Podcast
Pragmatic AI with Matt Stauffer
Hosted by Matt Stauffer · EN
Pragmatic AI is a podcast about practical AI for business leaders, developers, and thinkers—the stuff that actually works, not the hate or the hype. We cover using AI tools day-to-day across the spectrum of human experience.
18episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Human Marketing in an AI Search World
4d ago00:50:50Tap to summarizeThe Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten. T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.In this episode, Matt Stauffer sits down with Meg Clarke, owner of Clapping Dog Media, to talk about how getting found online has shifted from gaming search engines to being discovered by AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.They get practical fast: why keywords are giving way to 23-word prompts, why your About page suddenly matters, why LinkedIn beats Reddit as a source AI tools trust, and how Meg now runs tech audits and analysis through Claude skills and Cowork to cut payroll and take real vacations.The conversation also opens up into something bigger — how AI lowers the barrier to starting a business, why it changes the math differently for owners than for employees, and Meg's passion for helping more women step into entrepreneurship.Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstaufferTighten Website - https://tighten.com/Meg Clarke on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/clappingdogmedia/Meg’s Website - https://clappingdogmedia.com/Dan Martel Book: https://www.buybackyourtime.com/Allie K. Miller on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@AKMofficial-----Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/
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Using AI As a Thinking Partner, Not a Vending Machine
2w ago01:08:06Tap to summarizeThe Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten. T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.In this episode, Matt Stauffer talks with Greg Storey — author of Creative Intelligence: Don’t Ask AI, Think With It — about why most people are using AI like a productivity vending machine instead of a true thinking partner. Greg shares how AI can become a creative and strategic collaborator, exploring design thinking, divergent vs. convergent thinking, and the three questions he asks every time he starts a conversation with AI.They also dive into the bigger picture: why AI maximalism misses the point, how to stay creative as the tools become more capable, and what it means to preserve human creativity and curiosity in a rapidly changing world.Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstaufferTighten Website - https://tighten.com/Greg’s Website - https://brilliantcrank.comGreg’s Book - https://brilliantcrank.com/creative-intelligence/Creative Intelligence Everyday Field Guides - https://brilliantcrank.com/creative-intelligence-field-guides/-----Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/
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AI Researcher Michelle Yi on Watson, World Models, and Why AI Should Be for Everyone
3w ago01:06:22Tap to summarizeThe Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten. T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.Matt Stauffer is joined by Michelle Yi — co-founder of Generationship, board member of Women in Data, and AI Researcher at Basis Research Institute — who shares her 20-year journey across AI research, industry, and startups.Michelle traces the evolution of AI from her early days working on IBM Watson through to modern language models, reflecting on what's changed, what's been lost, and what's finally becoming possible. She and Matt dig into the importance of democratizing AI and making it genuinely useful beyond big tech.The conversation closes on Michelle's vision for a more equitable and responsible AI future — one being built through initiatives like Generationship and Basis Research Institute, and powered by people who choose to engage with AI rather than sit it out.Matt Stauffer on X Tighten Website Michelle on LinkedIn Basis Research InstituteNYC Rat Research in the News Pyro.ai Women in Data Generationship Decile Group Bobiverse Series Becky Chambers Book Andrej Karpathy YouTube Community Usage Tweet Setlist FM -----Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten.
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AI in Elementary Schools: A Principal’s Take
4w ago00:48:23Tap to summarizeThe Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten. T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.In this episode, Matt Stauffer is joined by Amie McCaw, an elementary school principal in Southwest Michigan with 19 years of experience leading K-5 buildings. Together they explore what AI actually looks like inside a real elementary school and how teachers, principals, and students are navigating it.Amie shares how she uses AI for communications, observation feedback, and behavior planning, while always vetting the output and never passing it off as her own. She talks about the surprising generational divide on her staff, where younger Gen Z teachers are often the most skeptical of AI, and why she still wants her K-5 kids learning to write a sentence before reaching for a chatbot.The conversation widens into bigger questions: how AI is reshaping teacher burnout, why critical thinking has to come before trust, and why no tool will ever replace the human connection between a teacher and a child.Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstaufferTighten Website - https://tighten.com/Amie on Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/amiemccaw.bsky.socialAmie on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amie-mccaw-53633464/-----Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/
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Teaching Non-Developers to Build Real Apps With AI
May 601:08:11Tap to summarizeThe Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten. T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.Matt Stauffer talks with Brian Casel about what it means to be a “builder” in 2026—and how that definition is rapidly expanding beyond traditional developers.They explore Brian’s work with Builder Methods and his YouTube channel, alongside the broader shift from writing code to spending the majority of time in planning, specs, and product thinking. The conversation highlights how AI is reshaping software development, enabling both technical and non-technical builders to create real, production-ready tools—not just experiments.They also dig into the rise of internal tools across all types of businesses, the growing importance of building in public, and why product thinking may now be the most valuable skill in the AI era.Matt Stauffer on X Tighten Website Brian Casel on X Builder Methods WebsiteBrian Casel on YouTubeProductize Course-----Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/
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Is AI Replacing Developers or Just Changing the Job?
