So what even is “real” software anyway?

Someone builds an app over the weekend. It works. It looks good. And then the search begins — for the asterisk. Security? Design quality? Can it go to production? Paul Ford says we’re in a new era: "I can't believe it's not software!"

Paul is the co-founder of Aboard, where he helps organizations build custom software quickly, using AI tools. He's also one of my favorite tech writers. You may know him from "What Is Code," the opus he wrote for Bloomberg Businessweek a decade ago or from his writing in the New York Times, including his recent opinion piece, The A.I. Disruption We’ve Been Waiting for Has Arrived. Or perhaps you’re hip to Ftrain, where he’s been writing for longer than we’ve had the word “blog.”

In this conversation, recorded at Aboard’s podcast studio (Paul and his cofounder also host a great show), we dig into the strange new world where roles are colliding, software* gets built quickly, and no one is quite sure what to teach their kids.

We get into:

• What Paul calls "the great search for the asterisk" — the moment someone demos an app and everyone scrambles to find the catch
• How the power dynamic between engineers and everyone else is fundamentally shifting — and why that's both liberating and destabilizing
• Why vibe coded prototypes are changing how agencies pitch and price their work — and why pricing is "very unresolved"
• The skills that actually matter now: client communication, systems thinking, and depth over velocity
• Why "the environmental costs [of AI] have become essentially a truthful folk narrative to talk about how difficult and scary and painful it is to see your life get continually smashed into bits."
• What he's teaching his kids (hint: it's not to code)

Chapters:

• (01:40) - “We’re in a funny moment now” – catching up on the ten years since “What Is Code?”
• (05:30) - “ You gotta stop fighting” - AI code is genuinely useful, caveats and all
• (08:44) - AI enables people who could never afford custom software to have it
• (09:50) - Why he knew he’d get yelled at for his recent piece in the NYTimes
• (13:00) - “AI washing” and job cuts
• (14:50) - Paul’s theory for why the market oscillates so wildly on AI news + are we going to vibe code our own DoorDash?
• (17:00) - What’s the hardest thing about building with AI right now?
• (19:36) - Hiring, the most in-demand skills, and “forward-deployed engineers”
• (27:50) - “Product is still hard” – in response to: “What is something that AI will never be great at?”
• (31:36) - “What is something that sounds like science fiction, but that will soon be real — and commonplace?”
• (32:46) - Why Paul is excited about world models (and thinks LLM’s are topping out)
• (36:06) - Why environmental concerns have become a “truthful folk narrative about how difficult and scary” AI is
• (39:26) - There is no magic solution for climate (but one positive thing AI can do is help digest climate data)
• (41:26) - Why kids should learn systems thinking

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Hey everyone... so, in case you haven't heard... this show, Future Around & Find Out, has been nominated for a Webby for best tech podcast! 

*** VOTE HERE: https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/shows/technology ***

I was kind of being chill about this. I am, admittedly, not my own best hype man, but then I got riled up when I heard the hosts of The Vergecast, one of the other nominees and last year's winner, complain that they weren't winning by enough votes and that they wanted to win by such a large margin that it -- quote -- hurts everyone's feelings. 

Well, those are my feelings Nilay Patel was talking about! 

Look, I like the Verge -- and I definitely didn't have them on my list of people I might feud with this years -- but f* those guys! Let's win this thing!

So could you please vote? Today, April 16th is the last day to do so and we're currently just behind, in second place. The link to vote is in the show notes. You can also find it on the show's website at Future Around dot com

And what is it you're voting for? Well, if you've been listening then you already know what this show is all about, but I also thought for newbies and even for long time listeners, it might be fun for you to hear exactly what the Webby judges listened to when they voted for FAFO to be a best tech podcast nominee. They ask for ten minutes of audio, so I made a highlight reel — and here it is.

*** VOTE HERE: https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/shows/technology ***

We live in a world where every crisis lands in your pocket the moment it happens. The result? We're more informed than ever — and somehow less capable of doing anything about it.

