Shows / Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)
We live in a world where our civilization and daily lives depend upon institutions, infrastructure, and technological substrates that are _complicated_ but not _unknowable_. Join Patrick McKenzie (patio11) as he discusses how decisions, technology, culture, and incentives shape our finance, technology, government, and more, with the people who built (and build) those Complex Systems.
Episodes
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Why SoftBank paid me 17 yen to skip the air conditioning
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his 2022 Bits about Money essay “Markets in power,” prompted by a SoftBank push notification asking him to cut his air…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)The charity that is also a time machine
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his 2022 Bits about Money essay on the infrastructure behind American charitable giving, prompted by the wave of AI-generated…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)The $900 million wire that wasn't final
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his 2022 Bits about Money essay "Finality does not exist in payments." It argues that how final a payment is depends on the…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Why banks pay you to use their credit cards
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his Bits about Money essay on how credit cards make money. The prompt was a listener who wondered how a card can include free…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Stranded? Who pays when air travel breaks
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) got stranded overnight after a backhoe severed a single fiber optic cable, knocking out air traffic control across much of the…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Forced vacations are a fraud control
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his Bits About Money essay "Financial systems take a holiday" (originally published February 2024), prompted by a conversation…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Everyone wants to be your wallet
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his Bits About Money essay on the business of wallets, with new commentary, prompted by paying his barber $100 over Venmo and…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)How AI detection actually works, with Pangram’s Max Spero
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Max Spero, co-founder and CEO of Pangram Labs, which builds models that identify AI-generated text and images. Max goes…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Two banks can't agree on fourth-grade math | Alex Elliott
Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) is joined by Alex Elliott (@alexpotato), who has spent his career in SRE and operations roles at financial firms ranging from…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)LLMs and the economics of Evil, Inc., with Manish Goregaokar
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Manish Goregaokar, a senior software engineer and member of the Rust security response team, to discuss what LLMs do to…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)The economics of putting germicidal light in every room, with Misha Gurevich and Vivian Belenky of Aerolamp
In this episode, Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Misha Gurevich, CEO of Aerolamp, and Vivian Belenky, its chief scientist and a researcher at Columbia…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Cheap cognition, supercharged surveillance, and AI risks, with Garrison Lovely
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Garrison Lovely, journalist and author of Obsolete: The AI Industry's Trillion-Dollar Race to Replace Us and How to…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)What you're actually getting paid in, with Leila Clark
In this episode, Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Leila Clark, founder of Stardrift and formerly a software engineer at Jane Street, to discuss her…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)What LLMs can and can't do for writers, with Clara Collier of Asterisk Magazine
Patrick McKenzie is joined by returning guest Clara Collier, editor-in-chief of Asterisk Magazine, to discuss how working writers and reporters actually use…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)YouTube economics now, with Justin Kuiper
In this episode of Complex Systems, Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Justin Kuiper, a longtime writer for MatPat's Game Theory family of channels and…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)The structural footprint of a bank run
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his 2023 essay "Deposit Franchises as Natural Hedges," written seven weeks into that year's banking crisis, making the case…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Forty ways to pay for coffee in Japan
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his 2021 essay "Payments in Japan," tracing how Japanese consumers navigate a landscape with dozens of competing payment…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)The factory behind your home loan
Patrick McKenzie reads from his 2022 Bits About Money essay on mortgages, making the case that a mortgage is best understood as a manufactured product, not a…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)How brokerage transfers actually work
Patrick McKenzie reads from his 2024 Bits About Money essay on ACATS, the Automated Customer Account Transfer Service that governs how Americans move…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Wrong numbers and why they survive, with Aaron Brown
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Aaron Brown, author of Wrong Number, to examine why institutions that produce bad statistics face so few consequences…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Defendant, Censor, Politico, Spy
The improbable but true story of how non-profits operating a private intelligence agency to combat terrorism decided to interfere with campaign infrastructure…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)How the SPLC became financial infrastructure
Patrick McKenzie reads from his latest Bits About Money essay, walking through why bank fraud charges are a prosecutor's favorite tool, how the Bank Secrecy…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)The honey badger of payments
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his classic Bits about Money essay on how checks shaped the entire American payments infrastructure, from the origins of ACH…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Cash received is not revenue earned
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his classic Bits about Money essay explaining why revenue recognition in software is more complicated than most engineers…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Your bank balance isn’t in the bank, and other alchemy
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his classic Bits About Money essay on why your bank deposit is not what you think it is. He explains the capital stack that…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Payroll, pins, and punch cards
In this episode of Complex Systems, Patrick McKenzie riffs on why public sector payroll modernization is even more likely to fail than the typical public…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Delve into compliance theatre
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) explains how compliance regimes designed to be viral brought many more firms into the scope of frameworks like SOC 2. This created a…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Understanding consumer debt collections: the underbelly of finance
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his classic Bits about Money essay explaining why the debt collection industry earns its “river of effluvia” metaphor. From…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Inference engineering and the real-world deployment of LLMs, with Philip Kiely
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) and Philip Kiely, early employee at Baseten, discuss the inference stack: the critical layer of software and hardware that sits…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Secrets designed to be divulged and other payment oddities
