Leave us a review on Apple and Spotify

Episodes

April 1, 2025

E68: Chinese Free Trade, AI Managers, and Why AI Art is Art

This week, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg discuss the transformative impact of technological change on global trade, AI’s disruption of senior roles, the debate over AI-generated art, and market dynamics—particularly in live...

Listen to the Episode
March 25, 2025

E67: Hidden X-Risk, Network Effects of Elon’s Empire, and American He…

This week, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg explore Donald Trump Jr.'s financial leverage of the Trump brand, Dustin Moskovitz's shift toward AI existential risks, Elon Musk's strategic decisions with Twitter, potential U.S. r...

Listen to the Episode
March 11, 2025

E66: The Politics of Alex Karp and Palantir, DOGE Breakdown, and AI v…

This week, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg explore the effects of technological change on media and society, covering topics such as the AI debate, blogging's social impact, AI's influence on search and data, the changing new...

Listen to the Episode
Feb. 25, 2025

E65: Bill Gates’s Persona, Against Copying Berkshire Hathaway, and Ma…

This week, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg examine why Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway can't be successfully replicated today, analyze Bill Gates's public versus private persona, and consider how economic growth manifests as "premium mediocre" options like Chipotle

Listen to the Episode
Feb. 19, 2025

E64: US vs China’s Strategies, Uber’s Growth Model, AI Supply Chains

This week, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg discuss technological inflection points and examine how legal frameworks mask continued globalization despite apparent retrenchment, explores US-China dynamics, analyzes AI industry structure and emerging models, and considers Uber's strategic positioning …

Listen to the Episode
Feb. 11, 2025

E63: OpenAI Deep Research, Elon’s Potential Hostile Takeover, and AI …

This week, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg discuss the transformative impact of technological advancements, particularly OpenAI's research, Elon Musk’s $97 billion offer to acquire its controlling nonprofit, and the implications for business, jobs, regulation, and Musk's strategies with X and Doja.

Listen to the Episode
Feb. 4, 2025

E62: Trump’s Tariffs, Open Source AI Models, and The Future of VR

This week, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg explore the impact of technological advancements on markets and businesses, covering topics like global trade tariffs, political populism, AI's evolving role, open-source vs. proprietary models, stock market trends, and Meta’s investments in the metaverse …

Listen to the Episode
Jan. 28, 2025

E61: Markets React to DeepSeek, Threads vs X, and Stargate Announceme…

This week, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg discuss the major disruptions in tech and business driven by AI advancements, examining reactions to DeepSeek's announcements, stock impacts on companies like Nvidia, volatility in AI investments, Meta's Threads, Elon Musk’s influence on X, the role of tec…

Listen to the Episode
Jan. 23, 2025

E60: Trump Coin, US Industrial Policy, and TikTok Ban

On this week's episode of The Riff, Erik Torenberg and Byrne Hobart explore the impact of technological change on markets, touching on meme investments, ESG, the rise of meme stocks and coins, Trump’s policies, China’s economic strategies, industrial policy debates, and how these factors could shap…

Listen to the Episode
Jan. 18, 2025

E59: Zuck’s PR, The Loneliness Economy, and OpenAI Corporate Structure

This week, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg explore the historical paradigms from agrarian to industrial eras and potential future growth, while also addressing challenges in adopting new technologies like AI, institutional constraints at companies like Meta, post-COVID loneliness, the Scandinavian …

Listen to the Episode
Dec. 26, 2024

E58: How Jensen Huang Outpaces Tech Giants w/ Tae Kim, author of THE …

This week, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg is joined by Tae Kim, author of The NVIDIA Way, exploring NVIDIA's remarkable journey, culture, and what sets the company apart under Jensen Huang's leadership.

Listen to the Episode
Dec. 19, 2024

E57: Pod Shops; Contrarian Vibe Checks; Scaling Laws Analysis

This week, Erik Torenberg and Byrne Hobart discuss the pod shop hedge fund model, market cycles, AI pricing models, and the future of AI-generated content, with Byrne offering insights on hedge fund evolution, the current market environment, and AI's impact on entertainment and society.

