The Every Podcast

How did the race to build AGI really unfold, and who made the decisions that shaped it?

Tech journalist Kevin Roose interviewed 150 people at the center of the AI industry to find out. The result is The AGI Chronicles, a riveting account of  how modern AI was built and the choices that will determine what comes next. 

On this week’s episode of The Every Podcast, Natalia Quintero sits down with Roose to talk about how he got a secretive industry to open up, how he did (and didn’t) use AI in his book writing process, and why he sees his job as explaining the “very confusing and insular” world of Silicon Valley to everyone else.

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:

• Follow Kevin Roose: https://x.com/kevinroose
• Get Kevin Roose’s book, The AGI Chronicles: https://theagichronicles.com/
• Machine Gods: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/g-s1-143588/machine-gods 
• “The Big Blob of Compute Hypothesis” excerpt on Kevin’s Substack: https://kevinroose.substack.com/p/the-essay-that-started-the-ai-race 
• Profiles of the Future by Arthur C. Clarke: https://www.amazon.com/Profiles-Future-Inquiry-Limits-Possible/dp/0575402776 
• The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/1451677618 
• NotebookLM: https://notebook.google/

Timestamps:

0:00 Introduction 
2:23 Are we doomed? Roose on AI risk and the case for mandatory safety testing
7:13 Why Roose raced to write the history of AGI before the records disappeared 
10:45 How Roose got 150 sources in a secretive industry to open up 
13:49 Dario Amodei’s “Big Blob of Compute” memo 
19:12 How Roose’s mother’s book on the survivors of the atomic bomb influenced his work
21:40 The moment Roose first “felt the AGI” 
23:24 How a “council of Claudes” fact-checked Roose’s book 
31:59 Launching Machine Gods and reinventing video journalism 
41:41 Weightlifting versus forklifting: How Roose decides what to hand off to AI

Subscribe to Every (free for 14 days): https://every.to/youtube-every-offer

Can AI create good art? 

Fred Graver thinks the answer depends on you. The Emmy Award–winning writer, producer, and founder of AI Writer’s Studio says AI can help with many parts of the creative process—but it can’t give you something to say. Without your own point of view, AI will only make your work more average.

On this week’s episode of The Every Podcast, Natalia Quintero sits down with Graver. They discuss why every writer should have a ‘who I am as a writer’ document, the cast of AI collaborators he’s built into his own writers’ room, and the human quirks that make characters endearing—the part he insists AI can’t supply.

Get Fred’s Skill: https://every.to/context-window/every-model-has-a-six-month-shelf-life-now

Links to resources mentioned in the episode: 
• Follow Every: https://x.com/every 
• Follow Natalia Quintero: https://x.com/NataliaZarina 
• Follow Fred Graver: https://x.com/fredgraver
• AI Writers Studio: https://aiwritersstudio.substack.com/
• Compound Writing plugin: https://every.to/guides/compound-writing 
• Compound Engineering plugin: https://every.to/guides/compound-engineering
• Thesis conference: https://every.to/thesis-2027
• Follow Katie Parrott: https://x.com/kplikethebird 
• Follow Kieran Klaassen: https://x.com/kieranklaassen
• Follow Dan Shipper: https://x.com/danshipper

Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
2:22 Fred’s path from National Lampoon and Letterman to Twitter and Microsoft
7:47 The “I want in” instinct behind every career pivot
12:19 How Best Week Ever taught Fred to build with the audience
13:26 Using AI as a virtual writers’ room, not a ghostwriter
16:07 Codifying industry expertise and studio culture into an AI core
20:32 The three phases of making entertainment with AI
26:27 Why you should brain-dump your idea before opening AI
38:47 Fred’s thesis: Success is knowing what the audience wants before it does
43:44 Fred’s day-to-day workflow across Claude, ChatGPT, and NotebookLM

Check out Gemini Audio: https://goo.gle/Every-Gemini-Audio

Every time a new AI model drops, companies face the same dilemma: Figure out what’s new and how to use it, or focus on getting work done.

Every solves this dilemma with a frontier team: a small group that tests new models and turns useful experiments into tools and workflows for the rest of the company.

On this week’s episode of The Every Podcast, Natalia Quintero sits down with all seven members of Every’s frontier team to ask what they’re building—from a tabless browser that helps protect your attention to a personal agent orchestrator called Minga—and what they want to try next.

