Weird Things

The episode opens with a long discussion of DeepSeek, its V3 and R1 reasoning models, and why the release caused such a big reaction in AI circles and on Wall Street. Andrew says DeepSeek appears to have made real efficiency gains in training and hardware use, while Justin argues the market overreacted to the idea that less compute would be needed; both stress that the models do not mean chips or...

The episode opens with a discussion of DeepSeek's V3 and R1 models, which the hosts describe as highly capable and unusually efficient. They frame the reaction as part of a broader open-source versus closed-source AI debate, while also noting uncertainty and controversy about whether some of DeepSeek's progress came from training on frontier model outputs or distillation. The hosts stress that the...

The episode opens with a discussion of rapid recent AI releases and whether AI has "hit a wall." Andrew points to OpenAI's O3 and Google video models as evidence that capabilities are still advancing, while Justin uses the ARC Prize and AGI as the lens for asking how quickly systems are improving and whether a reasonable AGI label could arrive within the next year. Andrew's response emphasizes the...

In this episode, Andrew Mayne, Justin Robert Young, and Brian Brushwood take listeners on a fascinating exploration of entertainment’s past, present, and future. They kick off with a nostalgic look at how theme parks like Universal Studios have evolved, highlighting the technological advancements in attractions such as the Born Stunt Spectacular. The conversation then shifts to the potential of AI...

The episode opens with a discussion of OpenAI's Shipmas announcements and a comparison with Google's recent AI releases. The hosts focus on OpenAI's o3 model, describing it as a real, usable research milestone and noting that it scored highly on the ARC Prize benchmark and coding evaluations, while also acknowledging that some announced features are not immediately available to everyone. The conve...

The episode opens with the hosts talking about new live multimodal AI features in ChatGPT and Google Gemini, including Andrew's demo of showing ChatGPT a card trick over live video. They note that these features had been demonstrated earlier and are now shipping, but emphasize that backend compute, server connections, and GPU supply make rollout slower than some people expect. Most of the episode...

In this episode, Andrew Mayne, Justin Robert Young, and Brian Brushwood kick things off with a brief chat about the latest addition to Justin’s family and the implications of raising a child in today’s tech-saturated world. The conversation quickly shifts to Elon Musk’s recent showcase of Tesla’s advancements in robotics, including the Optimus robot and the Cyber Cab. The hosts speculate on the im...

The episode opens with a long discussion of SpaceX successfully catching the Starship booster with Mechazilla. The hosts focus on the scale of the tower and booster, the surprise and delight of the SpaceX team, and what the feat implies for fully reusable rockets. They also broaden the conversation into Elon Musk's impact, conviction and persistence in engineering, and how institutions and experts...

The episode opens with Andrew detailing OpenAI's Dev Day announcements, especially the real-time API for continuous text or audio conversations and demos aimed at customer support and phone ordering. The hosts then debate AI as a replacement or augmentation for customer service, with Brian and Justin emphasizing how frustrating human support can be and how useful a capable AI agent might be if it...

In this episode, Andrew Mayne, Justin Robert Young, and Brian Brushwood kick things off with a chat about the weather before diving into the world of augmented reality and virtual reality. They discuss the limitations of Apple’s Vision Pro and the potential of Facebook’s Project Orion, comparing the two and expressing their hopes for the future of AR. The conversation then shifts to acoustic holog...

The episode opens with the hosts joking about wanting burritos immediately and turns into a discussion of faster delivery systems. Andrew introduces Zipline's drone-delivery model, describing how it keeps the aircraft high above the ground and lowers cargo by line to avoid noise and landing-safety problems. That leads naturally into a broader conversation about autonomous transport, including Waym...

The episode opens with a long discussion of OpenAI's Strawberry / O1-style reasoning models. Andrew Mayne explains that these models seem to work better when asked to break problems into steps, use tools, and reason through tasks in a more structured way than ordinary one-shot chat models. The hosts compare this to prompt engineering, discuss examples like decimal comparisons and counting the R's...

Andrew Mayne, Brian Brushwood, and Justin Robert Young (eventually) take us on a journey from the depths of space to the mysteries of our ancient past. They kick off with space news, discussing the return path for astronauts via SpaceX, not Boeing’s Starliner, and delve into the grounding of SpaceX launches due to a mishap. The conversation then shifts to a natural phenomenon where butterflies har...

