Talk Python To Me

Hosted by Michael Kennedy

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550

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Jun 2026

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EN-US

About the show

Talk Python to Me is a weekly podcast hosted by developer and entrepreneur Michael Kennedy. We dive deep into the popular packages and software developers, data scientists, and incredible hobbyists doing amazing things with Python. If you're new to Python, you'll quickly learn the ins and outs of the community by hearing from the leaders. And if you've been Pythoning for years, you'll learn about your favorite packages and the hot new ones coming out of open source.

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June 11, 2026Episode 5511 hr 48 min

#551: Stroll Down Startup Lane - 2026

If you've ever been to PyCon, you know one of the best parts of the expo hall is Startup Row, a stretch of booths where early-stage companies built on Python show off what they're creating. But only attendees get to walk that lane, so let's bring it to everyone. In this episode, we stroll down Startup Row together. We kick things off with the organizers, Jason and Shay, who share the program's origin story going back to Paul Graham and the PSF, plus some surprising stats, including two unicorns among the alumni. Then we meet five startups: Tetrix, bringing AI to institutional investing in private markets. Arcjet, security that lives inside your app as an SDK. Phemeral.dev, serverless hosting built for Python web apps. CapiscIO, an identity and authority layer for AI agents. And Pixeltable, a multimodal database from Marcel Kornacker, co-creator of Apache Parquet. See if you can spot the theme running through them all. Let's go for a walk. Episode sponsors AgentField AI Talk Python Courses Links from the show Guests Naunidh Bhalla: linkedin.com Grant Gittes: linkedin.com Marcel Kornacker: linkedin.com Beon de Nood: linkedin.com Chinmaya Joshi: linkedin.com David Mytton: linkedin.com Shea Tate-Di Donna: linkedin.com Jason Rowley: linkedin.com Azul Garza: github.com Renée Rosillo: linkedin.com Tetrix: tetrix.co Tetrix Jobs: tetrix.co Arcjet: arcjet.com Pixeltable: pixeltable.com Phemeral.dev: phemeral.dev CapiscIO: capisc.io Episode #551 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/551 Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm Theme Song: Developer Rap 🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong ---== Don't be a stranger ==--- YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython Bluesky: @talkpython.fm Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org X.com: @talkpython Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org Michael on X.com: @mkennedy

May 30, 2026Episode 5501 hr 2 min

#550: AI Contributions and Maintainer Load in Open Source

You wake up, brew the coffee, open GitHub, and there it is. Another pull request on your open source project. Thirteen thousand lines added. No issue filed first. No discussion. Just "here, please review this for me." Over the past year, GitHub activity has spiked roughly twelve times in a few short months, and a huge chunk of that signal is landing on the same small group of maintainers who were already stretched thin. The curl bug bounty got buried under AI-generated noise. Jazzband, the home of Django classics like pip-tools and the Django debug toolbar, hit what its maintainer called an "apocalypse" and started sunsetting. Even CPython just shipped fresh guidelines on AI-assisted contributions this week. So what does all of this actually look like from the receiving end of the pull request? On this episode, Paolo Melchiorre joins us to tell that story from inside the maintainer's chair. Paolo is a director of the Django Software Foundation, an organizer of PyCon Italy, a Django Girls coach, and he has spent the past year carefully collecting examples of how AI is reshaping open source contributions. The good, the bad, and the extra fingers. We dig into his PyCon US talk on AI-assisted contributions and maintainer load, why AI is best understood as an amplifier rather than a new kind of contributor, the wildly different policies across 86 open source foundations, whether projects banning AI today are reacting to last year's models. Episode sponsors AgentField AI Talk Python Courses Links from the show Guest Paolo Melchiorre: github.com DSF: www.djangoproject.com djangonaut-space: djangonaut.space PyCon Italia: 2026.pycon.it uDjango: github.com My PyCon US 2026 post: www.paulox.net AI-Assisted Contributions and Maintainer Load: www.paulox.net Senior Engineer Tries Vibe Coding: www.youtube.com Code Rabbit AI PR Reviews: www.coderabbit.ai GitHub Usage Graphs: github.blog Update on CPython's AI Policies: fosstodon.org High-Quality Chaos from Curl: daniel.haxx.se The Generative AI Policy Landscape in Open Source: redmonk.com Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com Episode #550 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/550 Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm Theme Song: Developer Rap 🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong ---== Don't be a stranger ==--- YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython Bluesky: @talkpython.fm Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org X.com: @talkpython Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org Michael on X.com: @mkennedy

