Josh and Will sit down with Dan Wolchonok, builder and founder of Work Coach, an AI desktop app that observes your meetings and gives you personalized, unfiltered feedback on how you showed up — and how to do better next time. We dig into how Work Coach detects meeting types (interview? one-on-one? all-hands?), builds longitudinal insights across multiple meetings, and helps you advocate for yourself when your manager simply can't be everywhere. Dan's vision is refreshingly grounded: stop waiting for someone else to develop your career, and start owning it yourself. We loved this conversation so much we literally had to force ourselves to stop recording.Work Coach is currently available free on Mac — go check it out at work.coach.

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What happens when the government decides to protect your kids online — and ends up with your ID, your face, and your data in the process?In this episode, Josh and Will dig into the growing push for age verification laws in the US and around the world. What starts as a conversation about protecting kids on social media quickly spirals into a much bigger question: what are we actually trading away when we hand our digital identities over to Instagram, PlayStation, or the government? Will walks through his deep passion for digital privacy and anonymity, and Josh pushes back (and sometimes agrees) on where personal responsibility ends and government regulation begins. It's their most politically adjacent episode yet — and honestly, one of their best.They cover everything from facial recognition in dating apps to surveillance state worst-case scenarios, VPNs and Brave browser, the death of online anonymity, and whether parents — not laws — should be the ones calling the shots on their kids' screen time.Buckle up. This one gets real.

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What if you could ditch Google Photos, iCloud, and your growing pile of monthly subscriptions — and replace them with a home server you built for about $382, one time? That's exactly what Will did, and Josh breaks down whether it's actually worth it.In this episode, Will shares the latest from his ongoing de-Googling journey, and then dives deep into Jellyfin — the free, open-source media server that lets you own your own cloud. We're talking setup, storage recommendations, real subscription cost comparisons, and even a live demo for HiTech Club members.

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♣️Want to become a HiTech Club member, support the pod, and get all of the extras on our episodes? Head over to our Buy Me a Coffee to subscribe: buymeacoffee.com/hitechpodcast.

🌐Check out ⁠⁠⁠hitechpod.us⁠⁠⁠ for all of our episode pages, social links, and more!

📖Need a journal that's secure and reflective? Check out our episodes on the Reflection App, and then sign-up for the App⁠ today!

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A neuroscientist just told Congress that classroom technology is a "failed pedagogical experiment" — and the clip went viral. But is he right?In episode 244, Josh and Will dig into Dr. Horvath's Senate Commerce Committee testimony, where he argued that Gen Z is the first generation to be less cognitively capable than their parents — and that decades of EdTech investment may be largely to blame. $30 million in laptops and tablets. 20,000+ studies reviewed. And a conclusion that's making educators, parents, and tech advocates seriously uncomfortable.We're not just reading the headlines here. We push back on the methodology, question what the research is actually measuring, and talk honestly about where we think Horvath's got it right — and where the narrative is getting away from him.

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♣️Want to become a HiTech Club member, support the pod, and get all of the extras on our episodes? Head over to our Buy Me a Coffee to subscribe: buymeacoffee.com/hitechpodcast.

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Can AI actually detect AI-generated content — or is it just really confident guessing?Josh and Will go head-to-head in a full episode debate on whether reliable AI detection is even possible. Will argues the tools exist and the tech is improving. Josh isn't buying it. They dig into how tools like GPTZero, Turnitin, and CopyLeaks actually work, why non-native English speakers keep getting flagged, and what the research really says about that claimed "99% accuracy."

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♣️Want to become a HiTech Club member, support the pod, and get all of the extras on our episodes? Head over to our Buy Me a Coffee to subscribe: buymeacoffee.com/hitechpodcast.

🌐Check out ⁠⁠⁠hitechpod.us⁠⁠⁠ for all of our episode pages, social links, and more!

📖Need a journal that's secure and reflective? Check out our episodes on the Reflection App, and then sign-up for the App⁠ today!

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What if the most powerful thing AI could do in your classroom… is refuse to answer?Josh built a custom GPT Socratic tutor — and it's changing how he thinks about AI in online learning. Instead of giving students answers, this bot asks questions, challenges assumptions, and guides learners through logical reasoning the way Socrates would have. We walk you through how it was built (in about 30 minutes), what happened when we live-tested it on logical fallacies, and why this flips the whole "AI is killing critical thinking" narrative on its head.Will's also on sabbatical (a.k.a. between jobs), building home servers, and playing Arc Raiders. Priorities.

• Head over to our website at ⁠⁠⁠hitechpod.us⁠⁠⁠ for all of our episode pages, social links, and ways to support us.
• Need a journal that's secure and reflective? Check out our episodes on the Reflection App, and then sign-up for the App⁠ today! We promise that the free version is enough, but if you want the extra features, paying up is even better with our affiliate discount.
• Ever wanted to create detailed walkthroughs in the easiest way possible? Check out our episode on Scribe and all that it can do for your training needs, SOPs, or troubleshooting docs.
• Build a world limited only by your imagination in Topia! A virtual world-building tool built to bring you and any of your virtual guests together. Interested in signing up and learning more? Reach out to us or Topia and let them know we sent you!

