Posts on Talk Python Blog

Introducing the new Talk Python web player

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 12:40:39 -0700

We expect that most people who listen to Talk Python do so through their podcast player apps on their phone or even on their laptops. But there are plenty of times that people end up on an episode page and would love to have a nice experience interacting with that episode as well. One really common example: you go back to an episode you discovered several years ago, and the chances it’s still on your device are low. Though we do keep our entire back catalog available in the RSS feed, most podcast players trim down what they keep locally.

Announcing Course Completion Certificates

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 19:39:51 -0700

I’m very excited to share that you can now generate course completion certificates automatically at Talk Python Training. What’s even better is our certificates allow you to one-click add them as official licenses and certifications on LinkedIn.

Remember last week, I added some really nice features to your account page showing which courses are completed and which ones you’ve recently participated in. Just start there. Find a course you recently completed, click certificate, and there is a Share to LinkedIn UI right there. It’s nearly entirely automated.

Updates from Talk Python - March 2026

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:04:09 -0700

There have been a bunch of changes to make the podcast and courses at Talk Python just a little bit better. And I wrote a few interesting articles that might pique your interest. So I thought it was time to send you all a quick little update and let you know what’s new and improved.

Talk Python Courses

Account Dashboard for courses

I spoke to a lot of users who said that it’s a bit difficult to jump back into your account and see which courses you were last taking. I can certainly appreciate that, especially if you have the bundle with every class is available. So I added this cool new dashboard that sorts and displays your progress through your most recent course activity as well as courses that you have finished.

Talk Python now has a CLI

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 15:39:55 -0800

TL;DR: Talk Python now has an open-source CLI tool (talk-python-cli) that lets you search 500+ podcast episodes, transcripts, guests, and training courses directly from your terminal. Install it with uv tool install talk-python-cli. It supports text, JSON, and markdown output: built for humans, scripts, and AI/LLMs alike.

Talk Python To Me has been running for over 10 years. Over that time, we have recorded an incredible amount of wisdom and history from the Python ecosystem. In fact, if you combine all our show notes, transcripts, and more, it totals over 7.5M words!

Announcing Talk Python AI Integrations

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:49:43 -0800

TL;DR: Talk Python now offers two AI integration features: an MCP server for real-time podcast data access in Claude, Cursor, and similar tools, plus an llms.txt file for AI assistants without MCP support. Search episodes, transcripts, guests, and courses directly from your AI.

We’ve just added two new and exciting features to the Talk Python To Me website to allow deeper and richer integration with AI and LLMs.

A full MCP server at talkpython.fm/api/mcp/docs
A LLMs summary to guide non-MCP use-cases: talkpython.fm/llms.txt

What is the Talk Python MCP server?

New to the idea of an MCP server? MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers are lightweight services that expose data and functionality to AI assistants through a standardized interface, allowing models like Claude to query external systems and access real-time information beyond their training data. The Talk Python To Me MCP server acts as a bridge between AI conversations and the podcast’s extensive catalog. This enables you to search episodes, look up guest appearances, retrieve transcripts, and explore course content directly within your AI workflow, making research and content discovery seamless.

Talk Python in Production Story

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 13:59:20 -0700

TL;DR: Michael published “Talk Python in Production,” a book telling the 10-year story of scaling talkpython.fm. It covers real-world Python DevOps lessons from a small team that runs 28 apps on a single server for under $65/month. Read the full backstory or get the book.

If you were a website that started from modest beginnings and grew over ten years to support a ton of features and a variety of users, wouldn’t it be great if someone told your story?

New Theme Song: Served In A Flask

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 11:55:42 -0700

TL;DR: Talk Python has a new theme song called “Served In A Flask.” It’s a geeky rap celebrating our migration from Pyramid to Quart (async Flask). Listen below or download it. Full lyrics included.

Those of you who were early listeners of Talk Python To Me might remember the amazing theme song we launched with: Developers, Developers, Developers by Smixx. Thanks to Smixx for letting us use his music for our intros.

Deep Dives Complete: 600K Words of Talk Python Insights

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 14:12:55 -0700

TL;DR: All 509 Talk Python episodes now have deep dive summaries. That’s 600,000 words of searchable, structured insights. Each deep dive is ~1,200 words (5-7 min read) and includes resources beyond the original show notes. They also supercharge our site search.

It’s been a real journey. I’m thrilled to announce that every single Talk Python To Me episode now has a deep dive analysis for that show. This short post is just a bit of a celebration (and heads up!) about this new way to learn from the podcast.

Introducing Episode Deep Dives at Talk Python

Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:10:54 -0800

Update: We just completed generating deep dives for every episode. Read more about that here.

TL;DR: Episode Deep Dives are structured summaries of each Talk Python episode. They include guest background, key topics organized by theme, links to tools/libraries mentioned, and notable quotes. Think “show notes on steroids.” Available for episodes #440+ with more being added.

Have you ever listened to a podcast episode and later wished there was a quick, detailed way to revisit the best points, without scrubbing through the entire recording again? That’s exactly why we launched Episode Deep Dives at Talk Python. This feature provides a rich, structured walkthrough of each podcast episode, giving you a snapshot of all the essential details and takeaways in one convenient place. Whether you’re curious about a specific tool our guest mentioned or you want to recall the main ideas days after listening, Episode Deep Dives makes it easy to dive right back into the heart of the conversation.

