Best Of: What are we building? And the future of human flourishing...

Best Of: What are we building? And the future of human flourishing...

Author: BKBT Productions March 16, 2026 Duration: 38:10
We've spent the last several months talking to people who live at the intersection of technology and the humans on the receiving end of it. A data privacy attorney. A corpus linguist. A clinical psychologist. A performance coach. An entrepreneur who built a business on failure. They don't all agree with each other. But they're all pointing at the same thing: the gap between how technology gets built, deployed, and sold — and what it's actually doing to people. This week's episode is our attempt to pull that thread. * Mike McLaughlin — The AI ecosystem is running on bad data, has no real mechanism to fix it, and the next wave of cybercrime will target the training data itself. * Kimberly Becker, PhD — AI-generated text is structurally overconfident, and a corpus linguist traced that pattern all the way back to how decontextualized certainty language helped fuel the opioid epidemic. * Dr. Marissa Alert — What organizations call employee resistance to AI is, clinically, a fear and identity threat response that most rollouts are spending millions to ignore. * Tychon Carter — Winning is often where the real crisis begins, and the goalpost never stops moving until you decide your value isn't determined by your output. * The "Bad Hombre" — A solopreneur who built a business on public failure makes the case that the willingness to fail more than most people even try is the only real competitive advantage. Every one of these conversations eventually arrives at the same place: the distance between what we're building and who it's landing on.

There’s a lot of noise in the world of technology talk, but Bare Knuckles and Brass Tacks cuts through it with a focus on the people behind the products and the societal currents shaping our digital landscape. Hosts George K and George A steer conversations that are less about specs and hype, and more about real-world consequences. You’ll hear them dig into topics like the messy rollout of new AI tools, the often-invisible backbone of digital infrastructure, and why communities adopt or reject certain technologies. This podcast regularly features guests from various fields who offer unvarnished opinions on what’s genuinely functional and what’s fundamentally flawed in our tech-saturated lives. The discussions move beyond simple commentary to challenge the standard narratives promoted by the tech industry, examining the cultural and social ripples of every new development. It’s a show for anyone who feels that technology coverage often misses the human element-the frustrations, the adaptations, and the ethical dilemmas. Tune in for a grounded, critical, and consistently engaging dialogue that connects the dots between code and culture. This production from BKBT Productions lives up to its name, getting down to the brass tacks of how technology is built and used, with a bare-knuckle honesty that’s increasingly rare.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Bare Knuckles and Brass Tacks
Podcast Episodes
Using focused AI to help small farmers and reduce food insecurity [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 35:46
What if narrow #AI, rather than imagined AGI through scaling will be what changes the world? In some places, that's already happening. El Mahdi Aboulmanadel founded DeepLeaf [https://deepleaf.io/] after watching smallhol…
Deep Learning vs Intuition: AI models and venture capital investing [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 47:14
What if the best investment decision is one where no human is involved? Brant Meyer, partner at Trac VC [https://www.trac.vc/] joins the show this week to talk about the firm's approach, where algorithms — not partners i…
Why cybersecurity is broken and time is the enemy [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 48:55
Why do your friends and parents still get breach notification letters from companies they've never heard of? John Watters aka "The Cowboy" joins the show this week for a hard look at information security. In the early 20…
What leaders get wrong about AI rollouts and employee adoption [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:33
What if your AI rollout isn't failing because of the technology, but because no one asked your employees how they feel about it? Dr. Marissa Alert is a clinical psychologist who works with organizations scaling AI. Her a…
The art and Science of grit, ambition, & betting on yourself [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 35:57
The voices telling you it won't work usually belong to people who never tried. Nobody gives you permission to take a chance. You just do it. Chris built a 50K MRR business without a formal education, a tech background, o…
Finding meaning and community in tech-fueled hustle culture [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:47
What happens when you get everything you thought you wanted and still feel empty? Tychon Carter won Big Brother Canada, gained fame and followers overnight, and felt completely lost. The success arrived before he was rea…