LH130 Learning Technologies London 2026 Show Special
Release Date: 05/11/2026
LH133 The Great AI Steal with Ross Stevenson
The Learning Hack podcast
Ross Stevenson is founder of Steal These Thoughts! and describes his job as AI enablement architect. Before going independent he was Head of Learning at Trainline, ran digital learning at Tesco for six years, and spent seven years in HR. If enablement sounds a lot like performance consulting, he wouldn't disagree. So is AI the thing that finally makes performance consulting happen? Also in this episode: where people really are with AI, what Ross won't hand over to a machine, and what might be left of the learning function in three year's time. How HR taught him what the business really...
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LH132 Your People Are Fine: It's The System That's Broken with Robin Hoyle
The Learning Hack podcast
A third of UK workers say their own organisation gets in the way of them doing good work. Four in ten managers would rather not be managers. So why does L&D keep building interventions that ignore the possible situational causes of poor performance? Robin Hoyle is Head of Learning Innovation at Huthwaite International and has chaired the World of Learning conference for about fifteen years. In this conversation he makes the case that training doesn't stick because the system around it is broken, and that the profession measures what is easy to measure rather than what matters. His answer?...
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LH131 AI for People People with Erica Farmer
The Learning Hack podcast
Two-thirds of HR professionals say AI is their top development priority. But only a third of organisations offer any AI training – and fewer than one in five think their leaders are equipped to lead in an AI-enabled environment. So where is the gap, and whose job is it to close it? Erica Farmer is co-founder of Quantum Rise Talent Group, host of the AI for the Average Joe podcast and author of AI for People Professionals (Kogan Page, 2026). In this conversation she argues that organisations are rolling out AI the way they rolled out every HR system before it, treating people as tech users...
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TI06 Three Predictions from SF That Came True ... And Three That Didn't.
The Learning Hack podcast
Did science fiction predict AirPods? Neuralink? The death of God? For this final episode of Season One, John Helmer and Ezri Carlebach give you what hacks call a listicle: three transcendently significant things prefigured in science fiction that definitely came true — and three that didn't. Or haven't yet. Prediction, as Niels Bohr said, is very hard. Along the way: Thirteenth-century flying machines Victorians watching live war coverage on flat-screen TV elearning before there was elearning Verne, Wells, jetpacks, flying cars, prediction markets, transporter beams, universal nudism and...
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TI06 Three Predictions from SF That Came True ... And Three That Didn't.
The Learning Hack podcast
Did science fiction predict AirPods? Neuralink? The death of God? For this final episode of Season One, John Helmer and Ezri Carlebach give you what hacks call a listicle: three transcendently significant things prefigured in science fiction that definitely came true — and three that didn't. Or haven't yet. Prediction, as Niels Bohr said, is very hard. Along the way: Thirteenth-century flying machines Victorians watching live war coverage on flat-screen TV elearning before there was elearning Verne, Wells, jetpacks, flying cars, prediction markets, transporter beams, universal nudism and...
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TI05 Frankenstein: Man Made Man
The Learning Hack podcast
How a teenage girl's waking dream birthed what is (probably) the first science fiction novel – and in the process gave the world its most enduring image of technology gone wrong. This time we're coming for the myth, the curse, the cliche that is Frankenstein. John Helmer and Ezri Carlebach climb up the tower, point the lightning conductor to the heart of the storm, and attach electrical cables to the neck-bolts of that fearful thing on the slab. Yes, it may be 200-years old but ... it's alive! They walk through the original 1818 plot — stranger and bleaker than the films — weigh the...
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TI04 Asimov 2: Foundation
The Learning Hack podcast
Can the future of an entire civilisation be calculated like the behaviour of gas molecules? In the second of two episodes on Isaac Asimov, John Helmer and Ezri Carlebach turn from his robots to his other great franchise — the Foundation saga — and the seductive idea at its heart: psychohistory, a fictional science that claims to predict the fate of galactic empires. From a Gilbert and Sullivan libretto opened at random to Apple TV's billion-dollar adaptation, this is a conversation about how one pulp idea grew into a cornerstone of science fiction and why its questions about...
