Dave Flynn on the Radio

The series has shown you what to watch out for. The atrophy. The cosplay. The kid pushing the train. The discipline of doing your half of the work.

This is Part 5—the closing post—and it's about what happens when it works.

You'll meet Bacon, our robot lawnmower and a small daily reminder of what good collaboration feels like. You'll see how AI tutors are quietly delivering Seth Godin's vision. You'll get the historical pattern (writers in the eighties said the same things about word processors that editors say about AI today).

And you'll get the only rule that holds the whole series together:

Kindness towards a robot isn't about the robot's feelings. It's about yours.

Be the "+".

Blog Post:

The Plus: Part 5, Centaurs Are Among Us

Sponsors:

⁠TempRx.App⁠

⁠CanIRetire.App⁠

⁠FlowFinder⁠

⁠HelloRatio⁠

Chapters:

00:00 - Welcome to the Show: Becoming Centaurs with AI

02:41 - Learning Collaboration from Bacon, Our Robot Lawnmower

03:59 - How AI Enhances My Writing as a Sparring Partner

05:43 - Adaptive AI Tutors Fulfill Seth Godin's Vision

10:09 - Historical Parallels: From Word Processors to AI

12:12 - Defining 'The Plus': Effective Human-AI Collaboration

12:59 - The Only Rule: Kindness Towards Robots is About You

14:11 - Thank You for Listening: Share and Review

Your job is to keep diverging. The robots' job is to converge. The handoff between those two—the place where divergent input meets convergent execution—that's the prompt.

This is Part 4 of The Plus, and it's the practical one.

I'll walk you through how I actually build prompts—not the color-coded template you've seen circulating, but a method that gets reverse-engineered from real conversations. I'll show you the fitness prompt that runs my weekly training, the stocks prompt that grades every company in my portfolio, and we'll talk about the cover-art prompt that fails me every week.

Plus a few rules that have held up across a dozen prompts: light beats heavy. Interview first. Constrain the output. Forbid the BS.

And how a non-technical guy ended up shipping web apps overnight.

Blog Post:

The Plus: Part 4, The Handoff

Sponsors:

TempRx.App

CanIRetire.App

FlowFinder

HelloRatio

Chapters:

00:00 - Part 4: Speaking with Robots and Prompting

02:43 - The Handoff: Beyond Template-Based Prompting

04:26 - Crafting Your Personalized AI Fitness Consultant

06:17 - AI for Finance: Scoring Stocks and Valuations

09:19 - Mastering Prompts: Light, Interview, Constrain, Forbid

12:44 - The Human Element: Where AI Prompts Fail

15:04 - Building Apps with AI: The Handoff of Meaning

19:42 - Thank You for Listening: Share the Show

The nine-dot puzzle has been around for decades. Connect all nine with four straight lines…without lifting your pen.

In the control group, nobody solves it. Then researchers temporarily suppress the rule-following part of the brain with electrical stimulation. Forty percent crack it.

The puzzle didn't change. The rules didn't change. The frame did.

This is Part 3 of The Plus. We get into convergent vs. divergent thinking, why LLMs can only do one of them, and what your kids can tell you about which one you're built for.

Then we meet the train kid—the viral clip that explains how it feels to work with the robots.

And last, three questions you can ask yourself to know if you're at risk of losing the "+."

Blog Post:

The Plus: Part 3, Keep Diverging

Sponsors:

⁠⁠Passing Notes to Strangers ⁠⁠

⁠⁠31 Easy™⁠⁠

⁠⁠TempRx

Chapters:

00:00 - Unpacking "The Plus": A Roadmap for Part 3

02:06 - Beyond the Box: Humans, LLMs, and the 9-Dot Puzzle

07:10 - Are You Just Pushing the Train? AI's Hidden Impact

10:40 - Three Critical Questions to Keep Your "Plus" Alive

12:11 - Thank You for Listening: Stay Divergent, Stay Original

In April, the Artemis II splashed down after a ten day trip around the moon. Three of the four astronauts couldn't walk off the deck.

Ten days. From able-bodied to not.

Your brain works the same way.

This is Part 2 of The Plus. We look at the atrophy problem—what happens when you let AI do the cognitive lift, and what an MIT study found when they wired up 54 essay writers with EEG headsets.

We also cover the lost sense of direction, the muscle you actually need to train, and the single discipline that holds the rest together.

The "+" weakens when humans stop carrying cognitive load. And there's a specific kind of load only humans can carry.

Blog Post:

The Plus: Part 2, The Atrophy Problem

Sponsors:

⁠Passing Notes to Strangers ⁠

⁠31 Easy™⁠

⁠TempRx

Chapters:

00:00 - How Convenience Leads to Physical and Cognitive Atrophy

05:29 - Reclaiming Skills: The Cost of Convenience and Practice

08:58 - The First Swipe Rule: Maintain Your Edge with AI

In late 2024, AI-generated articles passed human-written ones. Twelve months later, AI took the lead online.

Then the volume plateaued.

Not because the robots stopped writing. Because nobody was reading.

