FeedCity

Lady Gaga is a singer, songwriter, producer, and actress from New York. She’s one of the biggest artists in the world. She’s also won 14 Grammys, 2 Golden Globes, and an Oscar. And in March 2025, she released her sixth album, Mayhem. For this episode, I talked to her about a song from that album called “Abracadabra.” She co-wrote it and co-produced it with Andrew Watt and Cirkut, and they recorded it in Rick Rubin’s studio, Shangri-La. That’s also where we recorded the interview for this episode.

For more info, visit songexploder.net/lady-gaga.

I just sent out the September edition of my sponsors-only monthly newsletter. If you are a sponsor (or if you start a sponsorship now) you can access a copy here. The sections this month are:

• Best model for code? GPT-5-Codex... then Claude 4.5 Sonnet
• I've grudgingly accepted a definition for "agent"
• GPT-5 Research Goblin and Google AI Mode
• Claude has Code Interpreter now
• The lethal trifecta in the Economist
• Other significant model releases
• Notable AI success stories
• Video models are zero-shot learners and reasoners
• Tools I'm using at the moment
• Other bits and pieces

Here's a copy of the August newsletter as a preview of what you'll get. Pay $10/month to stay a month ahead of the free copy!

Tags: newsletter

John Moltz returns to the show to talk about the iPhone 17 lineup: the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, iPhone 17, and the no-number iPhone Air. Not one word about baseball, but some Star Wars talk may or may not have snuck in.

Sponsored by:

• Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow.
• Sentry: A real-time error monitoring and tracing platform. Get 3 months and 150,000 errors free.
• Factor: Get 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for one year.

Link: daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2025/09/30/ep-431

Pavel Durov is the founder and CEO of Telegram. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep482-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/pavel...

I really appreciated this thoughtful piece about Ta-Nehisi Coates & Ezra Klein. Andrea Pitzer says “lost” folks like Klein “don’t have a clear idea how this moment fits into history and what it is exactly that they’re doing”.

12 Booker Prize 2025 nominees share their writing spots. “There are kitchen tables, laptops open amongst the charming chaos of daily life, and desks appropriately equipped with the tools of the job, from laptop stands to ergonomic office chairs.”

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

I love this self-portrait by Na Kim. It’s somehow bold and subtle? Wow.

Tags: art · Na Kim

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

This question from Ta-Nehisi Coates in his recent conversation with Ezra Klein re: Charlie Kirk’s death jumped out at me: “But was silence not an option?” Too much attention-seeking and not enough meaning-making by our media & punditry.

Speaking of Benito Mussolini and fascism, the excellent Poster House museum in NYC has a new exhibition on for the next few months: The Future Was Then: The Changing Face of Fascist Italy. It features “some of the best posters produced during the worst period in modern Ita...

Having watched this morning's Sora 2 introduction video, the most notable feature (aside from audio generation - original Sora was silent, Google's Veo 3 supported audio in May 2025) looks to be what OpenAI are calling "cameos" - the ability to easily capture a video version...

To mark two years of the war in Gaza, our correspondents bring you this special episode of the Global News Podcast from the BBC Bureau in Jerusalem. Jon Donnison is joined by our Gaza correspondent Rushdi Abualouf, our International Editor Jeremy Bowen, and our Middle East co...

How to actually live like a local. “The thing is, nobody ever actually wants to ‘live like a local’ when they are traveling. Instead, they want to live like a romanticized, idealized version of a local that they have in their head…”

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

A long profile of Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the WWW. “Tim Berners-Lee may have the smallest fame-to-impact ratio of anyone living. Strangers hardly ever recognize his face; on “Jeopardy!,” his name usually goes for at least $1600.”

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Coding agents like Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex CLI represent a genuine step change in how useful LLMs can be for producing working code. These agents can now directly exercise the code they are writing, correct errors, dig through existing implementation detai...

On May 22, 1981, for the finale of the show’s 12th season, Mister Rogers visited Sesame Street. With apologies to the Avengers, this has to be the greatest crossover event in history. In the episode, Rogers agrees to judge a race between Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus, a ...

New book from Patrick Radden Keefe (Say Nothing, Empire of Pain): London Falling, “a portrait of a family trying to solve the riddle not just of how their son died, but of who he really was in life.”

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Yes, this exactly: “The government is already shut down, and has been for several months, as the Trump administration initiated an assault on this system of government.”

An oral history of Deltron 3030’s stupendous debut album.

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Jason Snell: According to Apple, four iPhone 17 Pros will be positioned at Fenway Park — in the Green Monster, the home dugout, and roaming the stands. In contrast to the secrecy of last week, the Tigers-Red Sox game will feature a bug in the corner of the screen that sh...

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey pull off the big con and revisit ‘The Sting’ to kick off Redford Month in honor of the late, great Robert Redford. 'The Sting' also stars Paul Newman and Robert Shaw and was directed by George Roy Hill. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Ronak Nair, and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is sponsored by State Farm®️. A State Farm agent can help you choose the coverage you need. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.®️  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices