Basement Transistor (https://transistor.fm) https://feeds.transistor.fm/basement Ten minutes in my basement studio with someone making something with AI: me, or an artist I've been studying. What I asked for, what came back, what I fixed, and one thing you can try this week. The full stories are at The Daring Creatives. © 2026 The Daring Creatives 5d6c8623-71e5-5fe1-9f8d-659d4c0b64dd yes en Tue, 20 Oct 2026 22:28:37 -0400 Tue, 20 Oct 2026 22:29:26 -0400 https://www.thedaringcreatives.com https://img.transistorcdn.com/Qx95i6AZEBmC7Mxov_VOp7NhBcLwUAweis_l4J-cGlc/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:1400/h:1400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9kYzZh/YjBmODZlNTA2Y2Uz/MTdjNjU4MGRmMTIy/MDdjOC5qcGc.jpg Basement https://www.thedaringcreatives.com episodic William Smith Ten minutes in my basement studio with someone making something with AI: me, or an artist I've been studying. What I asked for, what came back, what I fixed, and one thing you can try this week. The full stories are at The Daring Creatives. Ten minutes in my basement studio with someone making something with AI: me, or an artist I've been studying. AI art, AI film, generative AI, creative process, behind the scenes, AI tools The Daring Creatives No Yes Agency in a Box (v4) 4 4 Agency in a Box (v4) full 4d0709a8-8c4e-4c5c-bf6e-4f0f77a18e91 https://share.transistor.fm/s/b7a62a49 I've been talking with people at agencies, and the same story keeps coming up. A long-term client leaves because someone sold them a marketing department in a box for a monthly fee. Plenty of those clients aren't happy with what they get.

  • Why it stings: I'm one of the people building with AI. I'm trying to help small businesses get more marketing than they could normally afford.
  • What the box leaves out: this isn't set-and-forget. You have to train the people running it and the system itself: the context, the brand story, the assets, all organized and vetted. Every episode title here ends in a V and a number. That's how many versions it took before I liked it.
  • The opportunity: when the box fails, someone has to fix it. The people best at training AI are the people who've already mastered the work, and a lot of the best I've worked with came up in agencies.

Then a commercial break from SynergAI Infinity, a made-up product. Results not typical.

The robot wrangler line is from Episode 3: https://share.transistor.fm/s/8c9ee073

The full stories are at The Daring Creatives: https://www.thedaringcreatives.com

]]> I've been talking with people at agencies, and the same story keeps coming up. A long-term client leaves because someone sold them a marketing department in a box for a monthly fee. Plenty of those clients aren't happy with what they get.

  • Why it stings: I'm one of the people building with AI. I'm trying to help small businesses get more marketing than they could normally afford.
  • What the box leaves out: this isn't set-and-forget. You have to train the people running it and the system itself: the context, the brand story, the assets, all organized and vetted. Every episode title here ends in a V and a number. That's how many versions it took before I liked it.
  • The opportunity: when the box fails, someone has to fix it. The people best at training AI are the people who've already mastered the work, and a lot of the best I've worked with came up in agencies.

Then a commercial break from SynergAI Infinity, a made-up product. Results not typical.

The robot wrangler line is from Episode 3: https://share.transistor.fm/s/8c9ee073

The full stories are at The Daring Creatives: https://www.thedaringcreatives.com

]]> Tue, 20 Oct 2026 22:28:37 -0400 William Smith William Smith 387 Somebody's selling your clients the sun, the moon and the stars for a hundred bucks a month. Here's what that pitch leaves out, and why agencies might be the best people to train the AI. Somebody's selling your clients the sun, the moon and the stars for a hundred bucks a month. Here's what that pitch leaves out, and why agencies might be the best people to train the AI. AI marketing, marketing agencies, marketing automation, AI training, small business marketing, AI in a box Yes Becoming a Robot Wrangler (v8) 3 3 Becoming a Robot Wrangler (v8) full 4a6902a4-b0b7-4b1a-8023-7474985864aa https://share.transistor.fm/s/8c9ee073 Chris Stokel-Walker's piece in Fast Company is about academics and professionals who train AI models for companies like Mercor and Turing. Some fear these workers are making themselves obsolete. I think that's the point.

