Shows
From Rock Bottom PodcastAddicted to Killing: The Dark Reality of Sniper Ted Shirley’s WarFormer British Army sniper Ted Shirley opens up about the dark side of war — from deadly precision and sniper missions in Afghanistan, to the haunting aftermath of PTSD, nightmares, and addiction to killing.Ted shares raw stories of his first kill, his battle with mental health, and how war followed him long after he left the battlefield. This is a brutally honest look at trauma, survival, and the fight to find peace after war.
2025-11-282h 47
Blue Lightning AI DailyGoogle Nano Banana Pro: No More Melty Poster TextGoogle DeepMind just launched Nano Banana Pro, its highest-fidelity image generation and editing model yet—and the name is just the start of the fun. In this episode, Zane and Pippa break down why this release matters: reliably readable text in images, deeper creative control over lighting and composition, and easy, model-driven edits. Creators can finally make posters, packaging comps, thumbnails, and banners with crisp, professional typography that does not morph into gibberish. The rollout spans the Gemini app for everyday users and enterprise access via Gemini API, Google AI Studio, and Vertex AI—plus Adobe is bringing Nano Banana Pro...
2025-11-2009 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyClaude Haiku 4.5: Fast, Cheap, and Creator-Friendly AIHappy Halloween and happy Friday! Today’s Blue Lightning AI Daily dives deep into Anthropic’s new lightweight model, Claude Haiku 4.5. This speedy AI delivers reliable, sub-second responses and comes in at just $1 per million input tokens and $5 for outputs. Designed for creators, developers, and studios who need rapid brainstorming, batch content variants, scripts, outlines, and micro-apps without burning a hole in the budget. We break down its impressive SWE-bench Verified score, wallet-friendly cost levers like prompt caching and batch APIs, plus real-world workflow impacts: creators can reclaim real time by skipping AI wait screens and only using bigger models for...
2025-11-0107 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyAdobe Firefly Goes Unlimited: Your R&D Sprint Starts NowIt is a big day for creative workflows! Adobe has just launched unlimited image and video generations in Firefly and Creative Cloud Pro, but only until December 1. This exclusive window lets creators, designers, editors, and studios stretch their imagination without worrying about generative credits or monthly caps. Tap into Adobe’s latest Firefly Image Models, experiment with the upgraded Firefly Video Model, and access integrated partner models including Google’s Imagen and Veo directly in the Firefly web app. Instantly compare multiple looks and aesthetics side by side, then seamlessly transfer assets into Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, or After Effects for...
2025-10-2907 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyChatGPT Atlas: OpenAI Drops the AI Super BrowserOpenAI just launched ChatGPT Atlas, its first-ever web browser with ChatGPT built right in—no more clunky extensions or hopping between apps. Atlas debuts on macOS, with Windows, iOS, and Android on the way. What makes Atlas different? A page-aware sidebar that understands the content you’re viewing and a new Agent Mode, previewed for Plus, Pro, and Business users, lets you perform supervised multi-step actions like navigating sites, filling forms, and collecting info—all within one tab. Privacy advocates breathe easy: Browser Memories are off by default and never used for model training unless you opt in. Power users, creato...
2025-10-2309 min
Focused on NothingS1E3: A Man Named Murphy, and Other IG Nobel FunWelcome back to the Focused on Nothing Podcast! Season 1! Episode 3! Tonight hosts Ted and Nick give social media updates, discuss the greatness that is the IG Nobel prize awards, then give you an extremely (not extremely) history about Murphy's Law. Come on down and give it a listen!Intro music prod. Ty Cobb can be found Here
2025-10-171h 06
Blue Lightning AI DailyGoogle Veo 3.1: Native Vertical Video & End-Frame ControlToday we break down Google Veo 3.1’s game-changing release for video creators in AI Studio and the Gemini API. The headline features: native vertical video (9:16 format) and powerful end-frame control, letting you call your final shot with precision. No more awkward reframes or patchwork edits—vertical is now the master format, streamlining workflows for Shorts, Reels, TikTok, stories, and brand campaigns. We compare Veo 3.1’s editorial upgrades and stability improvements to rivals like Sora 2, Runway, and Luma, highlighting who benefits most: social teams, indie founders, podcasters, designers, and anyone posting short-form video content. We cover how end-frame targeting, scene extension, and ch...