May 25, 2026Episode 5491 hr 7 min

#549: Great Docs

Your documentation has two audiences now - humans reading the rendered HTML, and AI agents trying to make sense of your library. Rich Iannone and Michael Chow from Posit are back on Talk Python with a brand new Python documentation tool called Great Docs that takes both seriously. Rich is the creator of Great Tables, and before that the R package GT, the man has a serious eye for design, and he's pointed that energy at the Python docs ecosystem. We'll talk about how Great Docs spins up a polished site in three commands, why every page ships as Markdown for your favorite LLM, how it leans on Quarto for executable code blocks and tabbed install sections, and where it lands against Sphinx, MkDocs, and Zensical. Plus, you'll meet Tablin. Here we go. Episode sponsors Sentry Error Monitoring, Code talkpython26 Temporal Talk Python Courses Links from the show Guests Michael Chow: github.com Rich lannone: github.com Python Web Security with OWASP Top 10 and Agentic AI Course: talkpython.fm Great Docs: posit-dev.github.io/great-docs Great Tables: posit-dev.github.io GT Episode: talkpython.fm Sphinx: www.sphinx-doc.org mkdocs: www.mkdocs.org Zensical: zensical.org Hugo: gohugo.io Ghost: ghost.org Rs pkgdown: pkgdown.r-lib.org Quarto: quarto.org quickstart: posit-dev.github.io llms.txt file: llmstxt.org llms.txt: talkpython.fm mcp: talkpython.fm cli: talkpython.fm Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com Episode #549 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/549 Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm Theme Song: Developer Rap 🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong ---== Don't be a stranger ==--- YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython Bluesky: @talkpython.fm Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org X.com: @talkpython Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org Michael on X.com: @mkennedy

May 11, 2026Episode 5481 hr 8 min

#548: Event Sourcing Design Pattern

What if your database worked more like Git? Every change captured as an immutable event you can replay, instead of a single mutating row that quietly forgets its own history. That's event sourcing, and Chris May is back on Talk Python, fresh off our Datastar panel, to walk us through what it actually looks like in Python. We'll cover the core patterns, the libraries to reach for, when not to use it, and why event sourcing turns out to be a surprisingly good fit for AI-assisted coding. Episode sponsors Sentry Error Monitoring, Code talkpython26 Temporal Talk Python Courses Links from the show Guest Chris May: everydaysuperpowers.dev Intro to event sourcing e-book: everydaysuperpowers.gumroad.com Domain-Driven Design: The Power of CQRS and Event Sourcing: How CQRS/ES Redefine Building Scalable System: ricofritzsche.me DDD: www.amazon.com Understanding Eventsourcing (Martin Dilger): www.amazon.com Event Sourcing Explained using Football Video: www.youtube.com Why I finally embraced event sourcing and why you should too article: everydaysuperpowers.dev valkey: valkey.io diskcache: talkpython.fm eventsourcing package: github.com eventsourcing docs: eventsourcing.readthedocs.io John Bywater: github.com Datastar: data-star.dev Microconf: microconf.com Event Modeling & Event Sourcing Podcast: podcast.eventmodeling.org Python Package Guides for AI Agents: github.com Iodine tablets AI joke: x.com KurrentDb: www.kurrent.io Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com Episode #548 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/548 Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm Theme Song: Developer Rap 🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong ---== Don't be a stranger ==--- YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython Bluesky: @talkpython.fm Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org X.com: @talkpython Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org Michael on X.com: @mkennedy

May 6, 2026Episode 54759 min

#547: Parallel Python at Anyscale with Ray

When OpenAI trained GPT-3, they didn't roll their own orchestration layer. They used Ray, an open source Python framework born out of the same Berkeley research lab lineage that gave us Apache Spark. And here's the twist: Ray was originally built for reinforcement learning research, then quietly faded as RL hit a wall. Until ChatGPT showed up. Suddenly reinforcement learning was back, as the post-training step that turns a raw language model into something genuinely useful. Edward Oakes and Richard Liaw, two founding engineers behind Ray and Anyscale, join me on Talk Python to tell that story. We'll trace Ray from its RISE Lab origins at UC Berkeley to powering some of the largest training runs in the world. We'll talk about what Ray actually is, a distributed execution engine for AI workloads, and how a few lines of Python become work running across hundreds of GPUs. We'll cover Ray Data for multimodal pipelines, the dashboard, the VS Code remote debugger, KubRay for Kubernetes, and where Ray fits alongside Dask, multiprocessing, and asyncio. If you've ever stared at a single-machine Python script and thought, "there has to be a better way to scale this", this one's for you Episode sponsors Sentry Error Monitoring, Code talkpython26 AgentField AI Talk Python Courses Links from the show Guests Richard Liaw: github.com Edward Oakes: github.com Ray: www.ray.io Example code (we used for walk-through): docs.ray.io Getting Started with Ray: docs.ray.io Ray Libraries: docs.ray.io kuberay: github.com Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com Episode #547 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/547 Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm Theme Song: Developer Rap 🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong ---== Don't be a stranger ==--- YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython Bluesky: @talkpython.fm Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org X.com: @talkpython Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org Michael on X.com: @mkennedy

