A clip from our episode "Austin: From Counterculture to Culture | Karen Blashek, Austin Home Magazine"

Austin's counterculture is still the ethos. The next chapter is what gets built on top of it. Karen Blashek, the editor-in-chief of Austin Home Magazine, took over a 21-year-old design publication with no editorial background and turned it into one of the city's most consequential platforms for naming what's already…

Updated re-release. A year ago we left one question unresolved. Where do foundational AI models end and where do the applications begin? Nick Tippmann returns in a fresh epilogue. A year on, the tension has only sharpened. Specificity is the differentiator when inches matter. Nick Tippmann, founding partner of TipTop…

A clip from our episode "The First Thing Built on the Moon Will Come from Austin | Jason Ballard & Will Hurd, ICON"

Clip from our episode "What Building in Austin Actually Feels Like Right Now | Will Johnson & Alex Cohen"

Clip from our episode "What Building in Austin Actually Feels Like Right Now | Will Johnson & Alex Cohen"

This was not the episode we planned. Will Johnson, founder and CEO of Gyde, and Alex Cohen, founder and CEO of Hello Patient, came on to talk about innovation in the business of health. Instead it became our off the record conversations, but behind the microphone. An unfiltered field report…

A clip from our episode "The First Thing Built on the Moon Will Come from Austin | Jason Ballard & Will Hurd, ICON"

A clip from our episode "The First Thing Built on the Moon Will Come from Austin | Jason Ballard & Will Hurd, ICON"

A clip from our episode "The First Thing Built on the Moon Will Come from Austin | Jason Ballard & Will Hurd, ICON"

ICON has been telling the same story since 2018. Humanity has a construction problem that solving for regulations and supply-demand incentives alone won't fix. We need fundamentally new ways to build. Jason Ballard, ICON's founder and CEO, and Will Hurd, the former CIA officer, congressman, and OpenAI board member who…

A clip from our episode "Reinventing School Is Accelerating Austin's Talent Flywheel | Joe Liemandt, Alpha School"

A clip from our episode "Reinventing School Is Accelerating Austin's Talent Flywheel | Joe Liemandt, Alpha School"

A clip from our episode "Reinventing School Is Accelerating Austin's Talent Flywheel | Joe Liemandt, Alpha School"

Joe Liemandt built Trilogy, recruited 2,000 Ivy League graduates to Austin, and is now running what he considers the higher-leverage version of the same play, K-12 education. Our host, Jason Scharf, brings a perspective no other interviewer has. He is an Alpha School parent, and he uses that to ask…

A clip from our episode "Innovation Ecosystems Are Inherited | Nait Jones"

A clip from our episode "The Western Canon in the Age of Vibe Coding | Carlos Carvalho, President, University of Austin"

A clip from our episode "We're Living Through the Cyberpunk Era of War | Jim Rebesco, CEO, Striveworks"

A clip from our episode "We're Living Through the Cyberpunk Era of War | Jim Rebesco, CEO, Striveworks"

Directed energy weapons, autonomous drones, and combat AI agents are not just real. They are deployed. Jim Rebesco, cofounder and CEO of Striveworks, breaks down what's driving this moment, and the second and third-order effects most people aren't tracking yet. AI can't be bolted onto legacy systems and expected to…

A clip from our episode "Innovation Ecosystems Are Inherited | Nait Jones

A clip from our episode "Innovation Ecosystems Are Inherited | Nait Jones"

A clip from our episode "Innovation Ecosystems Are Inherited | Nait Jones"

The hype that landed on Austin in 2021 was correct and at the same time ahead of the curve. Nait Jones, serial founder and former a16z partner who arrived in Silicon Valley in 2011 at the Web 2 moment and moved to Austin during the pandemic, argues that the fundamentals…