Apr 2901:28:24Tap to summarizeThe Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten. T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.Matt Stauffer talks with Ian Landsman — 20-year SaaS founder, bootstrapper, and the person many credit with making the Laravel ecosystem possible — about what it actually looks like to build software with AI when you're not a full-time developer.Ian shares how AI removed the biggest bottleneck in his workflow — the code itself — letting him think like a product builder instead of a programmer. They dig into running multiple AI models simultaneously to debug hard problems, using AI to tackle security audits, building competitive comparison pages for Help Spot, and why writer's block may be solved.The conversation also gets into the harder questions: how much code should founders actually read? What happens when junior developers lean too heavily on AI without oversight? And what does it mean for small software businesses when the internet starts opening up again through MCP?Matt Stauffer on X Tighten WebsiteIan Landsman on X Ian Landsman on Bluesky Ian Landman’s Website HelpSpot Aaron Francis Counselors Solo ahrefs Outro -----Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten.
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Kent C. Dodds on MCP and How Product Engineering Might Outlast Coding
Apr 2201:19:22Tap to summarizeThe Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten. T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.Matt Stauffer talks with Kent C. Dodds — educator, JavaScript expert, and creator of Epic Web, Epic React, and Epic AI — about what it actually looks like to use AI at the frontier of software development.They dig into how Kent ships thousands of lines of AI-generated code without reviewing most of it, why he believes "product engineering" is the most durable skill left in the industry, and what MCP (Model Context Protocol) is and why it matters far beyond the developer world. Kent also walks through Kody, his personal AI assistant that controls his home, journals his life story, and can integrate with virtually anything.The conversation gets real on education, the future of jobs, the role of human empathy in an AI-dominated world, and why Kent thinks the parts of our jobs AI is taking are usually the parts we hated most anyway.Matt Stauffer on X Tighten Website Kent’s Website Kent on XKent on GitHub Epic WebEpic React Epic AI VS Code Cursor CodeRabbit Cursor Bugbot Practical TypeScript Course Justin Jackson Post EpicProduct.Engineer Community Usage from Bogdan Kharchenko Jesse Genet on X Kent C. Dodds AI Engineer Miami Talk-----Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten.
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Creating AI Workflows for Designers
Apr 1500:44:11Tap to summarizeThe Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten. T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.In this episode, Steve Schoger, designer and partner at Tailwind Labs, shares how he’s actually using AI in his day-to-day work, including tools like Claude in his design workflow. The conversation explores how AI is changing creativity, how it affects team collaboration, and what it might mean for the future of design and development. Matt Stauffer on Twitter - https://x.com/mattstaufferTighten Website - https://tighten.com/Steve Schoger on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@SteveSchogerSteve Schoger on Twitter - https://x.com/steveschogerSteve’s video on X - https://x.com/steveschoger/status/2035077141050622173?s=20Paper - https://paper.design/Skogafoss Waterfall Hike - https://thephotohikes.com/skogafoss-and-the-waterfall-way-hike/-----Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten.
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Advocating for more AI Governance
Apr 800:41:54Tap to summarizeThe Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten. T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.Matt Stauffer talks with Karen Maria Alston, a 20-year communication strategist turned AI governance advocate, about why AI is impacting everyone, whether they use it or not.They get into the real-world ways AI is already shaping daily life: deepfake photos on dating apps, AI-generated social media influencers with millions of followers, voice mimicry scams draining retirement accounts, and what it means that most Americans, including most politicians, still have no idea any of this is happening. Karen breaks down the case for voter mobilization, legislative action, and why individual abstention from AI doesn't actually change the trajectory.The conversation also gets into identity, the social contract, and the deeper human cost of automation, including what it means to lose a job that was part of who you were, and what it looks like to be hopeful about AI without being naive about it.Matt Stauffer on Twitter Tighten Website Karen Maria Alston on LinkedIn Karen Maria Alston on Instagram Karen Maria Alston on Substack Karen Maria Alston’s Website -----Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten.
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The Nexus of Technology & Theology
Apr 100:52:30Tap to summarizeThe Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten. T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.Matt Stauffer talks with Nick Peterson, PhD, Assistant Professor of Homiletics at Christian Theological Seminary, ordained AME minister, executive pastor, and grant director, about the deep history between religion and technology, and what AI is really doing to knowledge, credit, and labor.They explore how Nick uses AI as a tool for falsifiability rather than content generation, why the plantation economy is a useful (and uncomfortable) lens for understanding who benefits from large language models, and how the same dynamics that shaped the Gutenberg press, televangelism, and colonialism are very much alive in the age of Claude and ChatGPT.The conversation raises harder questions about what it means to own an idea, what students lose when AI does their thinking for them, and whether the consolidation of knowledge in the hands of a few tech platforms is something new, or just the oldest story in human history, running faster.Matt Stauffer on Twitter Tighten WebsiteNick’s Website Nick on Instagram Nick on Facebook -----Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten.
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