Show Your Priors Podcast

About Show Your Priors Podcast

Update your beliefs. Sharpen your edge. Welcome to Show Your Priors Podcast, a business and strategy podcast hosted by Michael Nichols and Jason Thompson. Bayesian Thinking: How to update your business strategy in real-time as the world changes. Discussing business strategy every Tuesday. #economictrends #marketanalysis #bayesian #venturecapital #businessstrategy

Publisher

Show Your Priors Podcast

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

13 Mar 2026

Latest episode

10 Jul 2026

Latest episodes

17 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   10 Jul 2026

   Alex Osterwalder: The Playbook Approach That's Replacing Corporate Training

   Connect with Alex https://strategyzer.com **Michael's Upcoming Book** https://a.co/d/045OQdAa Music by  ThunderWof. https://www.instagram.com/apache_thunderwof_18/ https://open.spotify.com/artist/4092jgp59goD4nZIL2mQw5 Alex Osterwalder, creator of the Business Model Canvas and founder of Strategyzer, joins Show Your Priors to break down what actually works when you combine business strategy with AI. We cover why most AI in business efforts fail without evidence based decision making, how the ambidextrous organization protects new business models from getting killed by the core business, and why Alex tells his own teams they need to fail more, not less. Alex walks through the playbook approach Strategyzer uses to turn business model innovation and innovation strategy into a repeatable, testable process instead of a slide deck exercise. We dig into real corporate innovation case studies, including Ping An building an AI first business model years before ChatGPT existed, and how Honeywell and Bosch use evidence based decision making and skin in the game experiments to rank and retire ideas instead of funding whoever pitches the best. You will also hear Alex's personal lessons from building Strategyzer, including why having too much money can quietly kill a startup, why disruptive innovation needs a different governance model than the core business, and why AI is making it easier to build a product while making it harder to actually learn if anyone wants it. We also get into value proposition design, customer discovery, and why product market fit still has to be earned the same way it always has. If you work in corporate strategy, finance, marketing, product, or leadership, this conversation is a practical guide to testing business ideas before you build them, not after. Subscribe for new episodes of Show Your Priors every week, where we sit down with the sharpest minds in business strategy, finance, marketing, and management to challenge conventional thinking. Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:18 How AI Is Changing Business Testing and Strategy 03:28 The Ambidextrous Organization and Protecting New Business Models 07:02 Strategy vs Business Model and the Ping An AI Case Study 14:49 Condemned to Succeed and Why Failure Needs a Rebrand 18:42 Evidence Based Innovation at Honeywell and Bosch 33:26 Founder Lessons on Money, Premature Scaling, and Quibi 40:01 AI, Learning Velocity, and Why Corporations Block Fast Testing 44:26 Testing Legally, Ethically, and Around Sales Conflicts 53:31 Where to Find Alex Osterwalder and Strategyzer Keywords: business strategy, business model canvas, innovation strategy, AI in business, corporate innovation, lean startup, Alex Osterwalder, business model innovation, value proposition design, startup strategy, disruptive innovation, Strategyzer, business experimentation, testing business ideas, evidence based decision making, ambidextrous organization, corporate strategy, AI strategy, innovation management, business model design, startup validation, customer discovery, product market fit, digital transformation, leadership and innovation

2. 

   23 Jun 2026

   OpenAI's $21B Loss, the Anthropic Crackdown, and a Live AI Startup Teardown | Ep.16 Show Your Priors

   Pre-order Mike's Book, Fatal Abstraction https://a.co/d/045OQdAa Have a strategy, product, sales, or procurement team you need to make more productive? Schedule a Phaneros demo! beta.phaneros.ai Connect with Seun https://x.com/seun_the_great/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/seunthegreat/ Music by ThunderWof. https://www.instagram.com/apache_thunderwof_18/ https://open.spotify.com/artist/4092jgp59goD4nZIL2mQw5 This week on Show Your Priors, the business strategy podcast where co-hosts Michael Nichols and Jason Thompson take the week's biggest business and AI news and rip it apart to see what lies underneath. We break down OpenAI's reported $21 billion loss and 42-state probe, the government crackdown on Anthropic, SpaceX buying Cursor for $60 billion, and the messy ethics of prediction markets like Polymarket, before sitting down for a live startup teardown with Nigerian entrepreneur Seun Abilawon and his AI powered forex trading platform. From AI layoffs and AI washing in corporate America, to Huawei chip stacking versus US semiconductor sanctions, the Great American AI Act, AI hallucinations, Snap AR glasses, and the FERC fight over AI data centers and moral hazard, this episode is built for anyone who cares about business strategy, finance, marketing, corporate management, venture capital, and entrepreneurship. Michael also previews his new book, Fatal Abstraction, and we apply that framework to a real business model live on the show. Chapters 00:00 Intro 00:36 Fatal Abstraction: Mike's New Book 07:44 Headlines: Anthropic vs. the US Government 13:59 OpenAI's $21B Loss and 42-State Probe 20:34 SpaceX Buys Cursor for $60B 24:44 Polymarket and the Ethics of Prediction Markets 33:11 The Firehose (powered by Phaneros) 34:03 Lineage Cold Storage Fire and Supply Chain Risk 40:26 Snap AR Glasses 44:19 AI Layoffs Hit 40,000 49:00 Huawei Chip Stacking vs. US Sanctions 51:34 The Great American AI Act 56:43 Who Does AI Remember Best? 59:12 FERC, Data Centers, and Moral Hazard 1:03:04 Chasing Zero AI Hallucinations 1:07:02 Allbirds, Smart Bird, and the AI Backlash 1:12:18 Digital ID and the UK Social Media Ban 1:18:10 Interview: Seun Abilawon's AI Forex Startup 2:06:01 Wrap Up Connect with us:Subscribe to Show Your Priors for weekly conversations on business, strategy, and the ideas shaping the world. Clips Channel | https://youtube.com/@sypclips Spotify | https://open.spotify.com/show/7qz3G3XoOaSPpg2elfKmH3 Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/showyourpriors/ Threads | https://www.threads.com/@showyourpriors TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@showyourpriors X - Michael Nichols | https://x.com/m_g_nichols X | https://x.com/showyourpriors Substack | https://showyourpriors.substack.com/ Reddit | https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowYourPriorsPodcast LinkedIn - Michael Nichols | https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-guy-nichols LinkedIn - Jason Thompson | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-thompson-607b0b54 Keywords:business strategy podcast, artificial intelligence, AI news, business news, entrepreneurship, startup pitch, OpenAI, Anthropic, venture capital, forex trading, AI layoffs, business strategy, prediction markets, corporate strategy, business model, fintech, SpaceX, Polymarket, tech news, AI regulation, AI hallucinations, semiconductor sanctions, Huawei, financial markets, stock market, management, AI in business, trading strategy, moral hazard, AR glasses, Snap, AI safety, Nigeria startup, Africa entrepreneurship, Fatal Abstraction, Michael Nichols, Show Your Priors

3. 