April 27, 2026Episode 5461 hr 3 min

#546: Self hosting apps for Python people

The cloud is convenient until it isn't. You upload your photos, sync your contacts, click through the cookie banners. Then prices go up again or you read about a family that lost their entire Google account over a medical photo sent to a doctor. At some point, the question shifts from "why would I run this myself?" to "why aren't I?" My guest this week is Alex Kretzschmar, head of DevRel at Tailscale, longtime host of the Self-Hosted podcast, and co-founder of Linuxserver.io. We cover what self-hosting really means in 2026, the apps worth running yourself like Immich and Home Assistant, why Docker Compose ties it all together, and how Tailscale lets you reach any of it from anywhere, without opening a single port. If you've been thinking about pulling your digital life back behind your own walls, this is your roadmap. Episode sponsors Temporal Talk Python Courses Links from the show Guest Alex Kretzschmar: alex.ktz.me Bitflip podcast: bitflip.show Self-Hosted podcast (Alex's previous show): selfhosted.show Perfect Media Server: perfectmediaserver.com KTZ Systems on YouTube: youtube.com/@ktzsystems Linuxserver.io (co-founded by Alex): linuxserver.io "How Tailscale Works" blog post: tailscale.com/blog/how-tailscale-works https://tailscale.com/: tailscale.com Self-hosted apps discussed Awesome Self-Hosted (GitHub list): github.com Immich (Google Photos alternative): immich.app Home Assistant: home-assistant.io Open Home Foundation: openhomefoundation.org Plausible Analytics: plausible.io Umami Analytics: umami.is Python integration for umami: pypi.org Pi-hole: pi-hole.net AdGuard Home: adguard.com NextDNS: nextdns.io Coolify: coolify.io Docker + ufw: docs.docker.com Storage, backup & filesystem OpenZFS: openzfs.org ZFS.rent (offsite ZFS replication): zfs.rent Backblaze: backblaze.com Hetzner Storage Box: hetzner.com DigitalOcean: digitalocean.com Secrets management mentioned OpenBao (open-source Vault fork): openbao.org HashiCorp Vault: hashicorp.com Bitwarden: bitwarden.com 1Password: 1password.com Hardware mentioned Proxmox VE: proxmox.com Minisforum MS01: minisforum.com Zima Board / Zima OS: zimaspace.com Other references Cory Doctorow on "enshittification" (Cory's blog where he coined the term): pluralistic.net Linus Tech Tips' WAN Show (Linus mentioned NAS-building going mainstream): linustechtips.com Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com Episode #546 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/546 Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm Theme Song: Developer Rap 🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong ---== Don't be a stranger ==--- YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython Bluesky: @talkpython.fm Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org X.com: @talkpython Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org Michael on X.com: @mkennedy

April 16, 2026Episode 5451 hr 6 min

#545: OWASP Top 10 (2025 List) for Python Devs

The OWASP Top 10 just got a fresh update, and there are some big changes: supply chain attacks, exceptional condition handling, and more. Tanya Janca is back on Talk Python to walk us through every single one of them. And we're not just talking theory, we're going to turn Claude Code loose on a real open source project and see what it finds. Let's do it. Episode sponsors Temporal Talk Python Courses Links from the show DevSec Station Podcast: www.devsecstation.com SheHacksPurple Newsletter: newsletter.shehackspurple.ca owasp.org: owasp.org owasp.org/Top10/2025: owasp.org from here: github.com Kinto: github.com A01:2025 - Broken Access Control: owasp.org A02:2025 - SecuA02 Security Misconfiguration: owasp.org ASP.NET: ASP.NET A03:2025 - Software Supply Chain Failures: owasp.org A04:2025 - Cryptographic Failures: owasp.org A05:2025 - Injection: owasp.org A06:2025 - Insecure Design: owasp.org A07:2025 - Authentication Failures: owasp.org A08:2025 - Software or Data Integrity Failures: owasp.org A09:2025 - Security Logging and Alerting Failures: owasp.org A10 Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions: owasp.org https://github.com/KeygraphHQ/shannon: github.com anthropic.com/news/mozilla-firefox-security: www.anthropic.com generalpurpose.com/the-distillation/claude-mythos-what-it-means-for-your-business: www.generalpurpose.com Python Example Concepts: blobs.talkpython.fm Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com Episode #545 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/545 Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm Theme Song: Developer Rap 🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong ---== Don't be a stranger ==--- YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython Bluesky: @talkpython.fm Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org X.com: @talkpython Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org Michael on X.com: @mkennedy

