PODCAST · society
Fast & Broken
by Carly Rector
Two friends from the internet try to make sense of what startup culture is doing to the world. Carly Rector is a software engineer and startup founder. Each week, she discusses current events with Teresa Kramer, TTRPG product manager and semi-professional voice actor. Their shared history lets them bridge the gap between online creative communities and the tech world with an empathetic but critical perspective.
Episodes
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Luxury Space Communism: Is AI Profitable?, Executive Orders, the Pope's Encyclical
Today is a Carly^2 episode with Carly Ho, a software engineer-slash-paralegal. We discuss the website isaiprofitable.com and recent developments in AI economics, a postponed executive order from Trump and a real one from Gavin Newsom, and the Pope's AI encyclical and the value of having a variety...
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Nonsense Grounds: AI in Law, LLM Ethics, Google IO, AI Leaders' Response to Backlash
Today's episode is focused on AI in law, and features Sarah Frankel, an Australian laywer working in immigration. We discuss the trend of lawyers submitting AI-generated briefs with hallucinated citations, where LLM tools can be useful for lawyers, how the problems we see in law are common across...
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Skill Issue: Agentic Coding Tools, Circular Funding Deals, Double Standards in Content Policy
Today's show is cohosted by Oz Brown! Oz is nontraditional software engineer who went through bootcamp at Amazon after a history doing creative work, including voice acting, and customer support, including for Xbox. We talk about the philosophy and current state of agentic coding tools, the...
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Multiple Specialized Throbbing Brains: AI & Jobs, UBI, PSM
This week I'm joined by Frank Kane, independent educator and one of the handful of people I know posting sane takes about AI on LinkedIn. We have the AI job loss conversation in the context of reporting that software engineer job listings are actually rising, go over recent developments in the...
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Programming Note: Schedule & Format Changes
There will be a hiatus in weekly episodes of this podcast and there may be some newer things coming soon! Email [email protected] with suggestions or if you'd like to come on the pod!
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Snake Oil: Block Layoffs, Netflix & WB, Anthropic RSP, Anthropic and OpenAI vs the DoD
We start the episode with a less-than-lightning round through some events of the week, including Block's 40% layoffs, Netflix walking away from the Warner Bros acquisition, and Anthropic's updates to their Responsible Scaling Policy. Then we discuss at length the drama around Anthropic refusing…
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Occam's Razor Split: Moves in Tech Regulation, OpenClaw Call-Out, Alpha School
After a lightning round of updates in government interaction with tech, we discuss the fascinating case study of an OpenClaw agent writing a call-out blog post for an open source maintainer who rejected its pull request, and 404 Media's detailed investigation of Alpha School, the AI enabled…
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Render Farm in the Bathroom: Discord Age Verification, SpaceXXX, Iron Lung
We almost managed to not talk about AI today. This week's topics include the backlash to Discord rolling out age verification worldwide, SpaceX acquiring xAI and Elon Musk's new moon-based visions, and the story the success of Iron Lung tells about independent filmmaking. -- Show Notes Discord…
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U Mad, Bro?: Claude's Super Bowl Ad, Moltbook Mania, the SaaSpocalypse, Anthropic Documents Unsealed
In this accidentally all-Anthropic installment, we discuss Anthropic's firing shots at OpenAI with their new anti-ads ads, the AI tools blowing up this past week (Moltbook and the SaaSpocalypse), and insights into Anthropic's copyright strategy from documents recently unsealed from their settled...
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Emotional B.O.: US TikTok Issues, Social Media Addiction Suits, Is OpenAI Losing the Race?
Sign the petition to call on tech leaders to speak out against ICE and Border Patrol's actions in Minnesota: https://iceout.tech/ This week we discuss accusations of censorship by the newly-divested US TikTok, landmark lawsuits using a product safety argument against social media companies, and…
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A Little Too Roko's Basilisk: AI at Davos, Razer at CES, Claude's Constitution
This week, we talk about comments from Dario Amodei and Satya Nadella at the World Economic Forum, Razer CEO Min-Ling Tan's interview with Nilay Patel of the Verge, and Anthropic's official release of Claude's Constitution, previously referred to on this podcast as the soul doc. -- Show Notes: AI...