Inventor and investor Pablos Holman has a diagnosis: we're spreading ourselves across every problem, which means we're solving none of them. His prescription is uncomfortable — pick one thing, go all in, and cut the noise.

***
QUICK PLUG: Future Around & Find Out is nominated for a Webby for best tech podcast! Voting is open now for the People's Choice Award. Please vote before April 16th! https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/shows/technology
***

Pablos is the co-founder of Deep Futures, where he hunts for inventors tackling world-scale problems: energy, water, food, waste, transportation. Not apps. Atoms. And thanks to advances in AI and software, these "impossible" problems are more solvable than ever — if the right people show up to back them.

In this conversation, recorded at the fabulous PopTech conference, he makes the case that inventors are the most important creative class on earth — and the most invisible. They're undersupported, uncelebrated, and working alone in garages. Some of them are probably going to blow themselves up. Those are exactly the people he's looking for.

We get into:

• Why doomscrolling is literally eroding your ability to make a difference
• The difference between craft (optimization) and creation (zero-to-one) — and why AI is great at one and struggling with the other
• Why you can name 100 musicians but fewer than two living inventors
• How solving energy unlocks clean water, sanitation, and climate — essentially for free
• Why software people are uniquely positioned to work on the hardest problems in the world right now

Chapters:

• (01:15) - Why the world isn't as broken as your newsfeed makes it seem
• (03:00) - The sticky note exercise: how to pick the one problem worth your time
• (04:30) - Inventors are the most important creative class nobody talks about
• (07:00) - Living inventors you should actually know
• (09:00) - What AI is good at — and what it still can't do
• (12:30) - Why software people are the right ones to tackle deep tech problems
• (22:56) - Energy is the root problem — solve it and you solve a lot else
• (25:56) - Climate change needs a thousand solutions, not one big fix
• (28:26) - The fashion industry's dirty secret and what robots can do about it

• Pablos Holman on LinkedIn
• Deep Future: VC firm, book, and podcast

Support Future Around & Find Out

• FAFO is nominated for a Webby for best tech podcast! Vote now! 
• Get the free newsletter
• And consider becoming a paid subscriber and help future proof this thing!

Sponsor the show? 

• Are you looking to reach an audience of senior technologists and decision-makers? Email me: [email protected]

---

Pablos's first appearance on the show covers his work at Blue Origin and Intellectual Ventures. Scroll in your podcast app to July 2025 to find that fun conversation. (Can listen before or after this one; not a prerequisite.) 

Hey, great news! We’ve been nominated by the Webby Awards for best tech podcast! Voting is open now and we’re in second place for the popular choice prize. Just behind The Verge. They really don’t need this win, but it would really help this show grow. Would you please (ask a friend to) vote for Future Around & Find Out?

*** VOTE FOR FAFO ***

OK, here’s this week’s FAFO Friday… (we record on Fridays and the show has Friday/weekend vibes, so just go with it no matter what day of the week it is :) 

This week, Kwaku and I…

• Gape at the moon in wonder
• Ask why we sent humans on this mission when space robots could’ve done the job (related: why climb Mount Everest?) 
• Marvel at Anthropic’s new Mythos model, which they say is remarkably good at finding flaws in the world’s critical software — or is this just another example of their marketing savvy? — or both!?
• Dig into AI world models and Jeff Bezos’s (modestly named) Project Prometheus
• Ask whether we want robots in our houses (yes, but only if they’re dumb)
• Keep FAFO weird (because in the age of AI that’s how you prove you’re human)

*** VOTE FOR FAFO ***

Future Around & Find Out is a best technology podcast nominee! And with your help it could be a winner. The Webby Awards voting is open now. Please vote for FAFO!

Thanks to AI, “content is about to become infinite.” And just like the Internet disrupted distribution, AI is disrupting creation. And so when anyone, anywhere can create content, what’s left? What’s defensible? That would be trust and humanity. 

