All episodes

Predicting The Future

Predicting The Future

17m 42s

AI headlines are everywhere—and many claim they know exactly what’s coming next.

In this episode, Teresa Torres and Petra Wille push back on that certainty. They explain why people are bad at predicting the future and why betting on a single outcome can be risky.

Instead, they share a more useful approach: scenario planning. Explore multiple possible futures, extract what matters, and use it to make better decisions today.

If you’re navigating AI-driven change, this episode will help you stay grounded without ignoring what’s coming.

Product Work Is Relationship Work

Product Work Is Relationship Work

18m 4s

As AI makes it easier than ever to generate ideas and build products, some people are asking: Do we still need product managers?

In this episode of All Things Product, Petra Wille and Teresa Torres argue that the real work of product management isn’t going away anytime soon. While AI can help build things faster, it can’t replace the relationship work required to align stakeholders, navigate competing priorities, and create shared understanding across teams.

They explore why many product teams become overly transactional, how curiosity unlocks better collaboration, and why investing in relationships actually helps teams move faster in the...

FOMO

FOMO

15m 54s

In the AI era, new tools seem to appear every week. It’s exciting—but it can also feel overwhelming. How do you keep up without burning out?

In this episode, Petra Wille and Teresa Torres talk about how they deal with FOMO when it comes to new technology—especially in the fast-moving world of AI. They share how they decide which tools are worth exploring, why they don’t try everything that trends on social media, and how focusing on real problems helps them go deeper instead of chasing every shiny new thing.

Teresa explains why she starts with opportunities and friction rather...

Product Builders

Product Builders

17m 30s

Is product management dead?

Petra Wille and Teresa Torres unpack the big question making the rounds at conferences: Is PM disappearing—or evolving?

Their take: product management isn’t dead. But the traditional product trio (PM, design, engineering) is collapsing into something new.

AI is raising the baseline. More of the repeatable 80% can now be built by anyone with the right tools. The future belongs to “product builders” — people with a shared foundation across disciplines and deep expertise in one area.

If you work in product, design, or engineering, this episode is your signal to start upskilling.

Bad Advice

Bad Advice

16m 52s

What happens when AI starts giving advice in your voice — advice you’d never actually give?

In this episode, Petra Wille and Teresa Torres unpack the rise of AI “clones” built from podcast transcripts and public content. They explore where experimentation is exciting, where it crosses ethical lines, and what happens when mediocre AI outputs get attributed to real people.

They discuss IP, open-sourced transcripts, pirated books in LLMs, inference costs, and the uncomfortable question: if anyone can prompt “act like Teresa,” how do creators make a living?

This isn’t anti-AI. It’s a nuanced conversation about quality, consent, and remembering...

Staying Sane

Staying Sane

27m 49s

When the world feels like it’s spinning out, it can be hard to stay grounded—especially if you’re someone who cares deeply and pays attention. In this episode, Petra Wille and Teresa Torres talk about what it looks like to stay sane (and still be helpful) when everything feels “bonkers.”

They share practical ways to cope without checking out: living your values in small, daily decisions; choosing where you invest your attention, time, and platform; and building bridges instead of feeding polarization. Along the way, they explore the idea of “under-complexity” (how oversimplified narratives make anxiety worse), how to seek more...

Kill Your Darlings

Kill Your Darlings

22m 7s

In this episode of All Things Product, Teresa Torres and Petra Wille tackle one of the hardest decisions in product and business: when—and how—to kill your darlings.

They dig into the uncomfortable middle ground between obvious failure and runaway success: products that are profitable, loved by customers, but fundamentally flatlining. Teresa shares candid stories from her own business about sunsetting products that were bringing in real revenue, including a decision that cut 40% of her income—on purpose.

Together, Petra and Teresa explore why mediocre success can be more dangerous than failure, how team structure and org design make sunsetting harder,...

Lost in the Woods

Lost in the Woods

22m 58s

Ever feel like your product team is “lost in the woods”? Petra Wille and Teresa Torres borrow a set of “lost person” patterns (what people tend to do when they realize they’re lost) and map them to how teams behave when strategy gets fuzzy, outcomes drift, or constraints aren’t clear.

They unpack five common moves—freezing, chasing shortcuts, following the first visible path, relying too heavily on intuition, and retracing your steps—and translate them into practical actions: when to stop and escalate, how to pressure-test a “shortcut” strategy, how to make more paths visible, and how to use principles and discovery...

Boundaries Between Product & Engineering

Boundaries Between Product & Engineering

13m 3s

Where exactly is the boundary between product and engineering—and what happens when it gets blurry?

In this episode, Teresa Torres and Petra Wille dig into a tension many product teams quietly struggle with: product managers taking on responsibility for bugs, tech debt, and even system architecture. What starts as “being helpful” often turns into burnout for PMs and lower-quality outcomes for everyone.

They unpack why this pattern shows up so often, how legacy IT mindsets and the “CEO of the product” myth contribute to the problem, and what healthy product–engineering collaboration actually looks like in modern product teams.

If you’ve...

Support System for Product Leaders

Support System for Product Leaders

17m 22s

Product leaders are overwhelmed — and it’s not just you.

Between shrinking headcount, constant AI disruption, economic uncertainty, and nonstop context switching, many product leaders are trying to do more with less while still protecting their teams. In this episode of All Things Product, Petra Wille and Teresa Torres unpack what real support for product leaders actually looks like.

They explore why product leaders often underinvest in themselves, how to think about delegation without guilt, and what kinds of support systems actually scale your impact — from executive assistants and research support to coaches and communities of practice. If you’re...