Michael Kennedy and Brian Okken
499 episodes listed below
Michael Kennedy and Brian Okken run down the week's Python tooling, typing, and packaging news.
Python Bytes is a fast-moving Python news roundup built around working-developer judgment, not polished press-release chatter. Recent episodes move from type checkers and uv audit to monorepos, ORM patterns, clean-room rewrites, and open-source licensing anxiety.
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Python Bytes is a co-hosted, panel-style news discussion rather than an interview or narrative show: Michael Kennedy and Brian Okken take turns presenting roughly five short items per episode, drawn from Python core development, packaging, web frameworks, and the broader developer-tools ecosystem. Episodes run in a numbered sequence in the 400s-470s range and last roughly 25 to 45 minutes, keeping a fast, item-by-item pace rather than long-form deep dives. Recurring subject areas include Astral's tool suite (UV, Ruff, Ty type checker), CPython typing and performance changes (PEPs, JIT, free-threading), web framework releases (Starlette, FastAPI, Django), documentation tooling shifts (Material for MkDocs winding down in favor of Zensical), and package/supply-chain security topics like UV Audit and GitHub Actions hardening with Zizmor. Testing practices, mocking anti-patterns, and project-management tools like Hatch also recur. No outside guests appear in the sampled episodes; instead, listener-submitted tips and links are credited by name within the discussion. Michael frequently ties topics back to his TalkPython Training courses and production experience, while Brian frequently covers testing tooling, Hatch, and the annual Advent of Code. The show assumes working familiarity with Python and is aimed at developers who want a condensed weekly digest of ecosystem news rather than tutorial-level explanation. Production is conversational and unscripted-sounding, built around back-and-forth reactions to each news item rather than a single narrative arc.
Made for: Working Python developers who want a weekly digest of language, tooling, and package-ecosystem news rather than long-form tutorials.
What sets it apart: A fast, multi-item weekly news rundown from two named hosts with direct industry ties (TalkPython Training, a pytest book) rather than a rotating guest-interview format.
Python Bytes is a weekly podcast hosted by Michael Kennedy and Brian Okken. The show is a short discussion on the headlines and noteworthy news in the Python, developer, and data science space.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Python Bytes turns Python tooling news into practical discussion about dependencies, compatibility, documentation and the choices behind everyday development.
Python Bytes turns developer news into a working conversation between Michael Kennedy and Brian Okken. They move quickly from a release or project to the questions that matter in use: what changed, how it behaves and where the rough edges appear.
Dependency audits become buddy comedy when Michael Kennedy and Brian Ocken compare notes.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A brisk episode on type checking tools and typed docs, with a useful look at docs that show their types.
Python Bytes spends this episode on type checking tools, typed docs, and the trade-offs that shape maintainability. The Ty migration segment moves quickly and has a clear point of view, but it still feels grounded in day-to-day use rather than release-note theater.
A dry, uneasy look at open source copycat economics and the ethics of clean room rebuilds.
Python Bytes spends much of the episode on an unusual NPM pricing experiment tied to unpacked size, then uses that as a springboard into open source, clean room rebuilds, and the line where inspiration starts to look like theft.
A practical Python tooling episode that is most convincing when it stays with the dependency-checking discussion.
Python Bytes spends most of its useful time on uv audit and the dependency-checking puzzle around it. The discussion works best when it shows how a vulnerability can look suspicious at first, then turns out to trace back to a lockfile that spans different operating systems and…
A small spelling tool becomes a practical discussion about code, editors, and CI.
The episode spends much of its time on typos and a Rust-based alternative to codespell, with the main appeal coming from its concrete-syntax-tree approach. That makes it useful for catching misspellings inside snake_case names as well as plain prose.
Practical Python plumbing, Django 6, and a brief seasonal promo stretch.
Python Bytes episode 460 stays close to practical Python plumbing. It highlights a signup flow that sends the welcome email after the response instead of during it, along with a background-task pattern that keeps the app responsive without leaning on extra queue infrastructure.