Live from Podcast Movement Evolutions at SXSW, I sit down with Jim Louderback — former VidCon CEO, Inside the Creator Economy newsletter writer, and media veteran — to unpack what's actually changing and what builders and creators should do about it.

We get into why the "age of perfection" is over, why founders need a meme instead of an elevator pitch, and why putting a creator on your cap table might be the smartest move a startup can make. Jim makes the case for a trust economy where views and likes are meaningless — and where the real question is how far your trust graph extends. We also talk digital twins (and what happens when yours goes rogue), why events are still the best way to prove you're human, the state of journalism and public media, and why 2004’s “Subservient Chicken” was so ahead of its time.

Chapters:

• (01:30) - How AI disrupts creation
• (03:50) - The number of creators is about to double to 500 million
• (06:45) - We’ll have “certified human” labels, just like “organic” and why the Subservient Chicken was so far ahead of its time
• (08:40) - The age of perfection is over
• (10:00) - The only thing that matters is trust
• (12:00) - Events, FTW!
• (13:45) - The elements of a great event are timeless
• (18:11) - Favorite moments from SXSW
• (21:56) - What’s your meme? > What’s your elevator pitch?
• (23:28) - Put a creator on the cap table
• (27:21) - Creator-community fit
• (29:38) - The challenges of being a journalist today
• (32:26) - Create your own digital twin
• (36:26) - Why John Green’s jaw dropped when he learned of Dan’s grandma

• Vote for FAFO to be a Webby Awards winner!
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• Sponsor the show? Want to share your message with senior technologists? Email Dan: [email protected]

Very fun news… The Webby Awards have just nominated Future Around & Find Out as a nominee for Best Technology Podcast!!!

And you can help make it a Popular Choice winner. Winning would be great for the growth of show. Thank you!

Please vote for FAFO! 

---
OK, on to today’s episode… it’s another good vibes rooftop episode recorded at SXSW. 

For the second year in a row I’m joined by Rob Kenedi, a fellow podcaster, who is the founder and host of Decelerator. 

Last year he, very memorably, said we were in the “fart app era of AI”. Meaning: people are trying stuff (a la the make-a-fart-sound apps that people built in the early days of the iPhone). So, we revisit that comment and ask where are we now? And what’s defensible for app makers — and for creators like us?

Podcaster that he is, Rob turns the tables on me and asks me a bunch of questions about how I’m approaching this question and I shared what was top of mind when I rebranded the show recently from CRAFTED. to Future Around & Find Out. Namely, I wanted to give the show more personality, but that is how you stand out right now and that’s what going to be defensible in the age of AI. 

And the Webby nomination — you already voted, right?? — only makes me feel more confident in the rebrand and the addition of more of these casual “FAFO Friday” episodes that feature a lot more of my (and regular guest Kwaku Aning’s) personality. 

(You’ll hear more about how AI is changing the creator economy and why “being human” is so important in a few days when my episode with Jim Louderback, writer of Inside the Creator Economy, comes out; he gives a great annual talk at SXSW and I had seen it the day before recording with Rob.)

In the meantime, come join Rob and me for some good vibes from Austin… 

And (ask your friends to) vote: https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/shows/technology

Climate-tech founder Eben Bayer is on a mission to protect Spaceship Earth. And he says it's time for climate control, i.e. active measure that cool the Earth. Why? " Because all other reasonable approaches have failed miserably," he says, slapping the table for emphasis.

Eben is the co-founder of Ecovative and MyForest Foods, the makers of MyBacon, which is sold in more than three thousand stores. It’s a non-meat bacon, made from mycelium, which (more or less) means mushrooms roots. Fewer people eating meat —> fewer farting animals —> a cooler planet. 

And Eben's latest Earth-cooling idea is (nearly) out of this world. Eben wants to put giant parasols in the stratosphere where they could block sunlight from reaching Earth. With "shade-as-a-service" a maxed-out utility (say in Phoenix) could pay for shade to cool a city or an individual could pinpoint a shadow over their backyard for an afternoon barbecue.

