<![CDATA[Background Noise]]>Two humans explaining AI so your Grandma can understand it. Tony Bryden and Nathan Roarty take one thing a week — ChatGPT, Claude, AI agents, prompts, whatever just happened — and explain it with quirky analogies, lots of tangents and rabbit holes, and no jargon. If Grandma can understand it, they did their job.  Hosts Tony Bryden and Nathan Roarty are friends and colleagues at an AI company who got tired of hearing this stuff explained badly. It's AI for beginners without the beginner's tone: expect apple pie, top-loading VCRs, and somebody's Mum's knitting. Expect no keynote voice, no vendor demos, and no unexplained jargon.  (Cover art background: spectrogram by Aquegg, released into the public domain via Wikimedia Commons.)

]]>https://riverside.com/Background-NoiseRiverside.fm (https://riverside.com)Fri, 11 Sep 2026 03:20:23 GMTSun, 06 Sep 2026 05:39:42 GMT60Nathan Tony<p>Two humans explaining AI so your Grandma can understand it. Tony Bryden and Nathan Roarty take one thing a week — ChatGPT, Claude, AI agents, prompts, whatever just happened — and explain it with quirky analogies, lots of tangents and rabbit holes, and no jargon. If Grandma can understand it, they did their job.  Hosts Tony Bryden and Nathan Roarty are friends and colleagues at an AI company who got tired of hearing this stuff explained badly. It's AI for beginners without the beginner's tone: expect apple pie, top-loading VCRs, and somebody's Mum's knitting. Expect no keynote voice, no vendor demos, and no unexplained jargon.  (Cover art background: spectrogram by Aquegg, released into the public domain via Wikimedia Commons.)</p>episodicNathan Tonygfpproducts@gmail.comno<![CDATA[Episode 3 - AI Prompting so grandma can understand it]]>Prompting an AI is basically bossing around a very literal six-year-old — and Tony proves it by playing one, one dirty dish at a time. Nathan asks him to "wash the dishes," and chaos (and grandma's heritage china) ensues.

Tony and Nathan break down why AI needs short, specific instructions with clear end states — and what to do when it doesn't know what to do next. If grandma understood a word of that, they did their job — though frankly, grandma's been giving flawless one-step, no-ambiguity prompts since 1962. She never once had to ask twice about washing the dishes... properly.

]]>19c66ace-508c-4796-949c-3521ed3c1463Sun, 06 Sep 2026 06:53:27 GMT<p>Prompting an AI is basically bossing around a very literal six-year-old — and Tony proves it by playing one, one dirty dish at a time. Nathan asks him to "wash the dishes," and chaos (and grandma's heritage china) ensues.</p><p></p><p>Tony and Nathan break down why AI needs short, specific instructions with clear end states — and what to do when it doesn't know what to do next. If grandma understood a word of that, they did their job — though frankly, grandma's been giving flawless one-step, no-ambiguity prompts since 1962. She never once had to ask twice about washing the dishes... properly.</p>no00:12:0413Episode 3 - AI Prompting so grandma can understand itfull<![CDATA[Episode 1 - Introduction to LLMs so grandma can understand it.]]>Two friends bootstrapped a podcast to demystify AI for real people. In this pilot episode, Tony and Nathan walk through their first recording setup (Zencaster + Otter), compare LLMs with VHS-era analogies, share quirky origin stories (including owls and knitting), and show how everyday tools like you.com and Claude can make AI practical and approachable — all with humour, chemistry, and the goal that even Grandma could follow along.

]]>https://zencastr.com/z/H1gRo_n90a232726-8779-46fe-9231-bb3f93c6e444Sun, 23 Aug 2026 23:15:06 GMT<p>Two friends bootstrapped a podcast to demystify AI for real people. In this pilot episode, Tony and Nathan walk through their first recording setup (Zencaster + Otter), compare LLMs with VHS-era analogies, share quirky origin stories (including owls and knitting), and show how everyday tools like <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://you.com/" target="_blank">you.com</a> and Claude can make AI practical and approachable — all with humour, chemistry, and the goal that even Grandma could follow along.</p>no00:17:071Episode 1 - Introduction to LLMs so grandma can understand it.full<![CDATA[Episode 2 - Hygiene, Habits, and Staying in Control: AI Governance so grandma can understand it.]]>Governance sounds like a corporate buzzword — until you think of it as a healthy habit. Tony and Nathan use a burning toaster, a Waymo, and a knitting hallucination to explain how to use AI without setting the house on fire. If Grandma understood what they said, they did their job, but let's be honest, Grandma already has a governance framework, it's that look. And somehow it's more effective than most corporate compliance training.

Referenced in this episode: Electric Toaster in Downton Abbey https://youtu.be/F_o0_Qel9QU?si=vk4FFrcSJD71Om-e

]]>https://zencastr.com/z/zB9z5vax413cae28-a0f6-4c39-8a3d-34f0004a2713Thu, 03 Sep 2026 05:54:02 GMT<p>Governance sounds like a corporate buzzword — until you think of it as a healthy habit. Tony and Nathan use a burning toaster, a Waymo, and a knitting hallucination to explain how to use AI without setting the house on fire. If Grandma understood what they said, they did their job, but let's be honest, Grandma already has a governance framework, it's that look. And somehow it's more effective than most corporate compliance training.</p><p>Referenced in this episode: Electric Toaster in Downton Abbey <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://youtu.be/F_o0_Qel9QU?si=vk4FFrcSJD71Om-e" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/F_o0_Qel9QU?si=vk4FFrcSJD71Om-e</a></p>no00:19:232Episode 2 - Hygiene, Habits, and Staying in Control: AI Governance so grandma can understand it.full