Christopher Rapaport runs field go-to-market across EMEA for Databricks. He joins Riccardo in Amsterdam, straight off the Data and AI Summit in San Francisco, for a conversation about what actually changes when a company stops moving data between systems and starts working from one source of truth.

This one stays concrete. Christopher explains the lakehouse without the jargon, after Riccardo asks him to pitch it to his grandmother. He describes the agents he genuinely uses himself, and why the argument for them is time rather than headcount. He pushes back on the idea that Databricks rewrites how a business runs: the process stays yours, it just stops being slow.

They also get into the harder parts. Whether this looks like the dot-com bubble or something that compounds. What a "Brickster" actually is, and why curiosity beats credentials. The gap between simplicity and the happy path, and why the legacy mind is the real thing to conquer after twenty-five years of habit. It closes on people: mentors, coaching, and what Christopher thinks leading authentically costs you.

In this episode

• Why the room in San Francisco and the room in Amsterdam ask different questions
• What customers ask for first, and what they ask for once they know what to ask
• The lakehouse, explained without a single acronym
• The agents Christopher uses, and the mentor line about time he keeps coming back to
• Bubble or compounding shift: the dot-com comparison, taken seriously
• The Genie story: one executive, one train commute, desk to desk

Chapters

0:00 Cold open
2:11 Live from the Data and AI Summit
3:03 What's different between the US and European rooms
5:42 What customers ask for first
7:34 Legacy, silos, and where the lakehouse starts
11:44 "Explain the lakehouse to my grandmother"
12:50 Do you use agents yourself?
15:24 The future of operations
18:39 Closing the skills gap
20:41 Are we in a dot-com bubble?
22:26 What makes a Brickster
25:51 Explainability, cost, or compute
26:58 Simplicity vs the happy path
28:32 Conquering the legacy mind
31:37 The Genie story
36:24 On mentors, and investing in people
38:10 Close

Chit Chats is hosted by Riccardo Murciano. New episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

What if there were a whole civilization of tiny people living inside your phone? 📱 Filmmaker and creative director Christopher Jorna turned that childhood daydream into a body of work — and in this episode of Chit Chats he shows how AI is quietly rewriting what a creative can build alone.

Recorded on a windy Madrid rooftop (with a phone mounted on a pair of roller skates 🛼), this is a wide-ranging, genuinely nerdy conversation about storytelling, virtual production, and one idea that ties it all together: don't resist AI, and don't just watch it — redirect the river.

• 🌊 The three paths for AI (resist / stop / redirect) — why building a new path in the river beats damming it
• 🧠 "Enabling flow state" — using AI to amplify creativity, not replace it
• 👔 Why you should treat AI like an employee — and why it's healthier for you, too
• 🃏 Handover cards & gap analysis: get far more out of every AI session
• 🏜️ The desert / gradient-descent analogy for how LLMs think — and why a little randomness finds a better path
• 🎥 Story, story, story: every AI call on Find My Phone served the story — including the scene he cut
• ⚙️ New workflows: white-wall VFX, color-grade-first AI rendering, the Claude × Blender plugin

Christopher Jorna is a half-Dutch, half-German film director and virtual-production technician with a background in economics and an MA in Film Directing from MetFilm School London. Creator of the Low Power Mode series — stories about the life inside your phone — and an advocate for AI that enables creatives.

• 00:00 — Intro: a rooftop, roller skates & directing remotely from Mumbai
• 01:44 — Meeting Rob & the virtual-production roots of Low Power Mode
• 03:18 — The childhood "tiny people in the cable" memory
• 05:18 — AI as a companion, not a servant; treat AI like an employee
• 08:01 — Handover cards & token efficiency (CLAUDE.md, /init, /insights)
• 11:33 — How LLMs really work: the "row of desks" analogy & compacting
• 13:59 — The AI-2027 rabbit hole: reverse inference, red vs green futures
• 18:28 — Three paths for AI & the river / dam analogy
• 23:29 — "Enabling flow state": the core vision
• 25:02 — What flow state actually feels like
• 30:46 — Claude fetching royalty-free sound effects (a practical example)
• 33:17 — Story first: making Find My Phone (white wall + AI VFX, self-funded)
• 41:19 — Work vs life: the London visa choice that led to Madrid
• 43:03 — Gradient descent, randomness & taking the big leap
• 45:16 — Goldfish: the Escobros, three wishes, shot in three days
• 51:04 — When a small idea shows up in a big Hollywood film
• 52:18 — Claude × Blender & the hi-vis (Unreal + AI render) workflow
• 59:07 — The gap-analysis secret for Claude Code
• 64:19 — Live demo: the interactive Low Power Mode website
• 68:18 — Closing takeaways: write it down, build your path

