The Now Podcast

How to use AI to get ahead, from someone who actually does it every day.

Matt Medved sits down with Zeneca to break down how he uses these tools and how anyone else can too. Zeneca introduces Yoshi, the AI agent he treats as a co-founder, and the gamified Stardew Valley-style dashboard he built to beat his own ADHD and stay consistent.

They get into his Dota 2 prediction model built in Claude Code, why domain knowledge is the only durable edge in prediction markets, and the two-Mac stack he runs across GPT-5.5, Hermes and Opus. Zeneca explains the Anthropic crackdown that forced everyone to rethink their setups, his thesis on AI and privacy coins, and why less is more beats ten open terminal windows.

His advice for getting started is simple. Pick one boring task. Hand it to AI. Learn by doing.

In this conversation:
– Going all in on AI and what actually changed
– Building Yoshi and the case for an AI co-founder
– The gamified dashboard that fixed his consistency problem
– A Dota 2 prediction model and the hunt for a real edge
– His current agent stack and the Anthropic OAuth crackdown
– The AI and privacy coin thesis
– How to monetize what you already know in prediction markets
– Dashboards and external memory as workflow hacks

Subscribe to Now Media: https://nowmedia.co/
Michael Blau: https://x.com/Zeneca
Matt Medved: https://x.com/mattmedved

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Michael Blau left a16z Crypto to build Drip, a marketplace where AI agents pay writers per article. No subscriptions. Just micropayments, settled on-chain, every time an agent reads.

The thesis: everyone's about to give their ChatGPT or Claude a wallet, and when they do, those agents will need somewhere to buy premium analysis. Drip lets Substack and newsletter writers sell their work to agents on a pay-per-read basis, starting with finance and tech. Writers set their own price. A trading agent might buy 100 articles for pennies each before it ever places a trade.

Matt Medved sits down with Blau to get under the hood of agentic commerce and what it means for the media model.

In this conversation:
– How Drip works and why it's additive to subscriptions, not a replacement
– Why micropayments need stablecoins (credit cards can't process a one-cent transaction)
– The x402 standard and why it feels like the early NFT/ERC-721 days
– Investor brain vs. founder brain, and lessons from Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon
– The three ways to play the agent economy: be the wallet, sell to agents, or own discovery
– Blau's personal AI stack: Codex, "brain folders," and switching off Claude overnight

Subscribe to Now Media: https://nowmedia.co/
Drip: https://dripstack.xyz
Michael Blau: https://x.com/blauyourmind
Matt Medved: https://x.com/mattmedved

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Adam Levy built the first fully synthetic podcast to top the UK charts. His Neural Broadcast Network has crossed 3.5 million downloads with no human hosts.
It started with a 48-hour thought experiment. The DOJ dropped a fresh tranche of Epstein files and Levy pointed Claude at the stack. Seven days after publishing, The Epstein Files had 100,000 downloads. WarDesk, Rex, and Neurodivergent followed. The catalog now pulls 70,000 downloads a week.

In this conversation with Matt Medved:
– How a tool for personal use became a media company
– What "trustless media" means and why Levy borrowed the phrase from crypto
– The legacy-press backlash and his response to it
– Building toward an autonomous newsroom that produces series on demand
– Where the synthetic-media audience is heading next

Subscribe to Now Media: https://nowmedia.co/
Neural Broadcast Network: https://nbn.fm
Adam Levy: https://x.com/levychain
Matt Medved: https://x.com/mattmedved

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What does it take to create 300 consecutive days of art while redefining your place in a volatile NFT market? Meet Mendezmendez, a digital artist who turned a creative slump into a groundbreaking daily art practice that transformed his career. From viral Reddit posts to collaborating with top record labels, his journey merges timeless artistic inspiration with cutting-edge Web3 technology. In this episode, we dive into his bold pivot from editions to one-of-one pieces, how he’s navigating the evolving digital art space, and his sold out-release on LG Art Lab.

Join us as we explore the stories behind his most compelling works, his approach to blending AI tools with traditional art aesthetics, and his insights on balancing digital platforms with the allure of traditional galleries. Plus, we uncover how consistency, community-building, and seizing opportunities have propelled his career, even in a challenging market.

Presented in partnership with LG Art Lab.
https://www.lgartlab.com

Follow Mendezmendez on X here: https://x.com/mendezmendezart

Follow nft now on X here: https://www.x.com/nftnow

Follow LG Art Lab on X here: https://www.x.com/lgartlab

To listen to the audio version, go to https://www.pod.link/1561616636

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In this episode, we chat with Emi Kusano, a multi-disciplinary Japanese artist blending AI and web3 in her work. Emi discusses her journey from music to creating AI-driven art, including her LG art lab debut, "Advertising Humanity," inspired by 1980s Japanese commercials. She reflects on the challenges of working with AI and the ongoing debate around its impact on art.

Emi also shares key moments in her career, from collaborating on an NFT project with her son to being mentored by Claire Silver. She offers valuable advice for digital artists on building a collector base and finding the right platforms.

Emi's 1/1 artwork, “Advertising Humanity,” is now available on LG Art Lab in the United States.
https://www.lgartlab.com/drops/detail...

Presented in partnership with LG Art Lab.
https://www.lgartlab.com

Follow Emi Kusano on X here: https://x.com/emikusano

Follow nft now on X here: https://www.x.com/nftnow

Follow LG Art Lab on X here: https://www.x.com/lgartlab

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