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Better Offline

More, Everything, Forever With Adam Becker

15 Apr 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 19.828 Unknown

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than add supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-iHeart.

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19.808 - 42.492 Michael Easter

2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.

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42.877 - 50.912 Michael Easter

Listen to 2%, that's T-W-O percent, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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54.402 - 64.757 Unknown

When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed I will be his last target.

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65.058 - 66.72 Adam Becker

He is not going to get away with this.

67.141 - 68.583 Unknown

He's going to get what he deserves.

69.084 - 70.546 Adam Becker

We always say that.

70.906 - 82.283 Unknown

Trust your girlfriends. Listen to The Girlfriends, Trust Me Babe, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I got you, I got you.

85.402 - 96.177 Nora Jones

Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians. Check out my newest episode with Josh Groban. You related to the Phantom at that point.

Chapter 2: How does Adam Becker describe his new podcast?

560.872 - 587.203 Ed Zitron

What is that? Yes. What do you mean? How's my day? How's my day today? It's the afternoon. Is it just the daytime? Do I care about nighttime now? Does this person care about me? Do they care about my family? What's going on here? Just in this constant state of confusion. Yeah. And then using way too much energy to just go, yes, fine. It's fine. I'm all right. Keep yourself busy.

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587.683 - 612.914 Ed Zitron

It's just what I don't get is what I mean. I take that back. Yeah, I actually totally get this. But if you're that rich, you have so much more time to do so many more interesting things and think about them, for example. Yeah. You know, just like a book or like a song or at that price, at the amount of money that he has, he could just be like, I wouldn't mind seeing... I don't know. Public Enemy.

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613.475 - 634.325 Ed Zitron

I bet I could just call all of them and pay them all to just do a concert in my living room. I don't think Marc Andreessen is a big Public Enemy fan, but just for the sake of example. Right, yeah. And it's very... And it gets me back to this thought I've had this whole time with the LLM era, where it's like, this is just the digital dunce cap era.

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634.345 - 651.907 Ed Zitron

This is when we find out all the people who just have not been thinking the entire time. Who just, all they've been doing is just walk around going like, money, money, money, growth. Is it like Facebook? Is it like Facebook? It reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg. Give him a million dollars. Wait, he needs $10 million. Give him 20 just in case someone else gives him 10.

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653.83 - 656.915 Ed Zitron

Just this constant state of, like, angry anxiety.

657.175 - 680.192 Adam Becker

Yeah. I mean, God, what was it? I saw this LLM startup advertising somewhere online that was saying that they were, you know, going to do your intellectual labor for you and they were going to do your homework for you and stuff like that in school. And I'm like... do you know what intellectual labor is saying that you're going to do it for me?

680.252 - 701.803 Adam Becker

Cause they were saying, then you just get to reap the benefits of the intellectual labor. And I'm like, okay, saying that you're going to do it for me. And then I get to reap the benefits is sort of like saying you have a robot that's going to do pull-ups badly. And if I just watch it do pull-ups badly, then I will somehow get stronger. Like that's just not how it works.

701.823 - 703.365 Adam Becker

That's not how thinking works.

703.385 - 703.485

Yeah.

Chapter 3: What are the implications of introspection-free venture capital?

1316.218 - 1340.259 Adam Becker

And also, you know, I just, I don't understand why they would be willing to relinquish Not just the process, but also the sort of like intellectual ownership. I don't mean like, you know, in the like intellectual property sense, but like... Yeah, like the I wrote this thing.

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1340.279 - 1360.346 Adam Becker

Yeah, and like the way that you know something when you wrote it that you can't know even if you were there for the editing, like... I know, I mean, you know, I'm getting older as we all do until we die. And as I get older, my memory is, you know, not as good as it used to be. I think it's still pretty good.

