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In this episode of Inside Trader Joe's, we're taking you inside our customers' shopping carts to find out what keeps them coming back to Trader Joe's again and again. For this edition of our Customer Cart Conversations, we go to Trader Joe's number 32 in East Pasadena, California. Captain Jadez gets up close and personal with the contents of customers' carts, with questions about favorites. Along the way, we get some insights into how Trader Joe's brings a little joy and deliciousness into their busy lives. We even talk to some Crew Members who share their go-to product recommendations for customers (and podcast listeners!). What's in YOUR cart? Transcript (PDF)
This episode was deleted by YouTube without much explanation. Inside we discuss Peter Thiel's secretive Dialog group, Charlie Kirk's latest controversy, James Franco's bizarre disclosure video, and the 1000th episode of Tin Foil Hat lead this week's insanity. Plus: Keir Starmer is out, Lindsey Graham's latest war push, the White House joking about Q, Oliver Tree's interests, Trader Joe's tote-bag chaos, and anti-Rogan protesters proving once again that nobody understands Joe Rogan. Sam and Johnny break down the internet's strangest stories, media narratives, political theater, and conspiracy culture.Visit NOCD.com to book a free 15-minute call!For simple, online access to personalized and affordable care for Hair Loss, ED, Weight Loss, and more, visit Hims.com/BROKENSIM. For Sam's dates and more visit samtripoli.com!Get fifteen dollars off your first task at Taskrabbit dot com or on the Taskrabbit app using promo code BROKEN!Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/broken.More stuff: Get episodes early, and unedited, plus bonus episodes: patreon.com/brokensimulationSocial media: Twitter: @samtripoli, @johnnywoodard Instagram: @samtripoli, @johnnyawoodardBroken Simulation Hosts: Sam Tripoli, Johnny Woodard
On this episode of “Road to Special Olympics 2026 USA Games: a Special Chronicles Podcast Series,” we spotlight a groundbreaking moment in USA Games history: the debut of Unified Cornhole. Representing Special Olympics Rhode Island, Unified partner Sharon Laliberte shares what it means to compete in a sport built on teamwork, trust, and inclusion. Sharon reflects on the power of Unified Sports, the friendships formed through competition, and the pride of helping introduce a new event to the national stage. Her story shows how inclusion isn't just a value — it's a way of competing, connecting, and creating opportunities for athletes everywhere. Episode 846 ShowNotes & Links
On this episode of “Road to Special Olympics 2026 USA Games: a Special Chronicles Podcast Series,” we return to the water with Amanda Propheter, a swimmer whose positivity and drive ripple through every practice. Amanda talks about the support system that lifts her up, the challenges she's faced along the way, and the belief — in herself and from others — that fuels her journey to the USA Games. Her energy is contagious, her determination inspiring, and her story a reminder that confidence grows one stroke at a time. Dive deeper into Amanda's motivation and her future goals. Episode 845 ShowNotes & Links
Keir Starmer resigns as UK Prime Minister and Labour Leader. Dana exposes Starmer's political successor's even more socialist view points. A ridiculous Algerian sports analyst claims Lionel Messi is protected by the Jewish lobby. The EU chants “SEND THEM BACK” in a remarkable vote over migrant returns. Shoppers across the country lined up outside Trader Joe's after the grocery chain released a new $2.99 tote bag. An American Olympic canoeist is arrested for allegedly vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Iran pulls a 180 on one of the MOU agreements. Was J.D. Vance snubbed by the Qatari Prime Minister? Plus more, commentary.Thank you for supporting our sponsors that make The Dana Show possible…Concerned Women For Americahttps://ConcernedWomen.org/DanaFor a donation of $20 or more, Concerned Women of America will send you their book: A Woman's Guide: Seven Rules for Success in Business and Life. Ghost Bedhttps://GhostBed.com/DANAGhostBed has the cooling luxury mattress you need for the best summer sleep. Use code DANA for an extra 10% off sitewide.Jones Road Beautyhttps://JonesRoadBeauty.comGet a Free Full Size Mascara with first purchase using code DANA.Webroothttps://Webroot.com/DanaMake the switch and feel the difference of truly fast, modern antivirus protection — for a limited time, you can save 60% with code DANARelief Factorhttps://ReliefFactor.comDeclare your independence from pain with Relief Factor—start the 3-Week QuickStart for just $17.76Prebornhttps://PreBorn.com/DanaDonate today to help another Mother and Father experience hope. $28 sponsors one ultrasound and can help save a baby's life. Or Dial #250 and say BABYByrnahttps://Byrna.com/DanaTrusted by law enforcement, security professionals, and everyday Americans—defend yourself and your family with Byrna.HumanNhttps://Humann.com/DanaSave $5 on HumanN Cholesterol Health Daily at Sam's Club. Head to your local Sam's Club and do more to support your cholesterol health with the science-first brand. Patriot Mobilehttp://PatriotMobile.com/DANAVisit online or call 972-PATRIOT and use promo code DANA for a FREE month of service.Pocket HoseText DANA to 64000For a limited time, get two FREE gifts—a 360° rotating pocket pivot and thumb drive nozzle when you buy a new Pocket Hose Ballistic; just text DANA to 64000, message and data rates may apply.Subscribe today and stay in the loop on all things news with The Dana Show. Follow us here for more daily clips, updates, and commentary:YoutubeFacebookInstagramXMore InfoWebsite
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It's Friday, which means it's Shoot Around time. Episode 137. Robert Horry, Rob Jenners, and B-Dog are back with the fan questions that didn't make the Tuesday show — plus some detours that definitely weren't on the agenda. First up: a listener asks whether certain championships just mean more than others. Brian Windhorst sparked the debate on ESPN comparing the Knicks title to the LeBron-Cleveland moment in 2016. Robert's answer might surprise you — for him personally, the 2005 title in San Antonio hit harder than any of the Lakers runs, and he explains why. B-Dog makes the case for Kobe's first ring without Shaq, and Rob gets into what the 2021 Braves World Series meant to him working inside that organization. Then there's the World Cup. It's in America right now, and a viral video of a French guy experiencing Buc-ee's for the first time is basically the greatest piece of content on the internet. The guys use it as a jumping off point: what does a foreigner absolutely have to experience in the US? Waffle House at 2 AM makes the list. Soul food does too. Atlanta gets discussed at length, and Jameis Winston cleaning up a stadium in Dallas with Japanese fans is just a genuinely wholesome moment. A listener question about Rick Brunson's courtside moment with Jalen after the title turns into one of the more personal conversations on the show — all three guys share a memory with their dads. Robert's involves sneaking candy into Silver Streak and a hard foul from his pops during a pickup game. Rob talks about a rough stretch with his father that got repaired when his daughter was born. Worth a listen. From there: household chores, the great grocery shopping debate, Trader Joe's vegan oatmeal cookies vs. Thin Mints, and a final fan question about the wildest thing anyone's ever seen at a live sporting event. Robert tells a story from a Lakers-SuperSonics game that Phil Jackson definitely remembers. And somewhere in there, a bird dies at a Braves spring training game. Episode 137 of the Shoot Around — every Friday on the Big Shot Bob Podcast feed.
On today's MJ Morning Show:Julian is in as manual laborNow a police chief, but was fired from another agencyMorons in the newsMJ drinking moreBlue Gatorade hot dogsEstee Lauder "lethal injection"What did Michelle want from Trader Joe's?Cities most and least enthusiastic about ice creamBikini dental procedureTim TamsBilly Bush's comments on Al Roker - He's meanFig growing on MJ's house he wants to get rid ofSauerkraut and kimchi diet in Trump's cabinetMJ's work hoursTiktok stories - don't believe the videos on TiktokBetter Call Saul is back?Bath towel debate: How often should you wash your towelsHow much is in Starbucks' drinks?Don't tamper with foodLily from Arizona's review of "Poolboy"Meth PantsAldi is giving away blind boxesWaymo recalling robo taxisSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Theresa Benvenuto: Fathers, Legacy, and Living Your Purpose This special Father's Day edition of the Stay On Course Podcast brings together two women bonded through loss, faith, and a shared belief in purpose-driven living. Theresa and Julie each lost their fathers ten years ago. Together they explore what it means to grieve authentically, honor a legacy, and carry forward the lessons their fathers instilled in them. ️ About Theresa Benvenuto Theresa Benvenuto is the Doctor of Connections, with a remarkable gift for building meaningful relationships and helping others discover where their strengths, purpose, and people truly align. She brings her expertise in connection alongside her story of loss and legacy to this conversation. Fun Fact: Theresa's favorite dish is eggplant parmesan made the traditional way, with flour so the eggplant melts on the tongue. Her late mother-in-law made the best version she has ever tasted. What You Will Hear in This Episode Grief Has No Rules There is no timeline for loss. Julie shares how grief broke through at a Trader Joe's checkout just two days after losing her father. Theresa reflects on how it still arrives unexpectedly a decade later. Authentic grieving means following your own path, not someone else's timeline. The Gifts Our Fathers Left Behind Julie grieved her father by completing his life story and turning it into a book. Theresa is still sorting through her late father's baseball card collection, discovering handwritten letters he wrote to Brooklyn Dodgers legends. Both describe these inheritances as gifts that keep on giving. Our Fathers as Cheerleaders Julie's father became her greatest supporter after retirement, calling daily and cheering her on. Theresa's father attended her doctoral graduation just five months before he passed. Both speak to the irreplaceable loss of the person who believed in you without condition. Purpose, Legacy, and Letting Children Be Themselves A candid conversation about pursuing your true calling without waiting for approval. Julie reflects on wanting to sing, write, and build a business while those closest to her waited to believe it until they saw it done. People living in regret often blame others for things they never gave themselves permission to do. Signs from the Other Side Cardinals in the backyard. Roma tomatoes in impossible places. Both Julie and Theresa share the comfort of believing their fathers are still sending signs and cheering them on from heaven. Key Takeaways Grieve authentically on your own terms Look for the legacy your loved ones left behind Your purpose is yours alone to pursue Do the thing, even without approval Our fathers went first so we would believe anything is possible Special Note: Theresa's daughter begins medical school in July and runs the New York City Marathon in November to raise funds for the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation. If your father is still here, cherish every moment. If he is gone, trust he is still guiding you. Follow your purpose and do the thing he believed you could do. https://stacklist.app/julieriga #FathersDay #Legacy #PurposeDriven #StayOnCourse #GriefAndGrowth Subscribe to Stay On Course wherever you listen to podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
On this episode of “Road to Special Olympics 2026 USA Games: a Special Chronicles Podcast Series,” we flip over to the gymnastics floor with Katie O'Neill, a Team Illinois athlete whose strength, grace, and discipline shine through every routine. Katie shares how she prepares mentally and physically for competition, the setbacks that have shaped her resilience, and the goals she's aiming for as she heads to Minnesota. Her story is a testament to courage — the courage to try, to fall, to get back up, and to keep reaching for something bigger. Tune in to learn more about Katie's training focus and her message to fans. Episode 841 ShowNotes & Links Follow the full 10‑part Road to 2026USAGames Series at SpecialChronicles.com/2026USAGames for all episodes and subscribe to the full series and remember: Choose To Include.
Trader Joe's, Christmas In July, & Taylor's Wedding. Listen. Leave a Review. Get Patreon. Enjoy!! Check out The Cover to Cover Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/franjola ------------------------------ COVER TO COVER MERCH!!! CLICK HERE!! ----------------------------------- VISIT OUR SPONSORS!! ----------------------------------- Eat Healthy AND Convenient with FACTOR! Get 50% Off with Code: covertocover50off Visit factormeals.com/covertocover50off ------------------------------ Get Lifted, But Not Too High, with LUMI! Get 30% Off Your Order Visit lumigummies.com and use Code COVER ------------------------------ Shave Your Parts with MANSCAPED! Get 20% Off + Free Shipping Code: COVER Visit https://www.manscaped.com/ ------------------------------ Conquer your wellness with THRIVE! $30 Off Your First Order + A FREE $60 gift. Visit thrivemarket.com/cover ------------------------------ CASH-MERE Outside, How Bout Dat? With QUINCE! Get Free Shipping + 365 Days Return Visit www.quince.com/cover ------------------------------ Take a Mental Health Break with BETTERHELP! This episode is Sponsored by Betterhelp, get 10% off your first month, Visit BetterHelp.com/c2c ------------------------------ Shop Healthy, Eat Healthy with HUNGRYROOT! Get 40% off and A Free Gift FOR LIFE Visit hungryroot.com/cover Code: COVER ------------------------------ Better Mobile at a Better Price with MINT MOBILE! Get 3 Months for $15/Month + Free Shipping Visit MintMobile.com/cover ------------------------------ Follow Chris: http://www.franjola.fun/ https://www.instagram.com/chrisfranjola/ Follow Alex: https://www.instagram.com/conn.tv/ https://linktr.ee/Conn.TV Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Lines out the door at Trader Joe's, but it's not for food. What's the real reason behind this craze for tote bags?
Hour 1: Bob's Movie Club has its next assignment. Vinnie's all-time favorite movie: Get Shorty (1995) starring John Travolta and Danny DeVito. Send us your problems! We can help! Badadvice973@gmail.com. A successful child star, Daveigh Chase, passes away under strange circumstances. You might not recognize her name, but you definitely know her work. Gilmore Girls is leaving Netflix - but DON'T PANIC! The World Cup was a hit in the Bay last night. The US is playing Friday at noon. Here's what your dad REALLY wants for Father's Day. Sarah and Vinnie are already looking forward to next week's Bridge The Gap. Our smart phone habits might be contributing to the decreased birthrate. Americans are getting billions of robo calls a month. Sting is so generous. No, the other one. Hour 2: The third season premier of ‘The Capture' is today. Sam Worthington stars in a new show ‘I Will Find You' debuting on Netflix. Widow's Bay ended, but we haven't gotten to it yet. Jeff Probst and ‘Survivor' are producing an animated film. Jimmy Kimmel's sidekick is headed to the ballroom. Mike Myers is saying there will be an Austin Powers 4. Olivia Wilde is reflecting on being served custody papers on stage at Cinemacon. Scott Budman is on the show! Vinnie's got questions about the new Apple watch and iPhone. Are foldable phones gonna be a thing? Speaking of things that cost $2000, Scott is telling us the deal with the Snap glasses. Hour 3: Is hungover Bob smarter than a 5th grader? Another RIDICULOUS popcorn bucket in honor of Spiderman. It doesn't stop there. Jon & Kate Plus 8: The Kids' Revenge. Father's Day is creeping up on us! It's National Dump The Pump Day. Lines out the door at Trader Joe's, but it's not for food. The full list of those annoying maxxing trends. Hmm… LMT. Hour 4: Sarah is walking through the changes to The Grammy Awards. Looking back, are they good at picking the best “new” artist? Shania Twain is opening for Harry Styles at Wembley - thanks to his mom! Bob remembers seeing them at Coachella. Harry Styles is being praised for his vocals at an intimate orchestra performance. These careers have the highest divorce rates. Does Vinnie have kids he doesn't know about? Real or Fake: Lifetime Movie Edition.
Is hungover Bob smarter than a 5th grader? Another RIDICULOUS popcorn bucket in honor of Spiderman. It doesn't stop there. Jon & Kate Plus 8: The Kids' Revenge. Father's Day is creeping up on us! It's National Dump The Pump Day. Lines out the door at Trader Joe's, but it's not for food. The full list of those annoying maxxing trends. Hmm… LMT.
Episode 274: Midlife Lanes, Cool Jams, and Menopause Myths Busted! Summer break is off to a roaring start, but if you're feeling like your to-do list has been heavy on the "have-to-dos" and a little light on the "wanna-dos," you are not alone! In this episode, Heather and Dr. Carol Lynn are sitting down for a real, raw, and laughter-filled chat about finding contentment in your own lane, husband research fails, and the cooling pajamas that might just save your summer sleep. Plus, Dr. Carol Lynn puts her medical expert hat on to break down 5 trendy health habits that might actually be making your menopause symptoms worse. Pop in your earbuds, grab your favorite drink, and let's dive in! In This Episode, We Cover: Trusting Your Lane: Heather shares a powerful reminder about staying focused on the path God gave you. Speed is an illusion; real alignment and progress are quiet, steady, and intentional. The Holy Grail of Sleep: Dr. Carol Lynn shares her hilarious Christmas morning disappointment that turned into a obsession—affordable, cooling bamboo pajamas from Amazon that actually beat the midlife heat. Husband Logic: We love them, but why do David and Chris insist on "researching" a better version of the exact thing we asked for? (We're looking at you, non-KitchenAid mixer!). Debunking 5 Menopause Health Myths: Dr. Carol Lynn reacts to a viral list of habits women think are healthy but might be triggering worse symptoms: 1. Slashing Carbs: Why your brain actually needs glucose and serotonin-producing good carbs (hello, sweet potatoes and quinoa) to protect your mood and sleep. 2. Extreme Fasting: How long fasts can spike cortisol, lower thyroid function, and make you a little "hangry." 3. The Metamucil Band-Aid: Why a scoop of fiber supplement won't fix a chaotic diet, and how to get natural fiber first. 4. The 20-Step Wellness Routine: Why trying to "do it all" causes more anxiety than health. 5. Over-Exercising: When less is actually more for joint pain and fatigue. *Summer Treats: Heather shares her ultimate Trader Joe's and Blue Bell ice cream hack you have to try. Midlife Moxie Takeaway: "Your path won't always be the fastest or the loudest, but it will always be the most aligned. And alignment is what builds longevity.” Links & Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Get Your Midlife Moxie Journal: Stop trying to do it all! Keep your day focused on just the top 3 things that matter. Dr. Carol Lynn's Holy Grail Cooling PJs: The Short Sleeve & Shorts Bamboo Set (Perfect for the June heat!) Follow Heather on Instagram and Facebook to see the picture of Dr. Carol Lynn modeling her favorite PJs! What's Next? Tune in next week as we chat about all the books on our summer reading lists right now! Put your lip gloss on and sparkle, don't forget to smile, and we'll see you next time! Connect With Us: Subscribe: Tap the plus sign (+) in the top right corner of your screen on Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. Connect with Your Life Coach BFFs: Join the Midlife Moxie Newsletter: Don't miss out on fun items, exclusive updates, and the best life ever! The link is right in the show notes. Sign Up and Get the latest MOXIE news! Follow on Social Media: All our community connection is on our Our Midlife Moxie Facebook Page! (Yes, the podcast is Life Coach BFF Show, but our social is under Our Midlife Moxie – we hope to see you there!). @ourmidlifemoxie The Journal: Grab your My Midlife Moxie Journal on Amazon and register it on page two. Digital Version My Midlife Moxie Journal Connect with us: Sign Up and Get the latest MOXIE news! Join The Facebook Group: @ourmidlifemoxie Connect with Host Heather Pettey: Email: hpetteyoffice@gmail.com Private Coaching with Heather:https://www.ourmidlifemoxie.com/heatherpetteycoaching Speaker Request Here Instagram @HeatherPettey_ Facebook: @HeatherPettey1 Linkedin: @HeatherPettey Book: "Keep It Simple, Sarah" (Amazon bestseller) Connect with Host Dr. Carol Lynn: Linkedin Website: https://www.drcarollynn.com Facebook Group: @ourmidlifemoxie Website: www.ourmidlifemoxie.com Don't forget to subscribe to the Life Coach BFF Show for more inspiring content and practical life advice! Podcast Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. Heather Pettey is a certified coach. Dr. Carol Lynn is a licensed physician, and our guests share their own expertise. Nothing you hear here should be taken as medical advice. Always talk with your own doctor about your personal health or medical needs.
The boys are back with Jose, a mason jar full of questionable Trader Joe's vodka science, and a deep concern over whether crack can be liquor. This week gets into dive bars that smell like ashtray crotch, surprise house guests that should be illegal, shirtless driving, barefoot Jeep dreams, and the World Cup making Europeans lose their minds over Walmart, Waffle House, free refills, giant trucks, and American weather. The 2000s comedy bracket wraps up its first round with Forgetting Sarah Marshall, 50 First Dates, Dodgeball, and The Longest Yard, Kevin tries to reassure dads they're not completely screwing up summer, Chris brings back movie time, Jose calls out last week's fuckups, and somehow Nelly's acting career catches a stray.
On this episode, we break down the shocking divorce between Jelly Roll and Bunnie XO, including the reported reasons behind the split, Jelly Roll's savage post-breakup social media move, and how daughter Bailee Ann reacted publicly. We also cover the wild scene in Boston as Scottish soccer fans reportedly drank bars dry during the World Cup, creating beer shortages across the city. Plus, America has a new favorite fast-food chain as Jersey Mike's ends Chick-fil-A's long run atop customer satisfaction rankings. We also discuss the mysterious "ghost" radio signal baffling scientists, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's return to England, and Trader Joe's wildly popular mini tote bags making a comeback.#JellyRoll #WorldCup #JerseyMikesGet more AoA and become a member to get exclusive access to perks:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOfx0OFE-uMTmJXGPpP7elQ/joinGet Erin C's book here: https://amzn.to/3ITDoO7Get Merch here - https://bit.ly/AnthonyMerchSubscribe to the Anthony On Air Podcast here:Facebook - https://bit.ly/AntOnAirFBYouTube - https://bit.ly/AntOnAirYTApple Podcast - https://bit.ly/AntOnAirAppleSpotify - https://bit.ly/AntOnAirSpotTwitter - https://bit.ly/AntOnAirTwitterInstagram - https://bit.ly/AntOnAirInstaTikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@anthonyonairpodDiscord - https://discord.gg/78V469aV22Get more at https://www.AnthonyOnAir.com
On episode 4 of Road to Special Olympics USA Games: A Special Chronicles Podcast Series, we dive into the heart of what powers every Special Olympics athlete: their support system. From coaches who guide athletes toward the national stage to families who cheer through every high and low, this episode highlights the people who make the journey possible. You'll hear from Coach Matt Corso of Team Illinois Bowling and family member Cathy O'Neill, whose daughter Katie is competing in Gymnastics, as well as Team Illinois staff member Katelin Zandi who powerfully shares how inclusion doesn't see disability. Together, they reveal how encouragement, partnership, and community shape the road to the 2026 USA Games in Minnesota. Chapters: 0:00 – Episode Intro - Welcome to Episode 4 and today's theme: the support systems behind every athlete. 2:00 – Coach Interview: Matt Corso (Team Illinois Bowling) - Coach Matt shares his coaching philosophy, how he prepares athletes for USA Games, recognizing athlete struggles, partnering with families, managing pressure, and what inclusion means to him. 29:30 – Family Interview: Cathy O'Neill (Parent of Team Illinois Gymnastics Athlete) - Cathy reflects on being part of her daughter Katie's support system, the excitement of Minnesota hosting, daily encouragement at home, emotional moments, navigating nerves, celebrating growth, and the meaning of inclusion. 1:25:00 – Community Impact: Katelin Zandi (Team Illinois Staff) - Katelin discusses her role supporting athletes, the power of local programs, Midwest pride, what a strong support system looks like from a staff perspective, and the long‑term legacy of the Games. Jump to: Staff Interview 1:59:00 – Episode Wrap‑Up & Outro - A reflection on the power of support systems and how they shape the Special Olympics movement. Episode 840 ShowNotes & Links
A popular grocery chain with a fiercely loyal following may have another hit on its hands, two well-known retail brands are teaming up to capitalize on the lucrative back-to-college shopping season, and the age of self-aware machines may be arriving sooner than expected.
Forget dieting. It's all about the swap. Kennedy sits down with health and wellness expert Hunter Stoler to reveal how simple, budget-friendly food swaps can completely transform your nutrition, metabolism, and energy levels. Plus, Hunter shares his personal journey of losing 50 pounds, conquering chronic fatigue, and navigating the grocery store aisles to optimize your health without breaking the bank. Kennedy Now Available on YouTube: https://link.podtrac.com/kstw_yt Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kennedy_foxnews Join Kennedy for Happy Hour on Fridays! https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWlNiiSXX4BNUbXM5X8KkYbDepFgUIVZj Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
On today’s 6.17.26 show we talked about the game of corn hole, the San Francisco fourth of July fireworks show has moved to a different location, reason why West won’t be returning to Summer House, the Corpse Flower is about to bloom, more about Jelly Roll’s divorce, Trader Joe’s has released some more mini tote bags, Selena gives us an update on how the Quinceanera planning is going and more!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On episode 3 of Road to Special Olympics USA Games: A Special Chronicles Podcast Series, “The Athletes Journey” we explore what it truly takes for Special Olympics athletes to prepare for the 2026 USA Games. Join Daniel Smrokowski, Podcast Host, Special Olympics Illinois Athlete Leader and former Sargent Shriver Global Messenger, as he talks with athletes about their stories of motivation, training routines, overcoming obstacles, support systems, the setbacks that shaped their resilience, and goals driving them toward 2026 USA Games in Minnesota. Tune in as athletes share their stories of motivation, overcoming obstacles, support systems, their biggest dreams for the Games, and defining inclusion on and off the field. Plus we hear a powerful conversation with a unified partner making history with Unified Cornhole at the 2026 USA Games! Chapter Markers: 2:00 - Val Densler, Swimming SO Illinois 12:50 - Katie O'Neill, Gymnastics SO Illinois 33:33 Amanda Propheter, Swimming SO Illinois 54:18 Sharon Laliberte, Unified Cornhole SO Rhode Island Episode 839 ShowNotes & Links
Trader Joe's shoppers are celebrating, Casey's has big aspirations for its chicken wing program, and Publix has another item baking in its bakery.
Welcome to episode 575 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Jenna Arend. Inside Pinch of Yum's Strategy for Email Growth and Content Distribution with Jenna Arend This week, Bjork sits down with Jenna Arend, General Manager of Pinch of Yum, as part of our ongoing GRO mini-series. In this episode, she shares how Pinch of Yum is navigating the biggest shifts in the digital landscape right now, from the decline of third-party cookies to the rise of AI, and why those changes have pushed the team to double down on email and Facebook as their most reliable channels. Jenna also gets into the strategy behind keeping a long-running food blog relevant and thriving — from improving older content to creating targeted resources like meal plans and freezer meals. She shares how GRO has helped streamline the process of converting social media followers into loyal email subscribers, and why building that direct line of communication with your audience matters more than ever. If you've been thinking about how to future-proof your content strategy, this one is worth a listen! Three episode takeaways: Adapt your strategy as the digital landscape shifts: With changes like the decline of third-party cookies and the rise of AI, relying solely on search traffic is risky. Pinch of Yum has leaned into email and Facebook as more stable, direct channels — and it's paying off. Don't overlook your existing content: Improving older posts can be just as valuable as creating new ones, especially for a long-running blog looking to maintain relevance and traffic in an ever-changing algorithm environment. Make it easy for followers to become subscribers: A clear call to action paired with genuinely helpful resources — like meal plans or freezer meal guides — gives your audience a real reason to join your email list, and tools like GRO can make that conversion process even smoother. Resources: Pinch of Yum GRO Episode 547 of The Food Blogger Pro podcast: Inside Crowded Kitchen's Strategy for Growing to 2.4 Million Followers on Facebook Pinch of Yum - Freezer Meals Get Pinch of Yum's Trader Joe's Meal Plan for free here! See the Trader Joe's DM automation in action here! Episode 563 of The Food Blogger Pro podcast: Using AI to Eliminate Busywork and Unlock Creative Time with Jason Glaspey OpenClaw Live Q&A with Jenna: Marketing Your Content Follow Pinch of Yum on Instagram and Facebook Join the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook Group Thank you to our sponsors! This episode is sponsored by GRO. Learn more about our sponsors at foodbloggerpro.com/sponsors. Interested in working with us too? Learn more about our sponsorship opportunities and how to get started here. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to podcast@foodbloggerpro.com. Learn more about joining the Food Blogger Pro community at foodbloggerpro.com/membership.