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) deconstructs the "original sin" of payments: building a global financial substrate on shared secrets that were distributed…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Understanding government procurement, with Luke Farrell
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) and Luke Farrell examine the structural "technical imagination" gap that prevents the US government from delivering high-fidelity…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)APIs of evil: studying fraud as infrastructure
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads an essay about "industrial-scale" fraud and why it should be treated as a professional business process rather than a series…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Why check cashing businesses exist
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads an essay about the business of check cashing, a misunderstood industry. He explains why cashing a check is actually a "new…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Claude Code makes several thousand dollars in 30 minutes, with Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) walks through a coding session with Claude Code to demonstrate what the fuss is about. The business problem: recovering failed…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)We should stop burning pharma trials’ lab notes, with Ruxandra Teslo
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Ruxandra Teslo to discuss why drug development keeps getting more expensive despite revolutionary new treatment…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Your support rep is also trapped in this call, with Des Traynor of Intercom
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) sits down with Intercom co-founder Des Traynor to examine customer support through the lens of Conway's Law, Goodhart's Law, and…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)The magic spell that makes banks give you your money back
Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) reads his latest Bits about Money essay explaining why he “loves Regulation E more than any rational person does.” He explains how…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)2025 in review, with Sammy Cottrell
Our annual year-in-review episode covers some recurring themes from 2025 and some behind-the-curtains discussion of running a podcast. Patrick McKenzie…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Gift cards and the fraud supply chain
For this week's holiday-inspired Complex Systems, Patrick reads his essay from Bits about Money on the gift card paradox: a legitimate payments rail, yet also…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Understanding perpetual futures
In this episode, Patrick McKenzie (patio11) walks through how perpetual futures work, from funding rates to liquidations to the surprise of automatic…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)The economics of discovery, with Ben Reinhardt
In this episode, Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Ben Reinhardt, founder of Speculative Technologies, to examine how science gets funded in the United…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Understanding equity at tech companies, with Billy Gallagher of Prospect
Why do billions of dollars of stock trade hands based on napkin math and vibes? Billy Gallagher, CEO of Prospect and former Rippling employee, joins Patrick…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)The $4,000 insurance policy designed to never pay out
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his essay on title insurance, a service designed to never be performed with a "laughably low" 5% loss ratio compared to 50-80%…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)How deposit insurance actually works
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his Bits about Money essay on deposit insurance, explaining this critical financial infrastructure, with some thoughts on its…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Home improvement lending with fewer bankers and more computers
In this episode, Patrick McKenzie reads his essay about the financial infrastructure that makes buying windows painless. When a window installer can originate…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Talking to the Bank of England about systemic risk and systems engineering
Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) shares his remarks to the Bank of England on critical vulnerabilities in financial infrastructure. Drawing from the July 2024…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Narrative, mastery, and character bleed in games, with Ricki Heicklen
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined again by Ricki Heicklen to discuss Metagame 2025, a conference where 250 attendees were divided into Purple and Orange…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Bits and bricks: Oliver Habryka on LessWrong, LightHaven, and community infrastructure
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Oliver Habryka, who runs Lightcone Infrastructure—the organization behind both the LessWrong forum and the Lighthaven…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Building institutions that bend towards truth, with Clara Collier of Asterisk Magazine
Patrick McKenzie is joined by Clara Collier, editor and publisher of Asterisk Magazine, to discuss how we create institutions that bend towards truth. Clara…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)How blogging went legit, with Substack CEO Chris Best
Patrick McKenzie is joined by Chris Best, CEO of Substack, to discuss how the platform created new economic infrastructure for independent media. They explore…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Prestige media, new media, and the US government, with Kelsey Piper
Patrick McKenzie is joined again by Kelsey Piper, who has co-founded "The Argument" to revive principled liberal discourse after witnessing how coordinated…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)AI alignment, with Emmett Shear
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Emmett Shear, co-founder of Twitch, former interim CEO of OpenAI, who now runs Softmax AI alignment. Emmett argues that…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Building software that survives contact with reality, with Will Wilson
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Will Wilson, CEO of Antithesis, to discuss the evolution of software testing from traditional approaches to…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Defense, drones, and military procurement, with Bean of Naval Gazing
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Bean, a pseudonymous defense industry expert, to explore the intellectual crossovers between military and civilian…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)AI and the great developer speed-up, with Joel Becker of METR
This week on Complex Systems, Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Joel Becker from METR. They discuss groundbreaking research on AI coding assistants. Joel…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)How banks actually work (and don't work)
In this solo episode, Patrick McKenzie reads his classic essay "Seeing Like a Bank," exploring why financial institutions often appear to have no memory of…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Building software in Japan, with Jim Weisser
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Jim Weisser, a serial entrepreneur and founder of SignTime, for an in-depth exploration of Japan's software market and…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Startup investing in Tokyo, with Coral Capital’s James Riney
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by James Riney, partner at Coral Capital, to explore Japan's transformation from a $700 million startup ecosystem to…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)How AI reshapes the craft of software engineering, with Yoav Tzfati
Patrick McKenzie is joined by AI researcher Yoav Tzfati to discuss “vibe coding” - using LLMs to delegate software engineering work to AI models. Yoav runs a…
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)Stacking the odds: Cate Hall on agency and outlier success
Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Cate Hall, CEO of Astera Institute and author of a forthcoming book on agency, to explore how individuals can…