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? Focus on transfer, not completions. Robin chairs the World of Learning Conference at the NEC in Birmingham on 6–7 October, closing the second day with a keynote on AI, adoption and agency. LINKS AND RESOURCES Robin Hoyle at Huthwaite International: https://www.huthwaiteinternational.com/blog/author/robin-hoyle Robin Hoyle on TrainingZone: https://trainingzone.co.uk/author/robinhoyle/ "The performance illusion: why training doesn't stick" (23 July 2026): https://www.huthwaiteinternational.com/blog/the-performance-illusion "Why isn't leadership training making leaders better?" (28 April 2026): https://www.huthwaiteinternational.com/blog/why-isnt-leadership-training-making-leaders-better "2026 in L&D: Transfer and transferability" (6 January 2026): https://www.huthwaiteinternational.com/blog/2026-learning-development-predictions "AI isn't coming for your job" (29 October 2025): https://www.huthwaiteinternational.com/blog/ai-isnt-coming-for-your-job World of Learning Conference & Exhibition, NEC Birmingham, 6–7 October 2026: https://www.learnevents.com/birmingham/conference/programme/ Robin Hoyle, Complete Training: From Recruitment to Retirement (Kogan Page, 2013) Robin Hoyle, Informal Learning in Organizations: How to Create a Continuous Learning Culture (Kogan Page, 2015) Geary Rummler and Alan Brache, Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart (Jossey-Bass, 1990) Ipsos Karian and Box, Work on What Matters — survey of 5,000 UK employees, May 2026: https://ipsoskarianandbox.com/report/work-on-what-matters/ Ipsos Karian and Box, "Are we working on what matters? What 5,000 UK Employees told us" (15 May 2026): https://ipsoskarianandbox.com/insights/are-we-working-on-what-matters-what-5000-uk-employees-told-us/ Fifty years of SPIN, Huthwaite International: https://www.huthwaiteinternational.com/fifty-years-of-spin Subscribe to The Learning Hack: https://linktr.ee/learninghack Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JohnHelmerConsulting

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 rather than as people. She also has a challenge for L&D, which she thinks is waiting for HR to tell it what to do. Along the way: writing a book with AI during a backlash against AI, why the tools push you to work their way, the CIPD skills gap, AI literacy and prompting, and what a self-driving Mustang says about human over-confidence. Also: Are HR and L&D in the same place on AI? Double down on what you're great at Co-writing with AI, and the neurodivergent workflow Slop and the AI backlash The CIPD gap: individual capability or organisational readiness? Leaders as practitioner, communicator and strategist Stress, burnout and AI 'golden time' Why prompting still matters LINKS AND RESOURCES Erica Farmer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericafarmer/ [verify handle] AI for People Professionals (Kogan Page): https://www.koganpage.com/hr-learning-development/ai-for-people-professionals-9781398625990 EricaFarmer.AI (speaking): https://ericafarmer.ai/ L&D Global Sentiment Survey 2026 (Donald H Taylor): https://donaldhtaylor.co.uk/research_base/global-sentiment-survey-2026/ CIPD, AI in the workplace: https://www.cipd.org/en/topics/artificial-intelligence-workplace/ Erica's Training Journal piece on writing the book: https://www.trainingjournal.com/2025/content-type/features/my-book-ai-for-people-professionals-was-a-human-first-experiment/   CONNECT WITH LEARNING HACK LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/johnhelmer YouTube: www.youtube.com/@JohnHelmerConsulting X: @johnhelmer Threads: @jphelmer Bluesky: @johnhelmer.bsky.social Website: learninghackpodcast.com

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 Octavia Butler's uncannily detailed vision of the Age of Trump. That's a wrap on season one. Let us know what you've enjoyed — and what you'd like to hear in future episodes. All suggestions considered. Connect with The Learning Hack: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/johnhelmer X: @johnhelmer Threads: @jphelmer Substack: @learninghack Instagram: @tech.imaginarium Website: learninghackpodcast.com Listen and watch: https://linktr.ee/learninghack Music by Nick Dwyer recording as Flintet. The Tech Imaginarium is a Learning Hack podcast, produced and hosted by John Helmer and written by John Helmer and Ezri Carlebach.

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 long-running argument over whether it really counts as science fiction, and trace the monster's afterlife from the 1910 Edison short and James Whale's 1931 classic to Boris Karloff, Mel Brooks, Eddie Van Halen's "Frankenstrat", Guillermo del Toro ... and beyond. In this episode: What really happened at the Villa Diodati in 1816? The radical parents and a childhood shadowed by death that made Mary Shelley Born in the age of revolutions: Enlightenment values battles alchemy and the occult How two Brits, James Whale and Boris Karloff, created a look for the creature in their famous 1931 film that resonated through a thousand sequels, rip-offs and pisstakes Did Mary Shelley predict the death of God? Connect with The Learning Hack: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/johnhelmer X: @johnhelmer Threads: @jphelmer Substack: @learninghack Instagram: @tech.imaginarium Website: learninghackpodcast.com Listen and watch: https://linktr.ee/learninghack Music by Nick Dwyer recording as Flintet. The Tech Imaginarium is a Learning Hack podcast, produced and hosted by John Helmer and written by John Helmer and Ezri Carlebach.

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 prediction, determinism and power feel uncomfortably current. In this episode: The origins of Foundation — Asimov, his editor John W. Campbell, and the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta that inspired a galactic empire The original trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation), Hari Seldon, psychohistory and the Mule How Asimov was pushed by Doubleday into the prequels and sequels — and how he retrofitted Foundation into his robot universe Two adaptations compared: the 1973 BBC Radio dramatization and Apple TV's contemporary series The ideas behind the saga — Gibbon, Spengler, Toynbee, and the long-running argument over Marx and Hegel Prediction as power — from Carissa Véliz's work to prediction markets and accelerationism Asimov the man: his later fame, his legacy, and his failings Connect with The Learning Hack: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/johnhelmer X: @johnhelmer Threads: @jphelmer Bluesky: @johnhelmer.bsky.social Instagram: @tech.imaginarium Website: learninghackpodcast.com Listen and watch: All links: https://linktr.ee/learninghack Next time: Frankenstein — Mary Shelley's fever dream and the most enduring image in tech