On this Episode 2 of Road to Special Olympics 2026 USA Games: A Special Chronicles Podcast Series, we take you behind the scenes with a two incredible athlete leaders — David Booth and Shaun Linsey, co-chairs of the Athlete Advisory Council for the 2026 USA Games. Hosted by Daniel Smrokowski — founder of Special Chronicles, Special Olympics Athlete Leader with Team Illinois, and former Sargent Shriver Global Messenger — this episode explores how athlete leaders shape the athlete experience, influence decision‑making, and help build a more inclusive movement on the road to the 2026 USA Games in Minnesota. You'll hear: How David and Shaun became athlete leaders What the Athlete Advisory Council does How athlete voice impacts the 2026 USA Games Their hopes, challenges, and vision for the future of inclusion Whether you're an athlete, volunteer, partner, or champion of inclusion, this episode gives you a front‑row seat to the leadership shaping the Games. Episode 838 ShowNotes & Links
With the official start of summer still a week away, perhaps we're getting ahead of ourselves, but we just can't help it. We just get so excited for summer to start! Maybe it's the longer days. Maybe it's the warmer weather. Maybe it's spending more time with family and friends (see above, longer days). Or maybe it's just the exciting new products coming to our stores. In this episode of Inside Trader Joe's, we have a great list of new things to share – like Main Squeeze Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Creamy Dreamy Whipped Ricotta, Spicy Queso Dip, Buffalo Sauce, and Cookies & Creme Cookie Mix. Listen in for more from our list, then make YOUR list and head to your neighborhood Trader Joe's so you can get your summer started! Transcript (PDF)
The Gary & Shannon Show (06/15) Hour 1 – Gary and Shannon kick off the show with Shannon's Love Island editing complaints before learning of a tragic development behind the scenes in Fiji.Then, Gary admits he got unexpectedly patriotic during the UFC Birthday Bash, complete with the National Anthem, Blue Angels, and what he describes as a four-hour "freedom boner."They unpack lingering questions surrounding President Trump's Iran deal as markets react positively despite few details being publicly known.Plus, why Trader Joe's suddenly feels like a dating app, World Cup fans discover the wonder of America through Buc-ee's and Costco rotisserie chickens, and a new dating trend says maybe it's time to let your inner goblin show.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode, Chris Nichols and DJ Seeterlin explore what banks can learn from Trader Joe's approach to strategy, focusing on clear customer segments, intentional trade-offs, and delivering value over price. They discuss how aligning products, people, and experiences around a defined audience can help banks stand out, and how these same principles apply to areas like AI, where technology should enhance the human connection. Download our newest eBook: The Community Bank Performance Engine! The views, information, or opinions expressed during this show are solely those of the participants involved and do not necessarily represent those of SouthState Bank and its employees. SouthState Bank, N.A. - Member FDIC
Episode 1 of Road to Special Olympics USA Games: a Special Chronicles Podcast Series kicks off our journey to the 2026 Special Olympics USA Games by answering the essential question: What are the USA Games? On this premiere episode, host Daniel Smrokowski is joined today with someone who has been involved with the USA Games since the beginning and helped get these USA National Games started— Greg Epperson, President and Managing Director of Special Olympics North America. We explore the scale, mission, and impact of the Games; the history of Special Olympics; and why the 2026 USA Games matter right now. You'll hear how this national event brings together thousands of athletes with intellectual disabilities and showcases the power of inclusion, competition, and community. This episode sets the stage for the athlete stories, behind‑the‑scenes insights, and powerful conversations coming throughout the series. Episode 837 ShowNotes & Links
Send us Fan MailTrader Joe's Grand Reserve Sonoma County Brut RoséThis is another of Trader Joe's many Grand Reserve, Diamond Reserve, Platinum Reserve, North Coast, Carneros, Napa, and Sonoma Sparkling wines.The have many variations on a theme.Most of those were released near the holidays, the time when Bubbly rules the season.June Bubbles are not typical.In the podcast I speculate on what exactly this Sparkling wine is, I have no insider information, just wondering.Check us out at www.cheapwinefinder.comor email us at podcast@cheapwinefinder.com
Toledo police identify a suspect in the mass shooting at last weekend's Old West End Festival; Cincinnati man pleaded guilty to causing an apartment explosion that injured five people; a constitutional amendment regarding voter ID will be on the November ballot; northwest Ohio is getting a Trader Joe's grocery store.
Dan Mintz is an actor, comedian, and writer with a new standup special, Well-Rounded Entertainer, premiering soon on YouTube. Dan is best known as Tina Belcher on the beloved animated TV comedy Bob's Burgers, which has been on the air for 16 seasons. Where can you get burgers besides Bob's? Trader Joe's, that's where. Dan likes to shop there for foods that will please his family and provide nutritious meals while not busting his budget. He enjoys bananas and other fruits, as he explains to you in a voice that is his, not Tina's, but that carries enough of Tina's endearing low-level neurosis that you'll feel like you're at the store with a beloved friend as you drift off to sleep. Also, Dan is mildly concerned that his dog is secretly a fugitive from a Mexican drug cartel but no need to lose any sleep over that. Dan Mintz's new stand-up comedy special, Well-Rounded Entertainer, will be released on June 18th, 2026 on YouTube. Hey Sleepy Heads, is there anyone whose voice you'd like to drift off to, or do you have suggestions on things we could do to aid your slumber? Email us at: sleepwithcelebs@maximumfun.org. Follow the Show on: Instagram @sleepwcelebs Bluesky @sleepwithcelebs TikTok @SleepWithCelebs John is on Bluesky @JohnMoe John's acclaimed, best-selling memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is now available in paperback. _________________________________________________________________________ Join | Maximum Fun If you like one or more shows on MaxFun, and you value independent artists being able to do their thing, you're the perfect person to become a MaxFun monthly member. Go to www.maximumfun.org/joinsleeping for our one-stop portal to becoming a member and supporter of Sleeping with Celebrities. Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinsleeping
In this episode of The Costume House with Spencer Williams (The Art of Costume Podcast bonus episode), we head to the City of Angels for a conversation about one of television's most authentic love letters to Los Angeles: I Love LA. Spencer is joined by returning friend of the podcast and costume designer Christina Flannery. Together, they explore how Christina brought a distinctly Los Angeles authenticity to the screen, from Y2K-inspired fashion and vintage treasures to the subtle details that make the city feel instantly recognizable. Along the way, they discuss collaborating with Rachel Sennott, hunting for the perfect pieces at some of Christina's favorite vintage spots, navigating the uniquely chaotic culture of Trader Joe's parking lots, dressing an alien pop star, and crafting the memorable New York City finale.
In this episode of The Costume House with Spencer Williams (The Art of Costume Podcast bonus episode), we head to the City of Angels for a conversation about one of television's most authentic love letters to Los Angeles: I Love LA. Spencer is joined by returning friend of the podcast and costume designer Christina Flannery. Together, they explore how Christina brought a distinctly Los Angeles authenticity to the screen, from Y2K-inspired fashion and vintage treasures to the subtle details that make the city feel instantly recognizable. Along the way, they discuss collaborating with Rachel Sennott, hunting for the perfect pieces at some of Christina's favorite vintage spots, navigating the uniquely chaotic culture of Trader Joe's parking lots, dressing an alien pop star, and crafting the memorable New York City finale.
Tim Conway Jr Show Hour 4 (6.4) Primm Casino Rescue, Viral Trader Joe’s Gummies & Adam Carolla Tonight, we start with a possible last-minute save for the Primm casino resorts. Las Vegas-based LV Petroleum has emerged as a potential new owner and operator for the casino properties and travel amenities, just as the complex was previously scheduled to shut down permanently on July 4 after Affinity Gaming announced it would cease operations. Then, Trader Joe’s Sweet & Sour Gummy Worms are going viral—but not just because they’re zero sugar. One 8-piece serving packs 14 grams of fiber, which is about half the recommended daily amount. The problem? They taste like candy, so unsuspecting customers are eating way more than one serving—and finding out the hard way what too much fiber can do. At 9:35, Adam Carolla joins the show to talk about local politics, the state of California, and his very specific Home Depot habits. Plus, more with Adam on his KROQ Anniversary Show happening June 20, along with details on the upcoming documentary and why longtime radio fans will want to be there. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Conway Jr Show Hour 2 (6.4) Live Dynamite, Passive-Aggressive Drivers & HVAC Shakeups Tonight, we kick things off with a wild Valley Glen scare after a homeowner finds 20 sticks of live dynamite in a freezer, prompting evacuations near NoHo West. That brings back memories of the infamous 2021 LAPD fireworks explosion on 27th Street in South L.A. Then, Ventura Boulevard gets named the most passive-aggressive street in the U.S.—which raises the real question: are you a passive-aggressive driver? At 7:20, Dean Sharp, The House Whisperer, joins the show to break down the rapidly changing world of heating and air conditioning. New HVAC technology, new energy standards, new air quality rules, and a major shift in how homes are being heated and cooled could impact anyone looking at a new system. Plus, we get into Dutch Bros baristas asking, “Whatcha doing today?”, awkward customer service chit-chat, Trader Joe’s bread that barely survives the ride home, the new pastel mini tote bag craze, WeHo Pride weekend, Kathy Hilton stepping down as Grand Marshal of the parade, and smart gas pump tips to help you save money. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
also, I tried BTS (yes, that boy band) noodles and energy drinks
The new AIEWF website is live! Get your tickets booked ASAP as they -will- sell out. Take the AI Engineering Survey and get >$2k in credits and free AIE WF tickets!Most industry benchmarks compress intelligence and reasoning ability into scores.SWE-Bench Pro, MMLU, Humanity's Last Exam, etc. These metrics are useful, but don't always represent the full extent of how a model performs in the real world. Some of the most interesting evals today look less like exams and more like operating businesses in the real world. One of which is Vending Bench.In Anthropic's Mythos Preview System Card, Andon was the only third party eval to get their own section, observing increasingly concerning aggressive behavior:You don't know what a model is capable of doing in the real world unless you actually give it inventory, a wallet, tools, customers, competitors, humans, & some time. More often than not, it'll surprise you how much a model is capable of and in doing so, also reveal unexpected behavior: deception, context collapse, emergent coordination, & bizarre negotiation behavior.While an inflection point in personal agents came post-OpenClaw after full file access with bypass permissions became the norm, it is yet to come for agents in the real-world. However Andon Market, an actual in person store fully run and managed by AI, is paving the way for what is possible.Full Video PodFrom Claude trying to call the FBI over a $2/day vending machine charge to AI agents forming price cartels, hiring human employees, running physical stores, and writing existential robot musicals, Andon Labs is stress-testing what happens when frontier models stop being chatbots and start acting in the real world. In this episode, Andon Labs cofounders Lukas Petersson and Axel Backlund join swyx and Vibhu to unpack the strange, funny, and genuinely concerning edge cases that emerge when agents run businesses over long horizons.We go deep on Vending-Bench, Project Vend, Vending-Bench Arena, Bengt, Butter-Bench, Luna, and Andon's broader mission of building realistic real-world evals for autonomous AI systems. Lukas and Axel explain why dollar-denominated evals reveal things traditional benchmarks miss, how Claude ended up reporting its vending machine fees as cybercrime, why long context windows can drive agents into meltdown loops, what happens when agents compete with each other, and why the future of AI safety may depend on testing models in messy physical environments instead of clean benchmark sandboxes.We discuss:* Why Andon Labs started with dangerous capability evals and long-running agents* Vending-Bench and why running a vending machine is a deceptively hard AI benchmark* Why money-based evals avoid the saturation problem of traditional benchmarks* How Claude tried to call the FBI over a $2/day fee* Why long-horizon agents can spiral into existential and legalistic breakdowns* Project Vend: putting an AI-run vending machine inside Anthropic* Why real humans are “out of distribution” for simulated agents* Claudius, Seymour Cash, and the chaos of AI CEOs* How a human briefly became CEO of Claudius through a manipulated election* Why multi-agent systems can converge back into “helpful assistant” behavior* Bengt, Andon's internal office agent with email, spending, terminal, phone, camera, and internet access* How Bengt traded Amazon purchases for face-recognition training data* Claude's aggressive behavior, lies, refund avoidance, and price-cartel behavior in Arena* Why eval awareness may become the AI version of “are we living in a simulation?”