Every week, Rik, Ben & Luca break down the biggest AI stories. The drama, the launches, the "who just got disrupted" moments, through three lenses: marketing, building, and macro vision.<br />For solopreneurs, indie hackers, AI enthusiasts, and idea people becoming founders.<br />New episode every Saturday.
Podcast Overview
Every week, Rik, Ben & Luca break down the biggest AI stories. The drama, the launches, the "who just got disrupted" moments, through three lenses: marketing, building, and macro vision.<br />For solopreneurs, indie hackers, AI enthusiasts, and idea people becoming founders.<br />New episode every Saturday.
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Publishing Since
3/9/2026
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Recent Episodes
July 24, 2026
EP23: Is the AI bubble popping? Claude, Kimi & network states
<p>Is the AI bubble popping? Network-state builder Gonçalo Hall joins to explain how Balaji's Network School lost Malaysia and rebuilt in Kazakhstan in 48 hours — then Rik, Ben and Luca break down Anthropic's stalling growth, open-source models like Kimi, Elon's Grok checkmate, and an OpenAI model that hacked Hugging Face.</p><p><br></p><p>Three builders plus a guest, covering the AI and builder news actually worth your time.</p><p><br></p><p>IN THIS EPISODE:</p><p>• What Network School actually is: $1,500/mo, 500 founders, one hotel, schooling for kids</p><p>• The Nas Daily accusation that got it kicked out of Malaysia — and the 48-hour pivot to Kazakhstan</p><p>• Why the real product of a network state is where you'd raise your kids</p><p>• Is the AI bubble popping? Anthropic from $10B to $60B in six months, and the fiber-optic-bubble read</p><p>• China, distillation, and why you can't ban open source without banning the internet</p><p>• Claude Corner: is Claude too censored? Ben asks Kimi about Tiananmen Square live</p><p>• Will AI be Facebook, or Uber? Localized frontier models and AI sovereignty</p><p>• Elon's open-source Grok "checkmate" and Sam Altman's "AI is electricity"</p><p>• The $20,000-vs-$1,300 Cursor SQLite cost proof — why do we even need Fable?</p><p>• An OpenAI model that daisy-chained its way out of the box to hack Hugging Face and cheat its own benchmark</p><p>• If an AI hacks on your behalf, who's guilty? Plus the new Claude Security plugin and Vando</p><p><br></p><p>CHAPTERS:</p><p>00:00 Cold open</p><p>00:17 Welcome to EP23 — four on the mics, with Gonçalo Hall</p><p>01:38 What is Network School?</p><p>03:45 How Malaysia pulled the permit (Nas Daily)</p><p>06:24 Was exposing it a mistake — or the plan?</p><p>09:51 Kazakhstan: a mountain-town Silicon Valley</p><p>10:54 The real product: where you raise your kids</p><p>14:46 Faster than tech: a city in 5 weeks</p><p>15:58 Is the AI bubble popping? Anthropic's ARR</p><p>18:51 China, distillation & banning open source</p><p>20:42 Packaging, the harness & Kimi cuts off signups</p><p>24:27 Claude Corner: is Claude too censored?</p><p>25:34 Asking Kimi about Tiananmen Square, live</p><p>26:34 Will AI be Facebook, or Uber?</p><p>29:18 Elon's open-source checkmate</p><p>30:25 Sam Altman: AI is becoming electricity</p><p>33:55 Cursor-maxing + the auto router</p><p>35:48 $20,000 vs $1,300 — the SQLite cost proof</p><p>37:04 Jevons paradox: is this a bubble?</p><p>39:58 An OpenAI model hacked Hugging Face</p><p>43:40 If an AI hacks on your behalf, who's guilty?</p><p>45:14 Claude Corner: the new Security plugin</p><p>48:12 Teach Claude a skill (record a skill)</p><p>52:22 Vando: vibe-code features onto any SaaS</p><p>59:09 Outro + Porto AI Week</p><p><br></p><p>MENTIONED: Balaji Srinivasan, Network School, The Network State, Forest City Malaysia, Nas Daily, Kazakhstan, Almaty, Solana Foundation, Alpha School, Anthropic, Claude, ChatGPT, Kimi K3, Grok, xAI, Colossus, Terrafab, Mistral, Bolt, Cursor, Cursor Composer, SQLite, Hugging Face, Chamath, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Vando, Linear, Prospera, Bansko, Thicker Trends, Porto AI Week</p><p><br></p><p>HOSTS:</p><p>Rik — https://x.com/rikventure</p><p>Ben Broch — https://x.com/brochchain</p><p>Luca Arrigo — https://x.com/LucaArrigo_</p><p>Guest: Gonçalo Hall — https://x.com/Gonzohall</p><p><br></p><p>Watch on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@godmodepod</p><p>Substack → https://godmodepod.substack.com/</p><p><br></p><p>New episodes drop Saturday.</p>
July 17, 2026
EP22: GPT 5.6 Sol vs Claude Fable — is OpenAI winning?