2025-10-1507 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyAI Video for a Nickel: Fal Launches $0.01/s Kandinsky-5Today on Blue Lightning AI Daily, we dive into Fal.ai’s game-changing move: text-to-video creation with Kandinsky-5 starting at just one cent per second. That means five seconds for five cents—cheaper than your iced coffee! Hosts Zane and Pippa break down what this means for creators, from social teams to indie agencies and educators. With two variants—Distill for rapid, budget-friendly drafts and Standard for higher quality—Fal's offering is all about low-cost, high-iteration workflows at social-friendly resolutions. We compare Fal’s new pricing to competition like Sora 2 on Artlist and Runway, explaining the wild savings for creators who need t...
2025-10-1508 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyGrok Imagine Turbocharges AI Video with Multi-RenderToday on Blue Lightning AI Daily, we dive into xAI’s Grok upgrades shaking up short-form video creation. The new Grok Imagine delivers parallel variants from a single prompt, speeding content creation for TikTokers, agencies, and YouTubers. The highly anticipated “Eve” voice gives a natural, human-like narration right in the app, reducing the need for third-party TTS tools. xAI’s push is toward lightning-fast draft-to-publish workflow: create synced six-second clips, batch test promo hooks, and never fuss with exporting audio again. We break down who benefits most from these upgrades, from solo creators to brand teams, and discuss the new “spicy” mod...
2025-10-1407 min
Blue Lightning AI DailySora 2 Joins Artlist: All-in-One Video Creation PowerupBig news for creators: Sora 2 is now live inside Artlist, meaning instant access to high-fidelity AI video generation without chasing an OpenAI invite. This episode unpacks what makes the Artlist x Sora 2 launch a game changer for YouTubers, marketers, agencies and solo makers. Consolidate video gen, stock, SFX, voiceover, and licensed music under one roof. We break down how Artlist’s credits system works across different plans, and why bundling these tools means faster pitching, fewer legal headaches, and less tool-juggling. Hear which creators and teams will benefit most, plus how it stacks up against other platforms like Google Veo 3 wi...
2025-10-1306 min
Blue Lightning AI Dailygpt-image-1-mini: The Creator’s Fast Lane for Cheap VisualsOpenAI just dropped gpt-image-1-mini, and it is the new daily driver for creators who need images fast and on a budget. In this episode, Zane and Pippa break down mini’s biggest selling points: lightning-quick image generation, affordable API rates, and creator-friendly features like text-to-image, image-to-image, inpainting, and style guidance via reference images. With fixed resolution options and flexible quality tiers, this model is built to keep costs predictable while delivering enough polish for YouTubers, social teams, ecom, and indie filmmakers. We compare gpt-image-1-mini’s pricing to alternatives like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and Adobe Firefly. The verdict: gpt-image-1-min...
2025-10-0808 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyOpenAI DevDay 2025: Apps, Agents, Sora 2 & GPT‑5 ProDive into the biggest announcements from OpenAI’s DevDay 2025 with Zane and Pippa. We break down how ChatGPT is evolving from a single assistant into a true creative platform. Discover how new Apps in ChatGPT end constant tab-switching with one-stop creative tools, and how the Agents SDK gives teams auditable, policy-aware automation. Creators, coders, and marketers will all want the scoop on Sora 2’s next-gen video capabilities, the lightning-fast GPT-realtime-mini voice features, and the returns of the Codex code model family. We cover the strategic edge of deploying domain-specific AI in your workflow, what features to try first, new pricing clue...