Top Talk Python Episodes of 2024

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 09:28:14 -0800

We’re rapidly closing in on the end of 2024, and it’s been fun to dive into the podcast data and see if we can highlight some of our most well-received episodes of the year. In this post, I break down the details of our top 5 most popular episodes (by downloads). Here they are!

TL;DR: The top 5 Talk Python episodes of 2024 by downloads:

Awesome Text Tricks with NLP and spaCy with Vincent D. Warmerdam
Being a Developer with ADHD with Chris Ferdinandi
Versioning Web APIs in Python with Stanislav Zmiev
Pandas and Beyond with Wes McKinney
State of Flask and Pallets in 2024 with David Lord

Hetzner policy changes, regret?

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 08:45:10 -0800

TL;DR: No regrets. Hetzner raised prices ~20% and reduced bandwidth limits. For us, that’s about $6/month more. We still pay ~$35/month at Hetzner vs $143/month at Digital Ocean. Still an easy win.

Timing is everything. One month ago, we moved to Hetzner for our core infrastructure. Days later, Hetzner announced what was received by the tech space as a big change. There’s a whole Hacker News thread on it. Some folks asked me if this made me regret changing to Hetzner or commented that I probably regret the move. Well, let me tell you about the changes, then I’ll share my thoughts.

Talk Python rewritten in Quart (async Flask)

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 19:26:23 -0800

TL;DR: We migrated talkpython.fm from Pyramid to Quart (async Flask). Why Quart over FastAPI or Django? Flask’s simplicity + Quart’s true async support. The migration took a few days, changed 5,000+ lines of code, and page response times dropped from 42ms to 8ms. I also created chameleon-flask so we didn’t have to rewrite our templates.

The code powering talkpython.fm is highly modern and leverages many new Python concepts. It makes extensive use of Pydantic with its entire data access layer powered the Beanie ODM. It has type hints at all the architectural boundaries (e.g. data access layer public functions). But we haven’t been able to fully take advantage of these benefits because our web framework has become frozen in time.

We've moved to Hetzner

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 18:11:33 -0800

[Update Dec 8, 2024: Since writing this article and making this move Hetzner has changed their limits and pricing. Since people have been asking, I posted an update Hetzner policy changes, regret?. I’ve also updated the numbers below accordingly. TL;DR: Does it change the benefit or decision for us? Nope!]

TL;DR: We moved from Digital Ocean to Hetzner’s US data center. Benchmarks showed Hetzner has 8x faster bandwidth and 1.2x faster CPUs at nearly 5x lower cost. We’re saving ~$1,500/year for better servers.

Cloud-native essay dives into our infrastructure

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 11:41:25 -0800

TL;DR: I coined the term “stack-native” as the opposite of cloud-native. It means building your app with just enough full-stack building blocks to run reliably with minimal complexity. Talk Python runs 28 apps handling 9 million monthly requests on a single server for $65/month. An equivalent AWS setup would cost an estimated $1,226/month.

I just wrote an article entitled “Opposite of Cloud Native is?” It’s inspired by how we’re running things here at Talk Python:

Self-hosted Open Source and more

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 14:42:11 -0700

Time for another update from Talk Python (the podcast and courses). Here are a few fun things in that space since we last spoke.

TL;DR: I went deep on self-hosted infrastructure on Django Chat, discussed “Is Coding Dead?” on Teaching Python, share how I actually use LLMs for dev work (with real prompts), plus 6 new podcast episodes and our new NLP/spaCy course.

Why Talk Python runs on self-hosted open source

We’ve recently completely overhauled how we run our websites and APIs at Talk Python. It’s highly influenced by the whole “Leaving the Cloud” series of conversations I’ve mentioned here and there on some of my shows.

Platform Week and Some Fun New Python Tools

Sun, 28 Apr 2024 14:59:24 -0700

I’m back with a few new Talk Python To Me episodes that are pretty awesome, a couple of excellent tools, and a short summary of Platform Week at Talk Python.

TL;DR: New podcast episodes on GPT actions, supply chain security, serverless Python, and building a SaaS with AI. Plus tools (CloudFlare Python workers, PyCharm’s local LLM) and a recap of Platform Week where I knocked out 15 issues.

Latest Talk Python podcast episodes

Since we last spoke, I released a few really fun and inspiring episodes:

Michael's Keynote: The State of Python in 2024

Sat, 30 Mar 2024 15:09:18 -0700

I’m excited to be writing to you again. Last time I said I’d be trying this new format and I asked a bunch of you what you thought. You all told me you overwhelmingly prefer a personal message like this so I’ll keep writing as long as you all keep enjoying them.

TL;DR: My PyCon Philippines keynote is now on YouTube, we have a VS Code AMA coming up, course prices go up tomorrow, and I’ve got 6 tools you’ll want to check out (including LMStudio for running local LLMs).

Build An Audio AI App Course, Plus Data Doodling

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 15:15:59 -0700

Michael here, writing you a more conversational email about what’s new at Talk Python To Me. This is something I going to try for a while rather than just headlines of new podcasts we’ve been sending to the friends of the show. « That’s you, thank you! I hope you enjoy this format.

TL;DR: In this update: our new free AI course, the Rock Solid Python typing course, uv (the pip replacement everyone’s talking about), Djangonauts, and a fun Data Doodling video.