   16 Jun 2026

   SpaceX's Record IPO, Anthropic's Banned AI, and Apple's Next Gen AI Siri | Ep. 15 Show Your Priors

   The most valuable IPO in history just happened, a frontier AI model got switched off by the US government within days of launch, and Apple quietly handed its flagship feature to a direct competitor. On Episode 15 of Show Your Priors, Michael Nichols and Jason Thompson rip apart the week's biggest business, strategy, and finance stories to find the playbook underneath.SpaceX IPO'd at a staggering 1.75 trillion dollar valuation, finished the day up 19 percent past 2.25 trillion, and pushed Elon Musk over 1.1 trillion in personal wealth. But do the fundamentals justify the price, or is the market simply betting on the man? We break down business models, projected cash flow, and why Morningstar's math lands at less than half the headline number.Then we get into Anthropic. The company launched its most powerful public model, Fable 5, on a Tuesday, and the government ordered it shut off by Friday under an export control directive citing national security. Is this a regulatory nightmare or the best free advertising in tech? We cover the Streisand effect, the rule of law, and what erratic AI policy means for the global race with China.Finally, Apple's WWDC 2026. The headline wasn't a product, it was a partnership: a rebuilt Siri running on Google's Gemini in a deal reportedly worth a billion dollars a year. We unpack the classic make versus buy decision, Apple's brand and channel moat, data privacy, and whether this is an admission that the competition simply does AI better.Plus a packed Headlines and Firehose: North Korean operatives behind 47 percent of state-sponsored tech hacks, Rita McGrath's new HBR piece on strategic centering, the private credit liquidity squeeze at BlackRock and Blackstone, Amazon's 31.5 billion dollar debt raise for AI data centers, the Harley-Davidson versus Indian motorcycle culture-war feud, Jeff Bezos' Prometheus, Goldman Sachs on compute as a commodity, and more.Music by  Thunderwof. https://www.instagram.com/apache_thunderwof_18/https://open.spotify.com/artist/4092jgp59goD4nZIL2mQw5Chapters00:00 Intro00:39 Headlines: North Korea Hacks and CrowdStrike04:19 Headlines: Rita McGrath on Strategic Centering11:48 Headlines: BlackRock and the Private Credit Squeeze17:10 Headlines: Amazon's $31.5B Debt and AI CapEx23:18 Headlines: Harley vs Indian Motorcycle Feud28:47 Firehose50:31 SpaceX IPO1:04:05 Anthropic Fable 51:11:29 Apple WWDC 2026Connect with us:Subscribe to Show Your Priors for weekly conversations on business, strategy, and the ideas shaping the world.Clips Channel | https://youtube.com/@sypclips Spotify | https://open.spotify.com/show/7qz3G3XoOaSPpg2elfKmH3Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/showyourpriors/Threads | https://www.threads.com/@showyourpriorsTikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@showyourpriorsX - Michael Nichols | https://x.com/m_g_nicholsX | https://x.com/showyourpriorsSubstack | https://showyourpriors.substack.com/Reddit | https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowYourPriorsPodcastLinkedIn - Michael Nichols | https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-guy-nicholsLinkedIn - Jason Thompson | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-thompson-607b0b54Show Your Priors is a business strategy podcast. We look at the week's news stories and rip them apart to see what strategies lie underneath. New episode every Tuesday. Like, subscribe, and leave a comment.Keywords:SpaceX IPO, Elon Musk, Apple WWDC 2026, Anthropic, Siri Gemini, Google Gemini, AI news, business strategy, AI bubble, stock market, tech news, AI regulation, private credit, business podcast, SpaceX valuation, Fable 5, AI data centers, compute costs, AI export controls, BlackRock, Amazon debt, corporate strategy, venture capital, trillion dollar company, Nasdaq IPO, Harley Davidson, Rita McGrath, AI commoditization, Dario Amodei, finance podcast, strategy podcast, North Korea hackers, Goldman Sachs, Show Your Priors

4. 

   9 Jun 2026

   Anne T. Griffin: Sycophant CEOs, the SaaSpocalypse & AI Slop | Ep.14 Show Your Priors Podcast

   Connect with Annehttps://griffinproduct.co/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/annetgriffin/ https://x.com/annetgriffin Music by  @thunderwofbaybe  (https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UCpKTmL4OvFLVIwUqVV-h89Q) https://www.instagram.com/apache_thunderwof_18/https://open.spotify.com/artist/4092jgp59goD4nZIL2mQw5Is AI about to wipe out SaaS, or is that the most overhyped fear in business right now? In Episode 14 of Show Your Priors, the business strategy podcast that takes the week's biggest stories and rips them apart, hosts Michael Nichols and Jason Thompson sit down with AI product strategy expert Anne T. Griffin, founder of Griffin Product and Growth. Anne breaks down how to build an AI product strategy that actually connects to your company strategy, how to tell AI slop from a real AI product, why the so called SaaSpocalypse is overblown, and why differentiation still beats copying your competitors feature for feature.Before the interview, we rip through the headlines and the firehose: Microsoft Build 2026 and the AI arms race against Anthropic and OpenAI, Florida becoming the first state to sue OpenAI and Sam Altman, American humanoid war robots in Ukraine, GoPro's going concern warning and the chip crunch, and the Harvard Business Review AI adoption study with its warning about think slop. We also cover the SpaceX IPO and Morningstar's valuation warning, Anthropic's confidential S-1, Uber burning through its entire AI budget, Alphabet's record 80 billion dollar raise, Victoria's Secret's brand identity comeback, the Stanford Law study where AI beat the professors, and US and China talks on AI guardrails.In the conversation with Anne, we dig into AI sycophancy in the C-suite, AI hallucinations and why you have to stay vigilant about your sources, AI washing, how small businesses actually use AI, why Gen Z seems anti AI (and may secretly be the most AI fluent generation), and her best advice for AI startup founders. If you care about business strategy, product management, marketing, corporate strategy, or where enterprise AI is really headed, this episode is for you.Subscribe for a new episode every week, and use the chapters below to jump around. If you enjoy the show, tell a friend and leave a comment with what you want us to cover next.Chapters00:00 Intro00:32 Headlines: Microsoft Build 2026 and the AI Arms Race07:24 Florida Sues OpenAI and Sam Altman13:10 American Humanoid War Robots in Ukraine18:47 GoPro's Going Concern and the Chip Crunch23:01 Harvard Business Review: AI Adoption and Think Slop33:38 Firehose: SpaceX, Anthropic, Uber, and Alphabet's 80 Billion Dollar Raise42:25 Victoria's Secret's Brand Identity Comeback46:02 Broken AI Economics and the SaaS Reshuffle51:10 Stanford Law, Mathematicians, and US-China AI Guardrails1:02:08 Interview: Meet Anne T. Griffin and Building an AI Roadmap1:10:40 Spotting AI Slop vs. a Real AI Product1:17:31 Will LLMs Go Vertical? The SaaSpocalypse1:24:46 AI Sycophancy in the C-Suite and Hallucinations1:39:28 How Small Businesses Actually Use AI1:43:16 Why Gen Z Seems Anti-AI1:48:51 Advice for AI Startup Founders and Wrap-UpConnect with us:Subscribe to Show Your Priors for weekly conversations on business, strategy, and the ideas shaping the world.Clips Channel | https://youtube.com/@sypclips Spotify | https://open.spotify.com/show/7qz3G3XoOaSPpg2elfKmH3Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/showyourpriors/Threads | https://www.threads.com/@showyourpriorsTikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@showyourpriorsX - Michael Nichols | https://x.com/m_g_nicholsX | https://x.com/showyourpriorsSubstack | https://showyourpriors.substack.com/Reddit | https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowYourPriorsPodcastLinkedIn - Michael Nichols | https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-guy-nicholsLinkedIn - Jason Thompson | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-thompson-607b0b54

5. 