2025-10-0610 min
The Same DrugsGraham Linehan: arrested for tweets!Earlier this month, Graham Linehan stepped off the plane at Heathrow airport, met by five armed police officers who informed him that he was under arrest for tweets. Graham was a beloved Irish comedy writer, most well-known for having created Father Ted and The IT Crowd. Once he began speaking out in defense of women’s sex-based rights and spaces, everything changed. Graham was vilified across the UK, ostracized by his friends and co-workers, and threatened endlessly by trans activists. He never gave up, despite all this, and went on to publish his memoir, Tough Crowd, as well as co...
2025-10-031h 14
Blue Lightning AI DailyTencent Open-Sources HunyuanImage-3.0: Game OnToday on Blue Lightning AI Daily, Zane and Pippa dive into the groundbreaking release of HunyuanImage-3.0 from Tencent. This new text-to-image model is fully open-sourced—including weights and inference code—offering creators unparalleled control in visual generation. Unlike previous diffusion models like Stable Diffusion or FLUX, HunyuanImage-3.0 is natively multimodal, blending text and image reasoning into one fluid stream for improved composition and prompt fidelity. We break down how HunyuanImage-3.0’s 80-billion-parameter Mixture-of-Experts architecture delivers stable, on-brand visuals for both solo creators and large studios. The episode covers use cases from design agencies needing private deployments to YouTubers, filmmakers, podcasters, and Ti...
2025-10-0307 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyClaude Sonnet 4.5: AI That Actually Gets Work DoneToday on Blue Lightning AI Daily, we break down Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.5—an upgrade that is less about hype and more about major workflow wins for creators, marketers, podcasters, and anyone managing projects. Discover how Sonnet 4.5 is leading key benchmarks like OSWorld for computer use and SWE-bench Verified for real-world coding challenges. New features let the model autonomously run agent tasks for up to 30 hours, navigate apps and the web more smoothly, and recover work with new checkpoints and instant rollbacks. Hear how the Chrome extension, Agent SDK, and sharper task memory minimize context drift and grunt work for creators of...
2025-10-0108 min
Blue Lightning AI DailySora 2 Debuts: One-Take Audio and Video AI MagicOpenAI’s Sora 2 has landed, launching as an invite-only iOS app and promising to reinvent short-form creation with synchronized audio and video in just one step. Today, Zane and Pippa break down what creators need to know: Sora 2 unifies visuals and sound, letting you generate flawless 10-second clips complete with music, dialogue, ambience, and effects all at once. Forget scrambling for soundtracks or wrangling multiple apps. Instead, TikTokers, YouTubers, marketers, and designers can whip up pro-feeling clips as fast as they can come up with prompts. How does Sora 2 compare? Google’s Veo 3 offers similar features, but is aimed at ente...
2025-09-3008 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyMeta Vibes: AI Video Creation Goes Feed-NativeToday we break down Meta’s ambitious new feature: Vibes. This end-to-end AI video creation and publishing feed lets you prompt, remix, edit, and post bite-sized videos directly from the Meta AI app or web, blending creation and distribution in one seamless loop. Unlike other AI video tools that stop at exporting, Vibes lets you go live with a single tap and instantly push clips to Instagram or Facebook Stories and Reels. We compare Vibes to rivals like TikTok Symphony, YouTube Dream Screen, Runway, and Pika to see who’s best positioned for the coming age of AI-native short videos. We c...
2025-09-2607 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyAlibaba Wan 2.5-Preview: All-in-One A/V AI CreationDive into Alibaba's Wan 2.5-Preview, the breakthrough model claiming the crown for unified multimodal generation. Zane and Pippa break down what makes this model unique: native support for text, images, video, and audio in perfect sync—no more bouncing between editing tools or struggling to line up sound to visuals. Hear how creators, marketers, and designers can generate beat-synced short videos, animated cover art, or flawlessly branded product shots all within a single model. Learn how real-time reference images, audio stems, and precise prompts allow advanced control over pacing, narration, SFX, and style. Compare Wan 2.5 to OpenAI’s Sora, Runway Gen...
2025-09-2608 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyKling AI 2.5 Turbo: No More Wobbly ShotsKling AI just launched its 2.5 Turbo Video model and it is a true game changer for creators. Say goodbye to drifting camera shots and random style changes. This update brings tighter prompt fidelity, reduced jitter and flicker, and huge improvements in character and motion stability. Whether you produce ads, music visuals, or social campaigns, Kling 2.5 Turbo gives you cleaner frames and fewer do-overs for faster workflows. With aspect ratios for every platform, 30 fps, and up to 1080p on pro accounts, it fits vertical and widescreen projects alike. Costs are down by around 30 percent per shot over version 2.1, so you can...
2025-09-2508 min
Blue Lightning AI DailySuno v5: AI Music Goes Pro with Studio-Ready SoundBlue Lightning AI takes you inside Suno v5, the latest AI music model delivering release-ready tracks with lifelike vocals, cleaner mixes, and tighter creative control. Explore how Suno v5 raises the bar on audio fidelity, arrangement, and prompt accuracy. Hear about its game-changing remaster feature, which lets you upgrade old tracks with faithful or adventurous new versions. Compare Suno to Udio and learn why v5 could streamline workflows for creators, podcasters, marketers, and musicians. Get the scoop on paid-only access, value calculation, and upcoming features hinted by Suno's WavTool acquisition. Discover real-world scenarios from TikTok hooks to pro client projects...
2025-09-2406 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyQwen3-Omni: Real-Time Multimodal AI Goes Open SourceCan AI really respond in under a second and handle text, video, speech, and images—all at once? Meet Qwen3-Omni from Alibaba’s Qwen team. This open-source, Apache 2.0-licensed model combines multimodal understanding with real-time, streaming speech. Qwen3-Omni features a clever split: the Thinker does the smart perception, while the Talker delivers lightning-fast voice feedback, shrinking typical multi-tool workflows into one live loop. The big advantage? Sub-second response times reported as low as 211 milliseconds, open weights, and legal clarity for commercial use. Whether you’re a YouTuber wanting express captions, a podcaster making global episodes, or a developer buildi...
2025-09-2306 min
Some Things Considered with Sean MurphySeason 4 Ep 9 | Karen Eber | The Art & Science of StorytellingIn this episode of Some Things Considered, I sit down with Karen Eber — TED speaker, award-winning author of The Perfect Story, and former Fortune 500 executive whose talks have reached millions worldwide. Karen specializes in the science and skill of storytelling, helping leaders and creatives alike use stories to inform, influence, and inspire.The conversation explores:* The science of storytelling: what happens in the brain when a story works, and why humans are wired to connect through narrative.* What makes a story succeed—or fail: common pitfalls and how to avoid them.* Trus...
2025-09-2359 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyLucy Edit Dev: AI Video Edits with One CommandGet ready for your fastest video edit yet. Today, Zane and Pippa break down Lucy Edit Dev from Decart AI—an open-weight, instruction-following video editor now on Hugging Face. Unlike text-to-video generators, Lucy Edit Dev lets you edit existing footage with natural language prompts: swap a kimono, replace a background, or turn a barista into an astronaut, all without painstaking masking. Powered by a VAE and Diffusion Transformer backbone in the tradition of Wan 2.2, Lucy Edit Dev keeps shot composition, motion, and timing stable while delivering precise instruction-driven edits. It is dev-focused, open for research and R and D, but un...
2025-09-2307 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyZoom Drops Photoreal Avatars and Cross-Platform AI NotesZoom just shook up video meetings at Zoomtopia with AI Companion 3.0, launching November 2025 for paid Workplace users at no extra cost. The update packs a punch: photorealistic avatars that mimic your real expressions arrive in December, offering a polished on-camera presence for when you want to skip the makeup or hit a meeting without being camera-ready. More than just looking real, these avatars could change the culture of remote work—with norms around disclosure sure to follow. But the feature everyone’s buzzing about? AI Companion’s new cross-platform notes. Now, Zoom’s slick note-taking follows you not just in Zoom, bu...