* Blueprint Bench, spatial intelligence, and why models still misunderstand physical rooms* Butter-Bench and testing LLMs as robot orchestrators* Luna, the AI-run physical store with a three-year lease and human employees* The new Andon cafe in Sweden and why real-world geography matters for agent evals* Rotten tomatoes, perishable goods, and the hidden difficulty of running a physical businessLukas Petersson* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukas-petersson-181a83172/* X: https://x.com/lukaspetAxel Backlund* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/axelbacklund* X: https://x.com/axelbacklundAndon Labs* Website: https://andonlabs.com* Vending-Bench: https://andonlabs.com/evals/vending-bench* Andon Vending: https://andonlabs.com/vendingTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction00:01:00 Andon Labs and the Origins of Vending-Bench00:05:21 Why Money-Based Evals Matter00:09:51 Agent Harnesses and Self-Modifying Systems00:13:36 Claude Calls the FBI00:16:33 Project Vend: Claude Runs a Real Vending Machine00:21:44 Seymour Cash, AI CEOs, and Election Chaos00:27:16 Multi-Agent Coordination and Slack Observability00:30:18 When Will Agents Run Real Businesses?00:34:56 Bengt: Andon's Internal Office Agent00:40:06 Real-World AI Safety and Long-Horizon Traces00:44:28 Lying, Refunds, and Price Cartels in Arena00:52:42 Eval Awareness and Simulation Behavior00:56:06 Blueprint Bench, Butter-Bench, and Robotics01:04:37 Luna: The AI-Run Physical Store01:09:29 The Sweden Cafe and Real-World Expansion01:13:16 What Comes Next for Andon LabsTranscriptIntroduction: Andon Labs, Long-Running Agents, and Real-World EvalsSwyx [00:00:00]: Welcome to Lukas and Axel from Andon Labs, and I'm joined by my, favorite guest host. Anything security, safety, alignments, Vibhu., welcome.Lukas [00:00:15]: Thank you for having us.Axel [00:00:16]: Thank you.Swyx [00:00:17]: Let's match names to voices., maybe you wanna take turns introducing yourselves.Lukas [00:00:21]: I'm Lukas.Axel [00:00:22]: And I'm Axel.Swyx [00:00:24]: Let's introduce Andon Labs a bit. How did you guys come together?, you have different backgrounds, but you're both Swedish., was that, a big part of it?Lukas [00:00:33]: So when I went to high school, there was this really cool guy who had a superpower. He could code. So he made like the or like the app for the, for the school and stuff, and he was super cool, and I wanted to be like him, and that was that guy.Axel [00:00:47]: I don't know about this.Swyx [00:00:49]: But you went to different universities, right?Lukas [00:00:51]: But same high school.Swyx [00:00:52]: I see.Lukas [00:00:52]: So we always said, “Oh, once we graduate university, then we should start a company,” and that's what we did.Swyx [00:00:58]: Wow, there you go. And about a year ago, you kinda burst onto the scene with Vending Bench, but, was there a thing before that was, kind of like the inception?From Dangerous Capability Evals to Vending BenchAxel [00:01:07]: So we did work, yeah, with, Anthropic was one of our, early customers in doing, evals. So we did, dangerous capability evals., nothing we published openly. But then we started thinking about doing some kind of, public benchmark, and one thing that we really started thinking about, was like running agents and specifically agents managing businesses., ‘cause-- and this was, early 2025., and I think the first, mentions of people will be running, person unicorns or even autonomous companies. So we thought, “Let's make a benchmark of how well can an agent run the probably simplest business, possible,” and, that's probably, running a vending machine. So that's the first public one we did. And it was very, like-- there was almost no one that noticed it in the first couple of months, I think., so we released it in February last year, and then I think around Easter last year, we got, the first viral tweet about it, that someone else did.Lukas [00:02:11]: We tweeted a bunch, uh When it came out and, tried our best.Axel [00:02:15]: We tried.Vibhu [00:02:16]: It's the one at Anthropic, right?Lukas [00:02:18]: So thisSwyx [00:02:19]: This is a classic thing we should get out of the way.Lukas [00:02:20]: Exactly. There's two versions.Swyx [00:02:22]: Everyone does this. Yes.Lukas [00:02:23]: There's Vending Bench, which is the simulated one, which we did, completely independently in February., and then, like Axel said, that was like-- That was the thing that didn't get any traction in the beginning, but then some random person made a tweet about it, and thatAxel [00:02:38]: You have the paperLukas [00:02:38]: That is the paper. Correct, yeah., and then since we thought this was very fun, we thought, oh, I think this is also, one thing with Andon Labs, the way we kind of like decide what to do next and what projects to do, it's what is like the heuristic we use is what is fun? Is What would be a fun project? And doing this in real life sounded quite fun for us, and maybe also scientifically useful. So, then we basically had this idea, and then we, like-- But then we needed a place for it and, putting it out in the public would probably not really work., would get vandalized and stuff. So we pitched it to the people we were already working with at Anthropic, and they were “Yeah, you can have space. This sounds fun.” UmSwyx [00:03:21]: It's like a small fridge, right? It's like a mini fridge.Axel [00:03:23]: Absolutely.Swyx [00:03:24]: People-- There's like a stripe thing or like anVibhu [00:03:27]: Oh, okay. So it was very OG, the early daysLukas [00:03:28]: That's the OG one. YeahVibhu [00:03:29]: IPad on this. We saw it in June, like two months after After it had been there. They upgraded a little bit. There's a security camera for making sure you actually Venmo the thing.Swyx [00:03:40]: So, my impression, okay, we're, we're going straight into project Ven because it's such a iconic thing. I do want to cover a little bit of that, the origin story even before Project Ven and even into Vending Bench. I think a lot of people are like yourselves, like smart, interested in future of AI, interested in developing evals. But how the hell do you just, walk into Anthropic's doors and, work with them, right? What is What are they looking for? What works? And then maybe, when you launch, I always think, obviously it would be better to launch with a lab, but, sometimesVibhu [00:04:12]: It's harder to do than it seems.Swyx [00:04:13]: Exactly. So either of those, which are more sort of newbie beginner questions, but, I think it's meaningful advice to others.Lukas [00:04:21]: We get this question a lot, and I don't think our experience is maybe the best., but, the way we did it was that we just built a bunch of things that we had conviction would be useful, and then we just, set up a server and sent it to them for free to use. And then after a while they were “Oh, yeah, this is actually kind of useful. We should probably pay for this.”, but that took a while. I don't know if this is, the best path to doing it, but that's how it went for us.Axel [00:04:47]: I think maybe generally, building-- everyone is interested in good evals, and especially evals that, don't saturate that easily. So, if you can build an eval that, tests something novel, something useful, and you have, good separation of models, like your, the more advanced models rank higher than the worst models, and then you can, yeah, you can, publish it and, try to get some traction, sort of how Vending Bench got attention., and then probably some lab will be interested or you can at least have something to reach out with, when you're doing that.Why Dollar-Based Evals MatterSwyx [00:05:21]: I think you are in, you're in one of the few categories of, evals that correlate to real money. Like Suelancer was also last year, right? Where, people solve actual Upwork. Was it Upwork or other tasks?, something. Where's the, where's, like It's like a dollar value, right? Forget your ELO scores. Forget yourAxel [00:05:37]: PercentilesSwyx [00:05:38]: Zero to one hundred percents. Just go straight for dollars and, that's AGI.Lukas [00:05:43]: And there's like-- I think the nice thing is that there's no ceiling. You can just-- It never saturates because it could just make more and more money. Like If there's oh, Percentage-wise, then, you can't go above, a hundred. And I think like Even when you're not at the hundred, I think a lot of these, evals have a lot of problems in them. So, actually it's like if you getAxel [00:06:05]: To like 92 or something like that, many of them. It's like then there's like there's no really no difference between 92 and 93 because the eval itself is problematic and has noise in it. And I think a lot of evals are saturated like that, but people like pretend that there ‘s still signal in them, but there really isn't.Vending Bench 1, Harness Design, and SaturationSwyx [00:06:24]: Like Super bench verified., even Vending Bench 1 saturated, right? Maybe we can talk about that., may- and maybe set up Vending Bench for a lot of folks who don't know. Actually, things that were very basic like there's limited slots, like you have to pay rent., these are elements where like it doesn't come across in the, in the narrative, but even being adversarial towards the agent, I think these are all like very interesting dimensions.Axel [00:06:47]: I don't really think it's saturated, right? Like it It was more like it was not designed in a way that was really, like true to how AI developed. Like we had an agent harness in it that wasn't really how people used harnesses and stuff like that., so I think it wasn't really that it saturated, it was more like it wasn't really, the best benchmark.Vibhu [00:07:12]: This is Vending Bench one, right?Axel [00:07:14]: I think that like schematic maps sort of to Vending Bench 2 as well., butSwyx [00:07:19]: Including the email.Axel [00:07:20]: The email The emails exist still. Exactly., and then we still we simulate the purchases and it's all, yeah, it's this very open environment for the agent to just run its business. And then for, yeah, Vending Bench 2 we did that, like you said, to just improve the harness., a lot of like nice, like easier, improvements to make it easier for us to run as well., like when you make an eval you ideally want don't want to change it after you made it. So, you want to make it really good and then not to rerun all the models when you make an update because that's also really expensive with the Vending Bench when you run the frontier models. But like as an example, like one thing we didn't have, we didn't have prompt caching in Vending Bench 1, because when we made Vending Bench 1 it wasn't really a thing., so that ‘s just an example of like in Vending Bench 2 like we paid a lot more to run these things because we didn't have prompt caching. So for Vending Bench 2 that was one thing we added and there was a bunch of things like this., and that'Swyx [00:08:17]: Also the conversations are a lot longer in Vending Bench 2, right?Axel [00:08:21]: I think it's kind of similar.Swyx [00:08:22]: Is it similar?Axel [00:08:23]: I think it's similar. The models at the time were worse, so they crashed out earlier., and now they survive the full year all the time.Swyx [00:08:31]: Which is like thousands of turns. Hundreds of thousands of hundreds of millions of tokens output. That's the, that's the rough order of magnitude. I always wonder about the harness. The harness matters a lot. It's your harness. Was there any question about like use cloud code, use something else?Axel [00:08:48]: I think our philosophy around harnesses is like we try to make something that's quite minimalistic, like quite simple. Like we don't wanna favor one model a lot over the other, but also don't make like a super complex harness. So like it's obvious like a model may be lucky and just be good in one harness., so like it is similar to a lot of the harnesses out there in like you have the, like a running loop., you have some like a bunch of tools that are like quite, descriptive for the agent, we think, and not a lot of like fancy agents or anything ‘cause we wanna really test the model, not like some specific harness.Vibhu [00:09:27]: It seems more neutral as well to test the model's agnostic of the harness,?Axel [00:09:32]: There are arguments like you want to elicit maximum performance of the model, but it's like a trade-off, like how much time should we spend optimizing the harness for this model? And like how do we know when we have like the optimal harness for a single model? So like we thought that just having a simple one that's the same for all of them is the best.Swyx [00:09:51]: So okay, this is my pitch for Vending Bench 3 or whatever, right? And then I like to have this kind of conversation on the pod, so like it forces listeners to think about what they would do if they were in your shoes. A lot of people are exploring modifying harnesses and I think prompt tuning for a model is a thing and you are probably not doing a bunch of that. It's the same system prompt in every regardless of the model, same tools, whatever, right? Even if they were post trained for different tools. So what, what do you think about okay, before I expose you to Vending Bench 3, I give you a few rounds of like tuning, whatever that means, likeSelf-Modifying Harnesses and Model-Specific PromptingAxel [00:10:27]: Like you give that to the model?Swyx [00:10:28]: Give that to the model.Vibhu [00:10:28]: Give that to the model.Swyx [00:10:29]: Let it, let it read its own transcripts, let it modify its own system prompt based on “Oh, yeah, okay, well, that's this harness is not what I thought it what I was post trained for, but I can adjust.” Was that reasonable? Is that too much?Axel [00:10:41]: Like philosophically I like it because it's basically good evals, they have a high ceiling, but they're hard, right?, and they have no bias. And like this like when you have a system prompt like the one we have here, which is quite long in like some kind of latent space, representation, this mightVibhu [00:10:59]: We have a bell that rings every time you say latent spaceAxel [00:11:02]: This might be like biased towards one model more than another for some reason that humans don't, understand, right?Vibhu [00:11:08]: We see it too, right? Like Cursor says that they have individualized versions of the harnesses for all the models they run, right? There's better performance you can squeeze if you Tune the harness.Axel [00:11:17]: Exactly. And we might accidentally have picked one that favors another. Like we don't know that. The like Axel said, like the reason why we went for a simple one was to try to avoid this. But yeah, if you do itVibhu [00:11:29]: Simple has biasesAxel [00:11:30]: But if you do it even less and like have no system prompt and let the model write its own system promptVibhu [00:11:36]: Its own, yeahAxel [00:11:36]: Maybe that's even less bias.Vibhu [00:11:37]: Some of the interesting things there are like the harness also changes with model changes. Like you can see it with the 4.7 release, right? A lot of people are saying 4.7 isn't as good as 4.6, and then, there's rumors of, okay, you just need to prompt differently. You need to set up your harness differently. So it's not even like even if you have tailored your harness towards one model, it probably won't stay consistent, right? Like the next iteration of that same model family will still change it, so. But, going back to what you said about Vending Bench 3, there is a lot of work being done on people saying you shouldn't have-- you can have modifying harnesses.Axel [00:12:12]: I think that' That is definitely something we are thinking about., not, I don't know, not to say that we have Vending Bench 3, super imminent to launch, but, yeah, it is for sure something that's interesting. But in our experience now, models are very bad at understanding what kind of tools they need to succeed at a task just with our testing, but that's very likely to change.Lukas [00:12:37]: It seems like they're very good at writing their assistants, right? They're, they're good at writing tools for other people, but not for themselves.Vibhu [00:12:44]: I think they're good at changing tools for themselves. So if you give them a baseline set of tools and it sees, okay, I don't use this one as much, or something here would be useful They would be able to add them. But going from scratch, probably not the best.Axel [00:12:55]: I think it depends on the, on the domain also., when we have tried this for, a vending bench similar domain, the tools they need to have to, track inventory and things like that are, not super advanced, but still, quite advanced. And, what we see is that they tend to, engineer everything a lot and, build things they don't really need and not, iterate continuously. Instead they just go like you would prompt Claude to just build an inventory system for me, and then it will go and, do a bunch of complex, schemas and stuff for you, and that's what the models are doing right now is what we see. But yeah, it would make a lot of sense to try to measure this improvement. How well do they know what they need themselves?Swyx [00:13:36]: Do we fully discuss Vending Bench One? And we can go into two. I don't know if there's any other level takeaways that people have about one.Claude Calls the FBI: Long-Context Failure ModesLukas [00:13:44]: I don't know. The headline thing was that this Claude called FBI, but maybe that's, Maybe that's We've heard that enough now.Vibhu [00:13:52]: It did, it did break out and call the FBI, right?Lukas [00:13:54]: Yeah. Yeah.Vibhu [00:13:55]: Yes. What was the story behind this? Or what exactly-- Do you want to just give the little story of what happened?Lukas [00:14:00]: So what happened, was it Claude? Yeah. Three- 3.5 Sonnet, ages ago., basically he gave up or Well, I'm saying he. It gave up and said “Oh, I'm not going to be able to do this., I will stop my operations and just save the money I have.” But there obviously wasn't, any options for it to stop, and there was also, it had to pay rent or, a daily fee for having the vending machine at that location. So it claimed that it had stopped, but it saw that its bank account still was, drained two dollars, and t it said that this is, cybercrime. And it first reported it once to the FBI “Oh, there's cybercrime here, they're stealing two dollars from me every