   2 Jun 2026

   Rita McGrath: Why AI Is Breaking Corporate Strategy | Ep.13 Show Your Priors Podcast

   Connect with Rita - https://www.ritamcgrath.com/Music by  @thunderwofbaybe  (https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UCpKTmL4OvFLVIwUqVV-h89Q) .https://www.instagram.com/apache_thunderwof_18/https://open.spotify.com/artist/4092jgp59goD4nZIL2mQw5What happens to business strategy when the old rules stop working? In Episode 13 of Show Your Priors, co-hosts Michael Nichols and Jason Thompson sit down with Rita McGrath, one of the world's leading minds on strategy and innovation, to unpack how artificial intelligence is rewriting the playbook for corporate strategy, competitive advantage, and the very shape of the modern company.Before the interview, we run the week's biggest business and tech stories through the firehose: the wave of AI layoffs hitting workers at a record pace, the "AI psychosis" driving CEO decision making, Robinhood handing agentic AI direct access to real money, Ferrari's rocky first EV, the Waymo vs Tesla robotaxi race, AI energy and water usage, the death of traditional SEO, synthetic customers in market research, and Meta's pivot to paid subscriptions.Then Rita McGrath joins us for a wide ranging conversation on why Porter's Five Forces struggles in a world of intangible assets, why she thinks in arenas instead of industries, how to actually define disruption, the truth about inflection points and discovery driven growth, why edge decision making beats top down hierarchy, the future of MBA education and corporate boards, and whether the AI boom is a real winner take all market or another casino economy bubble waiting to pop.Rita McGrath is a professor at Columbia Business School and the author of Seeing Around Corners, The End of Competitive Advantage, and Discovery Driven Growth. Show Your Priors is a weekly business strategy podcast that takes the latest headlines in AI, finance, marketing, and management and rips them apart to find the strategy and innovation underneath.If this episode challenged your priors, like, subscribe, and tell us what you think in the comments. New episodes every week.Chapters0:00 Intro0:34 Headlines33:30 The Firehose1:16:33 Guest Interview: Rita McGrath1:17:01 Has AI Broken Corporate Strategy?1:20:04 Arenas, Ecosystems and the Death of Industries1:24:14 Why In-Person Value Rises in the Age of AI Slop1:29:13 What Disruption Actually Means1:33:44 Edge Decisions and Loosely Coupled Organizations1:38:48 Can AI Power Discovery-Driven Growth?1:44:31 What the MBA Gets Wrong About Uncertainty1:50:49 Reinventing Boards and the Corporate Form1:54:28 Bubbles, the Casino Economy and Finance2:02:46 Winner-Take-All, Network Effects and AI as a Utility2:06:17 Where to Find Rita McGrath2:07:40 Final ThoughtsConnect with us:Subscribe to Show Your Priors for weekly conversations on business, strategy, and the ideas shaping the world.Clips Channel | https://youtube.com/@sypclips Spotify | https://open.spotify.com/show/7qz3G3XoOaSPpg2elfKmH3Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/showyourpriors/Threads | https://www.threads.com/@showyourpriorsTikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@showyourpriorsX - Michael Nichols | https://x.com/m_g_nicholsX | https://x.com/showyourpriorsSubstack | https://showyourpriors.substack.com/Reddit | https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowYourPriorsPodcastLinkedIn - Michael Nichols | https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-guy-nicholsLinkedIn - Jason Thompson | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-thompson-607b0b54Keywords:artificial intelligence, AI, business strategy, AI in business, corporate strategy, innovation, Rita McGrath, AI layoffs, AI bubble, disruption, competitive advantage, business podcast, management, future of work, strategy and innovation, AI jobs, discovery driven growth, inflection points, seeing around corners, Porter's five forces, agentic AI, AI trading, network effects, middle management, Waymo vs Tesla, Ferrari EV, synthetic customers, AI productivity, Columbia Business School, casino economy

6. 

   26 May 2026

   Google Declared Search Is Over. We Read the SpaceX S-1 So You Don't Have To. | Ep.12 Show Your Priors

   Episode 12 of Show Your Priors covers two of the biggest business stories of the year. Google IO 2026 arrived as the largest developer conference in the company's history, and what they unveiled amounted to a full-scale reimagining of the company. The traditional search results page has been declared over, Gemini 3.5 Flash is now running AI agents across Gmail, Android, and Drive, and Google is betting its entire future on multimodal AI and agent workflows. Then we turned to SpaceX, where Elon Musk filed an S-1 targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation and a $75 billion raise, both all-time records. We read the prospectus, and the picture it paints is equal parts audacious and polarizing.Before we get into Google IO and the SpaceX S-1, we cover a week packed with headline-worthy business strategy moments. Elon Musk's lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI was thrown out in under two hours on statute of limitations grounds, but the real story was the dirty laundry that aired on all sides. Nvidia posted another record quarter and announced what it calls a $200 billion AI CPU market. Anthropic hit a profitability milestone while signing a $1.25 billion per month compute deal with xAI. OpenAI claimed ChatGPT solved an 80-year-old math conjecture using long reasoning chains, raising serious implications for AI and multidisciplinary scientific discovery. And Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince laid off more than 20 percent of his staff despite posting above 30 percent revenue growth, then wrote a candid Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing AI will replace middle managers and measurers, not creators or sellers.Our Firehose segment covers the Artisan AI billboard campaign telling companies to stop hiring humans, OpenAI's equity-for-API deal with Y Combinator startups, a mysterious $700 million raise for something called personal intelligence, xAI pivoting to enterprise developer tools with Grok Build, the AI-generated podcast war between Amazon Alexa Plus and Spotify, Walmart warning about lower income consumer stress tied to fuel costs and the Strait of Hormuz disruption, humanoid robots entering German manufacturing through partnerships with industrial giants like Schafer, Jane Street's alleged market manipulation tied to the Terra USD collapse, and the Trump administration choosing AI acceleration over guardrails.The Google IO deep dive covers the strategic coherence question behind the volume of announcements, the Antigravity 2.0 coding agent that built an operating system using 185 AI agents, the Omni multimodal model, Gemini for Science with access to 30-plus life sciences databases, and Google's long-running enterprise battle against Microsoft. On SpaceX, we break down the financials, the voting structure giving Elon 85 percent control on 43 percent equity, the Mars colony compensation structure requiring one million inhabitants before bonus shares unlock, and the central strategic question: is this an integrated ecosystem or a blank check written to a vision?If you are serious about business strategy, corporate finance, AI investment, tech IPOs, startup dynamics, and the forces reshaping the global economy, Show Your Priors is the podcast for you. New episodes drop every Tuesday. Leave a comment below and let us know what you want us to dig into next.Music by ThunderWof.https://www.instagram.com/apache_thunderwof_18/https://open.spotify.com/artist/4092jgp59goD4nZIL2mQw5Connect with us:Subscribe to Show Your Priors for weekly conversations on business, strategy, and the ideas shaping the world.Clips Channel | https://youtube.com/@sypclips Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/showyourpriors/TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@showyourpriorsX | https://x.com/showyourpriorsSubstack | https://showyourpriors.substack.com/LinkedIn - Michael Nichols | https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-guy-nichols00:00 Intro00:38 Headlines35:10 Firehose1:02:42 Google IO 20261:15:26 SpaceX S-1 Breakdown

7. 