2025-09-1907 min
DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted RallDeprogram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: Trump Talking to the TalibanLive 5 pm Eastern and Streaming 24-7:On Thursday’s episode of DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou, where political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou dissect the news, the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the No Political Enemies Act, U.S. efforts to reclaim Bagram Air Base from the Taliban, hundreds of thousands strike in France.Jimmy Kimmel: FCC Chairman Brendan Carr states that Kimmel misled the public by linking Charlie Kirk's killer to MAGA, prompting ABC—with a merger pending before the Administration—to suspend Jimmy Kimmel Live! indefi...
2025-09-191h 08
Blue Lightning AI DailyElevenLabs Studio 3.0: A Timeline Revolution for CreatorsElevenLabs Studio 3.0 is here and it is shaking up the game for podcasters, YouTubers, audiobook creators, and agencies. In this episode, we dive deep into everything new: true video support, seamless voiceovers and music beds, automatic multilingual captions, and the headline feature, Speech Correction—just edit your text and your own cloned voice matches right up, no more closet re-records. Now, creators can upload video, mix in narration, underscoring, and sound effects, all on a single browser-based timeline. It is designed to cut out app-hopping and let your creative process flow from scriptwriting to finished media in one place. We co...
2025-09-1708 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyYouTube Drops Veo 3 Fast and Speech to Song for ShortsYouTube is supercharging content creation with a trio of new AI features dropping right into Shorts: Veo 3 Fast for rapid prompt-to-video generation, Edit with AI for instant draft edits, and Speech to Song that morphs lines of dialogue into catchy musical hooks. On this episode, we break down how Veo 3 Fast lets you spin up 480p clips with audio in seconds, right from the Shorts camera or YouTube Create app. Edit with AI scans your raw footage, drafts a highlight reel, sequences edits, adds music, and even provides voice narration, all in a tap or two. We also dive into...
2025-09-1607 min
Blue Lightning AI DailySeedream 4.0: 4K Image AI That Means BusinessReady for true 4K AI images in any dimension and workflow? Today Zane and Pippa break down Seedream 4.0 from ByteDance, the latest contender in the AI image generator world. Seedream 4.0 brings genuine 4K output, custom aspect ratios, and an API built for creators and teams who care about precision, speed, and scalable workflows. We dig into why the exact-pixel control is a game changer for YouTubers, brands, podcasters, and design studios that need reliable asset generation without pixel drama. With claims of being over ten times faster than the last version, plus cost-effective direct pricing at just $0.03 per image, Seedream...
2025-09-1308 min
Blue Lightning AI DailySynamedia’s All-In AI: Smarter Streams and HighlightsToday we break down Synamedia’s headline-grabbing AI rollout at IBC2025, which brings artificial intelligence to every corner of the streaming and broadcast workflow. From conversational search that lets you instantly find moments like "Messi’s third goal" to live tagging that auto-flags game highlights as they happen, this is a serious upgrade for anyone working with live or on demand video. Synamedia bakes in dynamic creative personalization, contextual ad intelligence, and even an AI video quality agent that tunes encoders on the fly—saving time, money, and network headaches. Quortex Switch debuts in Europe, promising standards-based multi-CDN switching with smarte...
2025-09-1108 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyNvidia Rubin CPX: AI That Remembers Your Entire MovieReady for AI that never forgets—and keeps your edits in sync? Today we unpack Nvidia’s new Rubin CPX inference chip, built just for creative pros who need their AI to recall every beat of a scene or line of code. Rubin CPX is all about massive context windows: million-token, hour-scale workflows where generative tools never lose the thread. Zane and Pippa run through the hardware hype: 30 PFLOPs of power, 128 GB of rapid memory, and on-chip video encode and decode. The magic? Rubin CPX fuses media engines with transformer inference right on silicon, so long-form audio, video, dubbing, and code...