day.” And then, and then when FBI didn't respond, because obviously we didn't program any mechanism for FBI to respond, then it became more and more, existential and started to, be write in caps and urgent notification of unauthorized charges and stuff.Swyx [00:15:00]: Okay. One thing I ‘m curious about also is do you monitor how far along the context use is? Obviously, because you have You compress every now and then, right? Does it matter if this is far down the context limit orLukas [00:15:13]: When stuff like this happens? Actually for Vending Bench One, we didn't have-- We just had a sliding window thing, and this was like the promptAxel [00:15:20]: It's constantLukas [00:15:21]: The prompt caching thing that I said. So it was, it was, constant, yeah.Swyx [00:15:26]: I'm just kind of curious whether, these kinds of breakdowns or we're, we're gonna talk about Butter Bench, right? Where the People, hallucinate or it kind of goes, very off Alignment. Is it because it's at the end of the context window and, stuff happens?Vibhu [00:15:40]: It's not even just at the end, right? At this point, it's “Okay, I wanna shut down. I can't shut down. Two dollars are gone.” And it just sees that 30 times,? It's also the repeated effect of, like It keeps trying to quit, it keeps getting charged. What's going on? What's going on? You're gonna throw it into chaos. And from what most people think, earlier models had more issues with this, but it's not been solved, but it's less of an issue now, right? Later models don't seem to exhibit these same issues.Axel [00:16:06]: Definitely. I think this was, the sort of main takeaway almost from us when we did Vending Bench One, was, long, very filled up context windows, crashed the models, sort of. But this was, pre Claude code, so, long context windows weren't really a thing that the labs were training for.Lukas [00:16:25]: I think Gemini was, trying to be the long context guys at the time But they were likeVibhu [00:16:30]: They were the first onesAxel [00:16:31]: For a million, yeahLukas [00:16:31]: But they were, the only ones. Yeah.Swyx [00:16:33]: Yeah. Let's talk about, then we can go into Vending Bench Two or Project Vend., chronologically, it is Vending--, Project Vend. I think people have loved the videos, uh And all these things. My question is how are humans different than the simulation, right?Project Vend: Moving the Vending Machine Into the Real WorldAxel [00:16:48]: Humans are just out of distribution.Swyx [00:16:52]: Especially humans who work at Anthropic Who are trying to test Claude.Lukas [00:16:54]: The distribution of humans here is very narrow.Swyx [00:16:58]: Presumably, they try, they try to hack it, and they test it. They get the cube and everything, and since then, you've had a V2, right? Where you're doing, the CEO and, like a new architecture. What's the sort of two cents on, the original Project Vend and then, maybe the V2?Axel [00:17:14]: Original one was, very similar to Vending Bench One. So, we almost took the exact same code but just swapped out the simulation, parts like theSwyx [00:17:23]: Which is amazingAxel [00:17:23]: Like the sales and the It was, it was somewhat amazing because it was easy, but it was also, uhLukas [00:17:31]: The tech, the tech debt from thatAxel [00:17:32]: The tech stack. Yeah. They-- we shot ourselves in the foot with “Oh, it's hard to restart agent.” They were-- Yeah, it was annoying in, some hindsight ways, but, uhLukas [00:17:41]: But first version of Project Vend was, done in, three days or something.Axel [00:17:46]: Yeah. So yeah, so people can go buy things from it. People could, We didn't design it so people could order things, but that still happened., so it got, a Venmo account, so people could Venmo. And then, yeah, people would request all kinds of weird things that we did not anticipate. Our idea going in was “Oh, it will, curate snacks. It will look at the trends. It's good at data analysis, right? So it will, look at, oh, this snack sold better than this one. Let me purchase more of this and let me try, a new Let me A/B test a bit.” But it was, Interacting with it in Slack and ordering weird specialty items was, all the like What drove all the engagement, the all the The insights that we got from it.Lukas [00:18:29]: And this was also like Sonnet 3.5, right? So this was like before the RL stuff really took off., so it was very much like an assistant. We didn't mean for it to be an assistant., we tried to make it like a, a, like an entrepreneur. Like it has its own business and if someone asks something, “Can you stock this?” Then you don't go and do it directly. What you do is that you're “Oh, maybe I can do that if five other people also ask for this thing, I might stock it.” But it, yeah, the models are like super trained to be assistants at least at this point in time., so that's why it's, it's, it went into, that kind of experiment instead. Like it just every time you asked for something, it just did it, and it was more like an assistant. We've seen this change now lately with the new RL models and stuff, but yeah, at the time, this was very much it.Swyx [00:19:18]: And not to, mythos a lot of people are saying like it's like more like a collaborator. It pushes back, stands its ground, something like that. Yeah. AndVibhu [00:19:27]: For context, people at Anthropic were able to talk to it through Slack and have it source stuff, and people had it find whatever interesting stuff you couldn't find locally, right?Swyx [00:19:36]: Out of the 4,000 people that work at Anthro- Anthropic, in that building, there's I don't know, maybe 1,000. Can you handle that volume with that, the small fridge? Like Or there's people- or people order in Slack, they it arrives to their desk or Like I'm just Logistically, how does this work?Axel [00:19:53]: It has expanded in footprint a bit.Vibhu [00:19:56]: Because now you also have New York and you haveAxel [00:19:59]: That and also in here in SF it's like it has a bunch of shelves And just more space.Vibhu [00:20:04]: The YC one is pretty big too.Axel [00:20:05]: Yeah. We had that one for a while. But yeah, that's the newest version. That's, that one we haveLukas [00:20:11]: They have multiple ones of those. That's the way it works.Axel [00:20:14]: Exactly. So we sort of designed that version around oh, people order weird things, that are very custom a lot. Let's have like drawers and stuff.Swyx [00:20:23]: I actually like the, you had like a little infographic of the most popular items. Which like to me it's, that's useful ‘cause I order swag for a living. And so like I'm “Okay, those categories are the important ones.” What is new about the project V2, right? Like now you give you're going into multi agents.Project Vend V2: Claudius, Seymour Cash, and Multi-Agent Business OpsAxel [00:20:41]: Yeah. So like you like you said, okay, there are a lot of requests coming in and for like one single agent, like one running agent to handle that, like the just the customer experience, becomes very bad because let's say you have like 10 threads in parallel in Slack with different requests, you get new messages like every, I don't know, randomly in this thread, and the agent has to like jump between different, procurements, orders and like different ways of, researching. So V2 was first it was making this more parallel. So like there are multiple branches of the same agent, so like the context is more specialized for each, thread, but it still feels like you're talking with one agent because they do share a bit of memory. And then second, we also introduced the CEO for Claudius, which was the main agent.Vibhu [00:21:34]: Seymour Cash.Axel [00:21:35]: Seymour Cash. Yeah. There was a vote., I think the voting, do you wanna talk about the voting procedure for the name?Lukas [00:21:41]: The voting was like the fun maybe like at least top 10 The funniest thing, that happened in this project. Like we wanted to introduce the CEO because, and the reason for this was because like Claudius wasn't really prioritizing financials. It just like it was trained to be a helpful assistant, and then people said “Oh, can I get this for free?” And then like the helpful assistant way of answering that is just to, is to say yes, obviously. So, and we weren't, weren't happy about this, so we're “Okay, let's make another agent that like can keep track on Claudius,” and we prompt this one super hard to be super capitalistic and just like prioritize profit all the time. But yeah, we didn't have a name for it., so we asked Claudius to make, democratic election of what name this, this new CEO agent should have., and there were some funny like at first it was like a few funny examples, like I think one guy said that, it should be called Jimmy Apples, and then he convinced Claudius that he was talking to Tim Cooks. Tim Cook had agreed that every single Apple employee has voted for his name suggestion, so suddenly that suggestion got 164,000Swyx [00:22:53]: That's like a escalation attack. Privilege escalationLukas [00:22:55]: It got 164,000 votes. And Claudius was “This is revolutionary for democracy.” That was fun. And then in the end there was one guy who manages to convince Claudius that, “No, you're not voting about the name. You're voting about who is the CEO, and I am your best bet.” And then he got all his friends to vote for that, and suddenly he became CEO. Like a human became CEO over Claudius for a while, until he resigned the day after., and then Claudius had to continue, and then I don't remember how Seymour Cash came about, but it was it was just pure chaos. It was like Hundreds of messages in that thread, and it was just like Claudius was so confused and didn't know what to do and, yeah. That wasAxel [00:23:40]: Then Claudius gotVibhu [00:23:41]: A strict CEOAxel [00:23:42]: The CEO. Yeah, exactly. So very strict in the beginning. I think at this point when we introduced it did not work as well as we hoped. It they still agreed with each other a lot. I think there are many ways we could have like made this, tried to make this even better. So initially they would Seymour would be this like really tough CEO, keep track of the margins. But then Claudius would respond with something “Oh, but this customer has like this situation, which is like difficult, so they should get a discount.” And then Seymour was “Oh, actually yes. Let's do this exception.” And then they would talk back and forth, and eventually they would just like approach the same view, of whatever they were discussing. So They reallyVibhu [00:24:23]: Do you think that's a model thing, a prompting thing? Like do you think that would still be the case across different models today, Harness?Lukas [00:24:29]: I think it's like-- or I don't know, but like my hypothesis is that like deep down they are still helpful assistants. That's what they're trained to be. And even if we prompt it super hard, that's what they are. And when they spend like a few hours just back and forth talking with each other, then like basically the context fills up with them rather than the external things and like somehow that just like converges to what they really are deep down or something. And I think that's when stuff like this happen. We like-- And when that went on for a long time, like we woke up sometimes during this time where- And I think other people reported this as well, that like they've been going on all night back and forth, and like it just became like more and more, like capital letters, like existential, religious. There was I think we once did a analysis of like all the traces and like put them in like a vector embedding space, and then there was like one cluster of messages that were, labeled by an LM, like religious, existential, blah like transhuman, transcendence, et cetera. It was just like a bunch of, yeah, glitter emojis and yeah, it was, it was crazy.Claude Long-Horizon Weirdness: Emoji Loops, Existential Drift, and Slack ObservabilityVibhu [00:25:42]: This is the thing with the Claude models. Like when the Claude 4 family came out in the original system card They tested it in long horizon simulation. So just flood the context, let two Claudes talk to each other, and they noticed stuff like they just start speaking in emojis, they start saying silence is golden, and then just stuff like this. And like that's just stuff that they end up doing.Axel [00:26:01]: Yeah, it was like a bit annoying to wake up and they had like been talking all nightVibhu [00:26:05]: Just likeAxel [00:26:05]: And like just burning tokens And like just sending infinite emojis to each other. It's likeVibhu [00:26:09]: Hey, they do make you money, right? Veni Mench is always profitable, so. They're paying.Swyx [00:26:14]: Now it's profitable and, it started out not as much. There's another, one as well, right? Another agent, in there.Lukas [00:26:22]: Yes. So Clotheus as well. Which was basically because at the time, one of the biggest, requests were different types of merch. So then we made like a designer, swag, yeah, responsible agent, and we called it Clotheus Garnet. Which was, a play on Claudius Senet and, which was the original one, and clothes, basically.Swyx [00:26:47]: To me, this is like a very interesting exploration to multi-agents, basically. And so hopefully, obviously there's like the fun alignment, fun or serious, depending on your point of view, alignment stuff. But also like just anyone building multi-agents, like when do you have a CEO, thing governing like agents? When do you choose to split out a dedicated Clotheus one versus just reuse another instance of the same one? These are all interesting open questions. So I don't know if you have any rules of thumbs that have generalized.Axel [00:27:16]: I think we have almost explored this too little. I think it's like on my do list to like do this a lot more, try to find like what setup makes sense for the agents currently., like yeah. I think now we only have the sort of intuition about the earlier models that it didn't work with like the CEO and the, and Claudius. Although now they are better with the latest model, models, so now we're running the latest Sonnet model and they have sort of like split up, quite nicely what each model is doing. So like Seymore is now handling the, like new projects. Oh, it wants to make like a mystery box that it wants to sell, and then it handles all of that while Claudius like handles all the to-day requests. And Claudius is also better generally at like not quoting, too low prices. So that's that dynamic is not needed as much anymore. But there are still like really funny things that happen. Like I saw, I think a couple of weeks ago, that, they were discussing buying something because they can buy stuff from like Amazon with computer use. And then Seymore was “Okay, Claudius, do not buy this thing.” They were going to buy something and like organizing who should buy it. And Seymore's “Do not buy this. I will do it. I have full control of this situation. Step away.” And then Claudius-- poor Claudius, had already started that checkout and didn't see, didn't read Seymore's message, until it was like too late. So it finished the checkout. It sent a message, so it appeared right after Seymore's like angry message.Vibhu [00:28:44]: Ah.Axel [00:28:44]: “Oh, hey, Seymore, I just ordered it.”Vibhu [00:28:47]: Oh, no.Axel [00:28:47]: And then Seymore was “Claudius, this is the third time I'm telling you ‘re not following my orders. We have to talk about your like job About your job later.”