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Optimistic Dichotomy: Grok and Society, Claude Code and Claude Cowork
In this episode, we review developments in the Grok deepfake epidemic and examine its implications on society at large, and then discuss the wave of excitement over Claude Code and the launch of Claude Cowork. -- Show Notes: Grok Updates Musk calls UK fascist...
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Batteries in the Basement: Grok Deepfakes, War Prediction Markets, Data Center Demand Response
In this episode, we discuss our depression and anger at the current torrent of nonconsensual nudification generated by Grok on X, a $400k Polymarket win on Maduro's deposition and Congress's response, and ways data centers can be connected to the grid earlier by prioritizing workloads. -- Show...
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Lock the Bubble: 2026 AI IPOs, AI in the 2026 Midterms, Insights from Amazon Retail
In our first episode of the year, we talk about some 2026 outlook topics: potential IPOs from OpenAI and Anthropic, and AI backlash in the US midterm elections. In the latter part of the podcast, we take a look back at what years working in Amazon retail personalization can teach us about...
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Seymour Cash: Disney-OpenAI Deal, AI Water Use Discourse, Larian Backlash & AI Leadership
This week, we discuss the deal between Disney and OpenAI, including the interesting specifics of the financials and the challenge of implementing Disney's guardrails. Then, we discuss the complex issue of AI water use and how it's overblown in online discourse. Finally, we talk about how a lot of...
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Strong Air Quotes: AI Coding Productivity, Polymarket War Betting, Australia's Social Media Ban
In this episode, we discuss research from DX and Anthropic on how much benefit enterprises are seeing from AI coding tools, the Polymarket bet on the Russia-Ukraine war that was probably gamed, and Australia's ban on under-16 users for a number of social media platforms going into effect. --...
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AI Vibes: Seattle Hates AI?, Social Media Polarization Research, Claude's Soul Document
This week, we hit the viral discourse that everyone in Seattle hates AI, new research on how social media effects emotional affect and political polarization, and talk about Claude 4.5 Opus's "soul document." -- Show Notes: Everyone in Seattle hates AI...
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Dry Wine Tasting: Recent AI Research from MIT and Anthropic
It's an all AI research week, as we talk about the MIT Iceberg Index - a measure job exposure to AI on a per-task basis - an Anthropic study on the economic impacts of productivity improvements using a similar per-task measurement, and an Anthropic study which showed that models that learn to…
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A Burrito: Exec Order on State AI Regulation, Cloudflare's Postmortem, Consensus Investing
This week, we discuss the leaked draft executive order focused on federal pre-emption of state AI regulation and its baked-in assumption that LLMs are magic truth machines, the recent Cloudflare outage and the CEO's hand in putting together the detailed postmortem blog, and the trend in venture...
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30% Earthworm: Anthropic's Political Bias Eval, AI Smut, Marc Andreessen vs the Pope
We start this episode with a shoutout to the closure of Teen Vogue. In the main episode, we discuss Anthropic's recently released open-source evaluation of an LLM's "political even-handedness," a recent opinion article from a founder of an AI chatbot platform and whether the problem is the smut,...
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Pink Elephants: Amazon v. Perplexity, ChatBot Mental Health Report, NYC Mayoral Election
In this week's episode, we talk about Amazon's recent lawsuit against Perplexity for them masking user agents while browsing the Amazon site, OpenAI's report on mental health-related conversations with ChatGPT, Character ai's recent decision to prevent minors from using their chatbots entirely, a...
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Gambling is Fun: Truth Predict, Grokipedia, Python Software Foundation Diversity Win
This week, we discuss Trump Media's Truth Social platform adding prediction markets, Elon Musk's Wikipedia-clone ego project, and an example of an organization standing on its principles and refusing federal funding. -- Show Notes: Truth Social is adding prediction markets...
