Modern CTO

If you’re feeling burnt out, it’s not the work you’re doing. It’s the mission you’re on.

Today, we're talking to Justin Fanelli, Chief Technology Officer of the Department of the Navy. We discuss why direct communication is fuel rather than friction, how the most driven government workers are often the ones who've already "made it" elsewhere, and why burnout has almost nothing to do with hours worked and everything to do with whether you feel connected to something bigger.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast!

Why did a smear campaign almost take out this anti-food waste company?

Today, we're talking to Luiz Beling, CEO at Apeel, about how a company that captured 60% of the U.S. avocado market can lose it almost overnight to a coordinated smear campaign. We discuss why narrative security now matters as much as cybersecurity, how a childhood kidnapping in Brazil quietly shaped his approach to crisis leadership, and why the real fix for food waste isn't more supply.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast!

To learn more about Apeel, check out their website here.

He’s 31, and nobody he knows is having kids. Tech is to blame, but what’s the solution?

Today, we're talking to Connor Leahy, US Director at ControlAI. We discuss why plummeting birth rates look eerily similar to what happens when zoo animals stop breeding, how ideas can spread and cause real harm the same way diseases do, and why the safest path with superintelligence might be to ban it outright rather than pretend we already understand it.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast!

To learn more about ControlAI, check out their website here

Developers, how confident are you in the future of your job?

Today, we're catching up with Hrishi Dixit, cofounder and CTO of Autonomy Finance, about what actually happens when you hand the keys to AI in a regulated industry — why the first pass of AI-generated code is never shippable, how a commingled client data hallucination can end a company overnight, and why the engineers who survive the AI wave won't be the ones who write the most code, but the ones who know exactly when the machine is about to get someone killed.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast!

To learn more about Autonomy Finance, check out their website here.

What happens when the worst among us get their hands on the most powerful tools?

Today, we're talking to Zach Goldberg, CEO at Gruntwork, about the messy edges of AI adoption. We discuss why "vibe coding" has created a new category of disposable, single-purpose software that never would have existed before, why the line between AI you can trust to read data and AI you can trust to write to production may be the most important distinction in enterprise tech right now, and why the real bottleneck on AI misuse has shifted from access to intelligence itself.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast!

To learn more about Gruntwork, check out their website here.