safe to eat

Dan and guest Paul Ford discuss Claude Opus 4.5's capabilities as a coding model. The episode explores how this tool can keep coding and coding autonomously without tripping over itself, marking new possibilities for software development. They examine design principles behind Claude Code, practical applications in building software, and broader implications of AI's evolution in development workflows.

Stewart Butterfield is the co-founder of Slack and Flickr, two of the most influential products in internet history. After selling Slack to Salesforce in one of tech's biggest acquisitions, he's been focused on family, philanthropy, and creative projects. In this rare podcast appearance, Stewart shares the product frameworks and leadership principles that most contributed to his success. From utility curves to the owner's delusion to hyper-realistic work-like activities, his thoughts on craft, strategy, and leadership apply to anyone building products or leading teams.

There's a ubiquitous prop in just about every police procedural and conspiracy thriller: a cork board pinned with documents, newspaper clippings, and Polaroid photos, all connected by a web of red string. They go by many names, including pin boards, string boards, evidence boards, investigation walls, conspiracy walls, and walls of crazy. These boards can be vehicles of insight or manifestations of madness – and in many cases, both. But where did they come from? And can they really solve a crime? In this episode, we try to unwind the red string board all the way to its center. To aide in our investigation, we enlist the help of Aki Peritz, a former CIA analyst and the author of Disruption: Inside the Largest Counterterrorism Investigation in History. You'll also hear from Shawn Gilmore, editor of The Vault of Culture and creator of the Narrative String Theory project; and Dr. Anne Ganzert, author of Serial Pinboarding in Contemporary Television. And we learn about the intricacies of building a string board from production designers Michael Scott Cobb (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and John D. Kretschmer (Homeland).

The episode features an interview with Dwarkesh Patel, a prominent podcaster known for going deep with subjects rather than oversimplifying content. The conversation covers his rise as an interviewer, particularly in AI discussions, and announces his upcoming book The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, co-authored with Gavin Leech and published through Stripe Press. The interview was recorded in San Francisco and explores both his professional work and personal background.

This is one of the finalists in the 2025 review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I'll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you've read them all, I'll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked. Just as we don't accept students using AI to write their essays, we will not accept districts using AI to supplant the critical role of teachers. – Arthur Steinberg, American Federation of Teachers-PA, reacting to Alpha's cyber-charter bid, January 2025. In January 2025, the charter school application of Unbound Academy, a subsidiary of 2 Hour Learning, Inc, lit up the education press: two hours of AI-powered academics, 2.6x learning velocity, and zero teachers. Sympathetic reporters repeated the slogans; union leaders reached for pitchforks; Reddit muttered another rich-kid scam. More sophisticated critics dismissed the pitch as selective data from expensive private schools. But there is nowhere on the internet that provides a detailed, non-partisan, description of what the 2 hour learning program actually is, let alone an objective third party analysis to back up its claims.