Kentucky tech, explained from the ground up.
Middle Tech is a regionally grounded interview show about startups, technology, entrepreneurship, and the systems shaping Kentucky and beyond. Its best conversations turn big shifts in AI, energy, operations, and critical minerals into concrete examples from people actually working through them.
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Middle Tech is a conversational technology and entrepreneurship show with a strong Kentucky center of gravity. It follows founders, operators, and technical guests through the practical details behind startup growth, AI adoption, energy development, and industrial capability. The show is not just interested in what is new. It is interested in what has to change for new technology to matter. Recent episodes spend time inside Lexington’s startup ecosystem, looking at Awesome Inc, fellowship programs, pitch events, and the long arc from small founder gatherings to larger community momentum. Other conversations focus on companies trying to make AI useful in ordinary business operations, especially where messy workflows, fragmented data, and old processes stand between a company and real leverage. That practical bias gives the show its shape. A discussion about AI can move from podcast production workflows to manufacturers, logistics companies, regulatory documents, and requests for proposals without losing the listener. The Mission Critical strand expands the frame into energy, advanced manufacturing, and national supply chains. Those episodes cover e-waste processing, critical minerals, closed-loop recycled copper, fusion at a decommissioned coal plant, and the case for a nuclear energy future. The show has a civic streak, especially when it talks about Kentucky’s role in larger technological shifts. It sounds curious rather than detached. It also gives young founders room to explain distribution, campus adoption, and the realities of building with limited resources. Middle Tech is strongest when a guest can translate a complex system into working parts: who supplies what, where the bottleneck sits, what risk remains, and what a next step would actually look like. The pacing is measured, with the interviewer often setting the scene, summarizing the guest’s point, and then asking for the next layer. It suits listeners who want regional startup coverage that still connects to national questions about AI, energy, infrastructure, and economic growth.
Made for: For founders, operators, students, and tech-curious listeners who want practical conversations about startups, AI, energy, and infrastructure. It especially suits people interested in how Kentucky and beyond fit into larger technology shifts.
What sets it apart: Middle Tech pairs local startup ecosystem coverage with bigger industrial and technical conversations, so a single feed can move from Lexington founder programs to fusion, e-waste, AI workflows, and nuclear energy. The regional grounding keeps the subject matter concrete.
A podcast network exploring startups, technology, and entrepreneurship in Kentucky and beyond.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Middle Tech connects emerging technology to the funding, infrastructure, workflows, and practical decisions that determine whether it can scale.
Middle Tech follows technology into the places where ambitious ideas meet operating reality. Its interview-led conversations move from Lexington's startup programs and a student app's rapid growth to AI-driven workflow changes, critical-mineral recovery, and an experimental…
Dorm flyers brought no signups; Middle Tech gives you the growth story after the victory lap.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Awesome Inc's Fellowship gives a practical view of Lexington's startup ecosystem.
Middle Tech uses the conversation to follow Awesome Inc's growth alongside Lexington's startup scene, moving from a 20-person room in 2010 to a Kentucky Theater event that nearly oversold at more than 750 people.
AI only matters when the work underneath it gets rebuilt.
Buddy Bockweg makes a steady case that AI only becomes an advantage when a business retools the work beneath it. The strongest passage connects the Ford analogy to a practical example of structured data, transcripts, and assets helping a small team produce more, not just save…
E-waste policy only gets real once the missing processing capacity comes into view.
This conversation frames e-waste as a supply-chain problem before it becomes a policy one. The host and Matt of Mint Innovation return to the same hard constraint: the United States generates roughly 8 million metric tons of e-waste a year, only 15% gets recycled, and the…
A campus AI app story that treats distribution like the main product.
Nate Royal’s story reads as a clean example of how a college-built AI app can reach real users. The 21-year-old junior at UofL ties the idea to a familiar problem of deadline pressure, then grounds it in syllabus reminders, Google Calendar connections, and text reminders.
A coal plant tour that becomes a plainspoken look at fusion risk and scale.
Mission Critical frames a decommissioned coal plant in Clinton, Tennessee, as more than a relic: it becomes a clear way to think about TVA, Type One Energy, and how old industrial space might be reused as a new power system comes into view.
Practical conversations from the decommissioning front line.
Commodity shocks, traced to market mechanics.
Finance stories with consequences attached.
Energy transition, explained at system scale.
Middle Tech talks with Garrett Fahrbach of Awesome Inc about Lexington's startup ecosystem and where it stands today.
Buddy returns to Middle Tech for a third visit.
The host opens with tariffs and export bans, then brings the focus back to the capability gap.
The host opens with 23,000 students in January alone.
Logan Jones opens with a simple image.
This episode features Logan and Evan discussing how to build a company using artificial intelligence, focusing on practical applications at Valent and the broader implications for entrepreneurship in America.
This episode features an interview with Steve Crossan, a founding member of AlphaFold at DeepMind, discussing the project's origins in an internal hackathon and his career at Google.
This episode features an interview with nuclear engineer Dr.
This episode features interviews with Cindy Sparks of Complete 3D and Dr.
The hosts celebrate Middletech's 300th episode by discussing the show's evolution, upcoming plans, favorite episodes, and future technology trends.