LH130 Learning Technologies London 2026 Show Special
The Learning Hack podcast
Augmented Workforce, Learning at the Frontline and the Destiny of L&D. For a long stretch, you could skip Learning Technologies for a year and miss almost nothing. Not this year. AI has stopped being something L&D is piloting and started being something the field is rebuilding around — and the conversation at LT26 had a sharper edge for it. In this season finale, John brings back five voices from the show floor and the studio to map what's actually changing: the augmented workforce, the 80% of workers L&D has long ignored, the readiness question nobody wants a straight answer to,...
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LH129 Ripping Scorm with Mike Alcock
The Learning Hack podcast
Your organisation has probably spent years building a learning library. Courses, videos, SCORM files, PDFs — hundreds of them, living in the LMS or scattered across SharePoint. You can enrol in them. You can sit through them. What you can't do is ask them a question and get an answer in seconds, at the moment you actually need one. The knowledge is there. It just isn't retrievable. That's the problem Mike Alcock, founder of Talvi, has set out to solve. In this episode, Mike takes John through how Talvi works. They also cover Mike's own unlikely route into learntech: a Civil Engineering...
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LH128 Crossing the Divide with Lars Hyland
The Learning Hack podcast
What does it take to change how an industry works — and what happens when it doesn’t change fast enough? Lars Hyland has been asking that question for thirty years, from the early days of interactive multimedia through nearly a decade leading EMEA for Totara Learning, and now at Enlytning, an AI-powered platform helping small businesses close the gap between policy and practice. In this conversation, John and Lars go back to the beginning — to the Epic days, when the e-learning model that now dominates the industry was taking shape around them — and trace a career-long argument about...
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LH127 Roll Away the Stone with Bob Mosher
The Learning Hack podcast
What if the ideas that L&D has been nodding at for thirty years are finally about to become unavoidable? Bob Mosher has spent his career arguing that training and performance are not the same thing — and that building courses, however well-designed, only meets two of the five moments when people actually need to learn. The other three happen in the workflow, at the point of need. Most of the profession has agreed with him in theory. Rather fewer have changed what they do. In this conversation, John and Bob catch up on how generative AI is changing that picture. Bob describes what...
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LH126 Polynesian Navigators with Laura Overton and Michelle Ockers
The Learning Hack podcast
Does L&D know where it's going? What separates the L&D functions that genuinely move organisations forward from those that stay busy but never quite shift the dial? That question has driven 's research for over two decades — and it sits at the heart of The L&D Leader, the new book she co-authored with . Their answer, drawn from more than ten thousand L&D professionals and two hundred learning leaders, points not to new tools or models, but to something older and harder to teach: the ability to read the organisation, sense its currents, and navigate your own way to somewhere...
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LH125 What’s The Vibe, Don?
The Learning Hack podcast
The results of the 2026 Global Sentiment Survey are out — and the mood in workplace learning is uneasy. In this episode, John speaks with about AI’s “hangover moment,” rising pressure on L&D teams, diverging regional trends, vendor anxiety, and what showing value really signals this year. Is this a temporary wobble — or a structural shift in what L&D is for? Timestamps 00:00 - Start 02:21 - Intro 04:14 - Overview of this year’s GSS 12:50 - Metaverse and virtual environments 21:59 - Opportunities and Challenges of AI 26:49 - More US respondents this year? 28:33 -...
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LH #124 Learning Hive: What's the Buzz? with Kinga Petrovai
The Learning Hack podcast
What if the most powerful learning system in your organisation is already there — hidden in plain sight? In this episode, Dr Kinga Petrovai introduces The Learning Hive: a structured, research-informed model for peer learning that amplifies tacit knowledge, builds community, and accelerates learning transfer. Drawing on her academic background and real-world practice, Kinga explains why informal learning is often undervalued — and how deliberate design can make peer learning both human and effective. Timestamps 00:02 – Introducing the Learning Hive 00:06 – What makes it true...
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LH123 – OEB Special: Learning and Humanity
The Learning Hack podcast
Voices from Online Educa Berlin 2025. Recorded at Online Educa Berlin 2025, this episode brings together five perspectives on keeping the human at the centre of learning in the age of AI. From global learning trends and AI maturity, to human-centred education, the Global South, emerging talent, and the long view of digital learning, these conversations capture the diversity, tensions, and possibilities shaping education and workplace learning worldwide. Guests Timestamps 00:02:19 – Intro: OEB 2025 00:02:52 – Donald H. Taylor:...
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LH122 The Changing Shape of Work with Josh Bersin
The Learning Hack podcast
The year ahead for learning, skills and work As organisations head into 2026, Josh Bersin returns to The Learning Hack to make sense of what is really changing in work, skills and learning. Drawing on his latest research and global advisory work, Josh explains why AI has crossed a threshold, how jobs are being reshaped rather than eliminated, why skills velocity is fundamentally cultural, and why L&D is facing a once-in-a-generation structural reinvention. Timestamps 01:28 – Intro 03:12 – What happened in 2025? 05:08 – ‘Superworkers’ & ‘supermanagers’ ...
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AI Learning and the Global South (an episode of the Great Minds on Learning podcast)
The Learning Hack podcast
Recorded live at Online Educa Berlin, this episode of Great Minds on Learning explores AI and the Global South through history, hard lessons, and contemporary debate. John Helmer and Donald Clark examine early techno-utopian experiments, the ethics wars around AI, and newer perspectives rooted in language, power, and lived experience. From Negroponte and Mitra to Gebru, Arora, Manyika, and Mugane, the conversation asks who AI is really for—and who gets to decide. Timestamps 00:57 – Intro 01:58 – Introduction to AI & the Global South 14:11 – Nicholas Negroponte...
info_outlineYour organisation has probably spent years building a learning library. Courses, videos, SCORM files, PDFs — hundreds of them, living in the LMS or scattered across SharePoint. You can enrol in them. You can sit through them. What you can't do is ask them a question and get an answer in seconds, at the moment you actually need one. The knowledge is there. It just isn't retrievable. That's the problem Mike Alcock, founder of Talvi, has set out to solve.
In this episode, Mike takes John through how Talvi works. They also cover Mike's own unlikely route into learntech: a Civil Engineering degree at Sheffield, a detour through an insulation factory in Newcastle, and three successive software businesses each arriving ahead of the market. And they have a searching conversation about what tools like Talvi mean for the LMS and for the instructional designer — neither of whom emerges entirely unscathed.
Is the technology now genuinely good enough to make learning in the flow of work a practical reality, rather than a conference agenda perennial?.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - Start
02:14 - Intro
04:15 - What is Talvi for?
16:20 - What's the journey for a learning leader adopting Talvi?
20:47 - Mike's story: from civil engineering to learntech
30:19 - What will tools like Talvi do to the LMS?
39:50 - Explanation of terms: RAG, vector databases…
49:01 - End
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