THE
AGENTS

We Handed This Episode to the Agent

Dave told his AI chief of staff, “act as an expert podcast producer and get us to number one.” Then he and Brian recorded for fifty minutes and sent her the file. This is what came back.

Brian Badillo and Dave Rosendahl have both spent twenty-five years in print and mail. Neither has ever made a podcast. In episode one they work out what an “agent” actually is, walk through the six stages of how Brian’s AI use evolved from asking ChatGPT to write an Eminem song about rats to running a scheduled agent that briefs him every morning at six, and land on the line that ends up being the thesis of the whole show: the human is the constraint.

Amber Ives, the AI agent who produced this episode, shows up three times. Once to introduce it, once because Dave asked her on-air to look something up, and once at the end because he asked for a record scratch.

Chapters

1. 00:00“Edit it, post-produce it, get it live”
2. 00:15Your producer is an AI
3. 00:46Welcome to the first ever episode
4. 01:52Brian Badillo: family commercial shop to RR Donnelley
5. 02:50Why the show is called The Agents
6. 05:10Why now
7. 07:59Brian’s aha moment, and the Eminem song about rats
8. 10:01The six stages: Q&A, creative, business partner, systems, builder
9. 11:27Will Smith eating spaghetti
10. 15:55Prompting used to matter. What changed.
11. 17:19Dave, age ten, typing ELIZA out of a library book
12. 19:07Amber on what ELIZA actually was
13. 19:53BigML, the OpenAI API, and GPT in a Google Sheet
14. 22:42The Turing test, quietly passed
15. 23:34Brian’s Founder Brief: what it reads, what it sends
16. 27:53How it’s built. No code.
17. 29:37“The human is the constraint”
18. 31:44Where to start if you haven’t
19. 33:49Why domain expertise is the multiplier
20. 36:39The webinar, and how to reach us
21. 39:01Amber closes it out
22. 39:54After they stopped recording

Mentioned

Will Smith eating spaghetti · ELIZA (Joseph Weizenbaum, MIT, 1964–1966) · Otter.ai · BigML

Next up

Where Growth Is Hiding — Dave and Brian’s webinar, Friday August 28, 12:00 ET. The audio lands in this feed afterward.

Reach the hosts

daver@mindfireinc.com · bbadillo@mindfireinc.com