Artificial Intelligence
Episodes whose main subject is AI itself: building with, training, evaluating, or debating AI systems. AI used only as a tool for another topic goes to that topic.
#1311: Beyond the Reel: Mastering Long-Form Documentary
Move beyond 60-second edits. Learn how to manage the technical debt and narrative weight of creating your first feature-length documentary.
#1309: The Death of Fiction: Why We Can’t Just Enjoy a Story
Is your brain too logical for movies? Explore why "non-fiction bias" makes it harder to enjoy stories and why fiction still matters.
#1308: The AI Attribution Paradox: Normalizing the Ghostwriter
Why do 70% of developers hide their AI use? Explore the "competence stigma" and the emerging rules for radical transparency in an AI-driven world.
#1307: Digital Protocols: Why Modern Manners Feel Like Software
Manners aren't disappearing—they're becoming context-aware. Learn why a "Hey" might be more polite than a "Dear Sir" in the digital age.
#1305: The Victorian Flex: A Masterclass in Social Engineering
Discover how 19th-century dinner rules were used to exclude outsiders and how to use these ancient "bluffs" to signal social pedigree today.
#1304: The Architect Spouse Survival Guide: Social Camouflage
Stop nodding blankly at floor plans. Master the "secret language" of architects to survive studio visits and gallery openings with ease.
#1298: The Wikipedia Wars: Who Controls the Digital Truth?
Is Wikipedia still a neutral gold standard, or has it become a battlefield for ideologues? We dive into the systemic collapse of digital truth.
#1292: The Visibility Trap: Dissent in the Digital Age
In the digital age, we have the right to speak but not the right to be heard. Discover the new architecture of algorithmic censorship.
#1284: The Sincerity Threshold: Why Huge Movie Flops Fascinate Us
Explore the $200 million swings that missed the mark. Why do we love watching high-budget, earnest cinematic train wrecks so much?
#1283: Is Your AI Thinking Too Much?
Stop building Rube Goldberg machines. Learn why autonomous AI agents might be the highest-interest technical debt in your stack.
#1282: The Geometry of Thought: The Mathematics Powering AI
Peeking under the hood of AI to discover the beautiful linear algebra and calculus that make machine reasoning possible.
#1279: Why AI Obeys the Developer Instead of You
Discover the hidden "plumbing" of AI system prompts and how architectural shifts are turning simple instructions into hard-coded laws.
#1266: The Manufactured Authenticity of Neurodivergent Reality TV
Is Netflix’s focus on neurodivergent dating genuine progress or a digital curiosity shop? We explore the ethics of "algorithmic empathy."
#1249: The Curse of Competence: Why Your Best Skills Are Invisible
We often ignore our greatest strengths because they feel too easy. Explore the science of expert blindness and the AI tools uncovering hidden talent.
#1235: Beyond "No Training": Securing the New Agentic AI Stack
Think your data is safe because of a "no training" clause? We deconstruct the hidden security risks within the modern agentic AI stack.
#1234: Why Hashing Fails: Building Context-Aware Redaction Pipelines
Learn how to bridge the "anonymization gap" and protect sensitive data without destroying its utility for analysis.
#1231: The Agentic Shift: 5 Bold AI Predictions for 2026
The Poppleberry brothers move past the chatbot era to deliver five high-stakes, falsifiable predictions for the future of autonomous AI agents.
#1229: The 39 Million Leak: Why Your .env File Is a Pinky-Promise
Stop relying on "security by pinky-promise." Learn how to move from messy .env files to professional zero-trust secrets management.
#1228: The $30 Billion Blog Post: Can AI Finally Kill COBOL?
A single blog post wiped $30 billion off IBM’s value. Discover why the world’s oldest code still runs our banks and if AI can finally replace it.
#1227: Mojo 1.0: Can Chris Lattner Fix the AI Performance Gap?
Explore how Mojo aims to unify Python’s ease of use with C++ performance to solve the "two-language problem" in AI development.