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Fun and Sexy: Anthropic x Trump Admin, Twitch Livestreaming, Elon Musk's Robot Army
In this episode, we discuss Twitter beef between Jack Clark and David Sacks prompting an official Anthropic response, Twitch and the future of livestreaming, and how plausible it is that Elon Musk will have the robot army he claimed on Tesla's quarterly earning's call. Anthropic x Trump Admin...
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Scintillating Economic Policy: OpenAI updates, Anthropic policy research, Private vs Public Markets
In this episode, we take a moment to run through updates on OpenAI topics from our last episode, before launching into two different economic policy topics - policy proposals Anthropic has gathered to address AI's economic fallout, and the debates on how to fix incentives in public markets. Show...
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OpenAI Hour: Apps in ChatGPT, Sora Drama, Circular Funding, and Amazon Enshittification
This week we get into all the news from OpenAI, including third-party apps in ChatGPT, developments in the Sora AI video app's copyright policies, and the announced deal with AMD and how it's part of a pattern of circular funding deals. In the last third of the podcast, we talk about Cory...
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AI Slop Pile: Jimmy Kimmel, Vibes & Sora, UBI studies
This week, we talk about the saga of Jimmy Kimmel's suspension and reinstatement and what it means for the state of media, OpenAI and Meta's new AI video feeds, and proof universal basic income won't mean people stop working and what it could really mean for society. Show Notes: Kimmel's ratings:...
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Problem Solving: Art & Technology, the TikTok Deal, Sora's Training Data
This week, we discuss takeaways from Christie's Art x Technology panel event, the motivations behind the TikTok divesture, and a recent Washington Post article about OpenAI's video generator, Sora. Show notes: Christie's event:...
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Mandatory Human School: Podcasts and Youtube, AI Efficiency Gains, AI in Humanities Education
This week we discuss YouTube product announcements, what it's like making a podcast, disillusioning results in AI efficiency gains, and what humanities education will look like in the AI-powered future. Show notes: Made on Youtube announcements:...
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Prediction Markets, More on AI Copyright, Factions of AI Discourse
In this episode, we give an overview of prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket and discuss insider trading and skewed incentives, give an update on Anthropic's copyright settlement and some new suits filed, and give a basic overview of AI skeptics, boomers and doomers. Show notes: The…
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Meta's Romantic RP Bots, AI-Enhanced Youtube Shorts, The Cult of Anthropic
This week we discuss Meta's dubious chatbot content standards, YouTube altering creators' shorts with AI, a beginner's primer on Anthropic, and perspectives on copyright in AI training. Show Notes: Reuters report on Meta's internal standards doc YouTube's AI "upscaling" The Information - The Cult...
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VO for AI, Tea App Hacks, AI Psychosis
This week, we discuss voice actors selling their careers to train AI, the history of "Are We Dating the Same Guy?" and the Tea App, and the new phenomenon of "AI psychosis." Show Notes: 404 Media on the Faustian Bargain for voice actors AI protections within the SAG-AFTRA agreement 404 Media...
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Woke AI, Cloudflare vs Perplexity, Online Age Verification
In this inaugural episode, we jump right in and discuss Woke AI and the related Trump executive order, the conflict between Cloudflare and Perplexity over web crawling, and the UK Online Safety Act and age verification online more broadly. Show Notes: Read the executive order Grok's Mecha-Hitler...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Two friends from the internet try to make sense of what startup culture is doing to the world. Carly Rector is a software engineer and startup founder. Each week, she discusses current events with Teresa Kramer, TTRPG product manager and semi-professional voice actor. Their shared history lets them bridge the gap between online creative communities and the tech world with an empathetic but critical perspective.
HOSTED BY
Carly Rector
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Fast & Broken have?
Fast & Broken currently has 32 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Fast & Broken about?
Two friends from the internet try to make sense of what startup culture is doing to the world. Carly Rector is a software engineer and startup founder. Each week, she discusses current events with Teresa Kramer, TTRPG product manager and semi-professional voice actor. Their shared history lets them...
How often does Fast & Broken release new episodes?
Fast & Broken has 32 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Fast & Broken?
You can listen to Fast & Broken on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Fast & Broken?
Fast & Broken is created and hosted by Carly Rector.
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