be tied to EVs being made in Europe. The likelihood is that a vehicle will have to contain parts, excepting the battery, that have been 70% made in the EU. If you wish to learn more, click this electrive article link here.The news has caused concern in the UK, as this would mean cars made here would not meet the criteria for state incentives. You can read about this by clicking the link here from Modern Diplomacy.RENAULT TAKES FULL CONTROL OF FLEXISRenault has now taken full control of the electric light commercial vehicle company it created a joint-venture with Volvo Group and CMA CGM to form. Renault has agreed to buy out the 55% that the two other partners held, but the Volvo Group will remain a ‘strategic partner'. For more on this story, click this electrive link here.AUDI GETS A NEW CTOGeoffrey Bouquot is leaving Audi and his role as Chief Technology Officer, after only a year. He will be replaced by Rouven Mohr, who is Lamborghini's CTO, to become Head of Technical Development. The wording of the electrive article is quite interesting, you can see more for yourself by clicking this link here.STAGECOACH BRINGS MORE EBUSES TO DEVONStagecoach is bringing 110 electric buses to Devon, working on routes from Tobay, Barnstable and Exeter. Let's hope they have measured the road widths and checked this time! To read more, click this electrive article link here.TFL AWARD RAPID CHARGER CONTRACTTotalEnergies has been awarded the contract for installing 43 rapid charge points across London. These will be a mix of 100 and 200kW power. You can find out more by clicking this electrive article link here.If you like what we do, on this show, and think it is worth a £1.00, please consider supporting us via Patreon. Here is the link to that CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT THE PODCASTNEW NEW CAR NEWS -Omoda 5 SHS-SOmoda are bringing a hybrid version of the 5 model to the UK, from March 2026. Called the 5 SHS-S, which stands for “Super Hybrid System - Hybrid”. Priced at £25,740 this undercuts the Nissan Qasqai by around £5,000. The company makes it clear the electric capability of this is to aid economy and efficiency.

"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.

"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 ...

"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

"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