Episode Details

Insanely Great Podcast — Memorial Day Edition 🍔

 
Episode recorded: May 24, 2026

Show Notes

Fire up the grill, crack open a cold one, and let Christopher and DJ keep you company while you flip burgers. This Memorial Day edition is a buffet of tech takes, hot rants, and pop culture detours — perfect for that backyard hang.

On the menu this week:

🤖 Google I/O lays the smackdown. Gemini 3.5 Flash now allegedly outguns 3.1 Pro at half the power, Gemini Spark is the big consumer cloud play, and we got a sneak peek at what Siri could be if Apple ever caught up. Spoiler: Apple is paying billions for a whitelisted, watered-down Gemini and the guys aren't sure why.

👓 The smart glasses arms race. Meta's Ray-Bans, Oakleys, Apple's incoming pair, and now Google's at the party too. DJ returned his Oakleys (vertical video — really, Meta?) and Christopher's Ray-Bans live on the shelf 90% of the time. Four-hour battery life is, in technical terms, "abysmal."

🏗️ Android 17 "Cinnamon Bun" gets deeper Gemini integration. In other shocking news, water is wet.

🛠️ Google Antigravity and the slow death of the IDE — just tell the AI what to code and walk away.

🍌 Nano Banana 2 keeps being magical, and Christopher demands to know how these models change one thing without nuking the whole image.

🚀 SpaceX files for what could be the biggest IPO in history (ticker: SPCX). Also, hey, at least the toilet didn't explode this time.

💸 NVIDIA prints money ($91B quarter, $80B buyback) while we debate whether Anthropic could ever catch the shovel-seller.

🏢 Meta's layoffs hit 8,000 while employees literally train their AI replacements via keystroke surveillance. Salesforce pulled the same gaslight. Yikes.

🧠 The AGI debate gets philosophical. Are LLMs the steam engine of intelligence? Plus a fascinating tangent on world models, three-system AI learning, and why power-hungry "evolutionary" AI might actually get us there.

🎬 Mandalorian & Grogu is a two-and-a-half-hour nothing burger. Sigourney Weaver: why are you here? Where are Luke, Ahsoka, Han, and Leia? A huge missed opportunity gets thoroughly dragged.

🪄 Harry Potter marathon! DJ is initiating his 13-year-old into Hogwarts (he's never seen them!). Christopher swears by the Chris Columbus extended editions, dishes on the upcoming HBO Max reboot, and yes — they get into the Hagrid actor situation.

💍 Bonus rant: Peter Jackson recording 30-minute intros to already-four-hour extended LOTR movies. The nerds applauded. Of course they did.

🎮 Gaming corner: Diablo 4's Mephisto expansion, the new James Bond game (looks like 2005?), Hogwarts Legacy love, Crimson Desert gunning for Game of the Year, the underwhelming Switch 2 launch lineup, and rumors of a $1,500 Xbox PC-console hybrid.

📺 YouTube Premium price hike gets roasted. $26/month for a family plan? For… ad-free and downloads? Bundle it with YouTube TV or stop, Google.

📱 iPhone Ultra fold rant preview (saved for next episode): how do you call it "Ultra" when the camera lenses are worse than the Pro?

🚫 Apple Shortcuts as moral police. Try to get it to proofread anything with the word "ass" and watch it silently refuse to do its job. Cool, cool, cool.

🔥 DJ's pro tips: DeepSeek v4 Flash in Hermes agent has been ripping, and check out Ion Router — they're running the OSS 120B model at 5¢ in / 10¢ out by squeezing NVIDIA GH200s. Insanely cheap. Let us know if you try it.

🎓 And a sentimental dad moment