• 🌐 Website: christopher-jorna.com
• 📸 Instagram: @christopherjorna
• 💼 LinkedIn: Christopher Jorna
• 🎞️ Find My Phone — watch on Instagram
• 💀 Los Sueños de los Muertos (2022) — watch on YouTube · IMDb · FEST REGARDS
• 🔋 Low Power Mode (2024) — IMDb · Letterboxd · Greenlit · MetFilm
• 🐠 Goldfish — coming soon, made with the Eskobros: Instagram · eskobros.com

Hosted by Riccardo Murciano. If this resonated, subscribe and comment: what's the future you want to see — and what does flow state look like for you?

• ▶️ YouTube: Chit Chats
• 🎧 Spotify: Chit Chats
• 📸 Instagram: Chit Chats

#ChitChats #ChristopherJorna #AIFilmmaking #VirtualProduction #FlowState #LowPowerMode #FindMyPhone #Filmmaking #CreativeDirector #ClaudeAI #VFX #Storytelling #FutureOfFilm

Episode Title: Peter Grafe on AI-Native Marketing, MMM, and the Agentic Future

Guest: Peter Grafe

A pragmatic conversation on where marketing is heading when measurement, decision-making, and execution start collapsing into one AI-native system.

Riccardo sits down with Peter Grafe, CEO and co-founder of BlueAlpha, to unpack the founder journey from Tesla data science to building an AI-native marketing hub. Peter explains how a real attribution and measurement problem at Tesla became the seed for BlueAlpha, why traditional click-based marketing measurement is breaking down, and why media mix modeling is becoming more relevant again in a world shaped by AI agents, LLM search, and brand-driven demand capture. The conversation also explores operating as a European founder in San Francisco, the importance of speed, trust, and autonomy in startup culture, and what “AI native” actually means inside a modern company. They go deep on agentic workflows, MCP-based execution, how marketing teams may flatten as AI takes on more operational work, and why future winners will be the brands that win mindshare before a customer ever types a prompt. It is curious, practical, and grounded in how fast the landscape is changing right now.

Chapters

• 00:00 — Timestamp data was not included in the provided transcript
• 00:00 — Japan honeymoon and staying connected
• 00:00 — Building team autonomy at BlueAlpha
• 00:00 — The company culture: ownership, speed, communication
• 00:00 — From Tesla to founder origin story
• 00:00 — Why marketing measurement broke
• 00:00 — The gap BlueAlpha is solving
• 00:00 — Connectors, orchestration, and agentic execution
• 00:00 — European founder lessons in San Francisco
• 00:00 — Raising capital and choosing investors
• 00:00 — What “AI native” really means
• 00:00 — Why marketing is moving up-funnel
• 00:00 — Winning prompts versus winning keywords
• 00:00 — Agents, org design, and the future of work
• 00:00 — Trusting the process while measuring everything
• 00:00 — Five-year and ten-year AI outlook

Links

• Guest: Peter Grafe on LinkedIn
• Organization: BlueAlpha
• Team page: BlueAlpha Team
• Product mentioned: What Is BlueAlpha?
• Key resource mentioned: What Is Media Mix Modeling (MMM)?
• Key resource mentioned: Agentic Execution
• Background context: The Hard Truth About MMM and Incrementality

Key takeaways

• Marketing measurement is shifting away from purely click-based attribution toward broader, probabilistic systems that can capture real impact across channels.
• AI-native companies do not just add AI tools; they redesign workflows, roles, and execution around AI from the ground up.
• The future of marketing is less about winning a keyword and more about winning mindshare before a customer ever asks an AI what to buy.