  • Where I am: most of my video, podcast and site work is training now. I describe what I want to see, how it's paced and how it should feel, then correct the model until it gets there.
  • The summit: at the NH Tech Alliance Innovation Summit in Nashua this month, Boston Dynamics CIO Chad Wright talked about a real job listing he found on Indeed: Technical and Manufacturing Robot Wrangler. You hear him in the episode, recorded from my table near the back of the room.
  • The chart: the article ranks white-collar jobs by how many are expected to be lost to AI in the next two to five years. Writers and authors top it at 57%. Every number on that chart counts job titles. The work keeps going.

Then AEGIS breaks into the transmission.

Read the article: [The smartest people in the world are automating themselves into obsolescence—and loving it](https://www.fastcompany.com/91587919/turing-mercor-scale-surge-academics-professionals-ai-model-training) (Fast Company, subscriber piece).

Chad Wright, Chief Information Officer, Boston Dynamics, speaking at the NH Tech Alliance Innovation Summit, Nashua, October 6, 2026.

The full stories are at The Daring Creatives: https://www.thedaringcreatives.com

]]> Chris Stokel-Walker's piece in Fast Company is about academics and professionals who train AI models for companies like Mercor and Turing. Some fear these workers are making themselves obsolete. I think that's the point.

  • Where I am: most of my video, podcast and site work is training now. I describe what I want to see, how it's paced and how it should feel, then correct the model until it gets there.
  • The summit: at the NH Tech Alliance Innovation Summit in Nashua this month, Boston Dynamics CIO Chad Wright talked about a real job listing he found on Indeed: Technical and Manufacturing Robot Wrangler. You hear him in the episode, recorded from my table near the back of the room.
  • The chart: the article ranks white-collar jobs by how many are expected to be lost to AI in the next two to five years. Writers and authors top it at 57%. Every number on that chart counts job titles. The work keeps going.

Then AEGIS breaks into the transmission.

Read the article: [The smartest people in the world are automating themselves into obsolescence—and loving it](https://www.fastcompany.com/91587919/turing-mercor-scale-surge-academics-professionals-ai-model-training) (Fast Company, subscriber piece).

Chad Wright, Chief Information Officer, Boston Dynamics, speaking at the NH Tech Alliance Innovation Summit, Nashua, October 6, 2026.

The full stories are at The Daring Creatives: https://www.thedaringcreatives.com

]]> Mon, 19 Oct 2026 20:38:51 -0400 William Smith William Smith 373 Fast Company found experts happily training AI to replace them. A Boston Dynamics CIO has a job title for the rest of us: robot wrangler. I think it's the job I already have. Fast Company found experts happily training AI to replace them. A Boston Dynamics CIO has a job title for the rest of us: robot wrangler. I think it's the job I already have. robot wrangler, AI model training, future of work, Fast Company, Boston Dynamics, Mercor Yes Drop Dead Simple Podcast Workflow (v24) 2 2 Drop Dead Simple Podcast Workflow (v24) full 8a515005-a7a9-4313-a980-9410b2254e24 https://share.transistor.fm/s/879a578a I have more podcast ideas than time to make them, and perfectionism used to mean I didn't record or edit at all. This episode is the workflow that changed that.

  • Record: a DJI Mic 3 on night walks through a neighborhood full of crickets and frogs. An iPhone works too.
  • Sound: Claude Opus 5.5 pulls the clip off the mic and cleans it up. I describe how I want to sound, close and with some of the room left in, and skip the talk about compression and EQ. Once it sounds right, save it as a skill.
  • Assembly: I recorded the basement with a Zoom H6: the dehumidifier, the metal hatch, the dryer, things I hit around the studio. Claude sampled and pitched them into the instruments and percussion you hear. Making your own music means there's nothing to license.
  • Notes: each run takes about 10 minutes. Episode 1 took 16 versions. In the episode I guess this one will take half as many. It took 24.

Then AEGIS breaks into the transmission.

The prompt I use

I recorded a podcast episode. The audio files are in this folder: [folder]. 1. Clean up my voice. Light noise reduction, keep a little of the room. I want to sound close, like I'm in your ear, with clear presence. I don't want to sound like a robot, like I'm several feet away, or like a lav mic. Give me two or three short samples at different strengths so I can pick. 2. Transcribe everything. 3. Find the hook: the most interesting line I said. It opens the episode, before the intro. 4. Cut it down to five or six minutes. Keep my real pauses and breaths. Cut repeats, false starts and tangents, but don't make it feel chopped up. 5. Make it immersive. Find the moments where something I'm describing could be heard, and put a sound under those words. Keep the sounds subtle and under my voice. Use the sounds in my folder first. 6. Give me the cut, plus a list of every edit and sound effect with timestamps, so I can give you notes. When I'm happy with how my voice sounds, save those settings as a skill called "podcast audio" so you can reuse them on every episode.

If you make one with this, I'd love to hear it. The full stories are at The Daring Creatives: https://www.thedaringcreatives.com

]]> I have more podcast ideas than time to make them, and perfectionism used to mean I didn't record or edit at all. This episode is the workflow that changed that.

  • Record: a DJI Mic 3 on night walks through a neighborhood full of crickets and frogs. An iPhone works too.
  • Sound: Claude Opus 5.5 pulls the clip off the mic and cleans it up. I describe how I want to sound, close and with some of the room left in, and skip the talk about compression and EQ. Once it sounds right, save it as a skill.
  • Assembly: I recorded the basement with a Zoom H6: the dehumidifier, the metal hatch, the dryer, things I hit around the studio. Claude sampled and pitched them into the instruments and percussion you hear. Making your own music means there's nothing to license.
  • Notes: each run takes about 10 minutes. Episode 1 took 16 versions. In the episode I guess this one will take half as many. It took 24.

Then AEGIS breaks into the transmission.

The prompt I use

I recorded a podcast episode. The audio files are in this folder: [folder]. 1. Clean up my voice. Light noise reduction, keep a little of the room. I want to sound close, like I'm in your ear, with clear presence. I don't want to sound like a robot, like I'm several feet away, or like a lav mic. Give me two or three short samples at different strengths so I can pick. 2. Transcribe everything. 3. Find the hook: the most interesting line I said. It opens the episode, before the intro. 4. Cut it down to five or six minutes. Keep my real pauses and breaths. Cut repeats, false starts and tangents, but don't make it feel chopped up. 5. Make it immersive. Find the moments where something I'm describing could be heard, and put a sound under those words. Keep the sounds subtle and under my voice. Use the sounds in my folder first. 6. Give me the cut, plus a list of every edit and sound effect with timestamps, so I can give you notes. When I'm happy with how my voice sounds, save those settings as a skill called "podcast audio" so you can reuse them on every episode.

If you make one with this, I'd love to hear it. The full stories are at The Daring Creatives: https://www.thedaringcreatives.com

]]> Sun, 18 Oct 2026 18:47:40 -0400 William Smith William Smith 342 The whole workflow behind this show: record on a night walk, hand the audio to Claude, describe how you want to sound, and turn basement noises into the music. The whole workflow behind this show: record on a night walk, hand the audio to Claude, describe how you want to sound, and turn basement noises into the music. podcast automation, AI audio editing, Claude, DJI Mic, Zoom H6, sound design Yes Welcome to Basement (v16) 1 1 Welcome to Basement (v16) full 9aa614a8-b21e-4b0c-a66e-e9988c6bbc1b https://share.transistor.fm/s/db86fc9f I was a freelance videographer for about eight years and made around a thousand videos by hand. I don't sit at a timeline anymore. I dictate edits to Claude Opus 5.5 from my phone, and it runs Remotion on my computer, so I can edit in the car, on a walk, on site, or down here doing laundry.

In this one:

  • Why making a thousand videos by hand earns you the right to tell your computer how to edit
  • Treating every project as an exploration, where you never take the first thing you see
  • Running a workflow you like overnight, again and again, which is what it takes to get video seen

Then AEGIS cuts in. Lexicon City would like you to know that making things is a privilege.

The full stories are at The Daring Creatives: https://www.thedaringcreatives.com

]]> I was a freelance videographer for about eight years and made around a thousand videos by hand. I don't sit at a timeline anymore. I dictate edits to Claude Opus 5.5 from my phone, and it runs Remotion on my computer, so I can edit in the car, on a walk, on site, or down here doing laundry.

In this one:

  • Why making a thousand videos by hand earns you the right to tell your computer how to edit
  • Treating every project as an exploration, where you never take the first thing you see
  • Running a workflow you like overnight, again and again, which is what it takes to get video seen

Then AEGIS cuts in. Lexicon City would like you to know that making things is a privilege.

The full stories are at The Daring Creatives: https://www.thedaringcreatives.com

]]> Sun, 18 Oct 2026 18:47:40 -0400 William Smith William Smith 259 The first episode, recorded in my basement with the laundry running: I made about a thousand videos by hand as a freelancer, and now I edit by telling Claude what I want. The first episode, recorded in my basement with the laundry running: I made about a thousand videos by hand as a freelancer, and now I edit by telling Claude what I want. AI video editing, Claude, Remotion, videography, creative process Yes