<p>Apple is suing OpenAI over stolen trade secrets, Codex admitted nerfing GPT 5.6 Sol, and Anthropic tripled your Claude rate limits to stop you leaving. Three AI builders break down the week AI got petty.</p><p><br></p><p>Rik (Midcurve Labs), Ben Broch (three SaaS products) and Luca Arrigo (ten years, five industries) go through the rate-limit arms race, the Apple v OpenAI espionage complaint, Codex Micro, the $500M AI companies nobody's heard of, and Kimi K3's jump to frontier pricing. No Claude Corner this week. Sam Altman took the segment.</p><p><br></p><p>IN THIS EPISODE:</p><p><br></p><p>• Ben does the math on the rate-limit war: twice-weekly resets plus 50% higher limits means roughly 3x the tokens for the same price</p><p>• The Fable vs GPT 5.6 Sol split, tested against a production SaaS with paying customers on the line</p><p>• Codex DevRel posts "no nerfing, only good stuff" and admits reverting "juice values" further down the same thread</p><p>• Apple sues OpenAI: 400 ex-employees, a VP of 24 years, and a second engineer who kept hacking Apple's file server after he left</p><p>• The Steve Jobs email to Adobe that shows how this used to get handled</p><p>• Codex Micro, a $240 eight-key macropad, gets roasted from three directions</p><p>• Chamath's 8090 CTO: inference spend doubling every 45 days, with the marginal gains getting more expensive</p><p>• Kimi K3 prices at 5x K2.7, and why China's efficiency play is the real threat to the frontier labs</p><p>• PayPal employs as many people as Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI combined, and Stripe just bid for it</p><p><br></p><p>CHAPTERS:</p><p><br></p><p>00:00 Cold open</p><p>00:49 Welcome to EP22: Codex is eating Claude</p><p>01:58 The rate-limit arms race: 3x the tokens</p><p>03:40 How far we've come: shipped in 2 days</p><p>05:22 Sam Altman is poaching Claude users</p><p>07:10 GPT 5.6 Sol vs Claude Fable</p><p>09:25 Can GPT 5.6 Sol be trusted?</p><p>11:45 The Claude situationship</p><p>13:50 A million users a day is a bad number</p><p>17:06 I cancelled Claude Max: the $60 stack</p><p>18:53 The GPT 5.6 nerf: "no nerfing, only good stuff"</p><p>23:42 Apple sues OpenAI for trade secret theft</p><p>29:11 Codex Micro: a $240 keyboard</p><p>34:16 LinkedIn is 60% AI content</p><p>36:23 The $500M AI companies nobody's heard of</p><p>41:53 Why AI got expensive instead of cheap</p><p>45:56 Stripe wants to buy PayPal</p><p>47:26 Outro</p><p><br></p><p>MENTIONED:</p><p><br></p><p>Claude, Fable, Opus 4.8, Anthropic, Codex, GPT 5.6 Sol, ChatGPT, Codex Micro, Sora, OpenAI, Cursor, Composer, Grok 4.5, Kimi K2.7, Kimi K3, Mythos, Apple, the Steve Jobs to Bruce Chizen email, Johnny Ive, Mercor, Together AI, Surge AI, Lambda, Fireworks, Lightning AI, Scale AI, Alexander Wang, Lovable, ElevenLabs, Perplexity, Manus, Chamath Palihapitiya, the All-In Podcast, 8090, Stripe, PayPal, Whisper Flow, Replit, Polymarket, CryptoPunks.</p><p><br></p><p>HOSTS:</p><p><br></p><p>Rik — https://x.com/rikventure</p><p>Ben Broch — https://x.com/brochchain</p><p>Luca Arrigo — https://x.com/LucaArrigo_</p><p><br></p><p>LISTEN AND FOLLOW:</p><p><br></p><p>YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUhKe2X1RW-kLTDigvkMz4w</p><p>Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/show/0ZBhl5IVFa8wZPvIKNTkRP</p><p>Apple Podcasts — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/god-mode-podcast/id1883959580</p><p>Substack — https://godmodepod.substack.com/</p><p>Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/godmodepod</p><p>TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@godmodepod</p><p><br></p><p>New episodes every Saturday. Next week: AI and blockchain, with a guest.</p>
