Old friends, sharp questions, and what technology actually changes.
Stuck @Om sets Om Malik across from founders, investors and engineers he counts as friends, and asks what technology changes rather than what it sells. The talk runs from AI and geopolitics to search, self-driving cars and pandemic-era work, with blunt questions and specific answers.
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Stuck @Om is a conversation show anchored by Om Malik and the people he knows from technology and investing, many of whom he greets as friends. That familiarity sets the tone. There is banter about coffee and travel, yet the questions carry an edge. Om Malik asks a venture investor whether blogging made him better at the job, and presses a former Google executive about working inside 'the belly of the beast'. He also wonders aloud whether the tech ecosystem has turned the world into dopamine seekers, while still calling technology a net positive. The episode list shows how far the beat reaches. Search, self-driving cars, the geopolitics of A.I., software engineering, the evolution of communication, consumer apps and clothing made from exotic materials all appear, alongside a forecast episode titled 'What will 2019 bring'. A cluster of conversations dated spring 2020 turns to the pandemic: lockdown at home, a restaurant industry facing mass unemployment, frayed social trust and shifting office culture. Guests in that stretch include Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital, Anne Dwane of Village Global, Jeffrey Sachs and Toby Ord, whose conversation centers on existential risk. Three conversations show the texture up close. 'The GeoPolitical Implications of A.I. - a chat with Sean Gourley' happens in person, and it swings hard. The talk moves from burnout and a missed chance to rethink work to the claim that TikTok will be regarded as the greatest intelligence operation of the last century. It sketches wide, sobering estimates of how much work AI could strip away within a decade. Then it turns hopeful about AI for scientific discovery and climate problems, saving its pessimism for the disruption that arrives first. 'Reality of Self-Driving Dreams w/ Trucks.VC Reilly Brennan' is grounded in industry mechanics. Brennan describes automakers as aggregators of their suppliers and asks whether that model survives a world of chips, batteries and software. Tesla earns praise as a strong company even if its automated-driving hopes fall short. Waymo surfaces too, down to how robotaxis have nudged one rider toward tipping human drivers more. The Sridhar Ramaswamy conversation is the most personal. After close to 16 years at Google, he explains why he walked away, why innovation is hard to fund when revenue is enormous, and how large language models could change search. His line about startup life, 'we stumble forward gloriously', fits a show that prizes unpolished answers. For AI and power, the Sean Gourley episode is the natural entry point. For cars and mobility, Reilly Brennan appears in both 2020 and 2023, so his views can be heard years apart.
Made for: Suits a listener who follows the technology business and wants founders, investors and engineers asked about consequences rather than products. Also fits someone curious how AI, search and self-driving cars bear on jobs, information and geopolitics.
What sets it apart: The conversations rest on long friendships, so some guests return years apart and answer pointed questions with unguarded specifics. The range also runs past pure tech into economics, existential risk, restaurants, con artistry and clothing materials.
Stuck@Om is a series of conversations about about technology and how it is reshaping our society. Om Malik (a veteran technology writer) sits down and chats with some of the best and the brightest from around the world. The podcasts supplement his writing on his blog, On My Om. (http://om.co)
Om Malik asks about car chips; a poker player gives your next rash decision a second opinion.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A wide-ranging AI conversation on work, military advantage, and tensions with China.
Om reunites with Sean Gurley for a broad, serious conversation about what AI may do to work, power, and public life. It begins with the pandemic's fading place in memory, then moves into the bigger question of how artificial intelligence could pressure the social contract if…
A mobility investor ties carmaking ambition to chips, batteries, supply chains, and the harder question of why cars still matter.
Mobility ambition is brought back to the ground where companies actually stand or fall: chips, batteries, suppliers, and the car industry's layered architecture.
Sridhar Ramaswamy explains why he left Google and what Neva set out to build.
This episode follows Sridhar Ramaswamy from years inside Google search ads and expanding leadership roles to co-founding Neva, with the sharpest thread running through what happens when technical ambition meets the incentives behind search.
Maria Konnikova treats poker as a grounded test of emotion, self-control, and better judgment.
Maria Konnikova's move from writing about con artists to becoming a world-class poker player gives this Stuck at Home conversation its most useful frame: judgment under pressure.
Ophir Gottlieb makes market noise feel less like a signal and more like a discipline test.
Om's conversation with Ophir Gottlieb keeps the stock market at human scale, treating investing less as a chase for the next move than as a test of perspective.
Fast questions, sharper game tangents.
Tech talk with useful detours.
Few questions, long tangents, wherever the conversation goes
Tech skepticism with geek-household fingerprints.
Engineer brain, tech culture, no polish.
Tech culture through working humans.
Stuck @Om reconnects with Sean Gurley in San Francisco for a conversation about data, machine learning, AI, and geopolitics.
Riley Brennan, co-founder of Trucks.VC, tells Ohm Malik that Tesla changed cars the way the iPhone changed phones by putting software, chips, and behavior at the center.
["Google's search pages now can show two full screens of ads on mobile, and Sridhar Ramaswamy says that is what happens when a product is built to monetize top-to-bottom scanning.", "He says Google once used a 50-50 rule for ads-quality gains under Eric Schmidt, but revenue pressure gradually pulled more of the surplus into monetization and away from user quality.", "Ramaswamy links that drift to his own exit after 16 years at Google, including YouTube brand-safety problems and the moment he felt his kids were no longer proud that he worked there.", "He argues that Neva's cited, real-time, answer-first search is built for generative AI, and he thinks 5 to 10 million subscribers could make the business cashflow positive."]
Maria Konnikova tells Shannon how The Biggest Bluff ties poker, luck, and decision-making to a June 23rd release.
["On Stuck at Home, Ophir Gottlieb says retail investors are \"totally overwhelmed with data and totally underwhelmed with information,\" and that mismatch is the core problem.", "Om talks with Ophir, founder of CML Wiz and CML Pro, about why he built a retail-facing research product around CEO interviews and institutional research.", "The episode argues that financial media, commission-free trading, and algorithmic market chatter all amplify noise more than they improve decision-making.", "Ophir ends on a digital-transformation thesis: the coronavirus shutdown has sped up cloud, remote health, and online business adoption, so he prefers dollar-cost averaging into companies that are already moving the world forward."]
Om Malik interviews Professor Jeffrey Sachs about his new book 'The Ages of Globalization' and the enduring role of globalization in a digitally interconnected world.
Om Malik interviews Matt Buchanan, executive editor of Eater, about the pandemic's impact on the restaurant industry and daily life in New York.
Om Malik chats with a VC about remote work culture and a friendly plank competition.
Om Malik interviews Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson about his journey and the evolution of the company.