The Stack Overflow Podcast

Who needs VCs when you have friends like these?

Ryan welcomes RunPod co-founder and CEO Zhen Lu to discuss circumventing VC money by going straight to your community for funding, how Zhen balances founder intuition with user feedback when the community is the one backing the project, and RunPod’s journey from basement servers to global infrastructure partnerships with a software-layer approach and data-first paradigm.  Episode notes:  RunPod [https://www.runpod.io/] is an end-to-end AI cloud that provides developers with GPUs so they can build and run custom AI systems that scale. Connect with Zhen on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/zeen/] or email him at zhenlu@runpod.io [zhenlu@runpod.io].  Today’s shoutout goes to Famous Question badge winner cigol on [https://stackoverflow.com/users/10820852/cigol-on], who won the badge for getting 10,000+ views on their question Using JavaScript, is it possible to capture the body payload from an outgoing fetch request? [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56715755/using-javascript-is-it-possible-to-capture-the-body-payload-from-an-outgoing-fe]. TRANSCRIPT [https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/04/14/who-needs-vcs-when-you-have-friends-like-these/] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

The messy truth of your AI strategies

Ryan welcomes Hema Raghavan, co-founder and head of engineering at Kumo.ai, to dive into all the messy stuff that comes with implementing AI, from pipeline sprawl to shadow AI. They discuss governance approaches like deploying models inside approved platforms and routing calls through monitored gateways, and how broken pipelines from complex feature-engineering motivated Kumo.ai’s approach of using a single foundation model with on-the-fly database queries.  Episode notes:  Kumo.ai [http://kumo.ai] allows you to train and run state-of-the-art AI models on your relational data, allowing you to make predictions about your users and transactions in seconds.  Connect with Hema on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/hema-raghavan-1581075/] or reach out to her at her email hema@kumo.ai [hema@kumo.ai].   Congrats to user BalusC [https://stackoverflow.com/users/157882/balusc] for winning a Populist badge on their answer to How to sanitize HTML code to prevent XSS attacks in Java or JSP? [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3587199/how-to-sanitize-html-code-to-prevent-xss-attacks-in-java-or-jsp]. TRANSCRIPT [https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/04/10/the-messy-truth-of-your-ai-strategies/] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

He designed C++ to solve your code problems

Ryan welcomes Bjarne Stroustrup, designer of C++ and professor at Columbia, to the show to dive into all things C++, from its history to where it's going today. They discuss its first emergence as a way to bridge high-level abstractions with low-level systems control, the criticisms some have around memory safety and null pointers (and how to solve these problems in your code), and why “move to Rust” thinking is too simplistic for modern codebases.  Episode notes:  Keep up with everything happening with C++ at the Standard C++ Foundation’s website [https://isocpp.org/].  Connect with Bjarne on LinkedIn [http://linkedin.com/in/bjarnestroustrup] and explore more of his work at his website [https://www.stroustrup.com/].  Congrats to Populist badge winner Michael Sorens [https://stackoverflow.com/users/115690/michael-sorens] for winning the badge for their answer to PowerShell equivalent for "head -n-3"? [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10079572/powershell-equivalent-for-head-n-3]. TRANSCRIPT [https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/04/07/he-designed-c-to-solve-your-code-problems/] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

Seizing the means of messenger production

Ryan sits down with Galen Wolfe-Pauly, CEO of Tlon, to chat about calm computing and how humans can take back ownership of their data and digital world. They discuss the early internet’s evolution from individual creativity into today’s internet that turns users into products, Galen’s takeaways from building a new network architecture that prioritizes user control, and why messenger applications are ripe for decentralization.  Episode notes: Tlon [https://tlon.io/] is releasing a decentralized messenger app that gives you ownership of your data, built on Urbit [https://urbit.org/], a complete, wholly encapsulated system that allows you to run a personal server in the cloud. Use the code STACK to skip the waitlist for the Tlon Messenger app. Connect with Galen on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/galenwolfepauly/].  Shoutout to user mkobuolys [https://stackoverflow.com/users/15427566/mkobuolys] for winning a Populist badge for their answer to Set default transition for go_router in Flutter [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/71636397/set-default-transition-for-go-router-in-flutter]. TRANSCRIPT [https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/04/03/seizing-the-means-of-messenger-production/] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

How can you test your code when you don’t know what’s in it?

Ryan hosts SmartBear’s VP of AI and Architecture Fitz Nowlan to explore how we’re moving away from old assumptions about software development, the challenges of testing MCP servers as LLM-driven agents introduce non-determinism that breaks tradition, and how data locality and data construction are becoming more valuable when source code is so easy to generate. Episode notes:  SmartBear [https://smartbear.com/] gives devs tools for application performance monitoring, software development, software testing, and API management—all at AI speed and scale. Connect with Fitz on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/fitz-nowlan/] and email him at FitzNowlan@SmartBear.com [FitzNowlan@SmartBear.com]  Congrats to Great Answer winner Alexander [https://stackoverflow.com/users/721079/alexander] for winning the badge for their answer to Is there a way to make Runnable's run() throw an exception? [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11584159/is-there-a-way-to-make-runnables-run-throw-an-exception]. TRANSCRIPT [https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/03/31/how-can-you-test-your-code-when-you-don-t-know-what-s-in-it/] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].