Welcome to Happy AI Hour, where two friends walk you through the AI revolution without the jargon, the hype, or the Silicon Valley attitude.

This show started exactly where you'd hope it would: at an actual happy hour. Darryl Foust kept telling his friend Arlis Albritton that he needed to pay attention to AI. Arlis — a professional songwriter and founder of the St. Augustine Songwriters Festival — wasn't buying it. AI felt like a threat to his career, not a tool. But Darryl kept pushing. One happy hour, Arlis finally caved, opened the thing up, and got hooked. And somewhere between the second drink and the fifth "wait, it can do WHAT?" — this podcast was born.

In Episode 1, Darryl and Arlis pour the first round and get into the question everyone's quietly asking: should regular people actually care about AI right now?

Spoiler — yes. And it's not for the reason you think.

In this episode:

• Why Arlis went from AI skeptic to AI believer (and what finally flipped the switch) • The Reese Witherspoon book club story — only 3 out of 10 people in the room were using AI, and her Instagram comments were a full-blown panic • The John Henry problem — what the old folk song about a man racing a machine tells us about the moment we're living through right now • How Arlis rebuilt his entire Songwriters Festival website using Claude Code — and how he built bookasongwriter.com for a fraction of the $50,000 a traditional developer quoted him • Why Darryl left corporate sales to co-found JasperFoust.ai — and how he's now helping a major Nashville restaurant build an outbound sales team from zero using AI lead generation • The tools that actually matter right now — Claude, Claude Code, GitHub, Supabase, Lovable, HeyGen, Runway • The people worth following if you're just starting out — Jonathan Mast, Jeff Hunter, Lauren Lucas, Rory Flynn • The Elon Musk vs. OpenAI lawsuit — what the $500 billion fraud case actually means • Why AI is already in your life (Netflix, spell check, fast food ordering, your grocery app) whether you've noticed or not • The "wild wild west" problem — no regulations, voice AI that sounds human, and what happens next • Why the world is splitting into two camps — the people embracing AI and the people resisting it — and why the middle group is where the real opportunity lives

Darryl Foust is the co-founder of JasperFoust.ai, a firm helping small businesses and real estate professionals leverage AI for lead generation, marketing automation, and business growth. He spent years in corporate sales, inside sales, and real estate before going all-in on AI in 2023 — and now coaches everyone from Nashville restaurant owners to 68-year-old first-time AI users.

Arlis Albritton is a professional songwriter, founder of the St. Augustine Songwriters Festival, and creator of bookasongwriter.com — a subscription platform he built himself using AI tools after deciding to stop paying developers tens of thousands of dollars. He's the beginner, the skeptic, and the friend asking the questions you're actually thinking.

New episodes every week. Pull up a chair. Happy hour starts now.