Shows
The Sunday Blender PodcastThe Dawn of Machine-to-Machine SocietyEditor’s Words
This has been a crazy week. Everyone I know from crypto and AI or just tech in general is playing with Clawdbot. Friends who disappeared years ago resurfaced and texted me to exchange notes. This feels like a bigger impact than the chatGPT moment 2 years ago and even the DeepSeek moment a year ago. The hype certainly owns the air wave.
If anything, Clawdbot gave me a convenient excuse to replace the good old 2018 MacMini with an M4 Pro MacMini, toward the noble cause of creating my 24/7 AI assistant, making the world a...
2026-01-3118 min
The Sunday Blender PodcastDestination: China - The Return of Western Rock BandsEditor’s Words
Check out the sports section of this issue. It’s got quite a variety.
If you have come this far, you must come from a family of readers in the pursuit of intellect and knowledge - a rare species in 2026. Congratulations!
Do you know of any other friend’s family who might also be in the same pursuit?
If you do, please forward the Sunday Blender to them, surprising them with the proof that the art of reading has not died, yet.
Thank you.
Tech
2026-01-2415 min
The Sunday Blender PodcastThe Attack of Robots, Elephant, Banksy, and HeatEditor’s Words
We’re back! We played quite a few games last weekend, so we had to skip an issue.
Publishing a weekly newsletter requires a lot of work. It would not have been possible without Claude, one of the best AI tools in 2026. If you are into creating content - whether that’s text, audio, or video, AI can be a huge productivity boost and a total game changer.
While being a weekly digest for curious kids, the Sunday Blender is also an experiment on how much AI can level the playgr...
2026-01-1718 min
The Sunday Blender PodcastAn Incredible Journey From Wuhan To SingaporeEditor’s Words
At the age of 82, my dad started learning piano. He sent us a video of him playing Auld Lang Syne, with two hands no less. I don’t have any Scottish friends around me. I don’t know if the Scottish are aware how popular and famous this song is for Chinese people. Literally every Chinese, from young to old, knows this song.
My mom has been playing piano for over 20 years. My wife started learning piano during Covid days and is now working on Turkish March by Mozart. My son’s forte is...
2026-01-0316 min
The Sunday Blender PodcastThe Age of One-Person Billion Dollar CompanyEditor’s Words
Have you noticed that reading articles on website has become a very unpleasant experience?
Those webpages are full of ads in every corner. They are in the beginning of the article, even before the body of the article is loaded. They are on the left and the right margins of the page - just to make sure you will not miss them. They are planted in the middle of the paragraphs, so that you have to look at them in order to read on. They also jump into your face as a po...
2025-12-2714 min
The Sunday Blender PodcastSo Many AI Reports, So Little Time to ReadEditor’s Words
I always enjoyed playing badminton when growing up. It however completely vanished from my life as I started working, traveling, and moving from one country to another. I picked up the racket at the end of last year to keep the game interesting for my son, who loves the sport. It has since then become our family sport and we plan to keep it that way for years to come.
Shanghai Badminton Open will take place on Dec 20-21, 2025. Just for fun, I registered for myself and my wife under the mixed do...
2025-12-1316 min
The Sunday Blender PodcastHumans Are No Longer the Only Species to Use Fiber OpticsEditor’s Words
A few days ago, while driving to a badminton court, my wife and I were listening to the podcast episode of the Nov 29 issue of The Sunday Blender from Spotify. The 15-minute show is moderated by a duo of male and female cohosts.
They speak native English and are very eloquent. They finish each other’s sentences, delivering a spirited and snappy dialogue. It would be hard to distinguish them from Anderson Cooper and Megyn Kelly. They identified quite a number of patterns in the 20+ stories, for similarities and contrasts.
I pl...
2025-12-0615 min
The Sunday Blender PodcastWho Will Lead Brazil at the 2026 World Cup, Neymar or Estevao?Tech
South Korea is making an aggressive push for AI sovereignty. The country has emerged as a magnet for major US tech companies, with Nvidia, OpenAI, and AWS pouring billions into investments — including Nvidia’s ~$10 billion deal to supply 260,000 Blackwell GPUs and AWS committing $9 billion for AI data centers. Domestically, Seoul committed ~$390 million to fund five “AI champions” — LG, SK Telecom, Naver, NC AI, and Upstage — competing to build Korean-language foundation models, with underperformers eliminated every six months. The goal is a “full-stack” sovereign AI industry combining Korea’s memory chip dominance with indigenous AI development, posit...
2025-11-2915 min
The Sunday Blender PodcastThe Most Intelligent AI Model Yet?Editor’s Words
I listen to many podcasts and toyed with creating my own half-heartedly a few times in the past. Couldn’t really get one going though. The setup is intimidating. I don’t have the chops of Stephen Fry. It is very time-consuming to convert a transcript into audio form.
Well, Google proved me wrong. One of its AI killer apps, NotebookLM, transformed the PDF version of the Nov 15 issue into a podcast episode in just five minutes, with two AI-generated hosts that would give Jake Tapper a run of his money. It was a...
2025-11-2216 min
The Sunday Blender PodcastThe Return of Chinese Rock in Kuala LumpurEditor’s Words
Rock is not really a thing anymore in China. But when I see thousands of people jumping up and down on the arena floor in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Nov 12, I know the spirit is still there, just brewing in some unlikely corners.
Not just in China. Does anyone still rock in America? The last three rock bands I listened to were Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis, and X-Japan. Music is not the same anymore after that.
Many things have changed: music, the web, and news.
Sometimes, they are still be...
2025-11-1511 min
The Sunday Blender PodcastWho Wins In This AI Bonanza?Editor’s Words
Just now, my son successfully beat a Lynel in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, his first Lynel kill in a Zelda game. Lynel is a lion-centaur hybrid monster in Zelda. It drops epic monster parts that are essential for the final boss fight. It’s a very difficult fight that requires a lot of patience and careful planning. I have been struggling with Lynel for weeks, but my son just beat me to it.
Kids of today are so lucky. If they want to play a good game, they have Switch 2 and Zeld...
2025-11-0813 min
The Sunday Blender PodcastDeepSeek Challenges AI PowerhousesTech
DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup initially part of the hedge fund High-Flyer, has released an open-source model, DeepSeek-R1, that outperforms leading AI models from Western companies like OpenAI on several benchmarks, despite limited resources. DeepSeek refined their AI using software-driven resource optimization and innovative model architecture rather than relying on extensive hardware. By open-sourcing their model, DeepSeek fosters collaborative innovation crucial for their advancements, potentially challenging current US AI export limitations.
Rubin Observatory is a new telescope under construction in Chile, atop a mountain that is 2,682-meters (8,800-feet) tall. The...
2025-01-2616 min