AI for Everyone

The bridge between learning and earning is crumbling, and it’s costing the economy over a trillion dollars a year in lost potential. In this episode, we break down the latest AI Readiness report from Pearson and AWS to understand the ”Degree Paradox”—the reality that formal education is becoming more essential, not less, as AI automates away the traditional entry-level stepping stones. We move beyond the hype of prompt engineering to discuss the shrinking three-year half-life of technical skills and why applied experience has become the only currency that matters in a high-stakes workforce. It is time to stop being a passive user of these tools and start becoming a strategic operator of your own career.

Brett Hanson navigates the 2026 Google Education ecosystem, where AI shifts from luxury to utility for teachers, parents, and homeschoolers. Learn how to manage the critical October 2026 storage deadline, leverage NotebookLM for active learning, and utilize new AI-optimized hardware—all while centering on human connection and data privacy.

In this episode, we examine the ”AI Fluency Index,” a February 2026 research report from Anthropic that analyzes nearly ten thousand real-world conversations to reveal how we actually interact with artificial intelligence.

Please enjoy this surprise from my AP Literature students. We did use a little AI (in editing), but this is mostly a good old fashioned radio play of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, but with a Southern Door twist. The fictional WBRU radio station in 1940 broadcasts the play during a storm. We hope you enjoy our Southern Door County ”Belgian” twist and the play itself.

In this session, we tackle the ”Paradox of Modern AI”: systems built to sound incredibly intelligent (fluent) before they were built to be reliably truthful. We explore the cognitive architecture behind why AI lies, the specific taxonomy of hallucinations, and the ”Epistemic Hygiene” toolkit you need to move from a passive consumer to an active verifier.

We’ve spent the last nine lessons opening the toolbox—looking at ethics, fears, and basic buttons. But today, we stop looking at AI as a cool party trick and start looking at it as the most profitable skill on your resume. Brett breaks down the startling new economic reality: The market no longer cares if you can build the robot; they just want to know if you can persuade it to do meaningful work. Backed by recent data from PwC, this episode explores why ”AI Swimmers” are commanding a 56% wage premium over their peers and how you can claim that value without writing a single line of code.

We often think of Artificial Intelligence as a futuristic robot or a confusing chatbot that writes poetry. But the truth is, you are likely already a ”Cyborg”—you just don’t use that label. In this episode, Brett explores the concept of ”Invisible AI”—the silent, servile algorithms that are already running your life. From the noise cancellation in your headphones to the ”magic” that saves your battery life, we discuss how we comfortably embrace AI when it acts as a tool, and why that acceptance is the first step toward developing true ”AI Taste.”

We have moved from the era of Search (finding sources) to the era of Answers (synthesizing information). In this episode, Brett explains the massive shift from Google as a ”Librarian” who points you to books, to Google as a ”Research Assistant” who reads them for you. While convenient, this ”Zero-Click” world requires a new set of skills to avoid being misled by ”flattened” summaries or hallucinations.

In this episode, Brett tackles the ”Plagiarism Panic”—that internal voice asking, ”If I didn’t suffer over this, is it really mine?” We dismantle the definition of cheating in the AI age and explore the critical difference between outsourcing your thinking versus outsourcing your labor. If you’ve ever felt like a fraud for using Chat GPT, this lesson will help you stop hiding in the shadows and start leading with ”The Editor’s Eye.”

In this episode, Brett Hanson speaks directly to the ”Sunbather”—the skeptic who believes they don’t need or want AI in their life. Brett challenges the myth that you can ”opt-out” of artificial intelligence by revealing the ”Invisible Assistant” that has been quietly curating your world for the last decade. From FaceID to your spam folder, we explore how you are likely already an active AI user. The goal today isn’t to convince you to love AI, but to help you move from a passive consumer to a conscious observer who uses ”AI Taste” to stay in control.

Welcome back to AI for Everyone. In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on a real, in-progress project from my AP Literature class. We’re moving beyond theoretical discussions and essays to build interactive, conversational AI avatars. My students are using OpenAI’s Custom GPTs to create and interpret the robot characters from Nnedi Okorafor’s fantastic novel, The Death of the Author. This isn’t just a classroom exercise; it’s a dynamic way to analyze literature, and the students will be presenting their finished avatars at the Great World Texts conference in Madison, Wisconsin.

In this episode, Brett sits down with veteran educator and virtual school leader Jamey Hill to deconstruct the process of building an AI implementation plan from scratch. Jamey shares her journey from being a Montessori-inspired teacher who believed ”the hand is the tool that feeds the brain” to becoming a leader in shaping how schools can responsibly integrate artificial intelligence. The conversation moves from the initial overwhelming phase of ”tool collecting” to the creation of a thoughtful, three-part framework: Define, Evaluate, and Integrate.

In this AI in Focus episode, Brett Hanson dives deep into Mustafa Suleyman’s essential book, ”The Coming Wave,” exploring the immense power and unprecedented risks of AI and synthetic biology. The discussion covers why this technological wave is different from all others, the ”great dilemma” we face in navigating it, and the urgent need for a new mindset of containment and responsible stewardship.