This is Part 1 of The Plus, a five-part series on working with the robots. We start with the Super Mid Plateau—the strange ceiling AI content has hit and why writing is the medium where humans still matter most. The robots can copy a YouTube prank in their sleep. They can't copy a paragraph that took forty drafts. That asymmetry isn't shrinking. It's the whole game.

Nicky Case said it best: the hard part isn't the AI, it isn't even the human, it's the "+".

Welcome to the series.

Blog Post:

The Plus: Part 1, Working With the Robots

Sponsors:

Passing Notes to Strangers

31 Easy™

TempRx

Chapters:

00:00 - Dave Flynn on the Radio: Introducing the AI Series

02:04 - Human Plus AI: The Hard Part Isn't the AI

03:14 - Why AI-Generated Articles Hit a Strange Ceiling

04:30 - AI Training on Itself: The Habsburg Bloodline of Content

07:29 - The Asymmetry: Why Human Writing Still Matters

08:54 - The Robots Are Here: It's About Collaboration

09:39 - Thank You for Listening: Share and Review the Show

In 1951, a comedian named Jack Roy walked away from the stage. Twelve years later he came back as someone else. And I think about Jack a lot lately

A piece about writing into the void, what the kids are watching, and finding the difference between asking the room if it's working and telling them what's really going on.

Blog Post: ⁠Is This Thing On?

Sponsors: Passing Notes to Strangers

Chapters:

00:00 - Embracing The Belly of the Whale and Jack Roy's Early Struggles

02:32 - Comparing Success, Low Views, and Kids' Viral Expectations

06:38 - The Rodney Dangerfield Lesson and Podcast Wrap-Up

At the 2003 U.S. Open, on center court, Pete Sampras emerged wearing a dark suit, open collar, surrounded by legends. He is retiring, and before he says a word, he’s overcome. He can’t get through it.

Then Agassi appears on the screen—prerecorded, because he's still playing.

"If I'd beaten Pete more often, or if he'd come along in a different generation, I'd have a better record. But I'd be less."

Less.

Most people confuse winning and competition. Grandpa cheats at Scrabble and calls himself competitive. He's not. He just likes to win.

There's a difference, and it matters more than you think.

This week's piece is about waves, rivals, and why the thing across the net might be making you who you are.

Blog Post: Winning and The Wave

Sponsors: TempRx⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠31 Easy™

Chapters:

00:00 - Redefining Winning: Beyond the Scoreboard

03:59 - Rivals as Waves: Pushing Your Limits

09:11 - Agassi's Realization: Why He Needed Pete

12:33 - Why We Often Cut Kedge Anchors Instead of Addressing the Real Issues

You've heard a guy at a barbecue call his wife "the old ball and chain." It's a joke. It's also a lie.

The real ball and chain travels with you everywhere you go. And most people spend their whole lives hacking at the wrong ones.

This week's post is about two kinds of anchors — the ones that hold you in place, and the ones that pull you forward. The trick is telling them apart before you cut the wrong one loose.

Blog Post: ⁠Anchors Aweigh!

Sponsors: ⁠⁠TempRx⁠⁠, ⁠⁠31 Easy™

Chapters:

00:00 - Unpacking the 'Ball and Chain' and Real Anchors in Life

03:54 - Understanding Anchors: Holding You Back or Pulling You Forward?

05:49 - Recognizing and Releasing the Deep-Rooted Anchors That Hold You Back

8:50 - Why We Often Cut Kedge Anchors Instead of Addressing the Real Issues

11:54 - How Perceived Burdens Can Actually Be the Anchors That Pull You Forward

15:42 - Embracing the Anchors That Propel You and the Power of Self-Doubt

We all say it.

“I know, right?!?”

It rolls off the tongue so easily that we don’t even notice we’re doing it. But that little reflex might be costing you more than you think.

It closes doors, shuts down conversations, and worst of all, it fools you into thinking that having heard something is the same as truly knowing it.

Spoiler: it’s not.

So what if the real flex isn’t “I know” at all?

Blog Post: I Know, Right!?!

Sponsors: ⁠TempRx⁠, ⁠31 Easy™

Chapters:

00:00 - Unpacking the Reflexive “I Know” and Its Hidden Costs

02:28 - The Illusion of True Knowledge: Hearing is Not Knowing

04:52 - Embrace “Tell Me More” for Growth and Connection

Why are we quicker to tell someone they have spinach in their teeth than to tell them they look great?

A.J. Jacobs called it radical positive honesty—if you think something good and keep it quiet, you're lying by omission.

Sylvester Stallone's entire career exists because one Harvard professor told him the truth at the right time. Not when his talent was undeniable. When it was still forming. That's when people are most likely to quit.

You see something good in someone and keep it to yourself? That's not politeness. That's a missed opportunity. Say the thing.

Blog Post: Let's Be Honest

Sponsors: TempRx, 31 Easy™

Chapters:

00:00 - Why Withholding Praise is a Form of Dishonesty

03:53 - How One Honest Comment Changed Sylvester Stallone's Life

07:14 - Rodney Dangerfield: The Impact of Simple Positive Feedback