More than a refresh: Conversations with the most interesting people you've never met

Hosted by Joshua Drake

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126

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Oct 2026

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About the show

More than a Refresh is a new podcast dedicated to learning about data and the people behind it through lively conversation, diverse topics, and engaging guest speakers. We explore professional trends within the ecosystem including trouble spots, privacy, equity, democratization, and future directions. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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60 recent

October 27, 202617 min

MTAR T3D Sessions: Why AI Needs So Much Compute | Better AI 3/6

Why does current AI need so much compute to produce an answer? In episode three of “Better AI,” our six-part series from More Than a Refresh Presents: T3D Sessions, Reza Rassool of Kwaai and JD Drake begin a two-part look at faster AI. They compare current neural networks with biological intelligence, which can learn while thinking and make a fast initial decision without processing every detail first. Reza explains that current AI separates training from inference and passes input through multiple layers before producing a result. The connections between those layers can cause computation to grow quadratically as inputs expand, while larger context windows add further load. He also contrasts human memory with LLM weights, where a specific fact cannot be located and edited directly. The episode closes with Kwaai’s research into the “blink transform,” an approach intended to change the relationships within a neural network so computation grows linearly rather than quadratically as the network increases in size. Learn more about Kwaai and its work at https://kwaai.ai .

October 20, 202611 min

MTAR T3D Sessions: Understanding PostgreSQL Query Plans and Testing Real Workloads.

EXPLAIN shows the query plan, but understanding why PostgreSQL chose it can take more digging. Testing how a database will behave under a real workload brings its own challenges, especially when a benchmark doesn’t reflect the application you support. In this Postgres Wishlist episode, Hunter O’Brien, Junior Systems Administrator and Junior DBA at Command Prompt, joins JD to talk through the tools he wishes were easier to use. His experience adapting pgbench tests leads to a conversation about reproducing application workloads and the complications of using production data in a test environment. On query plans, he wants clearer EXPLAIN documentation and more insight into the planner’s decisions. Hunter also wants a quick way to generate an entity relationship diagram (ERD) when working with unfamiliar schemas, particularly when the best documentation is a busy senior developer. Some of these needs have existing tools or workarounds; the challenge is making them practical for everyday database work.

October 15, 202619 min

MTAR T3D Sessions | When Postgres Is Enough | Replacing Valkey with PostgreSQL (Part 2)

In Part 2 of "When Postgres Is Enough", Michael Cooper and JD examine what it took for AgLedger to trust PostgreSQL with work previously split between PostgreSQL and Valkey. Supporting two databases meant maintaining separate schemas, backups, restores, and state that had to stay coordinated. PostgreSQL did not need to outperform Valkey at every task. It only needed to handle AgLedger’s workload well enough to make the second system unnecessary. Michael explains how pg-boss allowed him to move queue and rate-limiting work into PostgreSQL, and why managing connections became a more important constraint than memory. He also describes a three-hour test that subjected the system to multiple AI agents, interruptions, mutations, and adversarial attacks. PostgreSQL continued handling the workload without issue. The conversation also covers RDS IOPS, long-running snapshots, database bloat, and vacuum behavior. Once Michael trusted PostgreSQL as more than a place to store data, he began moving more schema and record structure out of application code and into the database, reducing recompilation work and making customer deployments more flexible. This episode explores the point where PostgreSQL stops being only the database and becomes the system coordinating the application around it.

October 13, 202612 min

MTAR T3D Sessions: Why PostgreSQL Prioritizes Reliability

James Nelson’s Postgres Love Letter comes down to reliability: being able to depend on the database as the software around it changes. In this T3D Session, James, Founder and CTO of PgCache, joins JD to explore the benefits and frustrations of PostgreSQL’s conservative approach to development. Protecting existing behavior matters to the people running applications, but so does fixing limitations they encounter in production. JD recalls earlier struggles over timestamp behavior, while James considers how forks give developers room to experiment with changes that could eventually inform core PostgreSQL. The conversation also looks at pluggable storage and the practical needs behind new extensions. James closes with the problem that led him to build PgCache: serving files at the edge while authorization requests still had to travel back to a central database.

