Cohost Lee Rodrigues dropped Final Cut Pro and his loyalty to a workflow that used to work. Sam goes one step further: loyalty belongs to the result, not any tool, old or new, and a tool's say-so isn't evidence.

A choice this episode can help with: Which tool are you loyal to, and what evidence says it makes the result better?

• The episode page, with the signals, the subtractions and every link
• The full transcript
• The Sunday newsletter: Better Boiled Water
• The takeaway: Two Decisions and an Owner
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Decision engineer Michelle Florendo on why more data has not made deciding easier: the hard part was never the options or the information, it is knowing what you want and counting the data that never reaches a dashboard.

A choice this episode can help with: What do you actually want from the decision you are sitting on?

• The episode page, with the signals, the subtractions and every link
• The full transcript
• The Sunday newsletter: One Shorter Leg
• The takeaway: The Concern Column
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Guest Limited Edition Jonathan returns with one idea told at three scales: learn the little things properly and they compound. A real estate company's 1.2 million files, and agents that cannot delete.

A choice this episode can help with: Which handoff in your organization exists only because the work used to need a team?

• The episode page, with the signals, the subtractions and every link
• The full transcript
• The Sunday newsletter: Carved in Stone
• The takeaway: The Handoff Check
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Cohost Markus Bernhardt debuts with a signal about who sets the terms: the people most comfortable with AI configure it for themselves, and everyone else inherits the permissions.

A choice this episode can help with: Who set the AI defaults everyone else in your organization inherits?

• The episode page, with the signals, the subtractions and every link
• The full transcript
• The Sunday newsletter: Which Match Are You Watching?
• The takeaway: The Default Ledger
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Guest Omar Ladak co-founded six construction and industrial services companies and built them, on purpose, to need less of him every year. The rule for what he will even look at fits on a post-it.

A choice this episode can help with: Owner or operator: where on that gradient do you want to sit?

• The episode page, with the signals, the subtractions and every link
• The full transcript
• The Sunday newsletter: The Speedboat and the Sailboat
• The takeaway: Name the Human
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Guest Ankit Patel, who runs a company of about sixty people, refused to re-sign HubSpot, asked AI what open source could do instead, and had the replacement running on his own AWS in days.

A choice this episode can help with: When the renewal comes up, do you re-sign, renegotiate, or build the replacement yourself?

• The episode page, with the signals, the subtractions and every link
• The full transcript
• The Sunday newsletter: Swiss Army Knife or Scalpel?
• The takeaway: Empty Isn't an Argument
• The takeaway: The Renewal Card
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Guest Paul Gibbons spent a decade attacking change management for never proving it changed anything. Now he runs a multi-agent setup that drowns him in verification, and the habit of waving through unread work has to go.

A choice this episode can help with: How do you know an AI-adoption effort changed anything?

• The episode page, with the signals, the subtractions and every link
• The full transcript
• The Sunday newsletter: No Wrong Answers
• The takeaway: The Verification Budget
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Cohost Lee Rodrigues nearly paid $4,000 to replace a water line that turned out to be brand new. The same move ends most rebuilds: run a test, run it twice, and don't let the tool define the problem.

A choice this episode can help with: What is the smallest test that could prove you are solving the wrong problem?

• The episode page, with the signals, the subtractions and every link
• The full transcript
• The Sunday newsletter: Dig the Second Hole
• The takeaway: The Enforcement Column
• The takeaway: The Second Hole
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Cohost JD Dillon and guest Josh Felix on influence, the workplace skill AI just repriced: everyone has ideas now, so getting the right person to reconsider and decide is the differentiator.

A choice this episode can help with: Are you still picking your next room, talk or channel by its size?

• The episode page, with the signals, the subtractions and every link
• The full transcript
• The Sunday newsletter: No Self-Checkout
• The takeaway: The Right Ten
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Douglas Hubbard wrote the book people hand you when you say something cannot be measured. Recorded in 2016, before anyone had an AI budget to defend. The conversation is audio; the video is a visualizer.

A choice this episode can help with: What result would actually change your AI investment decision?

• The episode page, with the signals, the subtractions and every link
• The full transcript
• The Sunday newsletter: Measuring 500 Nuclear Engineers
• The takeaway: The Implied Price Recovery
• The takeaway: The Pilot Kill Card
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Guest Michael Simon, a practising lawyer, on the chatbot obligations already in force across US states, the EU and California, and what an operator does about them on Monday.

A choice this episode can help with: Who owns the risk when a vendor's AI speaks to your customers?

• The episode page, with the signals, the subtractions and every link
• The full transcript
• The Sunday newsletter: The Quilt and the Minefield
• The takeaway: The External Speech Map
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Guest Limited Edition Jonathan on Substack's AI detector: a label does its damage whether or not it is accurate, and a writer scanned without being told pays for it.

A choice this episode can help with: Does the label on this writing measure the thing your decision needs?

• The episode page, with the signals, the subtractions and every link
• The full transcript
• The Sunday newsletter: Guilty Until Proven Human
• The takeaway: The Label Decision Card
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Guest Sabino Marquez, twenty years a CISO, on why AI compliance is really AI procurement, why a well-fed bull is still a bull in your apartment, and the question nobody asks: is it safe for the value you already hold?

A choice this episode can help with: What can your AI already reach that you have never named as valuable?

• The episode page, with the signals, the subtractions and every link
• The full transcript
• The Sunday newsletter: The Bull in the Apartment
• The takeaway: Human in the Loop, Honestly
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Cohost Lee Rodrigues and guest Christine Rodrigues, partners in life and in business, on the job hunt after AI: polished resumes turned into noise, corner cases still get hired, and thought sovereignty is the skill.

A choice this episode can help with: What evidence of a candidate still means anything when AI can manufacture polish?

• The episode page, with the signals, the subtractions and every link
• The full transcript
• The Sunday newsletter: The Crowded Bar
• The takeaway: Surface Alignment Check
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Solo. What a signal and a subtraction actually are, how to find your own with or without AI, and the for-loop meeting.

A choice this episode can help with: Which recurring commitments still deserve to exist?

• The episode page, with the signals, the subtractions and every link
• The full transcript
• The Sunday newsletter: The For-Loop Meeting
• The takeaway: Mandate Drift Inventory
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Cohost Lee Rodrigues on the one-page outline that shows where a model is making things up, and why more capability never fixes missing context.

A choice this episode can help with: When an AI system disappoints, do you need a better model or better context?

• The episode page, with the signals, the subtractions and every link
• The full transcript
• The Sunday newsletter: All Horsepower, No Radiator
• The takeaway: The One-Page Test
• Watch it on YouTube

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