April 10, 2026Episode 5441 hr 11 min

#544: Wheel Next + Packaging PEPs

When you pip install a package with compiled code, the wheel you get is built for CPU features from 2009. Want newer optimizations like AVX2? Your installer has no way to ask for them. GPU support? You're on your own configuring special index URLs. The result is fat binaries, nearly gigabyte-sized wheels, and install pages that read like puzzle books. A coalition from NVIDIA, Astral, and QuanSight has been working on Wheel Next: A set of PEPs that let packages declare what hardware they need and let installers like uv pick the right build automatically. Just uv pip install torch and it works. I sit down with Jonathan Dekhtiar from NVIDIA, Ralf Gommers from Quansight and the NumPy and SciPy teams, and Charlie Marsh, founder of Astral and creator of uv, to dig into all of it. Episode sponsors Sentry Error Monitoring, Code talkpython26 Temporal Talk Python Courses Links from the show Guests Charlie Marsh: github.com Ralf Gommers: github.com Jonathan Dekhtiar: github.com CPU dispatcher: numpy.org build options: numpy.org Red Hat RHEL: www.redhat.com Red Hat RHEL AI: www.redhat.com RedHats presentation: wheelnext.dev CUDA release: developer.nvidia.com requires a PEP: discuss.python.org WheelNext: wheelnext.dev Github repo: github.com PEP 817: peps.python.org PEP 825: discuss.python.org uv: docs.astral.sh A variant-enabled build of uv: astral.sh pyx: astral.sh pypackaging-native: pypackaging-native.github.io PEP 784: peps.python.org Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com Episode #544 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/544 Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm Theme Song: Developer Rap 🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong ---== Don't be a stranger ==--- YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython Bluesky: @talkpython.fm Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org X.com: @talkpython Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org Michael on X.com: @mkennedy

April 1, 2026Episode 5431 hr 3 min

#543: Deep Agents: LangChain's SDK for Agents That Plan and Delegate

When you type a question into ChatGPT, the model only has what you typed to work with. But tools like Claude Code can plan, iterate, test, and recover from mistakes. They work more like we do. The difference is the agent harness: Planning tools, file system access, sub-agents, and carefully crafted system prompts that turn a raw LLM into something genuinely capable. Sydney Runkle is back on Talk Python representing LangChain and their new open source library, Deep Agents: A framework for building your own deep agents with plain Python functions, middleware hooks, and MCP support. This is how the magic works under the hood. Episode sponsors Sentry Error Monitoring, Code talkpython26 Agentic AI Course Talk Python Courses Links from the show Guest Sydney Runkle: github.com Claude Code uses: x.com Deep Research: openai.com Manus: manus.im Blog post announcement: blog.langchain.com Claudes system prompt: github.com sub agents: docs.anthropic.com the quick start: docs.langchain.com CLIs: github.com Talk Python's CLI: talkpython.fm custom tools: docs.langchain.com DeepAgents Examples: github.com Custom Middleware: docs.langchain.com Built in middleware: docs.langchain.com Improving Deep Agents with harness engineering: blog.langchain.com Prebuilt middleware: docs.langchain.com Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com Episode #543 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/543 Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm Theme Song: Developer Rap 🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong ---== Don't be a stranger ==--- YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython Bluesky: @talkpython.fm Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org X.com: @talkpython Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org Michael on X.com: @mkennedy

March 25, 2026Episode 5421 hr 4 min

#542: Zensical - a modern static site generator

If you've built documentation in the Python ecosystem, chances are you've used Martin Donath's work. His Material for MKDocs powers docs for FastAPI, uv, AWS, OpenAI, and tens of thousands of other projects. But when MKDocs 2.0 took a direction that would break Material and 300 ecosystem plugins, Martin went back to the drawing board. The result is Zensical: A new static site generator with a Rust core, differential builds in milliseconds instead of minutes, and a migration path designed to bring the whole community along. Episode sponsors Sentry Error Monitoring, Code talkpython26 Talk Python Courses Links from the show Guest Martin Donath: github.com Zensical: zensical.org Material for MkDocs: squidfunk.github.io Getting Started: zensical.org Github pages: docs.github.com Cloudflare pages: pages.cloudflare.com Michaels Example: gist.github.com Material for MkDocs: zensical.org gohugo.io/content-management/shortcodes: gohugo.io a sense of size of the project: blobs.talkpython.fm Zensical Spark: zensical.org Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com Episode #542 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/542 Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm Theme Song: Developer Rap 🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong ---== Don't be a stranger ==--- YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython Bluesky: @talkpython.fm Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org X.com: @talkpython Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org Michael on X.com: @mkennedy