The Laravel Podcast

Matt Stauffer catches up with David Hemphill, co-creator of Laravel Nova and creator of the Beard CSS framework. They cover David’s years as an amateur MMA fighter, his punk rock roots, and why he keeps chasing flow states.

The conversation moves into how David uses Suno to prototype songs before producing them himself. It also covers why he hasn’t hand-written code in almost two years, plus deep dives into mechanical keyboard group buys, Tesla’s self-driving, and neighborhood bass fishing.
Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstauffer
David Hemphill on X - https://x.com/davidhemphill
David Hemphill Website - davidhemphill.com
Laravel Nova - https://nova.laravel.com
Beard CSS framework (on David’s GitHub, monarkee): https://github.com/monarkee/beard
Pat Miletich -https://www.espn.com/mma/fighter/_/id/2501404/pat-miletich
Miletich Fighting Systems - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miletich_Fighting_Systems
Suno - https://suno.com
Tycho, Dive (Matt’s background-music pick): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6ih1aKeETk
PostHog’s “product engineer” role  -https://posthog.com/careers/product-engineer
Sass - https://sass-lang.com/
Livemark - https://livemark.ai/
Omnitype Bauer Lite 65% - https://omnitype.com/products/bauer-lite
Happy Hacking Keyboard (HHKB) - https://happyhackingkb.com
Tactile Keychron 75% - https://www.keychron.com/collections/75-layout-keyboards
Keychron keyboards - https://www.keychron.com/
K2 Keyboard - https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-k2-wireless-mechanical-keyboard?_pos=1&_sid=a85eeb9c6&_ss=r
K3 Max Keyboard - https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-k3-max-qmk-via-wireless-custom-mechanical-keyboard?_pos=1&_psq=k3+max+keyboard&_psid=2b875253f&_ss=e
Fishbrain - https://fishbrain.com/ - User name: heyhemp
Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravel
Laravel Website - https://laravel.com/
Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/

----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/

Big thanks to the companies that support the show:

Flare by Spatie - http://flareapp.io and Performance Monitoring - http://flareapp.io/performance-monitoring

SerpAPI - https://serpapi.com?utm_source=laravel_podcast

The Laravel Podcast is brought to you by Tighten, your friendly neighborhood Laravel experts. Check us out at tighten.com and also by other sponsors you will hear about later in the episode. 

Matt Stauffer kicks off Season 8 of The Laravel Podcast with longtime friend Eric Barnes, creator of Laravel News, in a wide-ranging conversation that wanders well beyond code.

They talk about how Eric learned sales on a motorcycle dealership floor, running a business with Profit First, and how Laravel News is changing now that AI has taken away search traffic. Eric argues that editorial curation still matters. They also announce their new project, PHPNews , and Matt makes the case that PHP is the best ecosystem for LLM-driven development.

Along the way, they dig into building a low-stress life, celebrating your wins, and why success really comes down to time.
 
Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstauffer
Eric Barnes's Website -  https://ericlbarnes.com/
Laravel News - https://laravel-news.com/
2020 Episode with Eric Barnes - https://laravelpodcast.com/episodes/learning-keeping-up-to-date-with-eric-barnes
Eames Lounge Chair - https://www.eamesoffice.com/product/eames-lounge-chair-and-ottoman/
Profit First Book - https://mikemichalowicz.com/profit-first/
YNAB - https://www.ynab.com/
PHP News - https://phpnews.net/
Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravel
Laravel Website - https://laravel.com/
Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/

----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/
Big thanks to the companies that support the show:
Flare by Spatie - http://flareapp.io and Performance Monitoring - http://flareapp.io/performance-monitoring
SerpAPI - https://serpapi.com?utm_source=laravel_podcast

The Laravel Podcast is brought to you by Tighten, your friendly neighborhood Laravel experts. Check us out at tighten.com and also by other sponsors you will hear about later in the episode. 

In the Season 7 finale, Matt Stauffer talks with Sam Sappenfield, senior field marketing manager and two-time Laravel team member, about her unlikely path from athlete to journalism grad to marketer to Laravel's first dedicated events hire.

They get into why she left, why she came back, and how Laracon US talks on agentic programming turned her into a builder. Sam walks through shipping a Laracon photos app on Laravel Cloud, a Stripe-and-Printful generative art t-shirt store, and why building ruined HubSpot for her. 
Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstauffer
Sam Sappenfield on X - https://x.com/samsappenfield1
Sam’s Website - https://thesambrain.com/
Laracon Photos - https://laracon.us/photos
Building Ruined Hubspot for Me - https://thesambrain.com/building-ruined-hubspot-for-me
Generative Art Shirts - https://your-art-on-shirt.laravel.cloud/design
Solo - https://soloterm.com/
Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravel
Laravel Website - https://laravel.com/
Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/
Suggestion Box - https://suggest.gg/laravelpodcast

----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/

Big thanks to the companies that support the show:

Flare by Spatie - http://flareapp.io and Performance Monitoring - http://flareapp.io/performance-monitoring

Laracon AU - https://laracon.au

The Laravel Podcast is brought to you by Tighten, your friendly neighborhood Laravel experts. Check us out at tighten.com and also by other sponsors you will hear about later in the episode. 

In this episode, Matt Stauffer is joined by two of his oldest friends in the community — Michael Dyrynda and Jake Bennett, co-hosts of the Laravel News Podcast — for a Laracon-fueled catch-up that starts with golf, soccer, and adult swim lessons before turning to the framework.

They dig into the Laracon US highlights that stuck with them: rediscovering the joy of building "silly software," using AI as an educator for your own codebase, and the new releases they're most excited to ship — first-party image manipulation, the Laravel AI SDK's OpenAI-compatible provider, OG tag management, and Blade support in Pint.

Along the way, Matt talks rescue work and Laravel 5 apps in the wild, and Michael pulls back the curtain on what it actually takes to run Laracon AU.
Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstauffer
Michael Dyrynda on X - http://x.com/michaeldyrynda
Micheal Dyrynda on GitHub - http://github.com/michaeldyrynda  
Michael Dyrynda’s Website - dyrynda.com.au
Jake Bennett on X - http://x.com/jacobbennett
Jake Bennett on GitHub -  https://gitHub.com/jacobbennett
Jake Bennet’s Website - http://jakebennett.net/  
Christina Martinez's Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/2oUu9-jW6mg?si=rjckBIfr2wVCUKQA
Matt Stauffer’s Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/au9bIQsrh8k?si=BNJBMFIGFZR5oUqJ
Boom Party - https://boomparty.party/
Laracon AU - https://laracon.au/
Laravel News Podcast - https://podcast.laravel-news.com/
Mateus Guimaraes’s Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/Wb8qsfP2sJc?si=zSKc_EeVTv9wDA91
Will King’s Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/TlQm1fiQUZs?si=Dk2uZBgBHRcawsUC
Kent C. Dodd’s Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/zZPV_ggx5F8?si=88JRgSZ518lQhhp_
http://itch.io  - https://itch.io/
Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravel
Laravel Website - https://laravel.com/
Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/
Suggestion Box - https://suggest.gg/laravelpodcast

----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/

Big thanks to the companies that support the show:

Flare by Spatie - http://flareapp.io and Performance Monitoring - http://flareapp.io/performance-monitoring

Laracon AU - https://laracon.au

The Laravel Podcast is brought to you by Tighten, your friendly neighborhood Laravel experts. Check us out at tighten.com and also by other sponsors you will hear about later in the episode. 

In this episode, Matt Stauffer sits down with Taylor Otwell for a post-Laracon debrief covering the biggest announcements across the Laravel framework, AI tooling, and Laravel Cloud.

They walk through the new goodies — the LSP, Artisan Doctor, and CPX (think NPX for Composer) — before digging into how AI is reshaping the framework itself, from human-in-the-loop tooling in the AI SDK to treating AI as a framework primitive. On the Cloud side, Taylor breaks down managed queues, sub-second scale-to-zero for everything, and why he'd turn it on for every app.

The conversation closes on a bigger idea: Laravel as a multilingual, full-stack application framework — not just a PHP one — and what that means for the community it's about to welcome.
 
Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstauffer
Taylor on X - https://x.com/taylorotwell
Laravel Updates from Laracon US 2026  — Taylor Otwell - https://www.youtube.com/live/0P-VMS7JMQY?si=_kp2ob_OMmo8PSF6&t=24379
Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravel
Laravel Website - https://laravel.com/
Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/
Suggestion Box - https://suggest.gg/laravelpodcast

----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/

Big thanks to the companies that support the show:

Flare by Spatie - http://flareapp.io and Performance Monitoring - Performance Monitoring for Laravel & PHP | Flare

Laracon AU - https://laracon.au