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TI03 Asimov 1: The Robot Laws
The Learning Hack podcast
In 1942, a 22-year-old chemistry student and part-time writer set down three short rules for how a fictional robot ought to behave. His aim was to kill off the lazy "robot-as-Frankenstein-monster" cliché. More than eighty years later, real engineers, real ethicists and real lawmakers are still arguing about them. This is the first of two episodes on Isaac Asimov — one of the "big dogs" of science fiction whose output ran to some five hundred books. John Helmer and Ezri Carlebach take on the most enduring part of that legacy: the Three Laws of Robotics. The Laws went on to power nine linked...
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TI02 5 Foundational SF Authors You've Never Heard Of
The Learning Hack podcast
Every genre has a shadow canon — the writers who don't make the syllabus, don't sell out on Amazon, and rarely get the Netflix series. In science fiction, that shadow canon is where some of the most intellectually adventurous, politically serious and formally daring work of the twentieth century was done. Having opened the series with the big names — Wells, Verne, Poe, the Mount Rushmore of the genre — John and Ezri jump forward to the late 1960s and 1970s and turn to five authors most listeners won't know: Kate Wilhelm, Joanna Russ, John Sladek, John Brunner and Christopher Priest....
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TI01 Amazing Stories Is 100!
The Learning Hack podcast
A hundred years ago this spring, a magazine called Amazing Stories hit the newsstands and — almost by accident — gave a name and a shape to the genre we now call science fiction. Its publisher, Hugo Gernsback, was an immigrant electrical engineer, visionary and relentless self-promoter. He wanted his magazine to delight and enthrall – but also to educate. In this opening episode of The Tech Imaginarium, John and Ezri go back to 1926 to ask why this peculiar pulp magazine matters — and why its mix of techno-optimism, prophetic vision and dystopic warnings still echoes through the way we...
info_outlineAugmented 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, the maturing of content into context, and the generational lens of a 30 Under 30. The destiny of L&D, in other words — sketched from five different angles, while the ground is still moving.
Guests, in running order
- Giovanni Giamminola — AI advisor and author of The Augmented Manager; opening keynote speaker at LT26. The augmented workforce thesis: humans plus AI plus AI agents, and the cognitive shift that demands of management.
- JD Dillon — Founder of LearnGeek; former CLO at Axonify; author of The Frontline Enablement Playbook (out the week the episode airs). On the 80% of the workforce L&D conferences forget about.
- Alicia Sanchez — Chief AI Officer at MPF Federal LLC; LT26 panellist on future-proofing L&D. On AI readiness — organisational and workforce — and the failure modes at both extremes.
- Cheryl Clemons — CEO and co-founder of StoryTagger. On the show's themes from a vendor's chair: content to context, evidencing impact, and whether storytelling has had its day as a learning modality.
- Matt Caldwell — People Experience and DEI at Axon; LT26 30 Under 30 cohort. The generational lens: privacy, data, bias, and what younger workers actually feel about giving themselves to AI tools.
In this episode
- The augmented workforce — humans, AI, and AI agents working together, and what that means for management itself
- Why 80% of the global workforce is frontline or deskless, and almost no L&D budget reflects it
- The two-track AI readiness question — organisational and workforce — and the trap of "we're getting ready" as a permanent excuse
- Content to context: AI maturing the L&D conversation at both ends of the learning programme
- A generational read on AI, privacy and bias from inside the workforce that grew up with the technology
- The destiny of L&D, sketched from five angles while the ground is still moving
Links and resources
- Giovanni Giamminola — The Augmented Manager: How AI Makes Management More Effective, Creative and Strategic (2025)
- JD Dillon — The Frontline Enablement Playbook (2026); LearnGeek; the enabled newsletter
- Alicia Sanchez — Why Readiness Is Shaping the Future of Work (Learning Guild)
- Cheryl Clemons — StoryTagger
- Matt Caldwell — Axon; LT26 30 Under 30 cohort (Nigel Paine)
CONNECT WITH LEARNING HACK
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/johnhelmer
X: @johnhelmer
Threads: @jphelmer
Bluesky: @johnhelmer.bsky.social
Website: learninghackpodcast.com
Coming next on this feed
The Learning Hack returns for a new season in September. But the feed isn't going quiet over the summer — John launches a brand-new podcast on Tuesday 26 May 2026: The Tech Imaginarium — How Science Fiction Made the Modern World, co-hosted with writer and consultant Ezri Carlebach. Six episodes, weekly, into this same feed. More at learninghackpodcast.com/tech-imaginarium.