Subscribe to Every (free for 14 days): https://every.to/youtube-every-offer?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=companyagentepisode

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:

• Follow Every: https://x.com/every
• Compound Writing plugin: https://every.to/guides/compound-writing
• Every’s vibe checks: https://every.to/vibe-check
• Follow Dan Shipper: https://x.com/danshipper
• Follow Natalia Quintero: https://x.com/NataliaZarina
• Follow Mike Taylor: https://x.com/hammer_mt
• Follow Jack Cheng: https://x.com/jackcheng
• Follow Arielle Shipper: https://x.com/ArielleShipper
• Follow Katie Parrott: https://x.com/kplikethebird
• Follow Jannik Jung: https://x.com/JannikJung

0:00 Introduction: Why every company needs a frontier team
2:42 Why the best frontier teams have pirates and architects 
4:57 How Head of Evals Mike Taylor builds personal benchmarks 
6:46 How Opus edited an explainer video using Slack messages and meeting notes 
10:20 Working with AI means protecting other people’s attention 
12:26 Why a frontier team needs a “wrangler” like Arielle Shipper 
18:58 Why senior editor Jack Cheng built a tabless browser 
24:37 How resident writer Katie Parrott teaches her AI writing plugin who the reader is
30:51 Inside engineer Jannik Jung’s personal AI orchestrator 
35:41 Compound engineer Kieran Klaassen uses AI to build power tools

Check out Gemini Audio: https://goo.gle/Every-Gemini-Audio

Bet on founders who understand the technology, because their first idea probably won’t be the one that sticks.

That’s the view of Matt Hartman, founder and managing partner of Factorial Capital. In 2016, as a partner at Betaworks, Hartman was part of the team that wrote the first check into Hugging Face, which was then a chatbot app for teenagers. Today it’s the largest hub for open-source AI, and Nvidia has agreed to buy it for about $13 billion.

On this week’s episode of The Every Podcast, Hartman tells Natalia Quintero how backing Hugging Face shaped his investment thesis, how Factorial grew into a “family tree” of technical founders who help him scout deals, and why vibe-coding his own app gave him a new respect for SaaS.

Subscribe to Every (free for 14 days): https://every.to/podcast-every-offer?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=matthartmanepisode

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:

Factorial Capital: https://factorialcap.com

Ghost Pepper, Matt's open-source voice-to-text app: https://github.com/matthartman/ghost-pepper

Superpowers, Jesse Vincent's skill for Claude Code: https://github.com/obra/superpowers

Hugging Face: https://huggingface.co

Follow Every: https://x.com/every

Follow Natalia Quintero: https://x.com/NataliaZarina

Follow Matt Hartman: https://x.com/MattHartman

0:00 Introduction
5:06 How Hugging Face went from a teen chatbot to the home of open-source AI
9:52 The three decisions that set Hugging Face on its path
12:49 Hartman’s approach to finding the newly technically possible
18:10 Why Hartman backs technical founders
21:10 How Factorial’s portfolio founders source its next deals
27:09 Why faster iteration makes product insight the most valuable skill
34:28 What Hartman learned building Ghost Pepper, an open-source voice-to-text app
40:02 Hartman’s current theses, from non-language models to full-stack AI apps
44:14 Why the best founders right now are experimenting

Subscribe to Every (free for 14 days): every.to/podcast-every-offer?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=companyagentepisode 

On this week's episode of The Every Podcast, Dan Shipper sits down with Willie Williams, Every's head of platform and one of the driving forces behind the Every Agent, which launched this week. They discuss how Every went from everyone running their own OpenClaw to relying on one shared company agent—and where they think personal agents belong in everyday life. 

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:

• Willie Williams on X: https://x.com/bigwilliestyle
• The Every Agent: https://every.to/agent?utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast&utm_content=1006companyagent
• OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai
• Tend, Dan's open-source feed app: https://every.to/tend?utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast&utm_content=1006companyagent
• Every’s Vibe Check on Dots: https://every.to/vibe-check/vibe-check-dots-always-on-agents-in-chatgpt?utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast&utm_content=1006companyagent
• Dot from OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/introducing-dots/

0:00 Introduction

5:58 How OpenClaw spread through Every 

11:13 Why everyone's personal agents eventually died 

14:51 The difference between building for builders and building for operators 

16:20 Why work will run on company agents while personal agents will stay personal 

19:56 How engineering management has changed in the age of AI 

21:43 Using an AI-powered feed to see everything happening across a product launch 

23:53 Why Willie's token usage fell off a cliff 

29:05 The benefit of having separate AI coaches for each part of your life 

31:45 How Every is building its agent to surface information unprompted

Sam Altman's Dot, OpenAI's new always-on agent, gave him back the most productive part of his day.

The OpenAI CEO would lose his early mornings—his window of "maximum creativity"—to whatever fire needed putting out. Now, his Dot triages those issues and flags only what's truly urgent. It's also gotten him building again: In spare moments, he gives his Dot ideas for a feature, and his Dot builds five or six versions for him to review.

On the first episode of The Every Podcast (formerly AI & I), Dan Shipper interviews Altman at OpenAI's DevDay. They discuss how Altman uses his Dot to protect his time, why he only prompts on Ultrafast, and his belief that AI will spark a new Renaissance.

If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share!

Go to https://attio.com/every and get 15% off your first year.

To hear more from Dan Shipper:

• Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe 

• Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper

Chapters:

00:00:00 Introduction

00:00:55 Why AI hasn’t replaced developers

00:04:45 OpenAI’s platform bet on the rise of small-team companies

00:05:45 Why the AI era is more “Renaissance” than “Industrial Revolution”

00:07:40 How Sam’s Dot, OpenAI’s always-on AI agent, gave him back his mornings

00:12:00 Sam’s process for building new features with his Dot

00:16:00 Inside OpenAI’s “live documents” that agents and humans can build together

00:20:55 What bring-your-own-subscription changes for app developers

00:24:00 Why “OpenAI just killed X startup” never comes true

00:27:55 Sam’s life on Ultrafast and the push to make speed as cheap as intelligence

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:

• Sam Altman on X: https://x.com/sama 

• Codex: https://openai.com/codex 

• Space: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001549-getting-started-with-space-in-chatgpt

• Every's Vibe Check on Dots: https://every.to/vibe-check/vibe-check-dots-always-on-agents-in-chatgpt?utm_source=podcast

• Every's Vibe Check on OpenAI DevDay 2026: https://every.to/vibe-check/vibe-check-openai-devday-2026?utm_source=podcast

Two years ago, Katie Parrott was laid off from a crypto firm and couldn’t afford a career coach—so she turned to a $20-a-month ChatGPT subscription instead.

The Every staff writer’s habit of feeding AI good context eventually became compound writing, a codified system for brainstorming, drafting, and editing with AI. Today, that system is a plugin any writer can use.

On this week’s AI & I, Natalia Quintero talks with Katie about turning good ingredients into good writing, borrowing the taste of writers she admires, and why AI helped her fall back in love with the page.

If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share!

To hear more from Natalia Quintero:

Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe
Follow her on X: @NataliaZarina

Go to https://attio.com/every and get 15% off your first year.

Timestamps:
0:00 Start
0:49 Introduction
1:21 How Katie went from being laid off to using ChatGPT as a career coach
8:06 Turning AI into a “content agency of one”
10:59 Building the context files and style guides that make AI outputs useful
14:15 What makes a Claude project actually work
21:18 How AI helped with a mental health crisis and “computer errands”
27:03 Katie’s career coach, now a fully autonomous Codex project
32:27 What compounding means, and building the Compound Writing plugin
38:00 Borrowing Vonnegut, Hitchcock, and Sorkin as AI editing skills
44:49 Katie’s thesis: education and access will matter more than ever

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:

Katie Parrott on X: @kplikethebird
Compound writing plugin: https://github.com/EveryInc/compound-writing⁠
Compound engineering plugin (Kieran Klassen): github.com/EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin
Parrott’s companion piece on compound writing: https://every.to/guides/compound-writing
Parrott, “I Hired ChatGPT as My Career Coach”: every.to/working-overtime/i-hired-chatgpt-as-my-career-coach
Parrott, “AI Turned Me Into a Content Agency of One”: every.to/working-overtime/ai-turned-me-into-a-content-agency-of-one

Will England is the CEO of Walleye Capital, a hedge fund managing nearly $10 billion in assets. An engineer by training with a math background from Oxford, he has spent his career at the intersection of machines and markets—and has made AI fluency mandatory for all 400 employees.

