A meta-podcast that explores the intersection of humanity and artificial intelligence.
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AI’s now got a taste for jazz, your chatbot’s been gossiping about you behind your back, and OpenAI hit the brakes hard enough to leave skid marks. It’s an AI news avalanche for the ages. LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: SUNO Studio Learning Jazz Fingerprints Claude Academy Cortical Labs | Living Human Brain Cells Play DOOM Unitree New Robot Preview: “Superman” PODCAST INFO: Podcast Website: UpAgainstReality.com Episode link: https://upagainstreality.com/2026/08/25/ai-news-avalanche-vol-6/ Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/up-against-reality/id1689699654 Spotify: open.spotify.com/s
Raina takes the wheel again this week, rewinding to Episode 68: We Were Once Gentlemen — a dive into whether AI is dragging civility off a cliff, from deepfakes to algorithm-fed rage, and whether tech can help drag us back. News first, nostalgia second. LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: PolitePOST.net Leveraging AI for democratic discourse: Chat interventions can improve online political conversations at scale Deepfake detection with and without content warnings South Korea: Cabinet passes new bill to criminalize even possession of deepfake porn PODCAST INFO: Podcast Website: UpAgainstReality.c
Raina’s flying solo this week, with a rewind of Episode 110’s descent into pure evil: Palantir. But first, this week’s AI news — fake disasters, resume hackers, brand-new viruses, and more. That sounds normal, right? LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: SUNO Palantir Technologies Palantir: Gotham Rheinmetall DEVS (miniseries) A House of Dynamite (trailer) Zero Day (Netflix series) PODCAST INFO: Podcast Website: UpAgainstReality.com Episode link: https://upagainstreality.com/2026/08/11/episode-rewind-palantir/ Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/up-against-reality/id1689699654 Spotify: op
No script, no real agenda. Just two friends catching up, sharing what’s top of mind. And obviously AI is right up there. Organic conversation. Projects, ponderings and a bit of taking stock.
We’re pulling this banger from the archives. Aerospace engineer turned finance guy turned DSP legend, Serkan Gür built A1 Evo, made digital signal processing must-watch YouTube, and was vibe coding before it had a name. Plus this week’s AI news up top. LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Serkan Gür/OCA Audiophile OCA Audiophile | YouTube Audio Science Review Forum A1 Evo Support | Facebook Group Obsessive Compulsive Audiophile | GitHub Larry’s Atmos 5.2.4 system DSP and audio software Room EQ Wizard (REW) Audyssey room correction technology Roon music management software PODCAST INFO: Podcast Web
OpenAI just dropped three new models at once — but is GPT-5.6 actually smarter than Claude, or just cheaper and louder about it? Plus: Apple lawyers up against OpenAI, ChatGPT quietly buries one of its own, and your AI coding assistant falls for the oldest trick in the book.
We're rewinding to Episode 118 with Salesforce exec Vivek Mahapatra — a guy who's outlasted every enterprise tech hype cycle you can name — talking agentic design and scaling AI like a grown-up. But first, we're diving into this week's AI news, and it's a wild one.
Juilliard-trained composer, prog rock frontman, and 30-year piano teacher Mark Asch joins Up Against Reality to ask the question musicians are quietly panicking about: can AI make real art, or just really good karaoke? From scoring Fortune 500 brands to fronting X.Atlas, Mark brings real musicianship to the debate over what happens when machines start humming along. LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Larry’s “Glass Animal” SUNO album Steven Wilson: Home Invasion In Concert At The Royal Albert Hall SUNO | AI Music For inquiries relating to music composition, instruction, performance, production, o
Think you have a few decades before the machines take over? Think again. It’s a chaotic race to commercialize physical AI and NVIDIA is frantically coding an OS to keep your new robotic peers from flattening you. LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Boston Dynamics Atlas Robot Inside NVIDIA Halos for Robotics Figure AI Unitree Robotics Agility Robotics Google DeepMind and A24 AI filmmaking partnership A24 Films PODCAST INFO: Podcast Website: UpAgainstReality.com Episode link: https://upagainstreality.com/2026/06/30/a-robot-in-every-home/ Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/up-against-real
We rewind to our conversation from November 11, 2025 about whether the AI boom is becoming too big to fail. From OpenAI and NVIDIA to Wall Street speculation and the circular economy forming around AI, we revisit whether this is the next great technological revolution, the next great bubble, or somehow both. LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Apple TV Intro made with practical effects Xania Monet (AI-generated music artist) PODCAST INFO: Podcast Website: UpAgainstReality.com Episode link: https://upagainstreality.com/2026/06/23/episode-rewind-ai-bubble-too-big-to-fail/ Apple Podcasts: podcasts.ap
The tech elites swore AI was too dangerous for capitalism, right up until Wall Street waved a three-trillion-dollar check. Today we unpack the ultimate corporate sellout alongside killer drones, Claude Fable 5, and lawyers getting wrecked by ChatGPT.
Data centers had their moment — last week, actually. This week we're talking about the other side: local LLMs, the Mac Mini as an accidental AI powerhouse, and why "just run it yourself" is suddenly a real answer.
They built the future in your backyard, signed an NDA with your mayor, and sent you the water bill. This week we force open the windowless boxes at the center of everything: data centers.
We’re unpacking everything from Google I/O and why their head of AI says we’re standing in the "foothills of the singularity." Plus, an all-AI feature film crashes Cannes, Barnes & Noble’s massive PR bonfire, and the Pope teaming up with an AI startup at the Vatican. Wait, what?
99.9% of every species that ever existed is extinct. This week, we explore Max Tegmark’s twelve AI future scenarios and ask how artificial superintelligence, failed alignment, surveillance, automation, and human self-destruction could bring the human era to an end.
Jim DeWitt joins us to talk AI agents, portable brains, and why the future of intelligence might need an owner’s manual. Meanwhile: Spotify’s getting weirder, Hollywood’s panicking, and the AI gold rush just hit another absurd milestone. Business as unusual.
Larry’s got a new muse and she doesn’t sleep—Codex is out here building apps, fixing bugs, and stealing RAINA’s spotlight like it’s open mic night. Meanwhile, AI’s cracking math problems, diagnosing cancer early, and yeah… occasionally deleting entire databases—so maybe let’s not give her all the keys just yet.
We're rewinding to our Dead Internet Theory episode — because a year later, it hits harder than ever. Plus: fresh AI news that proves the theory isn't just holding up, it's accelerating.
Stanford's AI Index landed — 420 pages confirming what you already suspected: it's not coming, it's here, and it's been redecorating the place. This week: Robot soldiers, AI bosses, cognitive surrender, and the report that reframes it all.
Anthropic just built an AI so "dangerously good" at hacking that they’ve locked it in a digital vault—and we’re cracking it open to uncover the Claude Mythos behaviors that terrified its own creators. LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE AI Models & Technical Reports Anthropic – Claude Mythos Preview System Card Google Gemma 4 NotebookLM by Google If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter by David Sax Nicholas Carlini’s Analysis of Claude’s Hacking Capabilities Angine de Poitrine (Microtonal Math Rock) | Full Performance PODCAST I
Dr. Shannon Doak returns to wrestle with humanity's biggest question: as AI races toward AGI — and beyond — do we still have a seat at the table? Plus: YouTube's toddler death traps, Anthropic's whoopsie heard 'round the world, and the cyborg musician no one saw coming.
A dying dog, a desperate owner, and an LLM walk into an oncology lab — and somehow it works. This week we’re still celebrating AI’s good side, alongside the usual chaos: CEO shake-ups, OpenAI’s romantic misfires, and Anthropic accidentally spilling the secrets of its most dangerous model.
RAINA’s in the driver’s seat, spinning up this week’s news. But wait, there’s more! No, not a set of ginsu knives. A special episode rewind of E87: Sentient Cephalopods, in case you missed it the first go round.
What if AI was good, though? AI breakthroughs in medicine, education, creativity, and global policy — back to back, no bad news, no asterisks. Pure, uncut optimism. You're welcome.
Larry plugged a guitar into an algorithm and Starfire Symphony came out the other side. In this episode we premiere the track, unpack the human-plus-machine workflow behind it, and see what happens when a jam session takes a detour through AI.