A grounded episode about a faster MkDocs rewrite, compatibility, and the support model behind it.
Episode 459 follows the Rust rewrite of Material for MkDocs and the claim that it is five times faster. It also gets into the practical side: the project stays open source under MIT, and it is meant to keep existing MkDocs YAML files working as-is during the move.
Long-form interviews on AI coding agents, infrastructure, and security, plus a recurring SED News roundup.
Founders and engineers on AI coding agents like Claude Code, and supply chain security.
Stack Overflow's Ryan Donovan interviews founders and engineers on AI agents, protocols, and dev tools.
Michael Kennedy interviews Python maintainers on packaging, security, web tools, and AI.
Matt Stratton interviews DevOps practitioners on security, platform engineering, and trusting AI-written code.
Episode 476 starts with types.
Package pricing gets odd fast.
Python Bytes #474, recorded March 23rd, 2026, opens with Starlette 1.0 and a lifespan async context manager for startup and teardown code after `yield`.
This episode of Python Bytes discusses Python news and headlines, including a topic about a clean room rewrite submitted by a listener.
This episode of Python Bytes introduces the show's format, sponsors, and community engagement while teasing upcoming Python-related news and topics.
This episode of Python Bytes discusses the use of monorepos in Python projects, focusing on setting up a UV workspace for managing multiple projects within a single repository.
This episode discusses a new ORM design pattern for 2026, exploring how agentic programming and AI tools influence software architecture and design.
Michael Kennedy and Brian Okken discuss Python news, including inline snapshots for testing from a Pydantic blog post.
The hosts discuss Michael's new desktop application project, marking his first proper desktop app release in years, with Brian sharing his past experience in Windows development.
A weekly podcast discussing Python news and headlines, with this episode covering Django Bolt, a new API framework for Django.
A weekly podcast delivering Python news and headlines, with hosts discussing recent developments and community events.
This episode of Python Bytes discusses Django management commands and tools like Django Click and Django Typer for improving them.
Weekly podcast discussing Python news and headlines, with this episode covering a Mac/Windows app called Port Killer.
This episode of Python Bytes discusses the beta release of T-Y, an extremely fast Python type checker and language server protocol tool.
This episode of Python Bytes is a brief introduction and announcement about the show's schedule and sponsorship opportunities for 2026.
This episode discusses a blog post about why deprecation warnings often fail in Python libraries, using a specific example from lib3 2.6.
Episode 461 gets into typos, the spelling checker Sky Costco points the hosts to after code spell.
This slice of episode 460 starts with Django background tasks, then drifts into typing.
Python Bytes episode 459 covers five Python topics including PEP 814's proposed frozen dict built-in type designed for thread safety in Python 3.14's true-parallelism era.
A weekly podcast discussing Python news and headlines, with this episode covering Django website redesign and other Python topics.
A weekly podcast delivering Python news, headlines, and tips for developers.
A weekly podcast discussing Python news, headlines, and noteworthy developments in the Python ecosystem.
A weekly podcast delivering Python news, headlines, and updates for developers and data scientists.
Weekly news and headlines about Python development, including a discussion on Django REST frameworks.
Weekly podcast delivering Python news and headlines, with hosts discussing recent developments and community updates.
Hosts discuss Python news, including tips for saving app data in user-specific locations.
Hosts discuss Python news and a tip about using UV to install pre-commit.
Hosts discuss Python news, including a Twitter thread about why developers don't use the UV tool.
Hosts discuss Python news, including a quirk about rounding numbers ending in 0.5.
A weekly podcast delivering Python news and headlines, with discussion on tools like SQLAlchemy and SQLModel.
Weekly podcast discussing Python news, headlines, and development tools, with a focus on practical programming topics.
A weekly podcast discussing Python news and headlines, with this episode covering debugging HTTP calls and other Python topics.
This episode covers Python news including PEP 772 on packaging governance.
A weekly podcast discussing Python news, headlines, and noteworthy topics in the Python developer and data science community.
Python Bytes delivers weekly Python news and headlines, with hosts discussing recent developments and community updates.