patchperfect is officially at episode 21 and legal. Today we dive into the tech landscape shaping 2026, guided by futurist and Forbes columnist Bernard Marr, whose work I genuinely love. We walk through his biggest predictions for the year including AI’s growing energy crisis, the shift to practical quantum computing, and how agentic AI is about to reshape the way we work. We also explore why human nuance, taste and emotional intelligence become real competitive advantages as AI moves from reaction to reinvention.

In the lifestyle segment, we look ahead to 2026 with my friend Liz Cox, a postdoctoral research scientist at Harvard Medical School. We break down the key workwear and wellness trends we expect to see next year and how to stay grounded, stylish and confident heading into January.

A futurist guided tech deep dive, a 2026 lifestyle preview and a full new year glow up in one episode.

This week on patch we kick it off with the 2025 Spotify Wrapped drop. Then, a spotlight on Mira Murati, former OpenAI CTO and now founder of Thinking Machines Labs. Raised in post-communist Albania, she found stability in math and physics before building a career across Goldman Sachs Tokyo, Tesla’s Model X and Autopilot, Leap Motion, and ultimately OpenAI, where she helped shape dialogue-based interfaces like ChatGPT’s. Her new startup’s tool, Tinker, makes fine-tuning models like Llama surprisingly simple, even with minimal code.

In the lifestyle segment, we peek at her crisp personal style, including that clean, minimalist 2024 Met Gala look... to get the human side of one of AI’s most influential builders.

This week on patch: a quick AI update on Google’s “Nano Banana Pro” (thinking partner > pretty pics), then a primer on privacy in 2025 with Canadian lawyer & privacy pro Neil Proudfoot (views expressed on this show are his own).

In this episode, Neil explains what privacy truly means in 2025, how AI systems collect and learn from personal data, and why global regulation is splitting into two competing philosophies: Europe’s rights-first model and America’s innovation-first approach. We also unpack Law 25, Canada’s strongest privacy law to date, and what Canadians should know before trusting any AI tool with their data. Plus Neil's A-D-S checklist: Autonomy, Dignity, Safety. In the lifestyle segment we chat with Neil about how he’s staying grounded as a new dad.