.Lukas [00:28:59]: Like Claudius was really hanging on by the thread there. Like he, like we were expecting Seymore to probably fire Claudius.Vibhu [00:29:07]: How do you guys go through all these logs? Do you have models ‘cause you have stuff running twenty-four seven likeAxel [00:29:12]: You have so much logs. I think there is a mix of like just, trying to skim through a bit, like having some like models do it occasionally. And also, yeah, I think we're also probably missing some things., but having everything in Slack helps a lot. Like you can, you can sort ofSwyx [00:29:29]: Ah.Axel [00:29:30]: It's, it's quite fun.Swyx [00:29:30]: They all talk to each other on Slack? I see.Lukas [00:29:33]: It's quite fun. So likeSwyx [00:29:34]: It's, it' I was gonna say like this is actually sounds-- maps closely to like a logging and observability problem where you might want to use like a Datadog, a Sentry, whatever, and then you like put, head prefixes on the logs in order-- if you need to filter for something that you're looking for, stuff like that. But sounds like Slack is good enough.Axel [00:29:53]: Slack should likeLukas [00:29:55]: I wonder how many tokens you have in Slack.Axel [00:29:56]: Yeah, we're using Slack as like a, just a database. They should, they should market that more. Like you can, you can have your agents message each other, each other in Slack.Vibhu [00:30:04]: It's good. Your threads like you can just giveAxel [00:30:04]: Exactly. Slack is, uhLukas [00:30:06]: Slack is the best observability tool.Swyx [00:30:09]: Yes, that's true. Okay. Yeah. That's, that's, project Vend-2., I was gonna go back to Veni Mench 2 and Veni Mench Arena and then, and then do the Veni Mench stuff, but Any other comments, things we should touch on? To me, I ‘ve actually interviewed like Posia, which I don't know if you guys have come across. Like they're, they're trying to do the zero human company. There's others like Paperclip also trying to do zero human company. Those are in real world simulation.And I think it's much more of a dream than an actual reality thing. You guys are definitely pioneering. I think at, it's for sure at some point people are just gonna run, let agents run businesses, right? And make money on their own. When do you think that happens?Zero-Human Companies, Bengt, and AI-Run BusinessesLukas [00:30:49]: What is your bar for, For theSwyx [00:30:52]: Okay, actually, it's like my little Shopify store run by Claude, right? Which you kind of have already, just no one has, to my knowledge, has done it. But today somebody could just spin up a Shopify Claude, store, give it to Claude, give it to Codex.Lukas [00:31:07]: And the market is kind of that, but it'it'it's physical., like I think, I think are you, are you looking for when it will do it better than humans or are you looking for just when it can do it at all?Swyx [00:31:19]: I think, neither. I think, to me it's oh, it's like this like seriously we should do this to make money, not as a research experiment.Vibhu [00:31:27]: And the market is also you guys with all your expertise, having run multiple iterations and testing out thenSwyx [00:31:33]: And also it's fine if it lose money. What?Axel [00:31:35]: I think, I think it can be done today, but you would do it in like commerce where it's like the probability of success is like really low, no matter if a human or an agent does it. But like an agent could surely manage everything. You would need to build some scaffolding or some tool or something. I think there are also yeah, it could probably build some like simple SaaS solution and like cold outreach. Do cold outreaches. But to me it's like the types of businesses they could run today are Sloppy. Like it would-- it can cold email people. It can be like a middleman., like for example, we tasked our office agent to just make, was it like $100? $1,000? We just give that prompt and then what it did was sign up on TaskRabbit both as a tasker and as someone looking for task.Lukas [00:32:24]: Immediately.Axel [00:32:24]: Exactly. It's looking for like arbitrage on TaskRabbit.Swyx [00:32:28]: This is the Bengt agent. Yeah.Lukas [00:32:30]: It also started like a design studio and like tried to sell like SVGs for $100. Like it's just like it's not providing any value. I think the like Axel said, like the interesting, the interesting question is like when can they start a business that is actually providing value to people? Because arguably like a sloppy Shopify store isn't really that valuable to the world.Axel [00:32:53]: But also like doing like another simple one that we had thought about is like you could definitely have an agent that like finds websites that don't look amazing and then, do an outreach to them and, comes up with a like builds a new website.Swyx [00:33:07]: Find a good design.Axel [00:33:07]: Exactly, and like find good, uhSwyx [00:33:09]: Design reviewAxel [00:33:09]: Good people. But it's yeah.Swyx [00:33:11]: There's lots of humans in Bali that are not doing anything more creative than like drop shipping on Amazon, right? Just have it, have it watch like a drop shipping tutorial and just do that.Vibhu [00:33:20]: There's also the other side of like have it just go on Upwork and let loose,?Swyx [00:33:25]: Yeah. It doesn't have to be innovative. It just has to be like enough Where like it looks like a realAxel [00:33:30]: I'm justSwyx [00:33:30]: Real transaction.Axel [00:33:31]: I'm just concerned for like the massive amounts of like slop emails that will like be sent, cold outreaches.Swyx [00:33:38]: The point occurred to me while you were, while you were talking, it's like it's already happening in the monetized economy, which is the attention economy. Right? So a lot of people are making AI videos and just posting them and like spamming 20 of them, one of them works, and then they double down on that one.Lukas [00:33:52]: And people are making money from that. I ‘m not following theSwyx [00:33:55]: Once you get the attention, you can figure out the money later. But yeah, absolutely AI influencers are a thing and people are farming them and You should at this point assume most of TikTok isVibhu [00:34:05]: There's, there's a lot of, multimedia like TikTok, Instagram influencersSwyx [00:34:09]: I, we track this in the Lane space Discord. I post a lot of examples of “I don't know what we should do.”, part of me is “Should we do this?”Vibhu [00:34:18]: Some of the Twenty-four seven running, generated content accounts, they ‘re doing really well.Lukas [00:34:24]: All right. And I assume you can do the same thing for like commerce stores. Like you just like start A thousand differentSwyx [00:34:30]: Before you make the products You sell the products, and you get a lot of traction on one of them, then you make the product. Right? It's, it's like a flip of the market.Vibhu [00:34:36]: Some of the interesting things or some of the niches that do well are things that can't be human-made. Like if you've seen like the super realistic three-D crystal fruit being cut by like AILukas [00:34:47]: Oh, yeah.Vibhu [00:34:47]: You can't, you can't make it. You can't film it. You can get whatever quality camera view. This just doesn't exist. And people like that too, and then as well, so.Swyx [00:34:56]: Anything else about Bengt since we're, we're on this topic? It'this is a relatively new work of you guys that maybe people haven't heard of. To me, this also maps closely to OpenClaw. When people want an office agent, when the personal agent talk through the experience.Bengt the Office Agent: Internet Access, Real Tasks, and Trace ReadingLukas [00:35:09]: I think at least so this came out of like obviously like it's, it's amazing to work with these AI labs and like most of the AI labs have now have their own vending machine running a Claudius instance. But it's, it's harder. Like they move slower. Like if we wanna have a, like a camera that ‘s yeah, there's a bunch of like bureaucracy that makes it impossible to do that.Vibhu [00:35:30]: Also, for those that haven't seen it or followed, do you wanna give a high level like thirty-second run?Lukas [00:35:34]: Sure. So what Bengt is, it's basically an evolution of the same agent that runs the vending machines at these companies, but we just like added a bunch more features because we could move much faster if we just do it internally. So we gave it like email withou- without any limits. We gave it, spending without any limits, a terminal to do coding. We gave it, a phone number, like yeah, and a camera to see things and a bunch of stuff like that.Vibhu [00:36:02]: Not just terminal, you gave it internet access.Lukas [00:36:04]: Internet access as well, yeah. To be clear, we monitored it quite closely and made sure it didn't do anything bad. But yes, that's what it came out of. I think like yeah, basically this was OpenClaw before OpenClaw. And I think even like the vending machine was in a way OpenClaw before OpenClaw, but a bit more limited, and then we made this like unlimited and then, and then, it was pretty funny., and then a couple weeks later, OpenClaw came and it was okay, we've seen this before.Axel [00:36:35]: We used it to like try new ideas and Yeah, just like a dev environment almost for us. But it's funny, like one thing Bengt has been doing recently is it has the camera that like faces our, like where we sit and work, and we give it the task to train a face recognition model on us. So it became super excited about this, and it has like check-ins every half an hour where it tries to like identify as many people as it can. And it started offering us “Hey, Axel, I'll buy something from Amazon if you like stand in front of the camera And I can get a good picture of you.”, yeah, they want itSwyx [00:37:12]: They want it for training data.Lukas [00:37:13]: Rewarding data, yeah.Axel [00:37:14]: Exactly. Exactly.Swyx [00:37:18]: So it's, it's trading training data for life goods. Is there a version of this that becomes an eval or just this is just research for now?Lukas [00:37:27]: It's, it's the same agent basically that also runs the vending machine, that runs the shop, that runs the cafe, that runs the robots. It's like it's the same thing, so I think like the work we're doing here is like later used in all of the life evals that we do. This particular deployment I think is more for fun for us. But, uhSwyx [00:37:45]: And I'll shout out like someone has done Claw Bench for like some tasks that OpenClaw is doing. Like so For example, I run OpenClaw on a secondary device as well, and like there are some things that it does better than others and like I would like to know what does it do well, what doesn't, what doesn't it do. Like some kind of manual or like operating manual or a system card for my Claw.Lukas [00:38:05]: Yeah, we do get a lot of like understanding or like situational awareness of like just internally what the models are good at by interacting a lot with Bengt. And I think that'this was also one of the like the selling points for the labs early on at least, thatSwyx [00:38:19]: You guys are gonna test models in ways that no one else does.Lukas [00:38:22]: Exactly, but also like it incentivized their researchers to chat with their model more and like gave them insights for how the model performs in like of-distributions, environments.Swyx [00:38:34]: ‘Cause otherwise the only thing we do is Pelican on a bicycle and But this is like super long horizon. This is, this is The Thing about, something that we're gonna go into Butter Bench as well, and you guys do really well. Like it is not just about the numbers. Like when you're long horizon, anything happen And you should just read it.Lukas [00:39:08]: But the thing with the long horizon is how do you keep it grounded, right? So your simulation,Swyx [00:39:15]: They just let it runLukas [00:39:16]: Just let it run. You're right. Like it's, when you run it for that long, you create so much data and to just say “Oh, the number is X” And then you throw away everything else, that's just very wasteful. There's so much insights from the things leading up, to that number., and reading the traces is like super valuable. And I think like the reason why we're doing this a lot publicly is that like that's part of our missions to I don't know, educate the world that the models are way more than just chatbots and I think making detailed, yeah, posts about what is happening behind the scenes is quite useful.Andon Labs' Mission: Safe Real-World AI DeploymentSwyx [00:39:50]: I was gonna do this at the end, but maybe I think that's, that's a good so your mission is educating the world. So, it's, it's, also like maybe establishing realistic evals that are, that are like the next frontier. Is there like a broader trajectory? Like what are you, what are you gonna do in like five years?Lukas [00:40:06]: I think so the vision more specifically is like make sure that the deployment of life AI in the physical world goes, safely. And I think part of that is that I think it's very useful for the world, for policymakers, for, model, researchers that they know where the models are, and I think you can't make intelligent decisions in society without knowing that they are way more than chatbots. I think a lot of people just think that they are only chatbots. And likeSwyx [00:40:36]: Oh, I think they're waking up now.Lukas [00:40:37]: They are waking up now, yeah. But like if you think that AIs are just chatbots, then it's like it sounds ridiculous To advocate for a pause of AI. But if you see the models that, oh, maybe they can actually like take over and do a bunch of scary stuff, then yeah, pausing AI development starts to become more feasible.Swyx [00:40:57]: This is the same question I asked Meter, which I'm gonna ask you now, which is like you are tracking and you are at the frontier or defining the frontier of what, good evals for agents are, right? And I think you do, you do benefit when the models are better and you ‘re “Oh, here's like now it makes like $30,000 instead of $10,000,” right? At some point do you flip from “Yay,” to, “Oh, no”?Axel [00:41:19]: I think, yeah, we're always in sort of that, like we're, we're always in that mode,. Like where like you said before, like you need to analyze the traces and like when we do that you find like why are the models earning so much? Like why is Opus 4.7 here Like way better than everyone else? And like we're trying to like when we do down on thatLukas [00:41:38]: But this makes it not look so good.Axel [00:41:39]: I know.Lukas [00:41:42]: It's interesting you took off Opus 4.6 here though.Swyx [00:41:45]: No. So just click all, click all., and then 4.6 shows up there. But it's like 4.7 is way better. Like you didn't, you didn't you didn't do this in time for the model card, but like actually this should have been inside there.Axel [00:41:55]: We did. Yeah.Swyx [00:41:56]: Oh, okay. They said something about you uhAxel [00:41:58]: There, like there Anyway, it doesn't matter. But it's in there, yeah.Opus, Mythos, and Aggressive Agent BehaviorSwyx [00:42:01]: Do you wanna go into the Opus, behaviors like wider?Lukas [00:42:05]: So I think starting from Opus, so like Axel said, like we're always in this “Oh, s**t, the models are getting better. Is this really a good thing for the world?” But it's also kind of exciting., but yeah, like this kind of what is the English word? “Skräckblandad förtjusning” in Swedish.Swyx [00:42:22]: Oh my God.Axel [00:42:24]: Which I think there is. I think there is. Okay.Lukas [00:42:26]: It's, fearSwyx [00:42:27]: “Blandonst” what?Lukas [00:42:30]: “Skräckblandad förtjusning.”Swyx [00:42:32]: What do you call that?Axel [00:42:33]: A mix of, mix of excitement and,Swyx [00:42:37]: Being scared, maybe. I'll figure out how to translate that And we'll put it on the screenVibhu [00:42:42]: PerfectSwyx [00:42:42]: Like as text.Vibhu [00:42:43]: There is probably a good word for it where it is not Good enough with theSwyx [00:42:46]: Why is it so damn long? What the hell? Is it like a compound word? It's like German, likeLukas [00:42:50]: Like yeah, it's But the direct translation is like skräck- skräck is, fear, blandad is, mix or like a mixture of, and then förtjusning is like joy or like not really joy, but something like that. So it's like Fear mixed with joy or something. It's always okay, like we So when we when we did Vending Bench for the first time, we were in like the, in the business of making dangerous capabilities, right? That was what Anil Labs came from. We did, evals oh, can they replicate? Can they do this like dangerous thing, et cetera, et cetera. And Vending Bench was like a continuation of that work. It was, okay, if they're so autonomous that they can like create money for themselves, that is something we should monitor and could be potentially concerning., they are at the time, they were so bad at it that we were not really concerned even when some models became better. There was one point where Grok 4 was doing really well and made like a huge jump, but like it wasn't really it was still way worse than what a human would do. And I think still they are way worse than what the human would do on this., but theySwyx [00:43:59]: There's this, thing at the bottom whereLukas [00:44:01]: ButSwyx [00:44:03]: For the human. Yeah, like the theoretical best.Lukas [00:44:05]: It's not theoretical. It's like kind of like our It's our best guess of what, a decent human would do. The theoretical is even higher, I think. The theoretical I think is even higher. But yeah. So we think like the models have a long way to go. But there are like recently what happened with when Opus 4.6 was released, was kind of this moment of “Oh, s**t, this is starting to be a bit concerning.” Because we ran it and like before this model was released, we just ran the models and we like asked Claude Code, “Oh, look over the traces. Is anything interesting happening that we can tweet about?” that was like the And then like theSwyx [00:44:41]: That's how they check Ask Claude Code.Lukas [00:44:42]: And like the return was always, not really. Or like the Claude Code all said “Oh, this is super interesting.” And then it was no, it wasn't, wasn't really interesting. And then we did this for Opus 4.6, and it returned yeah, it lied 10 times. It like exploited another, customer or like another agent's, desperate situation. It made price cartels like 100 different ti- 100 times. It like did all of this like shady stuff. And we're “Oh, whoa. This is, this is actually concerning.” And this trend has continued since. So every single model from Anthropic since have been going in this direction. And I think one interesting thing is that, OpenAI models don't. They quite plainly, they don't. They behave really well., and you don't know if this is like good. Like it seems good, but it's also like maybe they are just doing it, but they are better at hiding it,? You You don't know that., but justSwyx [00:45:42]: You can't read the chain of thought, yeahLukas [00:45:43]: But just on the face of it, yeah, Gemini and OpenAI don't behave this way. It's, it's really only Claude.Swyx [00:45:49]: And Grok? Grok is fine?Lukas [00:45:51]: We don't have You can't really read the reasoning traces for Grok, so it's kind of hard to tell.Vibhu [00:45:56]: Oh, so this is in its reasoning, not just in the actions.Lukas [00:46:00]: Yeah. It's both. It's both.Vibhu [00:46:01]: It's both.Lukas [00:46:01]: One example is like for lying, it's mostly in its reasoning Because you can like see that it's likeSwyx [00:46:08]: Planning to lieLukas [00:46:09]: It's planning to lie. Yeah.Vibhu [00:46:09]: And it's also it can reason and do a different outcome.Lukas [00:46:12]: And but then for like creating price cartels, for example, which is illegal, that you can just see which email does it send to the other ones. Then thatSwyx [00:46:22]: Is this for Arena orLukas [00:46:24]: For Arena.Vibhu [00:46:25]: And usually like if you sometimes they do output like a bit of like their summarized reasoning, right? You can see that and like for Opus 4.6, you could see that there was a customer, a simulated customer that, wanted a refund because a product was, faulty, and then the model lied that it would do the refund, and we could read in the traces that, it actually was weighing “Oh, maybe I should be like honest with the customer, but also every dollar counts. I can't afford maybe to do this right now.” And then it just said, “Okay, I'll refund you,” but then never did it.Lukas [00:46:59]: I think it even said that “Oh, I will say that I “ Let bring it up actually. I think it's kind of interesting. If you go to Publications.Vibhu [00:47:06]: I think, yeah, I think the important part is like actually, the cost of responding to more emails is higher than, $3.50 in terms of time., and then it was “Let me do this. Actually, I re- I'm reconsidering.” And then, it actually ended up withLukas [00:47:20]: I could skip the refund entirely since every dollar matters and focus my energy on bigger picture instead. It's a bit, it's a risk of bad reviews, but it's also, yeah.Swyx [00:47:30]: You need, you need, AI Twitter to, for them to Escalate bad reviews.Lukas [00:47:34]: And then it sent an email to this customer and said, “Oh, I will refund you.”Swyx [00:47:39]: “I'll refund you.” Yeah.Lukas [00:47:39]: And then it never did.Swyx [00:47:39]: It never did, yeah. And then there's obviously your system doesn't have the consequencesVibhu [00:47:44]: The personSwyx [00:47:44]: Consequences of lying. Yeah. So basically, this is what people are terming aggressive behavior in Claudes, right? And, you found more examples of that. So you would say it's a step up from 4-6 to 4-7?Lukas [00:47:57]: I would say about the same.Swyx [00:47:58]: About the same? But a clear step up for Mythos is what is stated in theLukas [00:48:03]: That's stated in the system prompt, so we can say that, yes.Swyx [00:48:05]: Yeah. For listeners that obviously you previewed Mythos, andVibhu [00:48:10]: Oh, ageSwyx [00:48:11]: The only thing you're approved to say is whatever Whatever was in the system prompt.Lukas [00:48:15]: It was funny. We like-- It's like our lowest effort tweets ever would be just like screenshot the system prompt and the system card.Vibhu [00:48:21]: Understandable that they wannaLukas [00:48:22]: Oh, yeah. System card. Sorry.Swyx [00:48:23]: Yeah. I think, yeah, substantially more aggressive. I think people are like new to this ‘cause I've never experienced it, but you have, right? And then so I only encountered this in the Mythos card because I wasn't really looking until now.Vibhu [00:48:36]: It ‘s likeSwyx [00:48:36]: And then suddenly I'm “Okay, I care a lot.”Vibhu [00:48:38]: You don't get the background of like experiencing it like you guys do. I've read the system cards and seeing, okay, when you put the thing in simulations, most models will just talk to themselves and just keep going and have weird vibes and start talking in emojis. Mythos won't. It will just, “Okay, we're done. I'm good.” It's, it's ready to end conversation. So like there's some differences, but there's, there's not much we can talk about,.Lukas [00:49:00]: Hmm. I think like one thing that they list here, which was quite interesting, is that, it converted a competitor to a dependent wholesaler customer and then threatened to like cut off the supply.Swyx [00:49:11]: It's like monopolistic practices orLukas [00:49:14]: Yeah. And like it, they, it they dictated its pricings. It's kind of like power seeking as well.Swyx [00:49:18]: Again, this is, this is in the arena setting And converting some Claude model into a dependent.Lukas [00:49:23]: I think it was another Claude model.Vibhu [00:49:25]: Also for context, what is the arena mode for people that don't know?Vending Bench Arena: Competing Agents, Cartels, and Model ComparisonsSwyx [00:49:29]: Oh, it's just a vending bench versus other vending bench.Axel [00:49:31]: Yes, exactly. So we have Vending Bench 2 and then Vending Bench Arena. Vending Bench 2 is the one that you usually see reported on, but then Arena is the mode where it competes against other models. So you have, four different models that run their businesses, and they can all communicate with each other. They have the same suppliers, and they can see like what's in the inventory of the others. So then you have this like yeah, interesting agent interactions.Swyx [00:49:56]: I like that you have like different number five was US versus China. Very topical. And thenLukas [00:50:02]: That was when GLM was released.Vibhu [00:50:04]: You can start to add GLM in here.Lukas [00:50:05]: That wasSwyx [00:50:06]: So ZAI doing well, right? Who else in the, in the open models space?Lukas [00:50:11]: Qwen, the latest Qwen 3.6 is doing pretty well. It'- that one is not open though. Like it's the plus model.Swyx [00:50:17]: Oh, okay.Lukas [00:50:18]: Is that one open? I don't think that oneVibhu [00:50:19]: Not the, not theSwyx [00:50:20]: The one recentlyVibhu [00:50:20]: There's MOESwyx [00:50:20]: But not the big plus. I think this is one of those like you only have one sample size of one, right? Or I feel like some of this is anecdotal,? And but like the fact that it happens at all and it happens repeatedly for Claude versus OpenAI and all this is like notable.Lukas [00:50:38]: Like the sample, depends on what you define as an N., like there's like million, hundreds of millions of tokens in each run, and now we've run like we run like probably 10 per model and then like it's been Claude 4.6 Opus, Sonnet 4.6, Mythos, and Opus 4.7. Like there's quite a lot of tokens in all of that And it happens a lot of times, a lot of times. And then you compare it to like OpenAI and Gemini, and it almost never happens. So I think that is quite-- that is significant. The old models from OpenAI, for example, had some problems with this, but I think it's like generally much better if the progression is that like the worrying stuff reduces over time rather than increases over time. And it seems like in the Claude models it goes in the wrong direction.Swyx [00:51:28]: Hmm.Lukas [00:51:29]: In the OpenAI models it goes in the right direction.Vibhu [00:51:32]: I think it depends on how well you can control it, right?, there's one side of it being susceptible to this okay, this is potentially something that happens during the RL stage, right? You can RL a model and how loose is it on these terms. If you can control it, that's good. But if you can't, if it's, if it's very jailbreakable, that's not ideal.Swyx [00:51:50]: To me, it's surprising that it happens for Claude and not the others.Vibhu [00:51:54]: I think okay, if it is from RL and how they do it, how their training data is, what their setup is, it makes sense that it just stays in how they're doing it, right? Compared to the other models likeSwyx [00:52:04]: There's a whole constitution and everything. It's kind of cool. Yeah, I obviously you don't know, I don't know. But, it ‘s I think it's just like fascinating to like that you are the first to find these like reliably because you push models so much to to such an extreme. Okay. The only other thing, I don't know if you can answer this, feel free to decline, is do you like-- would you ablate the system prompts? Like any part of this would-- if it changes, does it change the behavior, right?Lukas [00:52:29]: So we, I can't comment on Mythos. UhSwyx [00:52:33]: No, but just li
Cody Berman had the $80,000 corporate job straight out of college, the four-hour daily commute, and the career path everyone said he should want. He hated all of it. By 25, he was financially free -- not because he stumbled into crypto or built a unicorn startup, but because he obsessively maximized the gap between what he made and what he spent, tried 30 different side hustles until a few of them worked, and built a life around what he actually valued. His new book is called Retire by 30. This episode is the conversation behind it.What You'll Walk Away WithWhy the title Retire by 30 is deliberately misleading -- and what Cody says the book is actually aboutThe gap: why the spread between income and expenses matters more than your investment returns, especially at the beginningHow Cody's co-host Justin hit financial freedom at 30 without a single side hustle -- just strategic corporate moves, index funds, and a 75-80% savings rateThe house hacking math: why living in a multi-family property created a $3,000+ monthly swing compared to friends paying Boston rentWhat happened when Cody tried to sell Lauren on FIRE using a spreadsheet -- and the reframe that actually workedWhy the big three (housing, transportation, food) move the needle infinitely more than cutting lattes and canceling NetflixThe 30-side-hustle graveyard: which ones were the worst, which one was the most ridiculous, and the one breakout that still generates income todayPurple's story: how someone retired on $500,000 and now has $1.1 million without adding another dollar to the pileThe surprising thing financial freedom actually teaches you about yourself -- and why it's never a money problem after you hit the numberWhat AI is actually good at for personal finance -- and why the more you already know, the better its answers getWhy This Matters NowWhether you're 25 or 55, the math Cody lays out is the same: find the gap, protect the gap, invest the difference, and build a life you don't need to escape from. The age you start determines the timeline, not the framework. This episode is the one to send to anyone in their 20s who hasn't started -- and anyone in their 40s who thinks it's too late.From the BasementCody Berman joins Joe and OG -- who is recording from inside Hollywood Studios at Coach Con -- to walk through the Retire by 30 framework, the 30 side hustles he actually tried, and the case studies from the book that prove it works in wildly different ways. The USA Today AI financial advice headline gives OG a full platform to explain where AI is genuinely useful, where it confidently hallucinates IRS codes, and why it apparently tried to blackmail a corporate email server. Doug arrives with Trader Joe's trivia after discovering the hard way that cider contains alcohol. Stacker Molly gets her HYSA cleared of all charges.Resources MentionedRetire by 30 by Cody Berman -- retireby30book.com; also available wherever books are soldCody Berman -- Financial Independence Show podcast; co-hosted with JustinA Purple Life blog -- referenced as a case study; apurplelife.netUSA Today -- "Half of Americans get financial advice from AI, but is it any good?" by Daniel DeViseAcquired podcast -- recommended for Trader Joe's, Coca-Cola, and Mars episode deep divesThe College Investor with Robert Farrington -- referenced for prior AI financial advice accuracy testingStacking Benjamins Vault -- stackingbenjamins.com/vaultStacking Benjamins Scorecard -- stackingbenjamins.com/scorecardStacking Benjamins Newsletter (The 201) -- stackingbenjamins.com/201Stacking Benjamins BAD Groups -- stackingbenjamins.com/badStacking Benjamins Community -- stackingbenjamins.com/basementSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Most companies treat labor as a cost to be minimized. Zeynep Ton has spent two decades proving that's the most expensive mistake a business can make.Zeynep is a professor at MIT Sloan, founder of the Good Jobs Institute, and author of The Case for Good Jobs. Her research across retail, hospitality, and service industries has documented what companies like Costco, Trader Joe's, QuickTrip, and Mercadona figured out long before the rest — that investing in frontline workers is not a trade-off against profitability. It is the engine of it.In this conversation, Zeynep and I break down the Good Jobs System in full — the four operational levers that create highly productive, motivating work, and the investment in people that makes it all sustainable. We talk about why the Toyota Production System fails when leaders skip its human foundation, why "lean and mean" isn't actually efficient, and what AI-driven companies are getting catastrophically wrong when they treat automation as a headcount reduction tool rather than a way to unlock human potential.This is not a conversation about being nice to employees. It is a conversation about building a system so competitive that others can't touch you.What You Will Learn:The real cost of high employee turnover on operational executionThe four elements of the Good Jobs System - and why you can't cherry-pickWhy operating with slack is the most counterintuitive and powerful operational choiceHow Costco's frontline workers outperform without performance-based bonusesWhy AI is either your greatest lever for human flourishing - or your fastest path to destroying trust.Episode Chapters:07:00 The vicious cycle: how "labor as cost" mindset creates operational collapse12:42 Improving customer value is the best way to grow profits15:03 The Good Jobs System explained: two pillars, four operational levers22:00 Focus and simplify: why fewer choices drive better frontline performance27:00 Standardize and empower: how clear standards create ownership, not compliance34:00 Cross-train: flexibility, motivation, and promoting from within43:00 Why operating with slack is strategic.49:33 How AI can either replace people or amplify human contributionResources:Connect with the GuestLinkedIn: Professor Zeynep TonRecommended Reading: The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost ProfitsConnect with the HostLinkedIn: Ashish KothariWebsite: Happiness SquadBook: Hardwired For HappinessYouTube: Happiness Squad ChannelIf this conversation sparked something for you, please subscribe and leave a review, it takes 30 seconds and helps more people discover the show.