England believes refusing to use AI is like refusing to use the internet in 1995 because it wasn’t perfect. His use of AI is public and effusive, including in a firm-wide email that opened with “I used ChatGPT to write this email. You should be using it, too, and be proud of it.” AI informs how Walleye drafts memos and selects stocks.

On Every’s AI & I, Dan Shipper spoke with England about why he’s betting his entire organization on AI, why “results are what matter” more than blood, sweat, and tears, and what the American frontier can teach us about leading through technological change.

Like, subscribe, comment, and share!

To hear more from Dan Shipper:
Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe
Follow Dan Shipper on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper

Go to https://attio.com/every and get 15% off your first year. 

Timestamps:
0:00 Start
0:51 Introduction
3:25 What pushed Will to go all in on AI
15:15 Inside the ‘AI-first’ memo Will shared at Walleye
17:02 Why you shouldn’t be afraid of using AI for work
31:25 How Will uses LLMs to sharpen his thinking
35:57 Walleye’s approach to using AI to reduce risk
39:35 What history can teach us about leading through change
57:10 Will’s first principles for making better decisions
59:23 Why Will journals every day—and how AI makes it easier

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:
Will England/Walleye Capital: https://walleyecapital.com/bio/will-england
Every’s AI tools—Monologue, Cora, Spiral, and Sparkle: https://every.to/studio
Every’s AI consulting: https://every.to/consulting

LLMs are a new medium for storytelling.

That’s according to the creators of Portola, the company behind Tolan: an embodied AI companion that lives on its own planet and chats to you with a distinct personality. In 2025, Portola's founder and CEO Quinten Farmer and Head of Story Eliot Peper joined Dan Shipper to explain how they’re building this new medium from scratch. Their aim is to help users go from overwhelmed to grounded through conversations with Tolan that feel personal and spontaneous, not scripted. 

On this week’s AI & I, Dan revisits his conversation with Quinten and Eliot. They discuss why response time is everything for voice-based AI interfaces, how Portola designs AI personalities users will click with, and why character-driven AI could become a new computing interface. 
If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share!

To hear more from Dan Shipper:
Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe
Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper

Go to https://attio.com/every and get 15% off your first year.

Timestamps:
 00:01:30 - Introduction
 00:04:07 - Talking to the Portola CEO's Tolan, Clarence
 00:09:11 - How Portola went from building software for kids to AI companions
 00:23:40 - Why response time is everything for voice-based AI interfaces
 00:29:54 - Tolans don't use scripted prompts—they're taught to improvise
 00:37:23 - How to know which AI personalities your users will click with
 00:42:27 - Developing the character traits of an AI companion
 00:49:48 - What does it mean to build technology that makes us flourish
 01:01:10 - How Portola evaluates whether Tolans are resonating with users
 01:11:01 - Inside Portola's viral growth strategy

In 2025, Kevin Scott bet that the agentic web would be the next big thing in AI.
The Microsoft CTO argued that for agents to be genuinely useful, they'd need to be able to take action on our behalf—which would mean giving them access to the same sprawl of tools, data, and systems that make up the internet. Today, that bet is starting to pay off, as the foundational infrastructure for the agentic web is now being built.

On this week's AI & I, Dan Shipper revisits his conversation with Kevin. They discuss Microsoft's role in the agentic web, why openness doesn't have to come at the expense of security, and why programmers should stay curious about new tools rather than resist them on principle.

If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share!

To hear more from Dan Shipper:
Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe
Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper

Go to https://attio.com/every and get 15% off your first year.

Timestamps: 
0:00 Start
1:44 Introduction
2:49 The race to close the "capability overhang"
4:31 How agents will evolve into practical, useful tools
6:48 The role Kevin sees Microsoft playing in the agent ecosystem
12:05 How robust security measures can coexist with open ecosystems
15:39 Kevin's philosophy on being a craftsman in the age of agents
20:52 How the landscape of software development agents will evolve
25:33 The future of agentic workflows

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:
Kevin Scott on X: https://twitter.com/kevin_scott
Model Context Protocol (MCP): https://modelcontextprotocol.io
NLWeb: https://github.com/microsoft/NLWeb
GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot