I'm in the market for a new lawyer, by the way.

Today's guest is Iain McLaren, who is a certified Competent Programmer and also currently working as special counsel at HWL Ebsworth. He does all the legal things our company needs and has always steered us right!

You might be wondering how this was possible. Well, by sealing a legal professional in a Zone of Truth prior to commencing recording, it is possible to have an honest conversation with the lawyer for up to two hours, assuming that they fail their Will saving throw and that they are not permitted to leave the spell's area for the duration.

It's Cory Doctorow, I'm not going to waste your time explaining who he is. You can find him at pluralistic.net, but I'm going to link you to this post specifically because it talks about how cool and hip I am.

Also, you can grab the book mentioned by Will at the beginning here!

Someone recently put me onto the book Crisis Engineering by Marina Nitze, Matthew Weaver, and Mikey Dickerson. It is unfortunately not about how to engineer a crisis, which would be very fun, but about how to leverage a crisis as one of the rare moments where a company is actually open to change. It is one of the rare contemporary books that is ostensibly about "business" that is going to last for longer than two weeks and probably become compulsory reading for operators everywhere.

You can read more about Layer Aleph here. Call them in an emergency! Read their book and print out copies of their faces to wear during a crisis! These are all reasonable courses of action.

This podcast is still not monetized and I didn't get paid or whatever, I just like their book.

Listen, it's Ed Zitron, he doesn't need an introduction. If you live under a rock (very reasonable mental health decision in the year of our Lord, 2026) you can find his work at Where's Your Ed At? or his own podcast, Better Offline.

This episode is with Efron Licht! I met Efron about a year ago, and I make the time to have a call with him every Thursday morning despite the myriad obligations of running a business because he's so goddamn good at programming (and also funny). His writing removed a lot of wild industry dysfunction from my brain around actually programming, and you can find it all eblog.fly.dev. Pick a random article and have fun, they're all great.

Also many thanks to Sarah for editing this episode! We have a paid editor now, everyone! (But also, many thanks to Lisa Lorenzin for getting us this far on volunteer hours!)

And finally, if you're a podcast description reader, the guest next month is Ed Zitron -- shhhhhhh, calm down, don't tell anyone, okay, this is between us.

Here's the second part of the episode! Why is it in two parts? Someone speculated that this might be a better format for people that don't want to get blasted by two hours of rambling without a natural break.

Many thanks to Lisa Lorenzin for editing this episode!

We have Dan Tentler on the podcast, a guy that I once (this is a true story) referred to outside of a security meetup wherein my interlocutor revealed that he's considered a "rockstar" by lots of security people. So you know, we're going up in the world.

Many thanks to Lisa Lorenzin for editing this episode!

Today I'm chatting with Demetrios Brinkmann, certified Cool Dude (TM) with lots of experience in the machine learning space. I recorded this a million years ago and must thank Demetrios for his patience. Topics we touch on are: machine learning hype in businesses, job searches, and the pros/cons of authenticity in a career.

Also, in a desperate attempt to feel like this is a responsible thing to produce while running a business, you can get advice on all sorts of software problems from my team at hermit-tech.com or email me personally at [email protected]

Many thanks are also extended to Lisa Lorenzin for taking my garbage audio and turning it into something passable.

Today we've got Felipe Velez on the podcast, a close friend of mine from the improv theatre scene here in Melbourne. I know, I know, weird topic, but I want everyone to know about it. We're catching Felipe as he's on his way back to Columbia for the next big chapter of his life. He's easily amongst the funniest and most wholesome people I've ever met.

If anything we talk about sounds interesting, look up a local improv school, preferably one that uses Keith Johnstone's material quite heavily. I attend a place called Impro Melbourne, which I highly recommend.

And finally, thanks to Dennis Crenshaw for helping with the audio. As always, all good things are Dennis and all bad things were probably me.

Today we've got Simon Swords, the managing director at Fundipedia and all-around extremely cool guy. His first email to me had this at the start, middle, and end:

"DO NOT START A BUSINESS THAT DOES NOT HAVE A LARGE AMOUNT OF ANNUAL RECURRING REVENUE."

And I cannot begin to describe how much suffering he has saved me.

With my newfound internet fame, I am going to upgrade my recording setup substantially after this one - so this is and the next episode (already recorded) are hopefully the last times I apologize for the audio. Sorry Simon!

This episode's guest is Jesse Alford, a former staff engineer at Pivotal Software, and the host of Radio Free XP. I've been corresponding with Jesse daily for a month or two now, and am consistently blown away by his insight into any topic I dredge up. We discuss a whole bunch of things, ranging from seriousness in job, whether entering management to drive organizational change is wise, to what you should learn from crashing prod.

I have also used a compressor for the audio this time, so we move ever closer to respectability. Enjoy!