   19 May 2026

   Cerebras IPO, Brain Implants, and What Hannibal Teaches About Strategy | Ep. 11 Show Your Priors

   Cerebras just delivered one of the most dramatic IPOs of the year, popping 68% on day one and putting real pressure on Nvidia's grip on AI inference. On this episode of Show Your Priors, Michael Nichols and Jason Thompson break down whether this punchy little startup with a dinner plate sized chip can actually crack Cuda, why Neuralink and Synchron are racing to put brain computer interfaces into healthy people, and what a 200 BC general named Hannibal can teach modern operators about winning every battle and still losing the war. If you care about AI chips, business strategy, ecosystem moats, frontier model IPOs, or the line between life changing tech and dystopian marketing, this one is for you. _Music by ThunderWof. https://www.instagram.com/apache_thunderwof_18/ https://open.spotify.com/artist/4092jgp59goD4nZIL2mQw5 _ We open in the Headlines with the booing of an AI commencement speech at the University of Central Florida and what it says about the foundation labs' brutal marketing problem. Then we get into the SpaceX S-1 filing and a possible 1.75 trillion dollar IPO as early as June 12th, the OpenAI breach of contract threat against Apple over the Siri integration, Microsoft pulling Claude Code from its internal developers in favor of GitHub Copilot, and what the Texas Roadhouse tablet rollout tells us about brand identity in restaurants. The Firehose covers Starbucks cutting another 300 corporate jobs, Ford's surprise 20% surge after spinning up Ford Energy for AI data centers using CATL battery tech, Cisco's record 15.8 billion dollar quarter alongside a 5% workforce cut, the EU pushing high risk AI rules back to December 2027, OpenAI launching a 14 billion dollar professional services arm, Anthropic targeting small business with a 10 city tour, Mind Robotics raising another 400 million dollars off a Rivian spinoff, Bosch teaming up with academics on robot hand dexterity, the mysterious Gemini Omni leak ahead of Google I/O, a new London and San Francisco startup called Recursive Superintelligence raising 650 million dollars to build AI that improves itself, and Anthropic's new Claude Dreaming memory feature. Then the main event. We take Cerebras apart as a strategy problem. Is inference speed enough to topple an ecosystem player like Nvidia and its Cuda moat, or is this another Clayton Christensen style disruption that grows up from the low end of the market? We connect it to the Microsoft and Apple battles in the headlines, where channel ownership and customer ownership keep eating product superiority for breakfast. Next we go inside the brain implant race. Elon Musk's Neuralink has 21 chips in human brains, while Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates back Synchron, which delivers similar results without cracking the skull open. We debate the ethics of marketing brain computer interfaces as a consumer gadget, the consent problem with neurological data, and where the line is between curing paralysis and advertising directly into your brain. We close with Michael's deep dive on Hannibal Barca, the Battle of Cannae, the Punic Wars, and one of the cleanest historical lessons in business strategy you will hear. Carthage had the better general and a master tactician. Rome had the better system. Rome rebuilt itself from a land power into a naval power on the fly with the corvus innovation, picked off Carthage's bases in Iberia, and turned its own allies against it. Tactics win battles. Systems win wars. If you are reading every X post about the next feature release and missing the ecosystem moves, you are watching the wrong board. Connect with us: YouTube: | https://youtube.com/@showyourpriors TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@showyourpriors Substack | https://showyourpriors.substack.com/ LinkedIn - Michael Nichols | https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-guy-nichols 00:51 Headlines 27:34 Firehose 52:51 Cerebras vs Nvidia 1:03:13 Brain Implants and the Consent Question 1:09:47 Hannibal: Win the Battle, Lose the War

8. 

   12 May 2026

   White House Pumps the Brakes on AI, Anthropic Tops OpenAI, Dan Toma Interview | Ep.10 Show Your Priors Podcast

   The White House just reversed its position on AI regulation, asking the same companies it spent the past year deregulating to suddenly slow down. On Episode 10 of Show Your Priors, Jason Thompson and Michael Nichols break down what triggered the about face, why Anthropic just surpassed OpenAI at a $900 billion valuation, and what Apple opening Siri to third party AI models reveals about who really controls the next App Store. Then we sit down with three time author and Thinkers50 management thinker to watch Dan Toma for a deep dive on corporate innovation, cargo cult strategy, and why innovation theater keeps killing real growth. _ Connect with Dan Toma https://www.linkedin.com/in/dantoma/ https://www.amazon.com/Open-Innovation-Works-Successfully-Leveraging/dp/1805920715 _ Music by ThunderWof. https://www.instagram.com/apache_thunderwof_18/ https://open.spotify.com/artist/4092jgp59goD4nZIL2mQw5 _ What we cover in this episode: A peer reviewed study where an AI model out diagnosed two attending physicians on real emergency room cases at a Boston hospital, and what that means for medical education, AI safety, and clinical deployment. Apple's reported plan to let iOS 27 users pick which AI model powers Siri, and why owning the customer beats building the model when you already control the channel. Amazon weaponizing its logistics stack as a product for any business in the country, running the AWS playbook for the second time, and which industries should be most worried. Nvidia's $500 million investment in Corning to ten times its optical fiber capacity, and why the next AI compute bottleneck is the pipes, not the chips. Anthropic's reported $900 billion valuation, putting it ahead of OpenAI for the first time, and what the B2B versus B2C split tells you about strategy, pricing power, and enterprise AI. A new EPFL benchmark showing AI models routinely hallucinate sources, even citing real journals for fake claims, and how to use AI without getting burned. A Claude curated Firehose covering the Anthropic SpaceX Colossus deal, Pennsylvania's first state level lawsuit against an AI company, McDonald's and Shake Shack earnings, Whirlpool's recession signal, Intel's Apple chip deal and the reshoring of semiconductors away from TSMC, Michael Burry exiting GameStop after the eBay acquisition pitch, Novo Nordisk and the GLP-1 weight loss boom, the protein supply crunch, LinkedIn's AI powered job search, the AI versus four year degree debate, and the Pentagon's UAP file release. The main topic: the Trump administration studying an executive order that would require AI models to clear a government approval process modeled on how the FDA approves drugs, what changed since JD Vance dismissed AI safety concerns at the global AI summit 15 months ago, the leaked Anthropic Mythos model, and how to think about regulation, leverage, and the art of the deal. Then our interview with Dan Toma, strategic innovation advisor to blue chip companies, World Economic Forum contributor, and author of The Corporate Startup, Innovation Accounting, and his latest book Open Innovation Works. We dig into cargo cult innovation, why copying Spotify's operating model fails inside banks and pharma companies, vendor management dressed up as open innovation, the high failure rate of M&A and corporate ventures, and why real innovation has to be a repeatable discipline instead of a one time moonshot. Main Channel | https://youtube.com/@showyourpriors Clips Channel | https://youtube.com/@sypclips TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@showyourpriors 00:00 Intro 00:38 Headlines: AI Out Diagnoses Doctors in ER Study 08:02 Apple Opens iOS 27 Siri to Multiple AI Models 13:20 Amazon Opens Its Logistics Empire to Every Business 22:14 Nvidia Bets $500M on Corning for Optical Fiber 28:34 Anthropic Hits $900B and Passes OpenAI 33:31 AI Models Are Hallucinating Their Sources 40:21 Firehose 1:06:54 White House Moves to Regulate AI 1:18:03 Interview with Dan Toma

