{"podcast":{"title":"Talk Cocktail","slug":"talk-cocktail-15520","podcast_index_feed_id":15520,"rss_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/863339.rss","website_url":"https://jeffschechtman.substack.com/podcast","image_url":"https://substackcdn.com/feed/podcast/863339/c9cec71f596a5c5bdf2430e80748f712.jpg","author":"Jeff Schechtman","episode_count":1000,"summary":"Jeff Schechtman talks with authors, journalists, and thought leaders.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-19T14:20:47.063498+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/talk-cocktail-15520"},"episode":{"title":"Before the Trillions, There Was Once Joy in Silicon Valley","slug":"before-the-trillions-there-was-once-joy-in-silicon-valley","published_at":"2026-07-11T15:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/talk-cocktail-15520/before-the-trillions-there-was-once-joy-in-silicon-valley","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/talk-cocktail-15520","url":"https://jeffschechtman.substack.com/p/before-the-trillions-there-was-once","audio_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/206338000/ffa9296653f67ede462a204ce4d8e297.mp3","summary":"A veteran of three tech eras on how the innocence was lost — and whether AI actually might win it back, through what he calls “enlightened AI.” Recently, on WhoWhatWhy podcast , Matthew Stepka — early internet-café founder, McKinsey alum, nine-year Google veteran who shepherded many of the company’s mission projects including the first self-driving cars, and now an investor in what he calls “enlightened AI” — walks us back through the Valley’s reinventions and asks what each one cost. Before the trillion-dollar IPOs, before the data centers and the doom, before “Silicon Valley” became shorthand for unaccountable power and unimaginable wealth, there was a teenager with an Atari — a gift from his NASA-engineer father — certain he could build any world he could imagine. Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe","meta_description":"A veteran of three tech eras on how the innocence was lost — and whether AI actually might win it back, through what he calls “enlightened AI.” Recently,…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2377,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/talk-cocktail-15520/episodes/before-the-trillions-there-was-once-joy-in-silicon-valley/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/talk-cocktail-15520/before-the-trillions-there-was-once-joy-in-silicon-valley.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}