Burn The Map: Chasing Chaos, Curating Creativity, and the Relentless Art of AI Video w/ Luka Tisler
Release Date: 07/17/2025
Burn The Map: Holograms, Flat Squirrels, & Why You Really Need Cake on Tuesday w/ Elizabeth Bieniek
Burn The Map
In This Episode: We sit down with Elizabeth Bieniek: accidental innovator, corporate plane-repairer at 30,000 feet, and author of Cake on Tuesday, a book for people who like their business advice with more real talk and less corporate fluff. Elizabeth walks us through her unpredictable path—from getting an MBA at Babson and tumbling into the tech world, to launching a stealth startup inside Cisco, and then finally distilling years of chaos into 25 lessons for unlocking corporate innovation. Why Cake on Tuesday? Because frankly, what’s the point of slogging through strategy sessions if...
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Burn The Map: Outfoxing Wall Street with Dr. Craig Kaplan Pt.2
Burn The Map
In This Episode: We sit down with Dr. Craig A. Kaplan, the PhD-wielding brains behind Predict Wall Street (and, apparently, the patron saint of retail investors everywhere). Craig walks us through 14 years in the financial trenches, building tech to turn the “dumb money” crowd into a collective force that could actually beat Wall Street at its own game—at least until the hedge funds caught the scent and crashed the party. Brace yourself for a story that’s equal parts “wisdom of crowds,” collective intelligence research, and “what happens when the little guy dares to play with the...
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Burn The Map: Herding AIs, Dodging Doom, and the New Ethics of Intelligence w/ Dr. Craig Kaplan
Burn The Map
In This Episode: We sit down with Dr. Craig Kaplan—the guy who was building AI before your favorite “disruptor” learned to tie their shoes. Dr. Kaplan takes us on a wild ride from the OG days of artificial intelligence (when data lived on floppy disks and having a “machine learning” project meant you had actual machines to move) to his current crusade: making sure superintelligence doesn’t wreck the joint for the rest of us. Kaplan lays out what everyone’s too scared—or too clueless—to admit: if you wouldn’t leave your wallet with a random LLM, why are you ready to...
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Second Brains, Biometric Socks, and the AI Classroom: Lisa Dieker on the Future of Learning
Burn The Map
“I was the daughter of a mechanic and a librarian—I know a thing or two about fixing things, building things, and making sense of way too much information.” —Dr. Lisa Dieker In This Episode: We talk to Dr. Lisa Dieker about why the future of learning isn’t robots replacing teachers—it’s humans and AI teaming up (with a little extra caffeine and a lot of biometric gadgets thrown in). As the Williamson Family Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas and Director of the FLITE STEM Center, Lisa’s on a mission to hack how we teach, learn, and support every kind of mind...
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Burn The Map: Quivers of Legs and Law Changes w/ Brenda Novak
Burn The Map
In This Episode: We talk to Brenda Novak, co-founder of the Connecticut Amputee Network and champion for anyone told they're “too expensive to fix.” Brenda breaks down her wild ride from business school grad to accidental activist, gives us the unvarnished scoop on the cutthroat world of prosthetic coverage (hint: it’s more ‘Shark Tank’ than ‘Grey’s Anatomy’), and shows us that sometimes, you’ve got to pass whole new laws just to get back on your feet—literally. What We Cover: How Brenda and her fellow “pirates” rallied lawmakers to pass legislation making...
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Burn The Map: Book People, Broken Systems, and Why Kids Are Getting Dumber w/ Rae Foote
Burn The Map
“If you’re worried your kid hates reading, maybe start by showing them you can sit down with a damn book. Kids do what we do, not what we say.” —Rae Foote In This Episode: We talk to Rae Foote, the unicorn who went from running logistics in military manufacturing (yes, actual missiles) to wrangling the chaos of marketing tech at Hachette Book Group in NYC—all while moonlighting as a champion for children’s literacy. Rae's journey is less “lifelong calling” and more “epic faceplant after faceplant, but make it fashion”—falling into publishing, falling for NYC, and now...
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Burn The Map: Joel McKay Smith — Networking Maestro, Rural Champion, and Master of Community Capital
Burn The Map
In This Episode: We talk to Joel McKay Smith—a guy whose “Rolodex” literally stress-tested the Wrench platform—about why real power isn’t in the LinkedIn follower count, but in the relationships you actually maintain. From rural Utah dairy farms to industrial parks, Joel’s journey is a hilarious, head-spinning tour straight through the heart of economic disruption and small-town resurrection. You think you’re a “super-connector”? Please. Joel remembers your name, your birthday, and probably your lactose intolerance from a conversation in 1997, all while masterminding a...