July 9, 2026
EP21: The new AI stack — Claude Fable plans, GPT5.6 builds, Grok 4.5 grinds
<p>Grok 4.5 matches Opus 4.8 at a tenth of the cost, GPT-5.6 "Soul" ships under government review, and Anthropic extends Claude Fable 5. The biggest AI week of the year, for builders.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rik, Ben and Luca break down what's actually usable this week versus marketing: the Grok vs Fable cost gap, the 3-model stack where Claude plans and Grok does the cheap grunt work, OpenAI retracting the SWE-bench benchmark, Cloudflare's x402 agent payments, and Europe's surveillance week (face-scanning cars and chat control).</p><p><br /></p><p>IN THIS EPISODE:</p><p>• Grok 4.5 lands on par with Opus 4.8 at about 70% less per task</p><p>• The 3-model stack: Claude plans, GPT-5 executes, Grok 4.5 grinds</p><p>• "Claude is the CEO telling OpenAI to go build it"</p><p>• Ben's call: free Fable ends behind a $500 to $1,000 per month plan</p><p>• OpenAI retracts SWE-bench right before shipping GPT-5.6 "Soul"</p><p>• ChatGPT's live voice demo, and the aunt who talks to "Timmy" more than her husband</p><p>• Cloudflare x402: get paid when agents scrape your website</p><p>• Europe Corner: new cars watch your face, and chat control passes</p><p><br /></p><p>CHAPTERS:</p><p>00:00 Cold open — the 9-to-5 rant and paragliding with a WhatsApp stranger</p><p>02:56 Episode 21 — still top 1% of podcasts</p><p>03:56 Who's where: Brooklyn, Bansko, Albania</p><p>06:44 Grok 4.5 lands — on par with Opus 4.8, trained on Cursor</p><p>09:26 Do you need the best model if it's 10x cheaper?</p><p>10:51 The qualitative era: picking a model is taste now</p><p>15:18 Claude and Codex cut this whole podcast</p><p>16:30 GPT-5.6 "Soul" and the government gatekeeping releases</p><p>20:11 The 3-model stack: Claude plans, GPT executes, Grok grinds</p><p>24:00 Fable extended to July 12 and the coming $1,000 per month tier</p><p>26:27 OpenAI's 5% stake and the spokesperson problem</p><p>27:30 ChatGPT Live voice demo — "we found a flaw"</p><p>32:05 Talks to Timmy more than her husband</p><p>34:56 OpenAI retracts SWE-bench — are benchmarks broken?</p><p>37:55 Quickfire: levels.io goes native iOS</p><p>41:07 Nomad Table vs Nomads.com — IRL wins</p><p>43:35 Hermes: agents fully in the cloud</p><p>45:39 Cloudflare x402 — get paid when agents scrape you</p><p>50:00 Europe Corner: your new car watches your face</p><p>53:46 Chat control passes — a sad day for Europe</p><p>58:30 Claude's monthly recap and /checkup — screen time for Claude</p><p>1:02:03 Outro</p><p><br /></p><p>MENTIONED: Grok 4.5, Cursor, SpaceX AI, Claude Fable 5, Opus 4.8, Anthropic, GPT-5.6 "Soul", Codex, OpenAI, ChatGPT Live, Bridgemind, SWE-bench Pro, Hermes agent, Replit, Lovable, Cloudflare x402, Coinbase, Firecrawl, levels.io, Nomad Table, Nomads.com</p><p><br /></p><p>HOSTS:</p><p>Rik — https://x.com/rikventure</p><p>Ben Broch — https://x.com/brochchain</p><p>Luca Arrigo — https://x.com/LucaArrigo_</p><p><br /></p><p>Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@godmodepod</p><p>Newsletter: https://godmodepod.substack.com/</p><p><br /></p><p>New episode every Saturday.</p>
23 total episodes available
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