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1360.506 - 1386.952 Adam Becker

But, you know, I have trouble remembering all sorts of things that I didn't used to have trouble remembering. But I know the stuff that I've written inside and out because I was in there, you know, in the trenches with it, writing it. Yeah. And and so I know it, you know, chapter and verse. Why would you give up having that kind of knowledge of your own work and your own thinking?

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1388.015 - 1390.382 Adam Becker

Well, that's the thing for me.

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1390.463 - 1408.812 Ed Zitron

With my writing as well. It's not just like the writing and the reading all that. It's I will be writing something and I will think, and in my case, it would be like, didn't the information mentioned in June, 2024, the open AI's annualized revenue. Like I will go through an insane chain of events in my brain, but it's because of my interaction with the work that I remember that stuff.

1408.832 - 1428.916 Ed Zitron

It isn't just, and then I linked a thingy and then think it was way earlier. That reminds me of something I was working on in 2024, 2025. And I'm not sure that these people have had that joy of an experience. Yeah. I don't even mean this condescendingly.

1428.936 - 1448.543 Ed Zitron

I just mean there is a certain joy to being like, wait, I remember this and digging something out that you painstakingly read and probably didn't even use at the time. Yep. Yeah, no, that's exactly it. It sucks. And also, it seems like more work. Yes, I agree. This seems like way more work to me.

1448.584 - 1463.94 Ed Zitron

Like, okay, I connect all of these things, and I make sure they work, and I've written a long text document. Also, he says that it's got all of his old articles in it. Wouldn't that fill up that context window? Anyway, putting all that technical stuff aside. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1464.36 - 1482.151 Adam Becker

No, I mean, I just don't understand... Because, like, if you don't write it, then you're not thinking your way through it. And like, yeah, OK, I go into writing something and I have sort of an idea of what it's going to be. But it's as I write it that I realize what I actually think about these things.

Chapter 4: How do LLMs affect our understanding of intelligence?

1939.602 - 1942.106 Adam Becker

But you're completely right. This is a marketing gimmick. Come on.

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1943.969 - 1956.286 Ed Zitron

It is. And it's also, I'm kind of honestly a little bit scared of how well it worked on people. Yeah. Like how many people were just like, yeah, this is the scariest thing ever because I couldn't see it.

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1956.306 - 1974.277 Adam Becker

It's because we've got this narrative that comes out of these, you know, AI cults like the rationalists that AI is going to take over the world and be able to, you know, make itself super intelligent and end humanity forever. once it's able to write its own code.

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1974.677 - 1996.523 Adam Becker

And all of that's just a sci-fi fantasy, but it makes it very easy for Anthropic to do these sorts of marketing gimmicks or, oh man, I don't remember who it was who pointed this out, but someone, I saw someone online say, it's not just that it's a marketing gimmick, it's also that this is a way of sort of soft launching it as an enterprise only product that's not available to the general consumer.

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1997.684 - 1997.764

Yes.

1997.744 - 2016.104 Ed Zitron

And you can tell they're kind of toying with that idea too, but it's not really obvious what the plan is. Yeah. Because the way they sell this shit is having one million different guys with an AI avatar on Twitter posting that this is what changes everything every time they do anything. Yeah.

2016.124 - 2033.689 Ed Zitron

And I just... I've also been playing a fun game which is called Go and Try and Work Out What These Big Integrations Do. It's not a very... Okay, when I say it's fun, I mean it's exhausting because... I went on the Goldman Sachs and Anthropic. They're automating accounting and compliance roles.

2034.69 - 2058.008 Ed Zitron

But don't worry, the firm is in the early stages of developing agents based on Anthropic's model that will collapse the amount of time these essential functions take. What are those functions? Who the fuck knows? They don't say. They just don't say. Because they probably don't have an answer. I want to see those contracts. I want to see the actual outcomes. But it's...

2058.798 - 2069.172 Ed Zitron

I mean, this is kind of a vague point to say, but I feel kind of insane that we're still talking about it on this level. We're still talking about it like we're trying to establish whether the Sasquatch exists.

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