The Dick & Paul Show

Dick Costolo and Paul Kedrosky
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Two of the sharpest minds in tech, Dick Costolo and Paul Kedrosky, pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future that’s rushing toward us. With insider access, fascinating guests, and a healthy dose of irreverence, they’ll make you laugh while they explain how the world might end (and how we might still save it).

Episodes

  1. 2d ago

    The Hidden Link Between Ozempic & Employment Rates

    Ozempic is quietly distorting U.S. jobs data, and your favorite wellness podcast might be lying to you — Dick and Paul debunk viral health claims (bananas, creatine, Chernobyl) and explain why lifting weights matters more than any biohack. Dick and Paul dig into how GLP-1 drugs (Ozempic, Wegovy, etc.) are quietly distorting U.S. jobs data — with roughly a million women returning to the workforce after losing weight, masking bigger economic trends like an aging population and shrinking immigrant labor pool. From there, they turn to the wellness industry's credibility problem, calling out popular podcast guests (Zach Bush on Rogan, Dr. Rhonda Patrick on Peter Attia's show) for confidently stated claims that don't hold up — from mixed-up Chernobyl facts to a debunked banana-cancels-blueberry-polyphenols theory to overhyped creatine dosing advice. The conversation broadens into why so much health content chases novel, marginal optimizations (VO2 max hacks, supplement stacks) while ignoring the boring basics that actually move the needle: sleep, diet, exercise, and — especially — strength training. They make a compelling case for lifting weights as we age, pointing to the staggering mortality rate after hip fractures in older adults, and call out the "form police" and social-media fitness culture that shames beginners out of the gym. They close by noting how AI chatbots may be making health anxiety worse by endlessly validating whatever fad someone feeds them. --- Two of the sharpest minds in tech, Dick Costolo and Paul Kedrosky, pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future that’s rushing toward us. With insider access, fascinating guests, and a healthy dose of irreverence, they’ll make you laugh while they explain how the world might end (and how we might still save it).

  2. Aug 27

    Big Tech's AI Spending Has Gone Full Enron... Literally

    Dick and Paul take a deep dive into the AI data center spending boom and why it's different from — and in some ways scarier than — the dot-com fiber-optic bust. They break down why lenders are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into these buildouts without much regard for whether the underlying business makes sense, simply because Big Tech's balance sheets are so clean (a dynamic they compare more to the 1880s–1920s railroad boom than the fiber bust). They dig into why so much of this spending is moving off balance sheet into special-purpose vehicles, why that structure echoes Enron, and how a recent SEC "no action letter" is now letting data center debt get syndicated the same way mortgage-backed securities were before the 2008 financial crisis. They also cover data suggesting frontier AI models have largely plateaued in capability even as price premiums stay sky-high, and how a chain reaction from the SpaceX IPO rippled into AI stock selloffs and even the U.S. Treasury's own bond-buying moves. It's a wide-ranging, systems-level look at where all this AI money is really coming from — and where the risk is quietly piling up. --- Two of the sharpest minds in tech, Dick Costolo and Paul Kedrosky, pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future that’s rushing toward us. With insider access, fascinating guests, and a healthy dose of irreverence, they’ll make you laugh while they explain how the world might end (and how we might still save it).

  3. Aug 20

    Prediction Markets & The "Big Score" Economy

    In this episode, Dick and Paul dig into why "lottery-style" speculation is exploding — from South Korea's illegal 3x leveraged semiconductor ETF mania (where a huge share of active young traders are piling in despite a government ban) to the boom in prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, where over 96% of bettors end up losing money to sophisticated market makers like Jane Street and Citadel. They break down what an "edge" actually means (and why most people who think they have one don't), why the bid-ask spread is quietly eating traders alive, and how a growing wealth gap plus economic unease is pushing people to chase a "big score." Along the way, they connect it all to a fascinating idea from Cornell mathematician Steven Strogatz on synchronization and mimicry — the same force behind fireflies blinking in unison, viral frozen yogurt lines, and crowded Yosemite trails — and what it means for herd behavior in markets. They close with practical thoughts on how to recognize when you're mimicking the crowd instead of thinking for yourself, and what to do about it. --- Two of the sharpest minds in tech, Dick Costolo and Paul Kedrosky, pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future that’s rushing toward us. With insider access, fascinating guests, and a healthy dose of irreverence, they’ll make you laugh while they explain how the world might end (and how we might still save it).

  4. Aug 13

    The Barriers to Mediocrity Have Collapsed

    Dick and Paul dig into why general-purpose AI models are doing to robotics what they already did to language — and why that's a bigger deal than the humanoid-robot hype suggests. They trace the throughline from Chinese EVs to laundry-folding robots to Rich Sutton's "Bitter Lesson," then make the case that cheap, general-purpose automation is set to collapse wages across the board. Along the way: a takedown of the "infinite abundance" argument coming from Silicon Valley and Washington alike, a detour through Veblen's theory of the leisure class, and a prediction that doesn't sugarcoat where this is headed. Show Notes China’s ‘Insane’ Car Market Flooded With Hundreds of New Models (Bloomberg) America has become an entrepreneur’s paradise (The Economist) 3hrs of Memo Folding Laundry (Sunday Robotics YT) --- Two of the sharpest minds in tech, Dick Costolo and Paul Kedrosky, pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future that’s rushing toward us. With insider access, fascinating guests, and a healthy dose of irreverence, they’ll make you laugh while they explain how the world might end (and how we might still save it).

  • 4 Episodes

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Two of the sharpest minds in tech, Dick Costolo and Paul Kedrosky, pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future that’s rushing toward us. With insider access, fascinating guests, and a healthy dose of irreverence, they’ll make you laugh while they explain how the world might end (and how we might still save it).

Information

  • Creator
    Dick Costolo and Paul Kedrosky
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    4
  • Rating
    Explicit