There Is No Such Thing as a "Learner"
Ditch outdated L&D metrics and courseware. Learn how to speak business data, treat L&D as a product, and drive real performance enablement.
Nerd Out
Education, Design and Philosophy
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Latest episodes
Stop Framing AI as Your New Coworker
Stop treating AI like a coworker. Unpack the hidden "verification tax" burning out employees and how L&D leaders can build smarter enablement workflows.
Build buy or rent: elearning on a budget
Stop order-taking in L&D. Learn the real math of build vs. buy eLearning, why intake forms fail, and how to deliver scrappy, high-impact learning design.
Mania for deskilling
Explore how generative AI impacts job performance, the threat of skill erosion, and how L&D can leverage AI to solve the Subject Matter Expert problem.
Postcard from Sicily
Just a quick postcard while I'm on summer vacation.
The Mother Skill of the AI Era: Cognitive Task Analysis
Your SMEs forgot how they do their jobs. Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) extracts hidden knowledge and turns L&D pros into AI-enabled context engineers.
The Thin Line Between AI Strategy and AI Slop
Ditch the lazy AI workflows. Learn why stuffing PDFs into an LLM breeds cognitive debt, and how to build human guardrails for real workplace AI enablement.
Solving L&D’s 'Apprenticeship Problem' in an AI World
AI ate the entry level grunt work, breaking traditional apprenticeship. To build future leaders, we must design intentional, hands on learning systems.
Systemic Failures, Shiny Shortcuts, and Other Delusions
From the history of Exercise Tiger to HBR’s AI reality check, stop paying the "cognitive debt" for broken systems. Fix the framework.
Playing Chess with Tech: Apple, Google, and the AI Long Game
Google’s chess moves, Apple’s synthetic video coaches, and KPMG’s tax simulators. How AI is killing the junior grunt work and rewriting the L&D playbook.
Readme: Welcome to Nerd Out
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Why AI Needs Your Learning Degree
Master AI for Instructional Design using Google’s PARTS framework. Why human learning science is the key to AI strategy and workforce transformation.
COGNITIVE DEBT
The Cost of Short-Term Thinking in the Age of AI
Can You Pay Back the Debt? Relearning in the Age of Agents
Is your AI "productivity" just high-interest cognitive debt? Take the 15-question audit, see the METR study, and find out if your org is mentally bankrupt.
AI Can Build It, But It Can’t Care About It
Focus on the human "why" over AI "how." Discuss shifting from makers to managers, using empathy and workflow analysis to avoid automated "slop."
The learning lab: cognitive insights
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Jobs & Skills Reshaped
Sal Khan on AI job displacement, McKinsey’s rising adoption trends, and Anthropic’s study on "intent to master" show why L&D must bridge the growing AI skills gap.
Closer to the Work
L&D must evolve into a strategic partner by embedding learning into daily workflows, using performance support, and involving frontline staff to build credibility.
The $4 Billion AI Hole in L&D and how to fix it
Why are L&D teams buying more tools but still feeling overwhelmed? In this interview, Yuval explains the growing “cognitive debt” facing frontline workers and why faster content creation is not enough. He shares a different vision for the future of learning: context-aware training built around real work, real environments, and the exact moment of need. Yuval is currently working with selected…
Learning Reinvented
Boost learning with science-backed study protocols, AI tutors, and sparkling water.