• Head over to our website at ⁠⁠⁠hitechpod.us⁠⁠⁠ for all of our episode pages, social links, and ways to support us.
• Need a journal that's secure and reflective? Check out our episodes on the Reflection App, and then sign-up for the App⁠ today! We promise that the free version is enough, but if you want the extra features, paying up is even better with our affiliate discount.
• Ever wanted to create detailed walkthroughs in the easiest way possible? Check out our episode on Scribe and all that it can do for your training needs, SOPs, or troubleshooting docs.
• Build a world limited only by your imagination in Topia! A virtual world-building tool built to bring you and any of your virtual guests together. Interested in signing up and learning more? Reach out to us or Topia and let them know we sent you!

Can you actually escape Google — and is it even worth trying? Will is back with a real-talk update on his de-Googling journey, and it turns out leaving Big Tech is a lot messier (and funnier) than it sounds.Josh and Will dig into what's actually been easy to switch out (browser and passwords — no sweat), what's been a nightmare (70 randomly sorted photo folders, anyone?), and what might be impossible to fully escape (looking at you, Google Maps). Will also shares his plans to ditch Google Home for local-only smart home tech — and explains why the home server rabbit hole is officially open.Whether you're privacy-curious or just tired of paying for subscriptions, this episode gives you an honest, no-hype look at what de-Googling actually looks like in the real world — plus two practical tips to get started today.

• Head over to our website at ⁠⁠⁠hitechpod.us⁠⁠⁠ for all of our episode pages, social links, and ways to support us.
• Need a journal that's secure and reflective? Check out our episodes on the Reflection App, and then sign-up for the App⁠ today! We promise that the free version is enough, but if you want the extra features, paying up is even better with our affiliate discount.
• Ever wanted to create detailed walkthroughs in the easiest way possible? Check out our episode on Scribe and all that it can do for your training needs, SOPs, or troubleshooting docs.
• Build a world limited only by your imagination in Topia! A virtual world-building tool built to bring you and any of your virtual guests together. Interested in signing up and learning more? Reach out to us or Topia and let them know we sent you!

What if the secret to getting way better results from AI isn't a better prompt — it's more examples? Josh went down a Corridor Crew rabbit hole and came out the other side with a completely reframed way of thinking about how AI actually learns.In this episode, we break down a fascinating Corridor Crew experiment where they trained a deep learning model to remove green screen using millions of examples — not hand-coded rules. The results? Genuinely jaw-dropping. And the principle behind it? Directly applicable to how you're using ChatGPT, Claude, or any AI tool right now. Josh connects the dots from VFX wizardry to real-world use cases: scripting videos for AI training, building smarter custom GPTs, and even a spicy take on using few-shot examples to get ahead of AI academic dishonesty.

📹 Check out Corridors Original Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ploi723hg4&t=1455s

• Head over to our website at ⁠⁠⁠hitechpod.us⁠⁠⁠ for all of our episode pages, social links, and ways to support us.
• Need a journal that's secure and reflective? Check out our episodes on the Reflection App, and then sign-up for the App⁠ today! We promise that the free version is enough, but if you want the extra features, paying up is even better with our affiliate discount.
• Ever wanted to create detailed walkthroughs in the easiest way possible? Check out our episode on Scribe and all that it can do for your training needs, SOPs, or troubleshooting docs.
• Build a world limited only by your imagination in Topia! A virtual world-building tool built to bring you and any of your virtual guests together. Interested in signing up and learning more? Reach out to us or Topia and let them know we sent you!

We took the podcast live — literally. At Lancaster Learns 2025, Josh and Will ran an "AI Hot Takes" session where real educators debated the big AI questions in real time, fishbowl style. Chairs. Buzzers. Opinions. No prep.Topics ranged from whether all students should learn AI, to redefining cheating in the age of AI, to "AI will usher in the end of humanity" (yes, that was a real take). The room didn't hold back — and neither did we.This one's part conference session, part podcast episode, and 100% unscripted. Featuring voices from educators in the room, including some returning HiTech guests.

• Head over to our website at ⁠⁠⁠hitechpod.us⁠⁠⁠ for all of our episode pages, social links, and ways to support us.
• Need a journal that's secure and reflective? Check out our episodes on the Reflection App, and then sign-up for the App⁠ today! We promise that the free version is enough, but if you want the extra features, paying up is even better with our affiliate discount.
• Ever wanted to create detailed walkthroughs in the easiest way possible? Check out our episode on Scribe and all that it can do for your training needs, SOPs, or troubleshooting docs.
• Build a world limited only by your imagination in Topia! A virtual world-building tool built to bring you and any of your virtual guests together. Interested in signing up and learning more? Reach out to us or Topia and let them know we sent you!