The idea is in its early stages, but Eben says it's feasible and it's the kind of big idea we need to get climate change under control. And while the idea of messing with the sun may sound scary, he says we alter the climate in all sorts of ways already: " We are geo-engineers. We farm animal livestock. We live on Planet Earth. We have impact. We emit CO2. We should not limit ourselves to modifying just one or two atmospheric gases to modify the planet. It's not how we operate, and it's an unbelievably constraining framing if you actually want to address this problem in a practical manner... When you start to take that frame, the options open way up."

Eben is a fascinating guy — very steampunk in his approach to entrepreneurship — and I'm sure you'll find this interview eye-opening.

And a special shout out to my field producer for this onsite recording from Troy, NY: my eleven-year old son, Julian! He was my camera and sound guy and he also makes his long-awaited (YouTube!) debut to ask Eben a question about protecting Spaceship Earth. 🤩

Thanks also to PopTech, the amazing tech conference where I first met Eben, and where he became a fellow more than a decade ago as he was just scaling up.

Support Future Around & Find Out

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• Become a paid subscriber and help future proof the podcast!

Sponsor the show? 

• Are you looking to reach an audience of senior technologists and decision-makers? Email me: [email protected]

---
Music by Jonathan Zalben

— Melania Trump, Futurist

Ah, yes, I can’t wait for my children to learn from an embodied AI. And that their access to everything be “instantaneous.” No struggle. No unreliable (fleshy) teachers. Just an embodied AI stuffed with the “entire corpus of information.” What an inspiring vision!

Regular listeners to Future Around & Find Out will know that I’m a fan of robots (think: self-driving cars), but really don’t understand why they need arms and legs (whether dog- or human-shaped). 

Well, as you may have seen our fever dream of AI with arms and legs reached the White House, with Melania and “Figure 3” competing to see which one could walk and talk more haltingly. (The robot was more engaging to listen to.) 

The robot was there, along with a patronizing display of first spouses from around the world, for a summit on education technology. So Kwaku and I use it as a jumping off point for this week’s FAFO Friday (yes, delivered on a Saturday) this week. 

Kwaku, a tech consultant to many schools, and I discuss this insatiable need for humanoid robots, AI, and instant gratification. And, following up on my conversation earlier this week with Khan Academy’s Chief Learning Officer, Kristin DiCerbo, we discuss what counts as a “productive struggle” and what’s wasted effort when it comes to AI and learning. 

Please enjoy this very human conversation… full of totally unnecessary tangents, riffs, asides, non-sequiturs, and other detours that Plato, the humanoid teacher, would find inefficient and useless. 🙂

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So what the heck should kids be studying today!?

That's my opening question to Khan Academy's Chief Learning Officer, Kristen DiCerbo, a learning and AI expert who is back for her second appearance on the show. 

We discuss:

• Kristen's advice for what to study today: fundamentals, AI literacy, and critical thinking
• How helpful should AI be? 
• Why the productive struggle is critical to learning, but also why we shouldn't "fetishize" struggle
• When should AI be Socratic — "and why do you think that?" — and when should it just give you the answer?
• The "5% problem" — why edtech that's proven to work still barely gets used
• How Khan Academy overhauled its classroom platform and evolved Khanmigo from a standalone chatbot into something woven into the whole learning experience
• Personalization that actually works 
• How Khan Academy uses LLMs as judges to evaluate 20,000 student interactions a day
• The scenario planning report that imagines deepfakes of school principals and AI going underground in schools
• What parents should be asking their kids' schools about AI right now
• What it looks like when a school implements AI well — and what it looks like when they don't

Chapters:

