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North Meets South Web Podcast

North Meets South Web Podcast

Jacob Bennett and Michael Dyrynda 199 Episodes Aug 13, 2026

Jake Bennett and Michael Dyrynda conquer a 14.5 hour time difference to talk about life as web developers. The podcast covers their experiences, challenges, and insights from working in different time zones. Each episode offers a blend of technical discussion and personal anecdotes. The show is aimed at web developers looking for relatable content and practical advice.

Episodes

Lobster rolls, boom parties, and crashed workers
Lobster rolls, boom parties, and crashed workers Aug 13, 2026 2820 In this episode, Michael and Jake recap Laracon US Boston, from Malaysian food and an undefeated dodgeball run to Laraprom, the great nachos-with-rice debate, conference logistics, Aaron Francis stepping into Laravel’s VP of Marketing and Community role, and a reminder to make room for silly software.Jake shares his work rebuilding Boom Party, the fast-paced Bomberman clone his team used
Wildfires, Fitness Tracking, and CCTV
Wildfires, Fitness Tracking, and CCTV Jul 17, 2026 2800 Michael and Jake catch up ahead of Laracon in Boston, beginning with Michael's increasingly complicated home extension. Jake shares a family trip to Cedar Point, then the conversation moves to how a Laravel Cloud weekend challenge inspired Michael to build Fitrack, a personal app for coordinating training around a single fitness goal. We then move on to home network and security upgrades,
Better API docs, customer support lessons, and cannoli
Better API docs, customer support lessons, and cannoli Jul 2, 2026 2702 Jake shares lessons from rebuilding a permissions system around flexible roles, temporary permission leases, and delegated user management. He also discusses adding Apple Pay and Google Pay, plus designing automated text-message payment flows that use numbered choices instead of complicated keywords.Michael talks about building lender integrations, the importance of adding real context to
Ten years of the show, conference ticketing, and database access
Ten years of the show, conference ticketing, and database access Jun 18, 2026 3425 In this milestone 10-year anniversary episode of North Meets South, Michael and Jake reflect on a decade of podcasting, from their first awkward recordings and early Laravel community connections to the friendships, conferences, and recurring topics that have shaped the show over nearly 200 episodes. A large part of the episode focuses on Michael's work-in-progress event ticketing platfor
Fast Laravel with Jason McCreary
Fast Laravel with Jason McCreary Jun 4, 2026 3370 Michael and Jake are joined by Jason "JMac" McCreary to talk the impact of AI on Laravel Shift and modern upgrade workflows, and his latest Fast Laravel course focused on edge caching and application performance.Jason shares how Laravel Shift has evolved alongside AI-assisted development, why recent Laravel releases have changed the upgrade landscape, and why he still believes there's val
Laracon AU CFP, developer storytelling, and audience engagement
Laracon AU CFP, developer storytelling, and audience engagement May 21, 2026 2792 Michael shares a behind-the-scenes look at organising Laracon AU 2026, including the new committee-based CFP review process, the tooling built to manage the talk submissions, and how AI-assisted workflows helped shape the final conference schedule. The conversation dives into balancing technical depth with audience engagement, designing conference cadence to avoid cognitive overload, and
Unused APIs, Passport testing traps, and local AI bottlenecks
Unused APIs, Passport testing traps, and local AI bottlenecks May 7, 2026 2177 In this episode, Michael shares details from a major internal platform shift at work, including the decision to completely remove an underused public JSON API and rebuild integrations around real customer needs instead of hypothetical use cases. The conversation dives deep into Laravel Passport, Sanctum, OAuth flows, request authorisation, and some tricky edge cases around testing authent
Gents on Gent with David Hemphill
Gents on Gent with David Hemphill Apr 23, 2026 3635 Michael and Jake are joined by David Hemphill to discuss David's macOS app Gent, a task runner built on the "Ralph loop" pattern for AI-powered coding workflows.The conversation covers how Gent takes a project requirements document (PRD), breaks it into small tasks that fit within a single context window, and runs them sequentially or in parallel using copy-on-write clones and Git worktre
Flight booking mistakes, Laracon AU, and dead letters
Flight booking mistakes, Laracon AU, and dead letters Apr 10, 2026 2961 In this episode, Michael and Jake catch up ahead of Laracon and share a wild travel story involving flight changes, third-party booking headaches, and expensive rebooking.Jake then shares a fun personal highlight: attending the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship and watching Michigan win.The conversation shifts into development work, where Jake dives into building a centralised system for
OIDC, bastion hosts, and production safety
OIDC, bastion hosts, and production safety Mar 20, 2026 2291 In this episode, Jake and Michael dive into modern infrastructure security practices, sparked by an annual audit and the painful process of rotating AWS IAM tokens. That experience leads into a broader discussion on why long-lived credentials in GitHub Actions are risky, and how OIDC (OpenID Connect) enables a more secure, short-lived, role-based alternative.Show linksScout SuiteOpenID Co
Worktree structures, workflow events, and enum metadata
Worktree structures, workflow events, and enum metadata Mar 6, 2026 2694 In this episode, we discuss using `claude --worktree` to spin up parallel feature work, and the unexpected friction that can arise when your editor doesn’t play nicely with nested worktrees.Jake shares his experience running multiple Claude agents in parallel and problems that surfaced in PhpStorm. Michael explains how he structures worktrees differently, avoiding those issues, and the tw
Charging chaos, corona discharge, and vector embeddings
Charging chaos, corona discharge, and vector embeddings Feb 20, 2026 2574 Michael and Jake discuss Jake's device charging chaos, household optimisation, international power outlets, and vector embeddings.Show linksGitryinMagnetic 3-in-1 wireless chargerDesktop charging station 12-in-1Corona dischargeLaracon US ElevenLabsDaily Dose of DS (Data Science)MstyRetrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)Laravel AI

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