HiTech Podcast

What happens when two guys who built a Topia world "without a lot of planning" invite an actual Topia expert to fix it live on camera? You get this episode.Josh and Will welcome Sam, a Customer Success pro at Topia with four years of platform expertise, for a live world makeover of the HiTech Podcast's own virtual space. From setting proper world boundaries and using the alignment tool, to landmark zones, animated assets, interactive games, embedded polls, and a full event management system — Sam walks them through everything they did wrong (gently) and everything Topia can actually do. The result? A world that went from "not bad" to genuinely impressive in under an hour. Say hi to Gregory the butterfly while you're at it.Whether you're an educator dreaming of virtual office hours, an event planner looking beyond Zoom, or just someone who wants to build a cool interactive space online — this episode is packed with practical tips you can use right now.

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🌏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 your laptop could run its own AI agents — no subscriptions, no data handed off to big tech — all from a chip the size of your palm? That's what Nvidia's RTX Spark is promising, and Josh and Will think it might be the biggest shift in how we use AI since... well, the personal computer.In episode 250, Josh and Will break down what the RTX Spark actually is, why it matters for everyday AI users (not just the hardcore tech crowd), and what "personal computing AI" could mean for privacy, accessibility, and the future of tools like Claude and OpenAI. They also get into the Linus Tech Tips video that sparked the conversation, why Windows is already building toward this, and what open-source tools are doing to get ahead of the curve.

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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!

🌏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 a cat could run your business and make you $300,000? Meet Felix Craft — an AI agent built to operate an entire company solo. We stumbled down this rabbit hole and it got philosophical fast.In this episode, Josh and Will break down the Felix Craft story: an AI "CEO" agent making real money with zero humans involved. But that's just the launch pad. From there, we get into the bigger questions — can AI really replace human workers at scale? What does AGI actually mean? And what does it look like when someone builds a company designed to eliminate themselves from it entirely?Spoiler: we think work is about more than efficiency. It's about culture, creativity, and showing up for each other — and no AI agent is changing that anytime soon.

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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!

🌏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 said some things in episode 244. Dr. Justin Harbin had notes.The doctor is back, and this time he's setting the record straight on our hot takes about tech, Gen Z, and the Horvath Senate testimony. Justin — educator, researcher, and our resident academic conscience — breaks down what Will and Josh got right, what they missed, and what the research actually says about edtech's impact on student learning.We get into the surprising inflection point around 2010, why schools will spend millions on unproven tech tools but can't pay teachers fairly, the concept of "instructional theater" (a phrase you won't forget), and whether there's such a thing as an ideal learning device. Plus: AI's weird commencement season, a graduation name-reading disaster, and Josh pitching a learning tablet that may or may not just be a pencil.It's a follow-up episode that somehow has even more banter than the original. You've been warned.

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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!

🌏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!

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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♣️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!

🌏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 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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♣️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!

🌏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 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!

🌏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!

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.

🌐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!

🌏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 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!

🌏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 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.

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• 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!