Call to action

Follow Chit Chats for more conversations at the edge of technology and business, and ask yourself: in an agentic world, what part of your work still has to stay human?

Episode Title: Curiosity, Commitment, and Courageous Choices with Simon Veithen

Guest: Simon Veithen — host of Courageously Curious, filmmaker, and Human Decision Science graduate.

A pragmatic conversation about how people make decisions, why status shapes behavior, and what it really takes to move from intention to action.

In episode 10 of Chit Chats, Riccardo sits down with Simon Veithen to explore decision-making from both scientific and personal angles. They begin with Simon’s path from economics into Human Decision Science at Maastricht University, unpacking the tension between models, incentives, psychology, and the messy unpredictability of real human behavior. From there, the conversation moves into status, authenticity, and the hidden social forces that drive action. They also discuss office politics, trust, and what early adulthood teaches you about working with people rather than just ideas. A major thread of the episode is Simon’s long period of travel, including life in New Zealand, where fear of missing out slowly gave way to a deeper appreciation for experience, memory, and deliberate choice. The final section turns to AI and creativity, where Riccardo reflects on his thesis about conversational AI, feedback loops, divergent thinking, and the risks of outsourcing too much cognitive effort. Across all these topics, one idea keeps returning: meaning tends to emerge not from endless optimization, but when exploration eventually gives way to commitment.

Chapters

• 00:00 — Episode 10 intro
• 01:14 — Meet Simon Veithen
• 03:02 — Today’s three big questions
• 05:21 — Why study decision-making?
• 10:45 — Intention vs action
• 11:38 — Incentives, status, and behavior
• 16:49 — What does high status mean?
• 20:24 — Cheat codes for early adulthood
• 23:42 — Office politics and trust
• 30:28 — Travel, FOMO, and New Zealand
• 37:26 — Dreams, doubt, and gap-year lessons
• 47:47 — AI, creativity, and cognitive outsourcing
• 55:24 — AI-generated art and cinema
• 62:10 — Commitment over endless exploration
• 74:25 — Thesis methods and qualitative research
• 78:03 — Closing reflections

Links

• Guest: Simon Veithen on LinkedIn
• Podcast: Courageously Curious on Spotify
• YouTube: Simon Veithen on YouTube
• Newsletter: Courageously Curious on Substack
• Organization: Maastricht University — Human Decision Science
• Book mentioned: The Status Game by Will Storr

Key takeaways

• Human behavior is shaped not just by rational analysis, but by incentives, social approval, and perceived status.
• Exploration is valuable, but growth often accelerates when you deliberately commit to fewer paths.
• AI can support creativity through feedback and context, but overuse risks weakening the creative muscle itself.

Call to action

Follow Chit Chats, share this episode with someone navigating big life decisions, and ask yourself: where in your life is it time to stop optimizing and start committing?

Episode Title: Fear as Data and FOOSA with Raymond Miranda

Guest: Raymond Miranda

What happens when your normal breaks? This episode explores fear as information, obstacles as revelations, and AI as a mirror rather than an authority.

Riccardo sits down with Raymond Miranda, creator of the Myhejo Method, to unpack FOOSA: Fear, Opposite, Obstacle, Story, Action. Borrowing from scriptwriting, Raymond explains a simple but powerful rule: if you can name the hero’s fear and then name its opposite, you can see the arc of transformation. Stories begin when ritual breaks. In life, that break feels like anxiety or instability. In narrative terms, it is the beginning of meaning. Together they test the method live. Riccardo articulates a one line fear about sustaining his current equilibrium, generates its opposite, and checks both statements against his body. AI is used only as a pattern recognition tool to surface possible obstacles, not as a decision maker. They also address analysis paralysis, the ethics of building AI driven systems, and why community matters more than an addictive app loop. The episode closes with a grounded definition of high status: discernment, the ability to pause and then choose clearly.