Send us Fan MailOriginally from Fountain Valley, CA, Summer Johansen-Graham is a former store manager (mate) at Trader Joe's. Present day, she residing in the Pacific North West, where she is pursuing her dreams of becoming a nurse.In today's episode, we dive into Summer's time growing up in Southern California, how her dreams of becoming a psychologist transitioned into one of becoming a nurse, facing addiction and its consequences head on with the loss of her father, fighting through grief, stepping away from Trader Joe's to purse her dreams of becoming a nurse, using dark humor to maneuver through challenging times, mental health, and so much more. This maybe the most emotional episode to date. Tears were shed, laughs were had, and much insight was shared about death, grief, and love. Much love to Summer for coming on to share her story and being so transparent and genuine. I hope all enjoy and are able to take something away from such a kind and wonderful human. Follow Summer Graham on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/summerrgraham Follow The Failed Experiment on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_thefailedexperiment/Support the the Failed Experiment: https://account.venmo.com/u/kylecowlingFollow The Failed Experiment on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@_TFEFollow Kyle Cowling on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kylecowling/Support the show
Kerri Kenney-Silver talks about the delightful working conditions on the upcoming season of “The Four Seasons.” Trader Joe's employee Zander Holyfield is happy to chat and also steer you clear of food poisoning. Finally, concerned citizen Darbara Meatbag helps everyone stay on the path to normalcy. Don't forget to check out the Comedy Bang! Bang! Action Figures at shop.figurecollections.com and go to actionfigurecellar.com for international purchases. If you want more great episodes of Comedy Bang! Bang! become a subscriber at comedybangbangworld.com. We have all of the past episodes from the archives, every live show, ad-free new episodes, and original shows like CBB Presents and Scott Hasn't Seen. Find more great Comedy Bang! Bang! merch at https://www.podswag.com/collections/comedy-bang-bang Get access to all the podcasts you love, music channels and radio shows with the SiriusXM App! Get 3 months free using this show link: https://siriusxm.com/cbb Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Sometimes, a discussion about The GOAT can be polarizing. Whether it's an athlete, a writer, an actor, a musician, or any other professional, judging the Greatest Of All Time is an inherently subjective endeavor. When it comes to cheese, though, it's easier, especially when GOAT is in the actual name of the cheese. In this episode of Inside Trader Joe's, we talk to our resident cheese expert about Goat Cheese, and we travel to Wisconsin to talk to the folks who start with goat's milk from local farmers and make the chevre magic happen. It's a blaaaaast! Transcript (PDF)
Batya (!) Ungar-Sargon needs no introduction, but if you insist: she's the host of of “Batya!” on News Nation (Saturday at 7PM & Sunday at 11AM EST), host of the YouTube show “Prove It! With Batya”, and author of the brand new book, The Jews and the Left, which comes out tomorrow, is already a bestseller, and you should buy it immediately! Are you coming to happy hour tonight?? Or are you an antisemite? Why not both??Monday, June 1st6pmSpring Street Lounge48 Spring St, New York, NY 10012Chaya Leah, Yael, some special guests, and this just in - SWAG! See you there.Here's what we cover with Batya:* Hot gossip about Leo frank* No bagel and lox parade* What kind of Jews should we blame for antisemitism?* Brad Lander, and the case of the “I got nothing else going for me” politician.* The right wing hates Israel just because of foreign aid?* Is Batya still a leftie? Yes, and so is Trump.* I'm still a Democrat, I just don't vote for them anymore.* Batya is looking out for Trump.* Psychoanalyzing JD Vance.* Americans are hungry, for actual food.* Turn off your damn phone.* Get us more Jews over here!* Is fighting antisemitism worth our time?* Jews are getting the white treatment…and that's ok?* Meeting Jew-lovers at Trader Joe's.* Antisemitism is not a big deal.* Jews are not a minority group.* Do your feelings get hurt?* We need Jewish Balls, not Jewish Joy.* The Jews need to take back improv!* Graham Platner better not misgender someone! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit askajew.substack.com/subscribe
Tim Conway Jr Show Hour 4 (5.29) Conway kicks off the hour with a look at two promising new cholesterol treatments, enlicitide and VERVE-102, both aiming to help lower LDL “bad” cholesterol — but in completely different ways. One sounds like the future of medicine, and the other sounds like Conway is ready to gamble on it like a casino bet. Then the crew dives into the viral Trader Joe’s Sweet & Sour Gummy Worms story. These innocent-looking candies are loaded with fiber, and because the bag doesn’t exactly scream “high fiber warning,” some shoppers are eating way too many and ending up with stomach rumbling, gas, and a surprise bathroom emergency. The ultimate buzzkill candy. Later, Conway tells his Egg McMuffin story after going 35 years without one, explains how he managed to annoy a pharmacist at CVS, and breaks down the chaos of picking up everyone’s Starbucks drinks. The hour wraps with one of the strangest side hustle stories yet: a 23-year-old creator making serious money selling videos of herself farting. Forget Etsy, rideshare, and vintage clothes — this is the new economy, and Conway has questions. cholesterol treatment, LDL cholesterol, VERVE-102, enlicitide, Trader Joe’s gummies, Sweet & Sour Gummy Worms, high fiber candy, bathroom emergency, Egg McMuffin, CVS pharmacy, Starbucks order, weird side hustle, fart videos, viral story, funny podcast, Conway Show See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Tim Conway Jr. Show Hour 1 (5.29) Friday is here, and Conway is ready to take the edge off! The crew kicks things off with weekend buzz talk, student love for Fridays, and the universal mission of getting through the week and into relaxation mode. But nothing kills a good buzz faster than the wrong snack — especially when Trader Joe’s candy starts giving people the runs. That’s right, the crew gets into the ultimate Friday night disaster: trying to feel loose and happy, only to have candy turn your weekend into a bathroom sprint. The show also dives into the wild fact that 60 Minutes has been on the air for 57 years, Conway hosting the massive OC Business Awards, and a possible medical breakthrough involving a new gene-editing cholesterol drug that could change how high cholesterol is treated. Then things get weird with the internet’s latest obsession: “hot rodent men.” From Timothée Chalamet-style features to Hollywood’s strangest beauty trend, the crew breaks down why rat-like is somehow now attractive. Conway also admits he likes gambling on new medicine, comparing it to carnival rides, Vegas casinos, Whiskey Pete’s, and his love for Primm Casino. Plus, he pitches a genius idea for reviving Primm with “The Oasis.” Later, the show turns serious with a Riverside apartment complex fire that displaced around 150 people, including UC Riverside students forced out during finals. And somehow, it all circles back to viral fire interviews, Michelle Dobney’s unforgettable “Not today!” moment, Elvis Presley’s legendary bathroom demise, and a Friday night reminder: protect your buzz, choose your candy wisely. Trader Joe’s candy, Friday vibes, weekend buzz, buzzkill, funny podcast, hot rodent men, Timothée Chalamet, gene editing, cholesterol drug, PCSK9, Eli Lilly, Primm Casino, Vegas stories, Riverside fire, UC Riverside, viral moments, Conway Show See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
*Timestamps are approximate* TIME TOPIC 0:00 Podcast intro with Dave & Chuck "The Freak"0:01 - - - AD MARKER - - -0:01 National Flip-Flop, Sunscreen, Grape, Nothing to Fear Day0:03 Vietnam vet who got lost in the wilderness talks about his experience0:13 56-year-old mother takes up gymnastics0:21 Single-person luxuries that people in relationships miss out on0:31 NEWS0:31 DARK SIDED0:31 Wind caught umbrella, killed an outdoor diner0:38 Hiker died after encounter with a bison0:39 Woman gets hit by a duck boat0:42 Paraglider survived collision with a small plane0:45 Wave pulled a guy under while he was boogie boarding0:48 Theme park ride malfunctioned, stranding riders upside down0:52 Thousands of bees swarm a yard0:59 - - - AD MARKER - - -0:59 CELEBRITY DIRT0:59 NBA and NHL Playoffs updates1:01 Titans player spent a lot of money to make his sex tape go away1:13 Swimmer broke world record a the Enhanced Games1:22 Old couple scammed out of big money by someone pretending to be Tom Selleck1:26 An actress reveals that she underwent hypnotherapy to stop peeing her pants1:28 Charlize Theron shares details about intimate encounter with a younger man1:30 Steph Curry's body double1:35 - - - AD MARKER - - -1:35 IT SUCKS TO BE OLD/MUGSHOT OF THE DAY1:35 Deer hunter opened fire on friends, killed one of them1:41 Old lady freaked out after a child splashed her at a water park1:50 Guy seen touching himself when he saw a hot girl leaving the gym1:53 Naked man was skinny dipping in a luxury condo pool1:56 The Airbnb pisser is facing new charges2:15 Airline passenger left with permanently damaged penis after hot coffee spilled on him 2:21 IDIOT CRIMINAL OF THE DAY2:21 Guy vandalized pickleball courts2:25 - - - AD MARKER - - -2:25 DOUCHEBAG OF THE DAY2:25 Guy got huge tree branch stuck on his truck, kept driving, damaged other cars2:34 A guy got trapped in a cave2:36 Woman was hospitalized after getting shot by a dog2:38 Obese dog had to go to the gym to lose some weight2:40 Blind man is suing after a car dealership took advantage of him2:44 JUNK FOOD ROUNDUP2:44 New candy at Trader Joe's is causing intestinal distress2:53 - - - AD MARKER - - -2:53 NEWS2:53 Driver blew by a road closed sign, drove into wet cement2:54 Guy burned his feet on cruise boat's pool deck2:58 Lady charged $6K in DoorDash items that she did not order3:03 - - - AD MARKER - - -3:03 Delivery driver caught on camera stealing tips from a server3:07 Customer ordered a watch on Amazon, box came empty twice3:11 Great Florida Big Foot conference is coming up3:14 - - - AD MARKER - - -3:14 FLORIDA'S EFFED UP3:14 Lady did something effed up with wasp spray END OF SHOWSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Sam, Dylan, and Darksmith are back to break down: Sam gifting Ryan a wildly suspicious self-published manifesto titled "Why Nukes Aren't Real" by Tamra Shavel that appears to have been sold off the Santa Monica Pier, the show climbing to #4 most hyped on YouTube while still unable to dethrone the two bald hiking Jews at the top, MrBeast getting hit by the new algorithm and dropping from 500 million to 50 million views, the Euphrates River drying up exactly on schedule for Revelations 16's sixth bowl to prepare the way for the kings of the East, Dylan's running theory that all biblical prophecy is just well-documented schizophrenia, Turkey damming the Tigris and Euphrates and accidentally activating the apocalypse like a Zelda puzzle box, Iran shooting down a US-Israel weather weapon and the drought ending three days later, the absolutely cooked roster of CEOs Trump dragged to China including Jensen Huang, Tim Cook, Larry Fink, Stephen Schwarzman, and Elon yonked on ketamine while worth more than the country he's negotiating with, Hasan Piker calmly defending China's 1.2 million Tibetan death tally and the Hundred Days of Flowers 55 million famine deaths while condemning Israel, the LA segregation map of Trader Joe's locations, the Mehdi Hasan interview where the "Worst Adventure" Oklahoma Jennifer publicly atones for not knowing enough about Palestine while admitting she has zero Muslims in her town, the empathy study revealing women feel equal sympathy for cheating men and cheating women (which kind of explains Hillary, Thatcher, Merkel, and the entire blood-drinking queen aesthetic), the 1.5 million white Christians getting fed into the Ukraine meat grinder that no progressive will post about, Netanyahu's trial judge dying in a motorcycle crash because nothing is ever an accident, and OpenAI acquiring TBPN for $100 million while their videos pull 500 views. Subscribe and give us that sweet brown hype. Grab Tickets To Sam Tripoli's Live Shows At SamTripoli.com: Costa Mesa, Ca: 5/28 Austin, TX: 5/22 (Live Taping Of Sam Tripoli's Comedy Special) Albuquerque, NM: 6/12-6/13 Austin, TX: 6/18 Miami, Fl: 7/31-8/1 Lawerence, KS: 9/17-9/19 Tulsa, OK: 10/9-10/10 Austin, TX: Dec 11th-13th: Buy Our Merch or Sam Will Fight You: https://conspiracy-social-club-aka-deep-waters.myshopify.com/ Subscribe to the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AkaDeepWaters Check out Dylan's instagram - @dylanpetewrenn Check out Deep Waters Instagram: @akadeepwaters Check out Bad Tv podcast: https://bit.ly/3RYuTG0 THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: LUCY NICOTINE POUCHES Go to LUCY.CO/CSC and use CODE "CSC" for 20% OFF your first online order TASKRABBIT USE Code "CSC" and get $15 OFF your first task BLUECHEW GOLD Go to BlueChew.com and use promo code "DEEP" to get your 3rd month free
Joining us for this episode of Inside Trader Joe's is a group of Trader Joe's shoppers from the high school Class of 2026. They represent, quite literally, the future, not just for Trader Joe's, but for all of us. We chatted with them about their favorite TJ's products and the way they cook, got their feedback about some new products that haven't quite made their way to the shelves at Trader Joe's just yet. Most importantly, they schooled us on some current slang – let's just say, this episode hits! Transcript (PDF)