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Burn The Map: Ask Me Anything with Dan & Gabi
Burn The Map
In This Episode: We sit down with Gabi Barragan—strategic advisor, organizational change whisperer, and the go-to for real talk about taming the AI beast in business. Gabi ditches the ‘thought leader’ theatrics and gets honest about what it really takes for companies to stop talking about AI adoption and actually get their hands dirty—without blowing the lunch budget on useless software. She walks us through the mess and magic of wrangling data chaos, the power of fierce internal experimenters (yes, she thinks your employees are already using ChatGPT behind your back), and how a little...
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Burn The Map: Doors, Data, and Digital Twins with Timber Barker
Burn The Map
In This Episode: We talk to Timber Barker, founder/CEO of BOOM Interactive, about turning flat floor plans into living, AI-powered digital twins—and the not-so-glamorous reality of building the company that does it. From selling his truck to keep the lights on to landing partnerships with NVIDIA and projects with the NBA, Timber breaks down how CoreSpec3D makes the built world actually usable: chat with your floor plan, drop “sticky notes” that act like tasks, render photorealistic options in seconds, and hand first responders a real-time 3D view when things go sideways....
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Burn the Map: Are You Even Using Your Data? Drew Phillips on the Realities of Content & Chaos
Burn The Map
“Don’t tell me about your fancy martech stack if you can’t tell me where your own customer data lives. Spoiler: if your dashboards are a mess, your personalization is, too.” —Drew Phillips In This Episode: We talk to Drew Phillips—part globe-trotting data wrangler, part content whisperer—about what actually moves the needle in enterprise content, data integration, and personalization (hint: it’s not a magic vendor pitch or an AI buzzword bingo). Drew reveals the truth behind making content less painful for brands that have more SKUs than most people have socks—and how chaos...
info_outline“Limitations? Please. The only thing that matters now is the idea—because with today’s AI, you can create anything. The rest is just noise.” —Luka Tisler
In This Episode:
We sit down with Luka Tisler, the Slovenian mastermind who treats AI video tools like his personal playground. Luka’s journey is a whirlwind of reinvention—from post-production purist to VFX wizard to motion graphics innovator to, well, teaching the rest of us how to keep up. He went from wrangling cameras to breaking generative models, turning every “hobby” into a full-blown career, and building Lighthouse Academy so others could stop floundering and start creating.
What do you get when you mix relentless curiosity, a little Balkan stubbornness, and a refusal to follow creative trends? Apparently, a one-man AI creative studio who’s as busy as he is unbothered by the old rules.
What We Cover:
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How AI has nuked creative limitations (and why your dumbest idea is your only real asset now)
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The messy, noisy process behind AI image and video creation—yes, even when the results have six fingers
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Why curation is the new creation, and batch-processing your way to greatness (or at least a good espresso)
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The agony and ecstasy of client “education” when nobody wants to leave their comfort zone
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The birth of Lighthouse Academy and why Luka would rather build something from scratch than explain things twice
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Where to find the world’s top AI nerds (Spoiler: Discord, Reddit, and definitely not Facebook)
Guest Bio:
Luka Tisler is a Slovenian video virtuoso and co-founder of Lighthouse Academy, known for his deep dives into motion graphics, VFX, and AI-powered animation. Since 2008, Luka’s career has spanned from old-school production sets to the wild frontiers of generative AI. He’s an unapologetic experimenter, a breaker of tools, and the kind of guy who turns every hobby into a profession—whether the rest of us can keep up or not.
Enjoy!
This show was brought to you by Wrench.ai
Follow Dan:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danbaird/
X: https://x.com/mrdanbaird
Follow Luka:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luka-tisler/
Follow the Pod:
YouTube
Twitter/X
Instagram
TikTok
BlueSky
Selected Links From This Episode:
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Luka’s LinkedIn
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Tools: Midjourney, Weavy, ComfyUI
People and Organizations Mentioned:
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Dave Clark (AI film legend)
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Billy Bowman (AI creative rockstar)
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Kevin the Kid, Metapuppet, Perz, Phil, Kijai, Seb (AI superheroes)
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Lighthouse Academy
Show Notes & Timestamps:
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00:04 — Luka’s journey: From Slovenian VFX to AI wild child
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02:09 — How video creation is being flipped on its head (and why your ideas matter more than your tools)
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05:43 — The latest in AI video: Broken tools, creative breakthroughs, and why “good enough” is never enough
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08:15 — Client education: Herding cats, fighting for sanity, and not letting the comfort zone kill your creativity
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14:15 — Curation is the new creation (yes, you still have to do the work)
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17:37 — Building Lighthouse Academy: Zero to one, the joy of teaching, and why community is everything
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21:17 — Where the real AI nerds hang out (spoiler: it’s not Instagram)
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24:15 — The hardest part? Clients who want 2010 results in 2024
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28:09 — Who to watch in AI creativity, and why the best don’t always come from film school