Chapters

• 00:00 Intro and background
• 03:14 Listening to the body’s “no”
• 09:51 What FOOSA stands for
• 10:00 Fear and the opposite explained
• 12:10 Entrepreneurs as heroes
• 18:24 Ritual breaks and story begins
• 24:37 Why obstacles matter
• 32:25 The one line fear exercise
• 33:46 Live example of fear and opposite
• 44:22 AI as pattern recognition
• 49:04 Smallest action step
• 58:19 Avoiding analysis paralysis
• 01:10:23 High status and discernment
• 01:13:30 Maya Angelou on success

Links

• Guest: Raymond Miranda official website

Key takeaways

• Fear can be treated as structured data.
• Obstacles are the mechanism that reveals inner truth.
• AI can reflect patterns, but action must return to the body and real life.

Call to action

Follow Chit Chats for more conversations and ask yourself: what fear could you rewrite into its opposite this week?

The Reality of Longevity Escape Velocity with David Wood - #8

David Wood (Chair of London Futurists and Executive Director at theLongevity Escape Velocity (LEV) Foundation) joins me for a pragmatic, wide-ranging conversation on longevity.We unpack what Longevity Escape Velocity really means, why we still haven’t moved past the 122-year lifespan record, and what it will take—scientifically and politically—to make real progress.

Links

• LEV Foundation: https://www.levf.org/
• LEV Foundation Projects: https://www.levf.org/projects
• London Futurists: https://londonfuturists.com/
• David Wood (Delta Wisdom): https://deltawisdom.com/
• David’s essay — “Ten ways to help accelerate the end of aging”: https://magazine.mindplex.ai/post/ten-ways-to-help-accelerate-the-end-of-aging
• Book mentioned — Citizen Cyborg (James Hughes): https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/james-hughes/citizen-cyborg/9780813341989/

Chapters

• 00:00 — Scotland, identity, and “citizens of the universe”
• 04:35 — Team roles, personality tests, and building high-functioning teams
• 06:20 — Mathematics → software engineering (Psion/Symbian) and the power of abstraction
• 10:50 — Emotional intelligence, uncertainty, and learning fast without breaking teams
• 13:00 — Staying sharp: puzzles, walking, audiobooks, and signal vs. noise
• 17:30 — Longevity: why the field is exploding (and why coordination matters)
• 19:45 — “Abolition of aging”: what it means in practice
• 27:40 — Evolution, the “grandmother hypothesis,” and why humans don’t have to accept the default
• 32:40 — The biggest misconception: why “more of the past” won’t get us past aging
• 37:30 — What actually fails: mitochondria, senescent cells, immune system, cognition, frailty
• 42:20 — Defining Longevity Escape Velocity (and why ~7 years matters)
• 50:10 — Genetic modification, muscle enhancement, and real-world tradeoffs
• 53:05 — “Three-parent” mitochondrial therapy + sickle cell: ethics vs. fear
• 56:35 — AI & longevity: AlphaFold, drug discovery, and why better data is the bottleneck
• 1:05:55 — Ray Kurzweil’s LEV timeline: what’s right, what’s risky
• 1:10:00 — Book that changed David’s trajectory: Citizen Cyborg and why politics matters

In this episode, we sit down with Calvin Kwok: gemologist, client advisor, and High Jewelry Ambassador at Tiffany & Co. in Amsterdam, to explore what lies beneath luxury, sales, and beauty.

We begin with Calvin’s journey from Hong Kong to Europe, unpacking how growing up between cultures shapes identity, ambition, and the way we relate to work, success, and happiness. From there, we dive into the world of fine and high jewelry, not as products, but as carriers of emotion, memory, and meaning.

We explore how selling luxury differs fundamentally from selling utility, why emotion always comes before logic, and how stories, not specifications, drive the most meaningful decisions. Calvin also breaks down the elegant three-step sales framework used in high-end retail: Same. Similar. Dream.

Along the way, we touch on craftsmanship, ethical sourcing, cultural pace, and the difference between living fast and living well, leading to a deeper conversation about happiness, peace, and being at ease with oneself.

We close with reflections on why the most valuable things we buy are often the ones we don’t need, and what that reveals about how we choose, love, and commit.

In this episode we sit down with AI consultant, engineer, and founder Florian Fürst to explore what it really takes to build AI systems that work in real businesses, not just in demos.

We start with Florian’s leap into entrepreneurship in 2025 and unpack what young founders should actually consider before starting a business in AI. From there, we dive into the operational core of automation: why apps are replacing Excel, why process design must come before AI, and why structure beats intelligence every time.

We explore one of the most critical questions in modern work:

Where should AI execute and where must humans stay in control?

Through concepts like human-in-the-loop, cognitive outsourcing, and AI as a utility like electricity, this episode cuts through both hype and fear.

You’ll hear why most AI projects fail, how messy data kills intelligent systems, and why workflow design remains one of the most creative and irreducibly human skills in the age of automation.

We close with a powerful real-world use case in legal automation and a simple personal mantra that captures the mindset needed to build in this space:

00:00 – Audio setup & live connection

02:16 – Who Florian is & founding fuerst.ai

03:26 – Starting a business in AI: hype or structural shift?

05:41 – Custom apps vs. LLM-built software

09:21 – How AI is actually used day to day

12:46 – Cognitive outsourcing & the calculator analogy

16:11 – Human-in-the-loop & decision authority

19:31 – Personal AI agent vision

23:01 – From Excel chaos to app-based systems

27:41 – Databases, relations & single source of truth

31:11 – Why most AI projects fail

35:21 – AI, work & society

39:41 – The least mundane human task

41:21 – Favorite real-world AI use case (legal automation)

43:51 – Personal mantra: Stay curious

45:31 – Final reflections & sign-off

Florian's links:

Company: fuerst.ai

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/fuerst-ai/

In episode 5 of Chit Chats, I sit down with Marina, an AI transformation leader at Leonardo, and Chiara, a philosopher-engineer focused on democracy and ethics. We explore our first encounters with AI, its philosophical roots from Heidegger to Kant, and today’s big challenges, from deepfakes to inequality and Europe’s AI Act. A conversation about keeping humanity at the center while shaping the future of technology.

Cristiano De Nobili is a theoretical physicist and AI scientist working across deep learning, quantum theory, and environmental impact — with a background that includes a PhD in string theory, postdoctoral research in machine learning, and real-world projects with the European Space Agency. From Svalbard to Milano, he’s taught, built, and led initiatives that bridge scientific research with startup energy.

Cristiano has dedicated his career to exploring the mysteries of black holes, the promise of AI, and the ethical choices scientists face in a rapidly evolving tech landscape. Today, he’s inspiring the next generation of deep tech talent and advocating for a culture where researchers turn bold ideas into real-world ventures.

Thank you for listening ❤

🔗 EPISODE LINKS:Cristiano’s LinkedIn: https://it.linkedin.com/in/cristiano-de-nobiliBeyond Entropy (Newsletter): https://denocris.substack.com/aboutEuropean Space Agency: https://www.esa.intSISSA: https://www.sissa.it

📬 CONTACT RICCARDO:💬 Feedback / Suggestions: ⁠[email protected]⁠📫 All other inquiries: ⁠https://riccardocloud.com/

OUTLINE:

00:00 – Introduction & Cristiano’s Background

01:20 – Childhood Curiosity & The Atom Story

05:10 – Physics as a Path & High School Inspirations

09:00 – Black Holes, Entropy & String Theory

15:30 – From Quantum Gravity to Deep Learning

21:20 – Working with the European Space Agency

26:40 – AI Ethics & the Responsibility of Scientists

32:50 – Why Scientists Should Embrace Entrepreneurship

39:00 – Quantum Computing & AI: Connections & Hype

47:30 – Advice for Graduates & Young Scientists

52:20 – Daily Practices, Flying Hobby & Newsletter

55:00 – Final Reflections: Mantras & Environmental Dreams