October 8, 202647 min

MTAR 61: AI Coding and the Business of Open Source

If AI makes software easier to build, what makes it worth paying for? Lev Kokotov, creator of PgDog, joins JD for a conversation about building an open source business when writing code is becoming easier to automate. Lev uses AI daily, but sees the value of his work in the experience needed to operate software that customers depend on. That raises a practical question: when does building something yourself make sense, and when is a supported product worth the money? PgDog brings that question into focus. Drawing on his experience at Instacart, Lev explains his approach to scaling PostgreSQL through load balancing and sharding, including the operational challenges that remain once the code is written. He and JD examine what customers get from paid support and how to build a business around software people can use for free. The conversation also reaches beyond software. JD and Lev share examples of AI making their own work easier, but differ on how society will adapt as more tasks become automated. Their exchange explores what those changes could mean for people whose livelihoods depend on the work AI can now help perform.

October 6, 20269 min

MTAR T3D Sessions: Real-Time Materialized Views in PostgreSQL

What would it take for PostgreSQL materialized views to stay current as the underlying data changes? In this Postgres Wishlist episode, Brian joins JD to explore his request for real-time materialized views. Brian has built trigger-based solutions for simpler cases, but keeping aggregate results up to date becomes more involved as queries grow complex. For applications such as a live scoring site, waiting for the next refresh means showing results that no longer reflect the latest activity. The conversation explores possible approaches and their trade-offs, then turns to a more targeted request: refreshing only the relevant portion of a materialized view. If only some customers have new activity, why recalculate results for everyone? Brian and JD consider what more flexible refresh behavior could offer and the implementation questions that remain open.

October 1, 202622 min

MTAR T3D Sessions: Can AI Work with Encrypted Data? | Better AI 2/6

Can an AI service work with your data without seeing it? In part two of Better AI, our six-part series from More Than a Refresh Presents: T3D Sessions, Reza Rassool of Kwaai and JD explore how homomorphic encryption could protect the information people share with AI systems. Reza explains how computations can run on encrypted data, with encrypted results returned to the user for decryption. He describes the performance challenges of fully homomorphic encryption and Kwaai’s research into partially homomorphic approaches intended to run on consumer laptops. The conversation also introduces Virtual Private Knowledge (VPK), a protocol Kwaai is developing to let users access AI compute while keeping their data private from the service provider. Reza outlines plans for a Linux Foundation working group focused on homomorphic encryption, while JD asks what would lead major AI providers to adopt this approach. Learn more about Kwaai and its work at https://kwaai.ai .

September 29, 202610 min

MTAR T3D Sessions: Adding Schema Change Events to PostgreSQL Logical Replication

PostgreSQL logical replication can provide a selective stream of data changes, but what happens when the schema itself changes? James Nelson, Founder and CTO of PgCache, shares his Postgres wishlist: more information about DDL and schema changes in the logical replication stream. For systems that use replication events to keep a cache current, a dropped table can create a serious blind spot when there is no corresponding event to invalidate its cached data. James and JD explore why consuming the binary replication stream is not always a practical alternative, including the volume of cluster-wide data and potential security concerns. They also consider possible workarounds using custom messages and triggers, and what a lightweight, opt-in approach could make possible for PostgreSQL extensions.

September 24, 202621 min

MTAR T3D Sessions | When Postgres Is Enough | From SaaS to Self-Hosted (Part 1)

We're kicking off When Postgres Is Enough, a new three-part T3D series with Michael Cooper, founder of AGLedger. Michael and JD follow how a data-sovereignty requirement put an entire application stack on trial, and why PostgreSQL kept winning. In Part 1, Michael explains how AGLedger started with a conventional AWS-based SaaS architecture. The product records AI agents' intentions and reported actions, preserving context so work can resume later. Keeping that information inside the customer's environment meant rethinking the product as a self-contained service that could operate without phoning home. PostgreSQL was already part of the stack through RDS, but every additional dependency raised questions about what Michael would need to deploy and support. Drizzle was the first component he removed, after repeatedly having to work out whether database problems came from ORM configuration or SQL. This opening episode traces the decisions behind that shift toward self-hosting and a simpler stack. It sets up the central question of the series: how much of what you're building actually needs something beyond PostgreSQL?

September 17, 202621 min

MTAR T3D Sessions: AI Safety Starts with Data Ownership | Better AI 1/6

This episode launches Better AI, a new six-part series from More Than a Refresh Presents: T3D Sessions, with Reza Rassool of Kwaai and JD. The series opens with a question about AI safety: who controls the data you share with AI tools? The conversation raises a practical question about how much control they retain when they depend on someone else’s platform. Reza Rassool: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rezarassool/ Kwaai: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kwaailab/