Dan, Toby, and Chmiel go behind the scenes of Cannes Lions to unpack the real programming, posturing, and potential shaping the creative industry’s biggest week. Is the future of advertising being written on the main stage or whispered behind closed doors?

Details in the Show

• Why the most important conversations at Cannes don’t happen on stage
• How closed-door programming became the sharpest tool for industry change
• The AI content hype loop: tools, platitudes, and the myth of mastery
• Automation vs. creativity: why the exciting stuff is still the unknown
• “Implementation isn’t innovation”—and other Cannes heresies
• The honest (and uneasy) truth about AI’s impact on labor, ads, and originality

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In this episode, we’re joined by Taylor Halsted of Shamrock Capital to interrogate the illusion of AI efficiency. What if the mess we’re trying to automate out of work is actually where creativity, connection, and culture live?

Details in the Show

• Why “Head of AI” might be the new “Webmaster”—and just as misguided
• The difference between performing productivity and producing outcomes
• Whether AI is making us more emotionally honest—or just better at faking it
• “AI guilt,” last-mile problems, and the hidden costs of over-orchestration
• Messy work, vibecoding, and the underrated value of creative friction
• What it takes to build AI culture without losing the human core

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Toby sits down with Henrik Werdelin and Nicholas Thorne, co-authors of Me, My Customer, and AI, to interrogate the optimistic thesis at the heart of their book, and the paradoxes it reveals. From donkeycorns to Dunbar numbers, this session explores what happens when everyone is an entrepreneur, and no one stands out.

Details in the episode:

• Why founder–customer fit matters more than product–market fit
• The illusion of scale and the power of intimacy
• Donkeycorns, not unicorns: redefining success in the AI era
• The creative danger of agreeable AI (and why we need disagreeable bots)
• What it means to “solve small” and why feedback loops must get weird

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Toby and Dan track the decline of Google Search, the end of SEO, and what’s replacing it: group chats, agentic systems, and personalized internets built around behavior, not clicks.

Details in the episode:

• Why search is collapsing (and what’s replacing it)
• How generative AI is reshaping discovery and intent
• What the “human internet” might look like
• Why the future isn’t conversational—it’s contextual
• Blockchain, Web3, and the portability of “your internet”

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We have been hosting closed-door, private Group Chats at ON_Discourse for 2 years. In this episode, Toby and Chmiel talk about the ON_Discourse version of group chats and how they are different than the contentious, political experience that was recently profiled by Ben Smith at Semafor.

Details in the episode:

• How the pandemic inspired group chats
• How group chats are the future of media
• Why trust matters more than security in private chats

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Toby and Dan turn a weekly meeting into an impromptu podcast recording about the future of digital strategy and why notifications suck.

Details in the episode:

• Requirements are dead
• The design supply chain
• Fast vs Slow creativity

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Toby interviews a couple teenagers who are vibecoding their way through the modern internet. This conversation reveals an alternative perspective on the AI revolution, from a generation that never knew a world without the web.

Details in the show:

• Will there be an internet in 5 years?
• Who do you trust online?
• What is your AI stack?
• A new acronym is coming: RLHF

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Toby interviews Suzy co-founder and CEO, Matt Britton, about his forthcoming book Generation AI: Why Generation Alpha and The Age Of AI Will Change Everything. This interview was conducted during a closed-door Member event.

Detail in the show:

• The Goonies
• Expertise vs Knowledge
• How to prepare your kids for adulthood in AI era

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Dan, Toby, and Chmiel welcome (but don't introduce) Craig Hepburn to the conversation. Craig is the Chief Product Office at Art Basel who recently introduced a new AI-powered app. Dan opens the conversation with an anecdote about an AI agent that keeps delaying its work. It sparks a conversation about the unmet potential of AI (so far).

Details in show:

• Surfing instagram
• Has AI changed anything?
• Voice is a weak interface

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Dan and Chmiel invite Henrik Werdelin, co-founder of Barkbox and PreHype, to talk about how unicorns are old news and how donkeycorns are the future. You’ll hear about how agentic AI can prompt wannabe entrepreneurs into actual founders. This is a small idea that can transform the economy.

Details in show:

• Small ideas win
• Human creativity wins
• Agentic AI as a tool

Learn about ON_Discourse.

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