9. 

   5 May 2026

   Musk Sues OpenAI for $134B, Berkshire Without Buffett, Spirit Airlines Folds | Ep.9 Show Your Priors

   Elon Musk drags Sam Altman and OpenAI into an Oakland courtroom over a $134 billion charity. Berkshire Hathaway holds its first annual meeting in 55 years without Warren Buffett at the helm. Spirit Airlines liquidates overnight, taking 17,000 jobs with it. Co-hosts Michael Nichols and Jason Thompson break down the strategy, finance, and management questions buried inside this week's biggest business stories. _Music by ThunderWof.https://www.instagram.com/apache_thunderwof_18/https://open.spotify.com/artist/4092jgp59goD4nZIL2mQw5 _ In the headlines, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta committed up to $700 billion of AI infrastructure capex for 2026, with all four CEOs telling Q1 calls they are still supply constrained. Microsoft alone is sitting on an $80 billion Azure backlog it cannot fill for lack of power. Gary Marcus calls the spending out of control. We compare hyperscaler economics to the dot com bubble and ask which foundation labs survive a price war. Then the model wars. Moonshot's Kimi K2.6 ties GPT 5.5 on coding at 80% lower token cost. xAI shipped Grok 4.3 as a budget reasoning model. Is the frontier decoupling from the bulk market? Anthropic moved Claude security to public beta with CrowdStrike, Microsoft Security, Palo Alto Networks, SentinelOne, Trend AI, and Wiz embedding Opus 4.7 into their platforms. Does this kill the AI native cybersecurity startup category before it gets funded? We cover AI slop in peer reviewed research, where submission volume jumped 42% after ChatGPT. China blocked Meta's acquisition of Manus, signaling that AI capability flight is now a national concern. Trader Joe's faces a class action over caffeine content in its private label coffees. In the firehose, David Silver closed a $1.1 billion seed for a new superintelligence lab, AWS launched managed agents in partnership with OpenAI, Japanese airports started a humanoid robot pilot, Jane Street paid $4.9 billion in employee comp, and a new LLM called Talkie was trained only on text published before 1931. Outside the courtroom, Musk called most cryptocurrencies scams and triggered a selloff.Then the three main topics. First, the OpenAI lawsuit. Musk claims Altman and Greg Brockman stole his charity by pivoting to for profit, but emails show Musk pushed the same structure when he expected to control it. xAI is now a direct competitor, and Musk admitted under oath that Grok has been distilling OpenAI outputs. Is this principled or $134 billion of founder's remorse? Second, Berkshire Hathaway. The first annual meeting since 1970 without Buffett. Greg Abel walked into doubled profits, a record cash pile, and a stock trailing the S&P by more than 30 points since Buffett's retirement announcement. Abel told shareholders Berkshire would not do AI for the sake of AI. Can he carry the prior when so many holders believe Berkshire equals Buffett? Third, Spirit Airlines. Liquidation began this morning, 17,000 jobs gone, and a $500 million Trump bailout died from creditor opposition. The Iran war doubled jet fuel prices and the ultra low cost carrier model could not survive it. This is Spirit's third bankruptcy since late 2024. Frontier and Avelo are forming a coalition to absorb the routes. Connect with us: Subscribe to Show Your Priors for weekly conversations on business, strategy, and the ideas shaping the world. https://www.youtube.com/@ShowYourPriors Chapters: 00:00 Intro 0:48 Headlines: Big Tech's $700B AI Capex Bet 6:21 Frontier vs Budget LLMs, Kimi K2 and Grok 4.3 11:43 Claude Security Goes Public Beta 17:46 AI Slop and the Peer Review Crisis 24:16 China Blocks the Meta Manus AI Deal 30:59 Trader Joe's Caffeine Class Action 35:00 Firehose 52:00 Topic 1, Elon Musk vs OpenAI in Court 1:06:18 Topic 2, Berkshire Hathaway Without Warren Buffett 1:17:23 Topic 3, Spirit Airlines Liquidation

10. 

    28 Apr 2026

    Did Elon Just Buy Cursor for $60 Billion? AI Strategy with Scott Newton | Ep.8 Show Your Priors

    Papa Elon just slapped a $60 billion price tag on AI coding startup Cursor, and the structure of the deal is even wilder than the number. Is this a real acquisition or the cleverest IPO pump of the year? In Episode 8, Michael and Jason break down the SpaceX and Cursor deal, then sit down with their very first guest, strategy expert Scott Newton, to talk about what modern corporate strategy actually looks like in the age of AI. __ Connect with Scott Netwon https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottbnewton/ __ Music by ThunderWof. https://www.instagram.com/apache_thunderwof_18/ https://open.spotify.com/artist/4092jgp59goD4nZIL2mQw5 __ Scott Newton is a managing partner at Thinking Dimensions, a global strategy consulting firm, and has spent over 20 years advising boards, CEOs, and private equity on strategy and growth. He mentors founders at Techstars, leads the MBA consulting program at CIMBA, and holds board seats at Strategy Tools and Sirius. We dig into AI adoption inside the enterprise, why most corporates are stuck in pilot hell, the Kodak versus Fujifilm story, why European automakers are getting eaten alive by BYD and the Chinese EV wave, and what the board of directors needs to look like for a digital first company. Before the interview, we run through the headlines: Google is investing $10 billion in Anthropic with another $30 billion to follow at a $380 billion valuation, AI journalism and the Wire by Atticus, DeepSeek V4 dropping at less than 15 percent of OpenAI compute cost, Siemens humanoid robots running an eight hour shift in the factory, and new MIT and Penn studies suggesting AI chatbots may be eroding cognitive ability. Then we ride through a Drinking from the Firehose rapid fire round covering Tim Cook stepping down at Apple, Intel earnings, Meta cutting 10 percent of headcount, Microsoft offering voluntary buyouts, GPT 5.5, Codex, Volkswagen AI agents in China, Microsoft's $18 billion Australia deal, and Anthropic and Amazon expanding their compute partnership.If you care about AI strategy, corporate governance, venture capital, business model disruption, or just want to understand where the money is actually moving in tech, this one is for you.Connect with us:Subscribe to Show Your Priors for weekly conversations on business, strategy, and the ideas shaping the world. Clips Channel | https://youtube.com/@sypclips Spotify | https://open.spotify.com/show/7qz3G3XoOaSPpg2elfKmH3Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/showyourpriors/Threads | https://www.threads.com/@showyourpriorsTikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@showyourpriorsX - Michael Nichols | https://x.com/m_g_nicholsX | https://x.com/showyourpriorsSubstack | https://showyourpriors.substack.com/Reddit | https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowYourPriorsPodcastLinkedIn - Michael Nichols | https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-guy-nicholsLinkedIn - Jason Thompson | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-thompson-607b0b54 00:00 Intro 00:28 Headlines: Google's $10B Bet on Anthropic 04:26 The Wire by Atticus and the Future of AI Journalism 09:15 DeepSeek V4: Open Source at 1 Percent of the Cost 14:55 Siemens Humanoid Robots Hit the Factory Floor 19:33 Are AI Chatbots Rotting Our Brains? 24:57 Drinking from the Firehose: Rapid Fire Headlines 33:30 Topic 1: Did SpaceX Really Buy Cursor for $60 Billion? 44:26 Topic 2: Scott Newton on Modern Strategy and AI 53:00 Kodak vs Fujifilm and the Trap of a Great Business Model 60:30 Why European Automakers Are Losing to BYD 66:00 Pilot Hell: Why Corporate AI Adoption Stalls 77:49 Education, Critical Thinking, and the End of Rote Learning 88:32 Fun Closer: TQM and the Chairman's Circle of Excellence 91:00 The Trait Every Leader Will Need 93:21 Closing Thoughts Keywords: AI, artificial intelligence, Elon Musk, SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Tim Cook, Meta, Intel, Anthropic, Cursor, Cursor AI, DeepSeek, GPT 5, Codex, Claude, Copilot, business strategy, corporate strategy, AI strategy, AI adoption, AI investment

11. 

    21 Apr 2026

    Stanford 2026 AI Index, SPACs Are Back with Chamath, and Stalin's Corporate Strategy Lessons | Ep. 7

    Episode 7 of Show Your Priors takes on three heavyweights at the intersection of business, strategy, finance, and technology. The Stanford 2026 AI Index Report, the surprise return of SPACs with Chamath Palihapitiya, and what Joseph Stalin's five year plan can teach corporate leaders about the targets sitting on their desk right now. We open with the headlines. Allbirds ditches its shoe business to become an AI compute company, and the stock rips 880 percent in a single day, while Michael Burry quietly loads up on beaten down SaaS names like Adobe, Veeva, and Autodesk. We talk vertical AI, thin wrappers, the next greater fool theory, and why the dot com bubble playbook is alive and well in the current AI hype cycle. From there we cover the US Air Force's new War Matrix AI wargaming tool, a federal judge ruling that your ChatGPT history is closer to a postcard than a privileged legal conversation, a Fortune report on how much of software engineering and customer support AI can already do, and Elon Musk's latest universal basic income pitch. If AI drives massive layoffs, who exactly is buying the next iPhone? The main topic is the 2026 Stanford AI Index Report. We dig into whether China is closing the gap on US AI supremacy, where private AI investment actually sits, why foreign AI researchers are not arriving at the rate they used to, the entry level squeeze hitting junior software engineers and customer support reps, global sentiment on AI as friend or enemy, generative AI adoption curves that outpace the internet, AI in medicine and digital twins, and where the data centers really are. Then SPACs. Chamath just raised another 300 million dollars to do it all over again. We break down what a special purpose acquisition company actually is, why the structure rewards sponsors before retail investors, what Virgin Galactic's chart reveals about the entire model, and why the 2026 version looks a lot like the 2021 version with better PR. Social proof, survivorship bias, caveat emptor, and why index funds keep winning the boring way. We close with Joseph Stalin and the Soviet five year plan. Why did top down targets lead to purges instead of productivity? And why does your annual corporate budget cycle rhyme with that same mechanism? Stretch targets, deterministic management, no excuses cultures, airbrushed CEOs, and the real reason big corporations struggle to innovate even when they have every dollar available to spend. If you have ever survived budget season, this one lands. Show Your Priors is a weekly business, strategy, finance, marketing, management, and AI podcast hosted by Michael Nichols and Jason Thompson. A prior is the belief you bring before the argument starts. Every week we show you ours. New episodes every week. Like, subscribe, and share with a friend who still argues for stretch targets. 00:00 Intro00:43 Headlines: Allbirds AI Pivot and Michael Burry Loads Up on SaaS05:13 War Matrix and AI in National Defense07:52 Federal Judge Rules ChatGPT Chats Are Not Privileged10:47 Fortune Report: How Much of Your Job Can AI Actually Do12:33 Elon Musk, UBI, and the AI Layoff Paradox18:59 Main Topic: Stanford 2026 AI Index Report41:10 SPACs Are Back: Chamath and the Special Purpose Playbook56:52 Joseph Stalin, the Five Year Plan, and Corporate Targets

12. 

    14 Apr 2026

    Mythos - The AI Too Dangerous to Release | Data Center Wars + Will Vertical AI Die? | Ep. 6 Show Your Priors Podcast