• (01:44) - What the heck should kids be studying right now?
• (03:55) - Teaching critical thinking in the age of AI
• (06:37) - What successful schools are doing differently
• (08:37) - The real risk: not that kids use AI too much, but that they don't use it enough
• (10:52) - My 13-year-old has to check five apps just to find his homework
• (11:52) - "Beyond the AI inflection point" — three scenarios, none of them great
• (16:30) - Should we just make every school a trade school?
• (19:41) - What should parents be asking their kids' schools?
• (22:27) - Khan Academy's Winchester Mystery House problem
• (26:28) - Personalized learning — what works and what surprisingly doesn't
• (29:32) - Kids are bad at asking questions and that's actually the point
• (32:01) - "I DON'T KNOW" in all capital letters — the Socratic method's breaking point
• (34:26) - Should an AI tutor give tough love?
• (37:01) - Why Khanmigo is fundamentally different from ChatGPT
• (40:11) - Don't fetishize struggle — but your kid still needs it
• (42:39) - Khan Academy's productive struggle: building evals from scratch
• (45:41) - What gives Kristen optimism

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Sponsor the show? 

• Are you looking to reach an audience of senior technologists and decision-makers? Email me: [email protected]

---
Music by Jonathan Zalben

South By Southwest was strange this year. No convention center to anchor the event (it’s a giant hole in the ground right now, being rebuilt from scratch, much like [insert your analogy here] will also need to be rebuilt in the age of AI). 

This South By was a all about convergence. How AI will impact [xyz] continues to be the dominant theme at the conference and in so much tech coverage (including on this podcast; sorry!). 

So, Kwaku and I report on the convergences we saw (and not only at Amy Webb’s annual talk where “convergence” was her key word). This includes everything from:

• the RoboCup, a quest (a la Deep Blue winning at chess) for humanoid robots to be able to defeat a team of great humans at soccer 
• pants that you wear (or do they wear you) that are kind of like an e-bike for your legs
• an AI-powered Cyrano de Bergerac that can help you whisper sweet nothings in your lover’s ear
• falling in love with an AI (and their business model)
• and AI that can tell you whether to have another slice of brisket (yes, duh, you’re in Austin!) 

So, come on along to Austin for what’s become an annual tradition: Kwaku and my SXSW Rooftop Revue. 

This year recorded in fabulous 4K with a three camera setup that we didn’t deserve! Big thanks to Podcast Movement Evolutions, Nomono, The Podcast Academy, and Simplecast!

And stay tuned for a few more episodes from a wild week!

Chapters:

• (00:25) - SXSW 2026: everything everywhere all at once
• (01:23) - Kwaku stumbles into a World Economic Forum session on convergence
• (05:54) - Reinforcement learning and robot soccer
• (09:07) - Amy Webb's three convergences: emotional outsourcing, unlimited labor, human augmentation
• (09:55) - Pants that are an e-bike for your legs
• (11:27) - The mental tax of running a fleet of AI agents
• (13:28) - Your boss wants you to pay for your own augmentation
• (16:07) - Esther Perel, Spike Jonze, and falling in love with Her business model
• (18:55) - An AI Cyrano de Bergerac to help you win your lover’s heart
• (25:30) - IRL is the antidote!

• Get the newsletter, support the show, check out past episodes: https://www.futurearound.com

How do you build a system for turning wild ideas into world-changing innovations? Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots at X, The Moonshot Factory, has spent over 15 years leading Google’s audacious innovation lab—the birthplace of Waymo, Google Brain, and other breakthrough projects.

In this special episode, recorded live in Austin at last year's SXSW, Astro shares the playbook to create a moonshot factory.

(I'm at this year's SXSW right now and you'll hear all about it soon. If you are here, drop me a line and let's meet up!)

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The “Train the Monkey First” approach to innovation
• Why audacity, humility, and intellectual honesty are key to moonshots
• How your org can get more 10x (not +10%) outcomes — and how to avoid the “innovator’s dilemma”
• Why you should “greenlight everything” and then redlight most projects quickly, following kill criteria you’ve agreed to in advance
• Where X is placing bets today, including climate-tech, modernizing the electric grid and bioengineering

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Future Around & Find Out newsletter and podcast: https://www.futurearound.com