Dear Listener,

We start Episode 193 with the kind of parenting lesson that gets learned through SPF failure: a Nashville-area track meet, no hat, no sunscreen, a badly sunburned face, and the realization that veteran track parents know things first-season track parents do not. From there we make room for the Iliad's catalog of ships, Manhattans, sweet vermouth standards, rye preferences, the bottles saved for future Kohlmeier time, and the recurring truth that our food and drink detours are mostly about craftsmanship.

The middle of the episode belongs to red sauce. We work through Shindig pizza, The Livery's tinga de pollo influence, the difference between Italian pizza sauce and the Chicago-style sauce Stan actually wants, the Blue Apron calzone recipe that unlocked the Lemon red sauce era, and why a simple pie with sauce, cheese, and basil should be enough if the sauce is doing its job. We also stop for soppressata, endive, Oberon, summer beer timing, and the way a happy orange label can make a beer feel like June.

Then we turn road food into identity politics. Buc-ee's outside Texas and Portillo's outside Chicago send us into a conversation about whether a place keeps its meaning when the people who made it are missing, which somehow drags Dante's exile from Florence into the fast-food lane. Stan finally closes the In-N-Out gap in Lebanon, Tennessee, and we audit Animal Style, no cheese, light sauce, sport peppers, limp fries, Shake Shack, Quarter Pounders, and whether the twisties will defend the burger. We finish with five minutes that becomes much more than five minutes on Othello, Desdemona, Iago, Cassio, The Sopranos, Shakespeare outdoors in Wisconsin, Denzel's Macbeth, Star Wars watch order, King Lear, The Tempest, and The Great Divorce left for next time.

Thanks for listening,

Stan Lemon & Jon Kohlmeier

P.S. This week's word count is, Jon: 3,148 (20.5%) and Stan: 12,239 (79.5%).

Dear Listener,

We start Episode 192 by remembering that this podcast still requires Chrome, which sends us straight into the browser corner: Monarch's Amazon sync, Claude steering tabs, ChatGPT Atlas, Gemini in Chrome, Firefox's AI experiments, Mozilla's business model, and the strange quiet disappearance of Wikipedia from our daily habits. That turns into a broader AI check-in, including public skepticism, regulation, and whether the dream of connected devices ever really became the world we were promised.

From there we move through the parts of technology that are already in our houses and on our roads. We compare Ecobee schedules, HomeKit scenes, Christmas tree automations, Matter and Thread pain, and the exact moment a "turn everything off" scene becomes dangerous to a pork shoulder. Then we put Waymo through the family-trust test before auditing Jon's AI resolution, his GitHub graph, the difference between agentic coding and normal coding, and whether ChatGPT should be trusted to pick a Guardian balance bike.

The back half is a very practical homeowner spiral. Jon's basement flooded, the carpet and old bar are gone, and we work through downspouts, driveway cracks, self-leveling caulk, and why backer rod is the boring little material that saves you from burning through tubes of sealant. We close with Apple succession talk, Tim Cook's legacy, John Ternus, Siri, Vision Pro's unresolved roadmap, Meta Ray-Bans, Alexa and Astro, a loving detour through Short Circuit, Jon's pitch for The Bear, and Stan's Nesso dinner with Puglia wine and olive cake.

Thanks for listening,

Stan Lemon & Jon Kohlmeier

P.S. This week's word count is, Jon: 3,719 (33.9%) and Stan: 7,255 (66.1%).

Dear Listener,

We open Episode 191 with sunburn, spring mileage, and a surprisingly serious conversation about bike gear. Stan talks through helmet expiration, the hunt for better bibs, and the joy of finding a product review so specific that it becomes literature. From there we settle in with a pair of wines, compare Firstleaf with Wall Street Journal Wine, and marvel at a moment where Gemini correctly refused to help an underage aspiring sommelier chill a bottle.

The middle stretch turns into a baseball memory lane we were happy to wander. We get into a long-running Cubs bottle debate, old Pirates fandom, Lou Piniella's theatrical speed-walk to the mound, and the very specific glory of weekday afternoon baseball. Then we hand the show over to Ask the Kohlmeier, where Jon gets cross-examined on his Mac habits: dock placement, Gmail versus Apple Mail, Spotlight, desktop clutter, Mission Control, and the fact that he somehow owns a Vision Pro while still treating it like a part-time appliance.