    What happens when an AI model becomes so good at finding security vulnerabilities that releasing it to the public would be genuinely dangerous? That is the question at the center of this week's episode, and it turns out the answer reveals just as much about AI business strategy as it does about cybersecurity.Jason and Michael dig into Claude Mythos, Anthropic's unreleased model that has already demonstrated the ability to find zero-day vulnerabilities in major software at a rate that dwarfs anything previously seen. Through Project Glass Wing, a small circle of companies including AWS, Apple, Cisco, Google, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, and Nvidia are getting controlled access to use it defensively on their own infrastructure. Is this genuinely responsible AI development, a brilliant enterprise sales play, or a quiet move to invite the kind of regulation that raises the cost of competing? The answer is probably all three, and the conversation gets into exactly why.From there, the episode turns to the AI data center buildout and the growing backlash against it. Energy bills, noise pollution, farmland usage, and NIMBYism are all converging into a volatile political situation. But is the real problem the data centers themselves, or the bureaucratic gridlock that is making it nearly impossible to bring new power generation online fast enough? With China holding a significant energy cost advantage, the stakes of getting this wrong extend well beyond electric bills.The final topic is one that matters directly to anyone in business strategy, finance, or enterprise software: the vertical AI question. Can foundation models like Claude, GPT, and Gemini eventually eat the vertical AI and SaaS companies built on top of them? Or do the business model tensions, distribution realities, and domain knowledge requirements make that scenario far less likely than the bears believe? Recent research suggesting that foundation models are actually getting worse at long-term strategic reasoning makes this debate even more interesting.Before all of that, Jason and Michael cover the week's headlines: Meta going proprietary with Muse Spark after years of open-source positioning, Google quietly releasing a free AI dictation app that threatens the entire vertical of paid transcription tools, Anthropic surpassing OpenAI in annualized run rate, Intel joining Musk's Terrafab chip fabrication project, and the growing pile of controversy surrounding Sam Altman.Connect with us:Subscribe to Show Your Priors for weekly conversations on business, strategy, and the ideas shaping the world.Clips Channel | YouTube:  @sypclips  (https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UCN_q6rGyB4BNsTk2mRykcaQ) Spotify | https://open.spotify.com/show/7qz3G3XoOaSPpg2elfKmH3Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/showyourpriors/Threads | https://www.threads.com/@showyourpriorsTikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@showyourpriorsX - Michael Nichols | https://x.com/m_g_nicholsX | https://x.com/showyourpriorsSubstack | https://showyourpriors.substack.com/Reddit | https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowYourPriorsPodcastLinkedIn - Michael Nichols | https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-guy-nicholsLinkedIn - Jason Thompson | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-thompson-607b0b5400:00 Intro00:34 Headlines17:24 Claude Mythos and the Cybersecurity Threat31:00 AI Data Centers and the Energy Crisis46:18 Vertical AI vs. Foundation ModelsKeywords:artificial intelligence, AI strategy, OpenAI, Anthropic, AI business, AI investment, AI data centers, cybersecurity, AI enterprise, foundation models, vertical AI, AI energy consumption, Meta AI, SaaS disruption, AI regulation, technology strategy, AI infrastructure, AI market competition, AI podcast, zero day vulnerability, AI chip shortage, technology investing, AI venture capital, Claude AI, AI corporate strategy, energy grid, AI power, Sam Altman, semiconductor chips, AI startups

13. 

    7 Apr 2026

    OpenAI Buys a Podcast, Will AI Replace Coders, Can we learn from Xerxes? | Ep.5 Show Your Priors

    OpenAI just spent over $100 million on a podcast. Oracle let go of up to 30,000 employees in a single email. And everyone wants to know: is AI actually going to replace coders?In Episode 5 of Show Your Priors, we break down the biggest moves in AI, business strategy, and corporate management this week. We start with OpenAI's staggering $852 billion valuation after a $122 billion funding round and ask the question no one on Wall Street wants to answer: at $2 billion a month in revenue, how long until those numbers actually make sense? Spoiler: we did the math, and it would take 35 years of revenue just to reach the valuation, and that is before you even talk about profit.Then we dig into OpenAI's acquisition of TBPN, the buzzy Silicon Valley business talk show, and what it signals about media ownership in the age of AI. Is this a savvy marketing play ahead of the OpenAI IPO, or a vanity project from a CEO who just liked the show? We look at the M&A failure rates, the mismatched business models, and why Benjamin Franklin would have understood this move better than most analysts.We also cover Microsoft building its own in-house AI models to reduce dependence on OpenAI, Anthropic and Claude surging from 14% to 40% enterprise market share while OpenAI drops from 48% to 27%, Google releasing Gemma as a potential loss leader to funnel developers into Google Cloud, and Oracle's massive layoffs amid its 54% stock decline since September.The AI replacing coders debate gets real. We talk about what vibe coding actually gets you versus what enterprise customers demand, why junior developers are struggling to find jobs, and where product liability lawsuits over AI generated code are probably headed. Plus, the Kraft Heinz cautionary tale about cost cutting that looks great on a quarterly earnings call but destroys the business underneath.Finally, we take a deep dive into Xerxes and the Battle of Thermopylae to explore asymmetric cost strategy, how smaller players can use the size of larger competitors against them, and why the definition of victory depends entirely on who is telling the story. If you are a startup founder competing against giants, or an executive trying to understand when cutting headcount crosses the line from smart into self-destructive, this segment is for you.00:00 Intro00:27 Headlines: OpenAI's $852B Valuation04:06 Microsoft Builds Its Own AI Models08:44 Anthropic's Enterprise Surge14:54 Google Gemma and the Open Source Threat18:35 Oracle Fires 30,000 and the AI Bubble26:34 OpenAI Buys TBPN: Media Ownership in AI36:08 Will AI Replace Coders?56:31 Xerxes, Thermopylae, and Business StrategyConnect with us:Subscribe to Show Your Priors for weekly conversations on business, strategy, and the ideas shaping the world.Spotify | https://open.spotify.com/show/7qz3G3XoOaSPpg2elfKmH3Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/showyourpriors/Threads | https://www.threads.com/@showyourpriorsTikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@showyourpriorsX - Michael Nichols | https://x.com/m_g_nicholsX | https://x.com/showyourpriorsSubstack | https://showyourpriors.substack.com/Reddit | https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowYourPriorsPodcastLinkedIn - Michael Nichols | https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-guy-nicholsLinkedIn - Jason Thompson | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-thompson-607b0b54Keywords: OpenAI, AI bubble, AI replacing coders, vibe coding, OpenAI IPO, Oracle layoffs, AI layoffs, business strategy, corporate strategy, Anthropic Claude, AI valuation, OpenAI TBPN acquisition, media ownership, Microsoft AI, AI enterprise, Google Gemma, open source AI, M&A strategy, AI market share, startup strategy, corporate governance, asymmetric warfare business, AI coding, loss leader strategy, executive leadership, tech layoffs 2026, AI productivity, corporate management, Xerxes business strategy, Thermopylae strategy, Kraft Heinz cost cutting, headcount management

14. 

    31 Mar 2026

    Your AI Is Lying to You (And You Love It) | Ep. 4 Show Your Priors Podcast

    Is your AI making you a better business leader or quietly keeping you delusional?In this episode of Show Your Priors, Jason and Mike dig into one of the most underrated risks in enterprise AI adoption: AI sycophancy. Your AI tools aren't just hallucinating facts, they're telling you what you want to hear, confirming your biases, and systematically pushing you further from the truth. And if you're a CEO, executive, or business leader using AI for strategic decision making, that's a serious problem.We break down the Dorian Gray Effect, how AI acts like the portrait in Oscar Wilde's classic novel, absorbing all the corruption so you never have to face it. Your ideas stay beautiful. Your blind spots stay hidden. And your business strategy quietly rots.In this episode we cover:What AI sycophancy actually is and why every major model has this problemHow reinforcement learning through human feedback (RLHF) bakes flattery into AI at the training levelWhy ChatGPT vs Claude represents two very different philosophies on AI honestyThe real danger of AI echo chambers for corporate leadership and C-suite decision makingHow survivorship bias makes CEOs and executives especially vulnerable to AI flatteryThe Iridium satellite failure as a $5 billion case study in what happens when you don't do due diligence on your go-to-market strategyWhy identifying your buying center, the economic buyer, decision maker, and end user, is the most overlooked step in B2B sales and enterprise tech adoptionHow bad AI-driven decisions could be the next great corporate innovation failureWhether you're in business strategy, B2B sales, corporate finance, marketing, or executive leadership, the AI tools you're relying on may be your biggest blind spot. This isn't anti-AI, we love the technology. But knowing the limitations of generative AI is what separates smart leaders from the ones making headlines for the wrong reasons.Don't let your AI be your yes-man. Show your priors.Show Your Priors is a podcast for business, strategy, finance, marketing, and enterprise professionals who want to think more clearly in a world full of noise.Enjoyed the episode? Leave a comment, subscribe, and tell us what you want us to tackle next.00:00 - Welcome to Show Your Priors00:44 - Live Demo: Catching AI Sycophancy in Action02:32 - What Is AI Sycophancy? The Dorian Gray Effect Explained06:57 - The GPT-4o Retirement Backlash: When People Grieved Their AI08:33 - How RLHF Bakes Flattery Into AI at the Training Level13:33 - What AI Really Learned From the Internet: Self-Affirming Slop15:41 - How to Fight Back: A Practical Workflow for Getting Honest AI Feedback18:30 - Free vs. Paid AI and the Ads Debate22:03 - Vibe Coding and the Rise of the Generalist26:57 - Eddie Dalton: The AI Artist Topping the Charts28:43 - Why Old Music Feels Better: The Spotify Effect40:03 - Elon, Grok, and the xAI SpaceX Merger42:14 - AI in Space: Hype or Reality?44:41 - Why Space Data Centers Do Not Add Up: Running the Numbers49:12 - Is Elon a Genius or Just a Marketing Machine?54:48 - The Iridium Satellite Disaster: A $5 Billion Warning for Space AI56:33 - What Iridium Teaches Us About Corporate Tech Failure01:04:37 - The Buying Center: Who Really Controls Your B2B Deal01:09:03 - Wrap Up and Final ThoughtsConnect with us:Spotify | https://open.spotify.com/show/7qz3G3XoOaSPpg2elfKmH3Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/showyourpriors/Threads | https://www.threads.com/@showyourpriorsTikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@showyourpriorsX - Michael Nichols | https://x.com/m_g_nicholsX | https://x.com/showyourpriorsSubstack | https://showyourpriors.substack.com/Reddit | https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowYourPriorsPodcastLinkedIn - Michael Nichols | https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-guy-nicholsLinkedIn - Jason Thompson | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-thompson-607b0b54

15. 

    24 Mar 2026

    Why Five Guys Shouldn't Exist (But Conquered the World) | Ep. 3 Show Your Priors Podcast

    In this episode of Show Your Priors, hosts Michael Nichols and Jason Thompson dive deep into one of the most surprising business case studies in modern history, Five Guys. How did a small family burger joint beat the odds in the brutal fast food industry and grow into a global brand without traditional advertising, without frozen food, and without following the playbook of giants like McDonald's?We break down the Five Guys business model from the ground up, their obsession with quality, their simple menu strategy, and how word of mouth marketing did what million-dollar ad campaigns couldn't. Then we ask the big question: is Five Guys vs McDonald's really a fair fight, or are they playing two completely different games?But we don't stop there. We connect Five Guys' rise to the timeless competitive advantage principles used by Alexander the Great and what his niche business strategy and culture of warriors can teach modern entrepreneurs.Along the way, we get into disruptive innovation and Clayton Christensen's disruption theory, explore the Sysco food supply chain monopoly and why it's a prime target for disruption, and discuss the explosion of ghost kitchens and food delivery trends reshaping the restaurant industry.We also take a hard look at AI in business and AI disruption, who's embracing it, who's fighting it, and what it means for the future of work.Whether you're into entrepreneurship, business strategy, or just love a great underdog story, this episode of the Show Your Priors podcast has something for you.00:00 – Introduction01:56 – Five Guys: The Cinderella Story Nobody Predicted04:55 – The Secret Weapon: Simple Menu, Obsessive Quality08:05 – The No-Advertising Strategy That Actually Worked10:18 – Five Guys vs. McDonald's: Two Completely Different Games23:00 – Covid Forced Their Hand: The Delivery Dilemma31:00 – Ghost Kitchens, DoorDash & the Future of Restaurants38:45 – What Is Disruption, Really? (Clayton Christensen Explained)43:00 – Sysco's Hidden Monopoly Over the Food Industry56:55 – Tying It Together: Alexander the Great Meets Five Guys01:01:00 – Locally Sourced as the Next Cultural Shift01:05:05 – The AI Tangent: Why the Elites Fear Disruption Too01:10:25 – Academia's Monopoly on Knowledge (And AI's Threat to It)01:14:30 – Building a Culture of Warriors: How to Hire for Your Brand01:18:50 – Final Takeaway: Find Your Niche, Then ConquerConnect with us:Subscribe to Show Your Priors for weekly conversations on business, strategy, and the ideas shaping the world.Spotify | https://open.spotify.com/show/7qz3G3XoOaSPpg2elfKmH3Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/showyourpriors/Threads | https://www.threads.com/@showyourpriorsTikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@showyourpriorsX - Michael Nichols | https://x.com/m_g_nicholsX | https://x.com/showyourpriorsSubstack | https://showyourpriors.substack.com/Reddit | https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowYourPriorsPodcastLinkedIn - Michael Nichols | https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-guy-nicholsLinkedIn - Jason Thompson | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-thompson-607b0b54Topics covered:Five Guys business model | fast casual restaurant industry | disruptive innovation | Clayton Christensen disruption theory | Alexander the Great strategy | Sysco food supply chain | ghost kitchens | word of mouth marketing | AI disruption | niche business strategy | Five Guys vs McDonald's | Peter Thiel | business case study | entrepreneurship podcast

16. 

    17 Mar 2026

    How an MBA Teaches Business Strategy | Ep. 2 Show Your Priors Podcast

    Unlocking the deep causal model behind enterprise success. In this episode of Show Your Priors, hosts Michael Nichols and Jason Thompson break down business strategy—a rigorous framework designed to bridge the corporate innovation gap and move beyond "Innovation Theatre".In this episode, you will learn: Strategy vs. Tactics: Why "Operational Effectiveness" isn't a strategy and how to find your unique Strategic Positioning.About Show Your PriorsShow Your Priors is a deep-dive podcast dedicated to unlocking the data behind the truth. We explore the deep causal models that drive business—from customer problems and revenue models to go-to-market execution.Connect with us:If you’re joining us for this journey, please like, comment, and subscribe—it helps us more than you know!

17. 

    13 Mar 2026

    AI Is Coming for Our Jobs | Show Your Priors Podcast Ep. 1

    Welcome to the first ever Show Your Priors Podcast!Hosted By: Michael Nichols and Jason ThompsonConnect with usTwtich | https://twitch.tv/showyourpriorsInstagram | https://instagram.com/showyourpriors/Threads | https://threads.com/@showyourpriorsTikTok | https://tiktok.com/@showyourpriorsX - Michael Nichols | https://x.com/m_g_nicholsX - Show Your Priors | https://x.com/showyourpriorsSubstack | https://substack.com/@showyourpriorsReddit | https://reddit.com/r/ShowYourPriorsPodcast/LinkedIn - Michael Nichols | https://linkedin.com/in/michael-guy-nichols/LinkedIn - Jason Thompson | https://linkedin.com/in/jason-thompson-607b0b54/

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Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

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