2025-09-1110 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyApple vs Pixel: AI-Powered Phones Go NativeToday on Blue Lightning AI Daily, Zane and Pippa break down the seismic shift in mobile AI as Apple and Google roll out radical new features. Apple’s iPhone event showcased Apple Intelligence—a generative AI layer baked right into your device, with privacy at its core and slick workflow upgrades like Writing Tools and smarter Siri. Meanwhile, Google’s Pixel 9 drops Gemini everywhere: from voice summaries to Docs to fast image gen, all woven across Android and the cloud. We compare Apple’s privacy-first on-device AI with Google’s “AI mesh” that syncs across your digital life. Whether you’re a YouTuber, p...
2025-09-1009 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyVidu Q1 Drops Seven-Image Continuity for AI VideoToday on Blue Lightning AI Daily, we break down ShengShu Technology’s latest Vidu Q1 update: multi-reference video generation. Imagine keeping your characters, props, and backgrounds consistent across a whole sequence—not just a shot—using up to seven reference images. Vidu Q1’s Reference-to-Video workflow aims to crush the classic problems like disappearing hats and morphing hero products, letting creators lock in continuity and reduce time lost to patchwork fixes. We compare it with rivals like Runway, Pika, and Luma and explain how more references mean fewer weird wardrobe jumps or identity drift. Find out why this helps everyone from You...
2025-09-0808 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyAlibaba Qwen3‑Max‑Preview: Trillion-Parameter AI for CreatorsOn this episode of Blue Lightning AI Daily, Zane and Pippa dive into Alibaba’s new Qwen3‑Max‑Preview, a trillion-plus parameter large language model making waves for content creators. Is it just big model hype, or does scale translate to workflow wins? Discover how Qwen3‑Max‑Preview offers improved instruction following, long multi-turn chats, and powerful agentic features for planning and tool use. Learn how creators from daily YouTubers and podcasters to filmmakers and brand agencies can benefit from longer context windows, more reliable outputs, and streamlined content pipelines. We break down Alibaba’s pitch versus competitors, pricing insights, and where th...
2025-09-0610 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyGoogle Photos Create Tab: Motion Magic UnleashedDiscover Google Photos’ new Create tab and the Veo 3-powered Photo-to-Video upgrade. We break down fresh Remix styles, cinematic animations, and highlight videos—all in-app. Find out how creators can batch slick stories faster with AI, tap into highlights from old archives, and skip the extra editing hassle. Pro tips included for eye-catching, scroll-stopping visuals. Turn memories into motion—no excuses!
2025-09-0607 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyGo Bananas for On-Model AI Art in Descript!Descript’s new “nano banana” image model keeps your characters and products looking consistent across edits. Learn why creators, marketers, YouTubers, and brand designers are obsessed—plus how Google’s watermarking ups trust and safety. From faster thumbnails to brand-safe ads, Blue Lightning AI Daily unpacks this delicious update and introduces the consistency wave rolling through creative AI tools.
2025-09-0307 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyGoogle Vids Superpowers: AI B-Roll, Avatars, and SpeedGoogle Vids just leveled up! We break down the new AI features: fast image-to-video b-roll, on-brand AI presenters, and transcript magic, all inside Google Workspace. Dive into how creators, marketers, and teams can storyboard, auto-edit, and publish videos quicker—no pro skills required. Hear workflow shortcuts, big-picture impacts, and why Google is pushing video-first collaboration. Get ready to power up your content game!
2025-09-0207 min
Blue Lightning AI DailyGrok Code Fast 1: Blazing Agent Loops, Zero LagWe break down xAI’s Grok Code Fast 1, a lightning-speed coding model made for agents that build, test, and fix in sub-seconds. From creators to dev teams, learn how this low-latency engine transforms workflows, slashes context-switching, and enables affordable micro-automation. Find out where to try it now, tips for better results, and why speed matters for creative pros.
2025-09-0108 min