Pragmatic AI with Matt Stauffer

The Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten.  T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.

Matt Stauffer talks with Kent C. Dodds — educator, JavaScript expert, and creator of Epic Web, Epic React, and Epic AI — about what it actually looks like to use AI at the frontier of software development.
They dig into how Kent ships thousands of lines of AI-generated code without reviewing most of it, why he believes "product engineering" is the most durable skill left in the industry, and what MCP (Model Context Protocol) is and why it matters far beyond the developer world. Kent also walks through Kody, his personal AI assistant that controls his home, journals his life story, and can integrate with virtually anything.
The conversation gets real on education, the future of jobs, the role of human empathy in an AI-dominated world, and why Kent thinks the parts of our jobs AI is taking are usually the parts we hated most anyway.
Matt Stauffer on X 
Tighten Website 
Kent’s Website 
Kent on X
Kent on GitHub 
Epic Web
Epic React 
Epic AI 
VS Code 
Cursor 
CodeRabbit 
Cursor Bugbot 
Practical TypeScript Course 
Justin Jackson Post 
EpicProduct.Engineer 
Community Usage from Bogdan Kharchenko 
Jesse Genet on X 
Kent C. Dodds AI Engineer Miami Talk
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Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten.

The Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten.  T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.

In this episode, Steve Schoger, designer and partner at Tailwind Labs, shares how he’s actually using AI in his day-to-day work, including tools like Claude in his design workflow. The conversation explores how AI is changing creativity, how it affects team collaboration, and what it might mean for the future of design and development.
 
Matt Stauffer on Twitter - https://x.com/mattstauffer
Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/
Steve Schoger on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@SteveSchoger
Steve Schoger on Twitter - https://x.com/steveschoger
Steve’s video on X - https://x.com/steveschoger/status/2035077141050622173?s=20
Paper - https://paper.design/
Skogafoss Waterfall Hike - https://thephotohikes.com/skogafoss-and-the-waterfall-way-hike/

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Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten.

The Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten.  T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.

Matt Stauffer talks with Karen Maria Alston, a 20-year communication strategist turned AI governance advocate, about why AI is impacting everyone, whether they use it or not.

They get into the real-world ways AI is already shaping daily life: deepfake photos on dating apps, AI-generated social media influencers with millions of followers, voice mimicry scams draining retirement accounts, and what it means that most Americans, including most politicians, still have no idea any of this is happening. Karen breaks down the case for voter mobilization, legislative action, and why individual abstention from AI doesn't actually change the trajectory.

The conversation also gets into identity, the social contract, and the deeper human cost of automation, including what it means to lose a job that was part of who you were, and what it looks like to be hopeful about AI without being naive about it.
Matt Stauffer on Twitter 
Tighten Website 
Karen Maria Alston on LinkedIn 
Karen Maria Alston on Instagram 
Karen Maria Alston on Substack 
Karen Maria Alston’s Website 

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Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten.

The Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten.  T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.

Matt Stauffer talks with Nick Peterson, PhD, Assistant Professor of Homiletics at Christian Theological Seminary, ordained AME minister, executive pastor, and grant director, about the deep history between religion and technology, and what AI is really doing to knowledge, credit, and labor.
They explore how Nick uses AI as a tool for falsifiability rather than content generation, why the plantation economy is a useful (and uncomfortable) lens for understanding who benefits from large language models, and how the same dynamics that shaped the Gutenberg press, televangelism, and colonialism are very much alive in the age of Claude and ChatGPT.
The conversation raises harder questions about what it means to own an idea, what students lose when AI does their thinking for them, and whether the consolidation of knowledge in the hands of a few tech platforms is something new, or just the oldest story in human history, running faster.
Matt Stauffer on Twitter 
Tighten Website
Nick’s Website 
Nick on Instagram 
Nick on Facebook 
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Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten.

The Pragmatic AI Podcast is sponsored by Tighten.  T-I-G-H-T-E-N. We will take your AI ideas, prototypes or even vibe-coded apps, and we'll take them to production. Scalable and secure. Check us out at tighten.com.

Matt Stauffer talks with Reuben Johnson — aka YoBigRube — founder of Fly Duo, a storytelling studio specializing in high-trust narratives for complex and sensitive messaging. Reuben brings a perspective shaped by decades as a self-taught developer and outsider to the tech establishment.

They explore what it looks like to engage with AI when you have real criticisms of the industry — from choosing the least evil tool to running local LLMs, using AI as a writing accountability partner, and refusing to let a machine call itself human.

The conversation covers AI bias, abstracted accountability, the vulnerability of kids to AI characters, and why the answer to symbolic activism isn't more symbols — it's showing up in community, staying curious, and never deciding you've done enough.
Matt Stauffer on Twitter 
Tighten Website 
FlyDuo | High-Trust Storytelling
Reuben Johnson on LinkedIn
Sam Cole Deep Fake Podcast 
The Tech We Want
404 Media
Small Technology Foundation
PBS 
Sex Tech N Chill 
Community Tweet 
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Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten.