Write, Change, Recall, Forget: MongoDB's Pete Johnson on How Retrieval Drives Agent Performance
About this episode
Pete Johnson discusses the history of database architecture and the challenges of agent memory.
Nathan's guest this episode is Pete Johnson, Field CTO of AI at MongoDB, and the conversation is really two conversations woven together: a history of database architecture, and a status report on the still-unsolved problem of agent memory. Pete opens with a framing device that recurs throughout — he was born in February 1970, four months before E.F. Codd's original relational-model paper that gave rise to SQL. The relational model, he explains, was built for a world where storage was the scarce resource, so normalization — splitting data across linked tables to avoid duplication — was the rational design choice. For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/write-change-recall-forget-mongodb-s-pete-johnson-on-how-retrieval-drives-agent-performance/ Sponsors: Mercury: Mercury is the banking platform loved by 300,000+ entrepreneurs, with virtual cards and Spend controls for granular budgets, receipts, and low-risk AI agent purchases. Learn more and apply in minutes at https://mercury.com Granola: Granola is an AI-powered notepad that securely transcribes meetings and turns rough notes into clean, structured action items. Try…
Sponsors
Mercury, Granola, Diffusion
More episodes of "The Cognitive Revolution"
- AI:AM Highlights: Welcome to the AGI Era
- AI:AM Highlights: Recursive Self-Improvement, Rushed and Vibe-Coded?
- RL's a Hell of a Drug: Metagaming, Reward Seeking & Motivated CoT Reasoning – Bronson Schoen, Apollo
- AI in the AM — Weekly Highlights: Relaunch Week (Aug 17–20, 2026)
- Let There Be Germicidal Light: This $500 Fixture Could Stop the Next Pandemic, from Complex Systems
- Lindy Teammate: Flo Crivello on Multiplayer Agents, Memory & Why He'd Ban the Chinese Models He Uses
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the "The Cognitive Revolution" podcast page.