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Sidecar Sync
Welcome to Sidecar Sync: Your Weekly Dose of Innovation for Associations. Hosted by Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias, this podcast is your definitive source for the latest news, insights, and trends in the association world with a special emphasis on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its pivotal role in shaping the future. Each week, we delve into the most pressing topics, spotlighting the transformative role of emerging technologies and their profound impact on associations. With a commitment to cutting through the noise, Sidecar Sync offers listeners clear, informed discussions, expert perspectives, and a deep dive into the challenges and opportunities facing associations today. Whether you're an association professional, tech enthusiast, or just keen on staying updated, Sidecar Sync ensures you're always ahead of the curve. Join us for enlightening conversations and a fresh take on the ever-evolving world of associations.
Episodes
152 episodes
Will AI End Us All? | 152
The people building AI are starting to sound scared of what they're building. Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias take on the AI safety debate that broke into public view this September: a researcher's resignation from Anthropic, alignment lead ...
Fundamentals of AI, Part 2 | 151
Intelligence is turning into a resource you can scale like electricity, and that shift changes what's actually worth your attention in the AI news cycle. In part two of their refreshed Fundamentals of AI series, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Meji...
How Pfizer thinks about AI, Thomson 1.0, & Who's Behind Ox Alpha? | 150
A drug company CEO just made the best case yet for why platform choice matters less than most associations think. Marking three years of Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias dig into Pfizer's new playbook for organizing around AI, T...
Spirit Airlines' Data Sale, the Model Too Powerful to Ship, & the Landlords of AI | 149
When Spirit Airlines went bankrupt, its planes and gates weren't the only assets on the auction block — Google paid $10 million for its data. Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias use that sale to dig into what's actually valuable in AI right now:...
Fundamentals of AI, Part 1 | 148
AI may feel like it arrived overnight, but its foundations have been decades in the making. In part one of a refreshed Foundations of AI series, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack the essential concepts association leaders need to unders...
Open-Weight Models, AI Watermarks, and How to Run Your Own Hackathon | 147
Meta and NVIDIA are turning up the heat in the open-weight AI race, while Anthropic is taking a very different approach by watermarking Claude-generated content. Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack what these moves mean for associations, ...
AI-Powered Service for Landscape Architects with Torey Carter-Conneen | 146
In this interview episode, Mallory Mejias and Amith Nagarajan sit down with Torey Carter-Conneen, CEO of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), to explore what it really looks like when AI becomes embedded in everyday work. Torey ...
Rogue Agents, the Open-Weight Revolt, & Claude Gets Cheaper | 145
This week, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack a whirlwind of AI developments shaping the future of associations. From Anthropic’s release of a more efficient Claude Opus 5 with dynamic “effort dialing,” to a shocking autonomous AI cybera...
The Open-Weight Wave & the Push for AI Referees | 144
In this episode, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack a rapidly shifting AI landscape where powerful, low-cost open-weight models from Chinese labs are challenging the dominance of major U.S. players. They explore Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 and...
Suspenders & Double Dutch: Scaling AI Without Losing the Human Touch with Vicki Deal-Williams | 143
In this interview episode, Mallory Mejias and Amith Nagarajan sit down with Vicki Deal-Williams, CEO of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), to explore how a century-old organization is thoughtfully embracing AI. Vicki share...
The Data Episode | 142
It’s been 130 episodes since Sidecar Sync last did a true deep dive on data—and a lot has changed. In this refreshed 2026 perspective, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack what “association data” really means today, from structured CRM rec...
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Anthropic’s Rapid Model Releases, GPT 5.6’s Gated Launch, and The Real AI Jobs Story | 141
This week on Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias break down a whirlwind week in AI, from Anthropic’s rapid-fire Claude releases to OpenAI’s tightly controlled GPT 5.6 rollout. They unpack the surprising performance of mid-tier mode...
Argentina, ARD, & AI’s Environmental Footprint | 140
In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias explore one of the most provocative ideas in AI yet: companies owned and operated entirely by artificial intelligence. Sparked by a proposal out of Argentina, they unpack what ...
The $400 AI Startup with Jon Cheney | 139
What if building a million-dollar business no longer required a team, funding rounds, or even technical expertise? In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Mallory Mejias sits down with AI strategist and GenAIPI CEO Jon Cheney to explore how artificial...
AI Solves an 80-Year Mystery, Microsoft Agents Take Over, & Anthropic’s Claude Mythos vs. Fable | 138
In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Amith and Mallory explore three major developments shaping the future of AI. First, they unpack how an OpenAI model independently solved a decades-old mathematical problem—challenging long-held assumptions and p...
The 4 Modes of Working with AI, The Transformation Paradox, & Building a Learning Organization | 137
In this jam-packed “mini” episode, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias break down a whirlwind of recent AI model releases—from Anthropic, Alibaba, Microsoft, and beyond—and what they signal about the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Then, they div...
How AI Is Changing Scientific Publishing with Dr. Jessica Miles | 136
In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Mallory Mejias welcomes Dr. Jessica Miles, founder of The Informed Frontier, former VP of Strategy and Investments at Holtzbrinck, and advisory board member for Johns Hopkins University Pres...
Proactive Gemini Workflows, AI Mode’s Search Overhaul, & Antigravity-Powered Wearables | 135
In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack Google I/O 2026 and what it signals for the future of AI-powered work, search, and member engagement. They explore Google’s push toward proactive, agentic AI acro...
Enterprise Platforms Prepare for AI Agents & Diffusion LLMs Prove Their Production Value | 134
In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias dig into two major shifts happening beneath the surface of AI: how enterprise software vendors are responding to the rise of AI agents, and why diffusion language models may be...
Dark Databases & the State of AI Video | 133
In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias dig into the hidden world of “dark databases”—messy, undocumented systems quietly powering many associations—and explore DBAutoDoc, a new open-source tool from Amith and Thomas...
Claude's Design Coup & The Curse of Work Slop | 132
In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias dive into Anthropic’s latest moves with Claude Opus 4.7 and the new Claude Design, a conversational visual creation tool that can generate decks, prototypes, one-pagers, landin...
How Siri’s Co-Creator Predicts the Next AI Wave with Adam & Noah Cheyer | 131
What happens when you put a Siri co-creator and longtime AI pioneer together with a next-generation events strategist? Adam Cheyer—co-creator of Siri, founder of Viv Labs, and a builder behind several influential AI startups—and Noah Cheyer, fo...
The Little AI Models That Could | 130
This week on Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias trace one of the biggest stories in AI: how cutting-edge intelligence keeps getting compressed into smaller, faster, cheaper models. From GPT-4-era pricing to today’s open models lik...
An FBI Operative’s Guide to Cybersecurity, Deepfakes, and Modern Spycraft with Eric O’Neill | 129
In this interview edition of Sidecar Sync, Mallory sits down with Eric O’Neill—former FBI counterintelligence operative, attorney, cybersecurity expert, and founder of The Georgetown Group and NeXasure AI—whose career has spanned undercover FBI...
The Claude Mythos Leak & the Reality of Computer-Using Agents | 128
This week on Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack a whirlwind of Claude news, from Anthropic’s accidental “Mythos” leak and what it could signal about the next major leap in AI capability, to the increasingly practical realit...
