Connection

Zap Cooking

Connection is a podcast about food, people, ideas, building, gratitude, and the things that bring us together. Through conversations with builders, creators, cooks, technologists, thinkers, and interesting people, we explore what we can learn from each other, what’s already good, and what we can make better. Problems are real, but we’re not doomed. Stay curious. Build useful things. Be grateful. Connect. Presented by Zap Cooking. ⚡️🍳

Episodes

  1. 22h ago

    We Know Everything About Each Other. Except Each Other. | Connection Ep. 8

    We know where our friends went on vacation, what their kids are doing, and what they posted yesterday. But when was the last time we actually talked to them? In Episode 8 of Connection, I'm exploring something that's been on my mind: we've never had more ways to communicate, yet it's surprisingly easy to lose touch with the people around us. A hundred happy birthdays on Facebook versus one thoughtful card in the mail. Knowing someone's political affiliation versus knowing the challenges they're facing. Reading a report about a problem versus actually going to see what's happening. These might seem like different things, but they share a common thread. We've become comfortable substituting information for understanding. I explore how social media creates an illusion of connection, why political conditioning can divide friends and families, and how easily we surrender our own judgment to algorithms and other people's narratives. I also introduce my Ladder of Communication, a simple framework for moving beyond likes and comments toward more meaningful conversations. And I connect this to lessons from manufacturing and continuous improvement, where one of the most valuable things you can do is stop assuming and go see the problem for yourself. Whether we're talking about relationships, work, community, or cooking together, the lesson is similar: Get closer. Ask better questions. Listen. Be willing to change your mind. This week's challenge is simple: Go one rung higher. Reach out to someone you've been meaning to call. Have the conversation you've been putting off. Or get closer to a problem you've only been looking at from a distance. Sometimes connection starts with a little more effort. More bloom. Less doom. 🌱 Connection is presented by Zap Cooking. https://zap.cooking People. Ideas. Food. Community. #Connection #Relationships #SocialMedia #Communication #Community

  2. Oct 24

    We Gave Away the Internet. Now We Can Take It Back. | Connection Ep. 7 with Derek Ross

    What if we built the internet, only to give it away? For Episode 7 of Connection, I'm joined by my good friend Derek Ross, a longtime Nostr advocate, builder, and fellow organizer of Nostr Valley. Three years ago, Derek and I connected on Nostr before realizing we lived just minutes apart. What started as a small Bitcoin meetup eventually grew into Nostr Valley, bringing together builders, developers, and friends from across the country. But this conversation goes well beyond Nostr Valley. We explore how the internet evolved from an open, decentralized network into an ecosystem dominated by a handful of powerful companies. We centralized to grow, but in the process, gave up much of our ownership, privacy, and control. What if we finally have the tools to take it back? We get into Nostr's evolution from a social protocol into something much bigger: an open infrastructure layer for communication, identity, applications, and even AI agents. We also talk about how AI is changing the economics of building, why personal intelligence and open-source software matter, and what happens when ordinary people can create tools without asking permission. And of course, we come back to community. From organizing Nostr Valley with little more than an idea and a few beers, to watching friendships and collaborations develop over three years, we've learned that technology is only part of the equation. People are what make it valuable. One idea that stuck with me from our conversation: We centralized the internet to help it grow. Now we may finally have the tools to decentralize it again. The future isn't guaranteed, and there are plenty of challenges ahead. But between open money, open communication, personal AI, and a growing community of builders, there's a lot to be optimistic about. We don't need to wait for someone else to build the future. We can build it ourselves. More bloom. Less doom. ⚡️ Connection is presented by Zap Cooking, where we're building a food community on the open internet. https://zap.cooking People. Ideas. Food. Community. #Connection #Nostr #Bitcoin #AI #OpenSource #Community

  3. Oct 17

    Nobody Joins a Protocol. They Join a Community. | Connection Ep. 6

    Nobody joins a protocol. They join a community. For Episode 6 of Connection, I'm doing something a little different. With Nostr Valley III happening this weekend in State College, Pennsylvania, I'm sharing a preview and practice run of my presentation on what we've learned building Zap Cooking. Three years ago, we started with an idea: bring people together through food, Bitcoin, and an open social network called Nostr. Like many builders, we spent a lot of time talking about the technology. Relays, wallets, encryption, NIPs, and protocols. All important things, but not necessarily what people care about. People don't want to learn a protocol. They want to connect, share, create, and belong. Over the past year, we've been putting that lesson into practice. In this episode, I explore: Why food is one of humanity's oldest forms of connection What Pleb Lab taught us about building a product and community How AI and open-source collaboration accelerated Zap Cooking Why we simplified onboarding, wallets, and the user experience How our new curated food relay brings together years of recipes and food conversations Why community, trust, and shared experiences matter more than the software itself What Nostr Valley has taught me about turning online relationships into real friendships We've built a lot this year, including new mobile experiences, AI cooking tools, and a curated feed with roughly 40,000 food-related posts across 44 topics. But the biggest lesson isn't technical. Community takes work. And the most important thing we're building isn't software. It's connection. Whether you're building on Nostr, starting a business, growing a community, or simply trying to bring people together, I hope there's something useful here. Join the food community: https://zap.cooking Explore the curated food relay: https://feed.zap.cooking Learn about Nostr Valley: https://nostrvalley.com People. Ideas. Food. Community. Connection — presented by Zap Cooking. ⚡️🍳

  4. Oct 12

    Can We Build a More Human Internet? | Connection with UTXO

    What if social media's biggest problem isn't that our networks are too small—but that they've become too big? This week on Connection, I'm joined by UTXO, the developer behind Wisp and a longtime builder in the Nostr ecosystem. We start with a simple problem: everyone talks about wanting an open internet where we own our identity, data and algorithms. But none of that matters to normal people if the product sucks. From there, we get into what Nostr has learned about adoption, why censorship resistance isn't enough, the tradeoff between sovereignty and convenience, spam and moderation, and whether users should be able to choose the algorithms that shape what they see. But the conversation eventually goes somewhere I find even more interesting: Maybe we're thinking about social networks at the wrong scale. Instead of another platform connecting billions of strangers and optimizing for virality, what if the future looks more like smaller communities built around people, places and interests? We also talk about AI-assisted development, open-source software, why UTXO was happy to see us fork Wisp for Zap Cooking, local AI, cooking, the future of Nostr, and why we're both optimistic about what the next generation will build. Maybe we don't need another bigger social network. Maybe we need a more human internet. Connection is presented by Zap Cooking. ⚡️🍳

  5. Oct 3

    You Can Build Now: AI, Nostr & the Power of Community | Connection Ep. 4

    What happens when the barrier between having an idea and actually building it starts to disappear? For the first guest episode of Connection, I'm joined by my friend and Zap Cooking partner, Daniel. Daniel's path didn't start in software development. His background was in design, branding and marketing. Then came Bitcoin, Nostr, community building, and eventually AI-assisted coding. Suddenly, ideas he previously couldn't build himself became things he could actually ship. Pasted text Pasted text We talk about the early days of Nostr, meeting internet friends in real life, Harlem Bitcoin, Node Stretch, Lightning, building a Bitcoin point-of-sale for a Harlem restaurant, and the long road that eventually led Daniel into building wallets and tools across the Nostr ecosystem. Pasted text Pasted text We also get into AI and the move toward “superintelligence,” vibe coding, what these tools are doing to creativity, and what happens when people who never considered themselves software developers suddenly have the ability to build. But underneath all the technology is something much simpler: Community. People helping each other. Learning together. Building things that solve real problems. Making mistakes. Trying again. And turning online connections into real relationships. Daniel and I have been building together for years. This conversation is really the story of how a lot of those pieces came together — and why we're both optimistic about where they could go next. People. Ideas. Food. Community. Connection, presented by Zap Cooking. ⚡️🍳