We close with a little more Vision Pro talk, a quick detour toward Meta's glasses ambitions, and a literary cooldown with Othello, Shrinking, and the eternal question of whether Harrison Ford is ever playing anyone other than Harrison Ford. It is a wonderfully mixed bag of an episode, which is to say it feels exactly like us.

Thanks for listening,

Stan Lemon & Jon Kohlmeier

P.S. This week's word count is, Jon: 3,018 (27.8%) and Stan: 7,840 (72.2%).

Dear Listener,

We open Episode 190 in exactly the right place for this show: First Contact Day. We dig into the Artemis mission, the joy of watching NASA head back around the moon, the strange product placement orbiting the mission, and the way Jim Lovell still looms over every serious moon conversation. We also spend some time reflecting on what it means to be the Columbia generation instead of the Challenger generation, and why launches still feel like something worth holding your breath for.

From there we take a wonderfully abrupt turn to Holy Week in the Chicago suburbs, where Henry gets his wish to visit a Ferrari dealership and we marvel at Koenigseggs, Paganis, a Ford GT, and a deeply impractical Plymouth Prowler. That detour carries us into racing movies, the impossibility of test-driving a hypercar, and the realization that some cars exist less as transportation and more as industrial art.

We close with William Guidara's Unreasonable Hospitality and a long conversation about what great customer experience actually looks like outside a luxury restaurant. Disney Cruise Line, plumbers, roofers, and API design all get pulled into the argument before we wrap with a quick burst of AI enthusiasm over Google's Gemma 4, Edge Gallery on iPhone, and the possibility that fast local models may finally give Apple a real path toward useful on-device intelligence.

Thanks for listening,

Stan Lemon & Jon Kohlmeier

P.S. This week's word count is, Jon: 2,621 (23.2%) and Stan: 8,684 (76.8%).

Dear Listener,

Jon called Stan on his way home from work and got sent straight to voicemail. Stan was at poetry group reading Dante's Inferno. That's the kind of episode this is.

We recorded on a moment's notice, so you get an unfiltered hour of books and TV. Othello is the Q2 Shakespeare pick, we're both in reading funks, and listen in to hear why Wind and Truth broke Stan's heart. From there we get into the Firefly animated reboot, Jon's surprise anime phase, and a Star Trek ranking that might get us in trouble.

Lastly, the Twisties say Jon doesn't talk enough. Stan agrees! The semi-official robot calculated word count this week: Stan 7,911 (72.5%), Jon 3,002 (27.5%).

We set a 40% target for Jon, which still remains aspirational. But now we're workshopping a new segment called Johnny Five — a five-minute Jon monologue.

So let us know, how did Jon do?

Thanks for listening,

Stan Lemon & Jon Kohlmeier

Dear Listener,

Episode 188 opens with Stan's brief return to office life and the strange mental math of salaried lunch breaks, then quickly moves outside for a spring bike ride through Indianapolis, post-ride tacos, and a debate over whether sleep is actually better without an Apple Watch strapped on overnight.

From there the show takes a hard turn into full-blown 90s nostalgia after a wave of Goo Goo Dolls "Iris" reels takes over everyone's algorithm. Stan and Jon bounce through City of Angels, crowded mall-era movie theaters, peak Will Smith, the Chicago Bulls, Tupac, Hilary Duff, Spice World, and the general realization that late-90s culture still has an absurd amount of hold on both of them.

They close on 90s fashion and retail psychology: Lee Pipes, Tommy Hilfiger, and the unforgettable chaos of JCPenney pricing. That leads into a surprisingly good discussion about Apple's resistance to discount logic, why honest pricing failed at Penney's, and what that says about how people actually want to shop.

Thanks for listening,

Stan Lemon & Jon Kohlmeier

Dear Listener,

This week Jon lobbed an emotional grenade into the group note — the new Disney Cruise Line Oscars ad — and Stan immediately struggled with his "allergies." We dig into what makes Disney's cruise marketing consistently excellent and swap stories from our own sailings, including Stan's Alaska cruise where the Northern Lights kept the decks populated around the clock.