The episode opens with Justin and Brian discussing a New York Times story about a SpaceX Starlink launch that experienced an upper-stage problem. They note that the first stage landed normally on a drone ship, but the second stage did not reach the intended altitude to deploy the satellites properly, and they mention SpaceX describing the event as a very rare glitch and a rapid unscheduled disasse...

In this episode of Weird Things, Andrew Mayne, Justin Robert Young, and Brian Brushwood embark on a journey through the evolving landscape of aviation technology. They discuss the myriad of companies attempting to develop next-generation aerial vehicles, including those adding excessive propellers to electric helicopters in hopes of making flying cars a reality. The trio delves into alternative av...

Andrew Mayne and Justin Robert Young dissect Apple’s approach to integrating AI into its ecosystem with a strong emphasis on privacy. They speculate on the implications of Apple’s strategy to handle AI processing on-device as much as possible, while also offering cloud processing with user permission. The trio discusses the technical hurdles, Apple’s historical stance on privacy, and how these fac...

Andrew Mayne, Brian Brushwood, and Justin Robert Young embark on a technological odyssey, starting with Andrew’s recent acquisition of a Bamboo A1 3D printer. The excitement is palpable as Andrew shares his adventures in 3D printing everything from knives to whirligigs, showcasing the printer’s impressive capabilities. The conversation then shifts to AI, with the trio exploring Claude 3.5 and its...

Andrew and Justin spend most of the episode comparing OpenAI's GPT-4o rollout with Google's AI announcements. They describe GPT-4o as a multimodal system that combines text, image, sound, and voice into one model, and emphasize that OpenAI's live demos felt fast, real-time, and more transparent than Google's earlier staged or prerecorded presentations. They also discuss latency, the shift from sep...

The episode opens with a long discussion of the OpenAI / Scarlett Johansson controversy. Andrew says he had a direct view of GPT-4o voice development, that OpenAI hired actors with disclosures and fair pay, and that there was never an intent to copy Johansson’s voice. The hosts argue that the resemblance was driven by audience expectations shaped by Her and by a familiar voice archetype, not by a...

The episode opens with the news that philosopher Daniel Dennett has died, and the hosts reflect on how influential his books, especially Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Consciousness Explained, were on Andrew's thinking about arguments, thought experiments, consciousness, and where the boundaries of sentience may lie. Brian adds his own examples from dogs and consciousness, reinforcing the sense that...

The episode opens with a discussion of AI-generated music, starting from a Weird Things intro written by Suno and moving into comparisons between Suno and Udio. The hosts note that Udio produces cleaner vocals but shorter initial clips, while Suno can generate longer clips and be extended. They treat the tools as a major sign of how quickly AI-generated creative content is improving. The conversat...

The episode centers on a long discussion of AI's rapid move from novelty to everyday utility. The hosts describe using AI for transcription, editing, text simplification, image cleanup, and coding help, and Andrew demonstrates how tools like Groq and Cursor make inference and programming feel dramatically faster and more accessible than earlier AI systems. The conversation also walks through token...

Andrew Mayne, Justin Robert Young, and Brian Brushwood embark on a journey through a variety of topics, starting with a real-world disaster involving a boat crash and a collapsed bridge. They speculate on the implications of tainted fuel and the role of the National Transportation Safety Board in such incidents. The conversation then shifts to the potential for economic and infrastructural disaste...

The episode opens with a discussion of Boom Supersonic and its attempt to revive commercial supersonic air travel. The hosts talk about Boom's successful test flight of a scaled-down prototype, the plan for the Overture airliner, the role of Japan Airlines, and the history of Concorde, including sonic booms, U.S. restrictions on supersonic flight, and the Concorde's drooping nose and hot exterior....

The episode opens with Justin describing a Cameo birthday message he received from Kirstie Patterson, the performer associated with the viral Willy’s Chocolate Experience disaster, and the hosts discuss how the incident became internet-famous, the “depressed Oompa Loompa” label, and how Cameo can be a practical way for someone caught in online notoriety to earn money. They also briefly discuss the...