  6. Sep 26

    The Lost Art of Curiosity: What Should We Be Teaching Kids? | Connection Ep. 3

    What skills will a 10-year-old today actually need when they're working in the 2040s, 2050s, or even 2070s? We can't predict the jobs they'll have or the technology they'll use. But we can probably make some good bets about the skills that will endure. Curiosity. Critical thinking. Communication. Problem solving. Creativity. Learning how to learn. Building things. Working with other people. In Episode 3 of Connection, I explore why curiosity may become a superpower in a world where answers are increasingly cheap and instantly available. I get into why saying “I don't know” can be the beginning of learning, how manufacturing taught me that root-cause analysis is really structured curiosity, and why understanding someone doesn't require agreeing with them. I also explore my personal perspective on education: what foundational skills kids still need, how AI could enable more individualized paths to learning, the idea of an infinitely patient AI tutor, and why technology should ultimately give teachers more time to do the deeply human parts of teaching. And inspired by a Taoist lesson on mockery and ridicule, I come back to a simple choice we all face when encountering something unfamiliar: Dismiss it, mock it, or get curious about it. Maybe the future doesn't belong to the people with all the answers. Maybe it belongs to the people who know how to ask better questions. Stay curious. ⚡️ Connection is presented by Zap Cooking.

  7. Sep 19

    More Bloom. Less Doom. | Connection Ep. 2

    We spend a lot of time consuming everything that’s wrong with the world. The latest outrage. The next crisis. Why AI is dangerous. Why the economy is going to collapse. But what if we spent a little more time asking a different question: What did I build today? In Episode 2 of Connection, I explore the difference between consuming and creating, why I believe AI can be an intelligence amplifier, what manufacturing and continuous improvement taught me about developing a builder mindset, and why we should be willing to try things before they’re perfect.  I also talk about gratitude—not as pretending everything is awesome, but as recognizing how much good already exists around us while still working to make things better. We’re surrounded by human cooperation every day, and most of the time we barely notice it.  This week’s challenge is simple: Create something instead of consuming something. Build something. Cook something. Fix something. Teach someone. Call someone. Start the project you’ve been talking about. It doesn’t have to scale. It doesn’t have to make money. Just put something positive into the world that wasn’t there yesterday.  More bloom. Less doom. 🌱⚡️ Connection is presented by Zap Cooking.

  8. Sep 12

    Why I’m Rejecting Doomerism | Connection Ep. 1

    We’ve gotten really good at pointing out everything that’s broken. Money is broken. Social media is broken. Politics is broken. Food is broken. AI is coming for us. Society is falling apart. Some of those criticisms are legitimate. But what if we’ve become so focused on what’s wrong that we’ve stopped noticing what’s good? And what if, instead of waiting for everything to collapse, we tried to build something better? In the first episode of Connection, I explain why I’m starting this podcast and how my experiences in manufacturing, continuous improvement, building software, Bitcoin, Nostr, and Zap Cooking have shaped the way I think about the world. This isn't about blind optimism or pretending problems don't exist. It's about rejecting doomerism as the answer. We'll explore food, people, ideas, building, and gratitude, and talk with people who create things, challenge assumptions, change their minds, and make the world a little better. I don't think we're doomed. I think there's an incredible amount of good happening around us. Maybe we just need to do a better job connecting it. Connection is presented by Zap Cooking. ⚡️🍳

  • 8 Episodes

About

Connection is a podcast about food, people, ideas, building, gratitude, and the things that bring us together. Through conversations with builders, creators, cooks, technologists, thinkers, and interesting people, we explore what we can learn from each other, what’s already good, and what we can make better. Problems are real, but we’re not doomed. Stay curious. Build useful things. Be grateful. Connect. Presented by Zap Cooking. ⚡️🍳

Information

  • Creator
    Zap Cooking
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    8
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Zap Cooking
  • Show Website
    Connection