We pivot to a viral LinkedIn post Stan published about using Claude on his phone mid-bike ride on the greenway — a near-death experience buried in an otherwise enthusiastic update about AI coding on mobile. That opens up the bigger question of disposable software: one-shot AI-generated tools that serve a single moment and get thrown away, and whether that model starts to erode the case for traditional SaaS. Stan also shares a homework angle: his daughter Lucy's school debate on AI and jobs, and why the automation-eliminates-work argument keeps underestimating how many new jobs automation creates.

We close on AIRops — AI-first RevOps inside HubSpot — a new role coined by HubSearch that neither of us can quite agree on how to pronounce. But the naming debate leads somewhere more interesting: the argument that calling out AI as a distinct skill in a job title is already shortsighted. Every role is going to be implementing AI as a tool. It's not the end goal — it's the new spreadsheet. The roles don't fundamentally change; the tools do. Whether AIRops sticks as a title or not, the underlying shift it points to is already underway.

Thanks for listening,

Stan Lemon & Jon Kohlmeier

Dear Listener,

Episode 186 opens with Big Ten tournament fallout, then immediately veers into one of the more important questions facing the Midwest: where does Southern Illinois actually begin? That geography riff turns into old globes, office desk culture, and a brief but worthwhile wine detour before Stan and Jon settle into the week's tech stack.

The middle of the show is an Apple hardware roundup with opinions on the iPhone 17E, Studio Display updates, MacBook Neo, and the kind of pricing and form-factor choices that make sense once you stop pretending every device needs to satisfy power users. They also spend some time on Kindle regressions, HomePod disappointment, and whether Siri's next reset can arrive without another hardware catch.

They close on AI workflow reality: Claude Remote Control during a basketball game, GPT 5.4 speed tradeoffs, Claude's new memory import from ChatGPT, and the larger trust question OpenAI is creating if ChatGPT tries to split the difference between productivity tool and adult platform.

Thanks for listening,

Stan Lemon & Jon Kohlmeier

Dear Listener,

Episode 185 starts in the kitchen with a deep dive on sourdough timing, discard strategy, and why no-knead fridge fermentation is still one of Stan's favorite practical bread workflows. That quickly turns into a butter rabbit hole, Instagram cheese-store links, and a lively wine detour after an NPR tasting event with Rick Steves.

The center of the conversation is a candid reaction to 1Password's new pricing jump. Stan and Jon break down which features actually feel new, where the optics miss, and what it would take to migrate years of credentials and passkeys into Apple Passwords or another manager without creating security headaches.

They close with AI workflow reality: Claude Remote Control rollout friction, Codex usage patterns, and the tradeoff between fast feature generation and sustainable architecture when building apps. A Downton Abbey mixer analogy sets up a broader question about automation, software jobs, and whether a shorter work week is ever realistically on the table.

Thanks for listening,

Stan Lemon & Jon Kohlmeier

Dear Listener,

Episode 184 is a true no-agenda Sunday conversation that starts with pizza dough and quickly pivots into AI workflow reality. Stan and Jon compare how they are using chat tools for software work and resume drafting, including the frustration of multi-question UX and the limits of SwiftUI testing when you are trying to avoid regressions.

The middle stretch is a practical AI shopping stress test. A live Lego prompt shows what works when context and preferences are clear, but the wins are balanced by misses on shoes, home items, and in-store wine lookup. They also compare Google and Amazon sponsored placement and talk through what ChatGPT ads could mean for trust and usefulness.

They close with a broader media detour: podcast recommendations, Star Trek opinions, Downton Abbey catch-up, and one more tasting note on white Bordeaux as a wine style worth revisiting.

Thanks for listening,

Stan Lemon & Jon Kohlmeier

Dear Listener,

Episode 183 opens with a classic Stan-and-Jon food dispute: chicken "Philly" naming, pizza dough ingredients, and a playful scorecard on who has actually cooked for whom. That banter rolls into a Chicago road-trip recap, including suburban tavern-style pizza and the realities of teaching new-driver confidence in city traffic.

The center of the episode is Stan's Valentine's weekend in Chicago, with a stay at the Drake Hotel and a detailed review of Boka's seven-course Michelin tasting menu. He and Jon break down what made the meal stand out, from service and pacing to how each wine pairing changed bite by bite.

They wrap with a tech segment covering Apple's next event rumors, Siri delays, Vision Pro momentum, and hands-on Codex thoughts for practical AI work. The closing question for listeners: what should Jon cook the next time Stan visits Iowa?

Thanks for listening,

Stan Lemon & Jon Kohlmeier