Listen to the Episode
Dec. 12, 2024

E56: AI Agents are Coming; China’s Internet; Google Wants to Win

This week, Erik Torenberg and Byrne Hobart discuss AI's economic implications, the rise of passive investing, gambling markets, and Warren Buffett's early investment tactics, examining how technological advancements shape economic metrics, market dynamics, and industry shifts.

Listen to the Episode
Nov. 21, 2024

E55: Futarchy, Elon, and Gut Decisions in Business

This week, Erik and Byrne discuss the impact of technological change on markets, debate the feasibility of Argentine-style economic policies in the U.S., discuss government efficiency, payroll costs, and political dynamics, including the potential economic effects of a Trump administration and stra…

Listen to the Episode
Nov. 14, 2024

E54: How Bubbles Create The Future

On this week’s episode of The Riff, explore the impact of technological change on markets and businesses, discussing economic bubbles, the future of AI, the post-election political landscape, and Byrne's upcoming book Boom, which examines the role of bubbles in infrastructure development.

Listen to the Episode
Nov. 7, 2024

E53: Election Analysis, Heresy, and Real Estate

This week, Erik Torenberg and Byrne Hobart explore the evolving landscape of heretical ideas, election dynamics, AI and crypto’s market impacts, prediction markets, the shifting Overton window, contrarian perspectives, and trends in housing and smaller social networks.

Listen to the Episode
Oct. 31, 2024

E52: How Tech Journalism Works w/ Patrick McKenzie

In this special episode of The Riff, Erik Torenberg and Patrick McKenzie explore the evolving landscape of tech journalism, media narratives about the tech industry, and how the industry is increasingly telling its own story.

Listen to the Episode
Oct. 24, 2024

E51: Venture Scale, Y Combinator, and Financial Bubbles

In this episode of The Riff, Byrne Hobart discusses his upcoming book about financial bubbles, venture scale businesses, creator financing, and prediction markets.

Listen to the Episode
Oct. 17, 2024

E50: Freemium Apps, Restaurants, and Search

In this special episode of The Riff, Byrne Hobart is joined by Patrick McKenzie, host of the podcast Complex Systems to discuss a range of topics including app business models, restaurant industry economics, AI's impact on productivity, the evolution of search technologies and more.

Listen to the Episode
Oct. 10, 2024

E49: AI Art, Young Founders, and Disrupting Higher Education

This week, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg discuss the shifting dynamics of careers and education, the notion of "auto-paternalism" in organizational choices, Spotify's growth strategy in a mature market, the future of podcasts and audio content, and the intricate relationship between AI art, prope…

Listen to the Episode
Oct. 3, 2024

E48: Facebook vs MySpace, Why Peter Thiel is Wrong About Competition,…

This week, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg dive into a range of fascinating topics such as the evolution and future of OpenAI's business model, economic rationale behind corporate buybacks, changing software economics, China's recent equity market surge and more.

Listen to the Episode
Sept. 27, 2024

E47: Cult Stocks, Tech Media, and Technological Revolutions

This week, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg discuss cult stocks like Tesla and Palantir, debate whether AI or globalization will impact jobs more, explore the energy transition's unexpected reversal, analyze Forbes' content strategy and more.

Listen to the Episode
Sept. 19, 2024

E46: Degrowth, Private Equity, and the EU Tech Industry

This week, Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg tackle the current state of the EU's tech sector, evolution of private equity firms, consumer credit defaults, online reputation management and more.

Listen to the Episode
Sept. 12, 2024

E45: Efficient Market Hypothesis, Missing Billionaires, and Digital C…

This week, Byrne and Erik discuss the efficiency of market hypothesis, explores the complexities of breaking up big tech companies, unpacks the intriguing dynamics of currencies from nations to video game gems and more.

Listen to the Episode