Dan Beksha

Private audio notes

Learning podcast

Lessons I create to understand AI, energy, and housing. Each starts with a question and works toward a useful explanation, with research and excerpts from people who know the subject. Episode notes are public; listening access is shared individually.

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Start with a question

AI · Start with 01How does a language model learn anything? →Energy · Start with 08Why can’t new power plants just connect to the grid? →Housing · Start with 14Does building housing really lower rents? →

Jul 16, 202612:07

13 — Energy — Is permitting an energy technology?

Why process design can change deployment as much as a better turbine, reactor, or well.

Available in the private feed.

Episode notes & sources

The impetus

Thomas Hochman’s core permitting-reform reading list ↗

The reading list treats process design as a field worth learning in its own right—the premise behind asking whether permitting can function like an energy technology.

Source audio in this episode

Evidence and further reading

Jul 15, 202611:23

12 — Energy — Why build the next nuclear plant at an old coal plant?

Reusing transmission, industrial land, power-sector workers, and community relationships.

Available in the private feed.

Episode notes & sources

The impetus

TerraPower at a closed Wyoming coal plant ↗

The project makes the energy transition look less like replacement and more like reuse. The question is which parts of an industrial place—grid connection, workforce, land, and trust—retain value.

Source audio in this episode

Evidence and further reading

Jul 14, 202611:51

11 — Energy — Why is nuclear expensive if the technology already works?

Nuclear cost through construction finance, project delivery, standardization, and repetition.

Available in the private feed.

Episode notes & sources

The impetus

The 88–2 Senate vote to speed nuclear licensing ↗

The unusually broad vote sharpened the puzzle: if the technology works and political support exists, why is new nuclear still so difficult to deliver?

Source audio in this episode

Evidence and further reading

Jul 13, 202612:38

10 — Energy — What changed in geothermal?

How oil-and-gas drilling capabilities may turn underground heat into scalable clean power.

Available in the private feed.

Episode notes & sources

The impetus

Fervo’s 70% reduction in drilling time ↗

The drilling result suggests a sharper question than whether underground heat exists: can oil-and-gas learning curves make much more of it economically recoverable?

Source audio in this episode

Tim Latimer on geothermal’s cost curve ↗

Tim Latimer, speaking with Bill Loveless on Columbia Energy Exchange. 17 seconds, about 3:08 into this episode.

More source audio

Evidence and further reading

Jul 12, 202612:30

09 — Energy — Will AI break the grid—or finance the next one?

How data-center demand could shift costs, bypass the grid, or underwrite new supply.

Available in the private feed.

Episode notes & sources

The impetus

Eli Dourado on off-grid solar data centers ↗

The proposal reframes AI load as a design choice: wait for the grid, shift costs onto it, or build a new power system around the data center.

Source audio in this episode

Evidence and further reading

Jul 11, 202612:31

08 — Energy — Why can’t new power plants just connect to the grid?

Grid studies, upgrade costs, project withdrawals, and the interconnection queue.

Available in the private feed.

Episode notes & sources

The impetus

Jesse Jenkins on the interconnection queue ↗

The deceptively simple problem is that hundreds of gigawatts of proposed clean power cannot connect. The episode asks what the queue is actually doing—and why projects keep falling out of it.

Source audio in this episode

Evidence and further reading