Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)

Episodes

Payroll, pins, and punch cards

April 2, 2026

Why government payroll projects implode due to hidden rules, and how private payroll providers became essential, state-deputized tax collectors.

Delve into compliance theatre

March 26, 2026

Patrick McKenzie dissects the Delve scandal, exposing 'compliance theatre,' the viral nature of SOC2, and the line between startup naughtiness and fraud.

Understanding consumer debt collections: the underbelly of finance

March 19, 2026

Unpacking consumer debt collection: a broken system built on bad data, legal exploitation, and scalable abuse of vulnerable debtors.

Inference engineering and the real-world deployment of LLMs, with Philip Kiely

March 12, 2026

Explore inference engineering, the engine driving real-world LLM deployment. Learn about agentic systems, open models, and future AI adoption.

Secrets designed to be divulged and other payment oddities

March 5, 2026

Payment security has been a decades-long game of whack-a-mole, evolving from leaky shared secrets like CVVs to smartphone-based authentication.

Understanding government procurement, with Luke Farrell

February 26, 2026

Government contracting is a web of legacy rules and vendor capture, leading to poor citizen services. Experts discuss paths to reform.

APIs of evil: studying fraud as infrastructure

February 12, 2026

Fraud isn't random; it's infrastructure. By studying the 'APIs of evil,' we can learn to better defend our own complex systems.

Claude Code makes several thousand dollars in 30 minutes, with Patrick McKenzie

January 29, 2026

Patrick McKenzie demonstrates how Claude Code solved a real, revenue-losing business problem in 30 minutes, showcasing a seismic shift in coding.

We should stop burning pharma trials’ lab notes, with Ruxandra Teslo

January 22, 2026

Biopharma R&D productivity is declining. Ruxandra Teslo's CTD Project aims to reverse this by creating a public library of failed trials' data.

Your support rep is also trapped in this call, with Des Traynor

January 15, 2026

AI is reshaping customer service, moving beyond siloed orgs and flawed metrics to deliver coherent, instant support and create new career paths.

The magic spell that makes banks give you your money back

January 8, 2026

Regulation E is the powerful, decades-old consumer protection law that makes banks liable for fraud, a rule now being challenged by Zelle.

2025 in review, with Sammy Cottrell

January 3, 2026

A year in review of Complex Systems: Exploring AI's impact on coding & art, top episodes, and laundering niche ideas into corridors of power.

Gift cards and the fraud supply chain

December 26, 2025

Intentional regulatory carve-outs and outsourced program management create a gift card "accountability sink," leaving scam victims with no recourse.