I'd Rather Be Writing Podcast
Tom Johnson
A technical writing podcast about the latest trends and practices in the field of technical communication. Technical communication includes topics like technical writing (software help), AI, information architecture, usability, API documentation, information design, web design, illustration, DITA, structured authoring, content strategy, visual communication, and more. If you're a technical writer or interested in technical writing, this is the one of few podcasts in this niche. I also have a blog at https://idratherbewriting.com where the podcasts and other blog topics are published. For an index of all podcasts, see https://idratherbewriting.com/podcasts.
Episodes
Mentioned books
16 snips
Apr 23, 2026 • 59min
AI Book Club discussion recording of 'Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future', by Dan Wang
A lively discussion ties Dan Wang’s themes to AI, focusing on China’s energy and compute capacity and what that means for AI development. The group compares EV industry dynamics and manufacturing surge capacity. They describe pervasive surveillance, everyday tech in Chinese cities, and contrasts between an engineering-driven state and a lawyerly society.
Apr 12, 2026 • 1h 5min
Podcast: How valuable are agent skills? Conversation with Larah Vasquez and Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti
In this podcast, I chat with Larah Vasquez and Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti about using skills to extend AI capabilities, the future of agentic engineering, local models like Qwen and Gemma, and whether the tech writer role is shifting into automation architecture. We get into the memory problem in LLMs (and why some of us actually prefer the no memory to extended memory), the progression from prompt engineering to context engineering to compound engineering to orchestrating whole agent systems, and how skills are quietly forcing engineers to write down knowledge they'd never documented before.
Apr 5, 2026 • 1h 29min
The Emerging Picture of a Changed Profession: Cyborg Technical Writers — Augmented, Not Replaced, by AI
I recently gave a presentation to students and faculty in person at Louisiana Tech University on March 30, 2026, focusing on what I call the cyborg model of technical writing. The idea is that the emerging model for tech writing isn't one in which AI replaces tech writers but rather one in which AI augments tech writers. Tech writers interact with AI in a continuous back-and-forth, conversational, iterative manner. This post contains the recording, slides, transcript, summary, notes, and more from my presentation.
Mar 21, 2026 • 1h 18min
Will tech writers survive AI? Perspectives from two professors, Nupoor Ranade and Jeremy Merritt
In this podcast, I chat with two professors — Nupoor Ranade (Carnegie Mellon) and Jeremy Merritt (James Madison University) — about how AI is reshaping the technical writing profession from the academic side. We discuss dropping enrollments, misconceptions about what tech writers do, historical parallels to past disruptions, agentic AI and organizational restructuring, the cyborg model of human-machine collaboration, and how academics and practitioners can bridge the divide to solve real problems together.
Mar 17, 2026 • 56min
AI Book Club recording of 'If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies'
This is a recording of our AI Book Club discussion of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Will Kill Us All by Nate Soares and Eliezer Yudkowsky, held March 15, 2026. Our discussion touches on a variety of topics, including whether the book's use of parables strengthens or weakens its argument, the question of whether AI can develop genuine intentions, the competitive dynamics that prevent any single company from pumping the brakes, the limits of recursive self-improvement, and what ordinary people should make of wildly conflicting predictions from leading AI thinkers. This post also includes discussion questions,...
Mar 8, 2026 • 60min
Podcast: Doc testing, skills files, and the guardians of knowledge -- with Manny Silva
In this podcast, Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti (passo.uno) and I chat with Manny Silva (instructionmanuel.com), head of documentation at Skyflow and author of Docs as Tests. Manny is working on a follow-up book that incorporates AI, covering validated generation, trusted agents, and self-healing documentation.
Feb 16, 2026 • 54min
AI Book Club recording, notes, and transcript for Sarah Wynn-Williams's Careless People
This is a recording of our AI Book Club discussion of Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams, held February 15, 2026. Our discussion touches on a variety of topics, including whether criticisms of the author's complicity are fair, the ethical dilemmas we face working in tech, whether the parallels between social media and AI hold up, the Streisand effect of Meta's attempt to suppress the book, and more. This post also includes discussion questions, key themes, and a full transcript.
Jan 25, 2026 • 1h 2min
Podcast: Tech comm predictions for 2026 (Phase One)
In this episode, Fabrizio and I discuss our predictions for tech comm in 2026, focusing on two posts: Fabrizio's My day as an augmented technical writer in 2030 and my 12 predictions for tech comm in 2026. Some of the specific topics we cover include the evolution of writers into automation engineers, the increasing necessity of systems thinking, the economic paradox where high tech valuations are contrasting with stagnant hiring, the risk of the Reverse Centaur dynamic (where humans merely approve AI output), and the growing value of authentic human connection and humanity.
Jan 24, 2026 • 56min
AI Book Club recording of God, Human, Animal, Machine
This post provides a recording of our AI Book Club discussion of God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning by Meghan O'Gieblyn, held Jan 18, 2026. Our discussion touches upon a variety of parallels between religion and AI, such as the black box nature of AI and the incomprehensibility of divine will, transhumanism and resurrection, predictive algorithms and free will, and more. This post also provides discussion questions, a transcript, and other resources.
Jan 4, 2026 • 1h 10min
Podcast: Writing as telepathy: AI tools, automation, and an intentionally offline life -- conversation with CT Smith
In this episode, Fabrizio (passo.uno) and I talk with CT Smith, who writes on a blog at docsgoblin.com and works as a documentation lead for Payabli. Our conversation covers how CT uses AI tools like Claude in her documentation workflow, why she builds tooling that doesn't depend on AI, her many doc-related projects and experiments, and how she balances a tech writing career with an intentionally offline life in rural Tennessee. We also get into reading habits, the fear of skill atrophy from AI reliance, and where the tech writer role might be headed.
