aiEDU Studios
aiEDU Studios is a podcast from the team at The AI Education Project.
Each week, a new guest joins us for a deep-dive discussion about the ever-changing world of AI, technology, K-12 education, and other topics that will impact the next generation of the American workforce and social fabric.
Learn more about aiEDU at https://www.aiEDU.org
aiEDU Studios
Kaleidoscope see podcasts as an 'engine for empathy'
What happens when you combine Hollywood-level storytelling with the intimacy of audio?
Oz Woloshyn and Mangesh Hattikudur, co-founders of Kaleidoscope, have created some of the most compelling podcasts in the medium by focusing on one simple truth: people love feeling smart, especially when learning feels like an adventure.
Kaleidoscope's award-winning shows transport listeners from the Amazon rainforest in search of rare cacao to a Soviet space station where a cosmonaut finds himself stranded when his country collapses beneath him. These aren't just podcasts – they're audio journeys that hook listeners with compelling facts and emotional moments that make seemingly niche topics universally fascinating.
As we navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of AI and content creation, Oz and Mangesh offer refreshing perspectives on why human creativity remains irreplaceable. While they've embraced AI tools to streamline production (revolutionizing their workflow with transcription and editing software), they emphasize that technology serves creativity, not the other way around. The subtle imperfections of human communication (which Mangesh calls the "wobble") create emotional connections that no algorithm can replicate.
Kaleidoscope's approach to podcast creation offers valuable insights for educators and parents who are concerned about how to engage students in an era of shrinking attention spans. Whether you're a podcast creator, educator, or simply curious about the future of storytelling, this conversation will leave you rethinking how we connect with audiences in meaningful ways.
Learn more about Kaleidoscope:
aiEDU: The AI Education Project
Yes, welcome to AIEDU Studios, where we're building either. We don't know if it's a show, it could be a podcast, maybe it's a YouTube channel. The goal is bringing interesting people on to talk about the intersections of our nerdiness, talking, obviously, about artificial intelligence and education, but also bringing people who are at the forefront of different industries, different spaces, places that are being impacted by and also driving forward innovation, artificial intelligence and sort of help us sort of paint this picture of what the future really looks like, because we hear a lot about the future of work and the age of artificial intelligence. I think most people don't really understand what that means for them, depending on their interests, and so, to that end, we have not actually had an opportunity to invite folks in the media space, in the creative space, and so joining me today are the co-founders of Kaleidoscope, mangesh Hartikadur and Az Velashin, and we're going to hear more about what they've built, what Kaleidoscope is. They have blazed the trail that AIDU is just beginning, and so I'm personally excited.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):Maybe we'll have a little bit of a mix. I don't know about that.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):We will certainly be cutting all the instances where they're providing me feedback and telling me all the things I'm doing wrong. But yeah, thank you so much for coming on to the show. And why don't we start with just tell us a little bit about you know, tell us about Kaleidoscope and tell us about what your life has been like over the last couple of years, as you've been sort of building this new studio, this new company.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):Yeah, so Kaleidoscope is a podcast company. We love the audio space. We think there's something so beautiful and transportive and the fact that you can be in someone's ear and that connection that you have is so meaningful. This company we really thought that it was just an incredible way to tell stories from around the world and almost treat it like an engine for empathy, and that stories were a way to just an incredible lens for understanding the world.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, and so it's interesting because the even the project of what we're doing here, you know, along maybe 60, maybe even 90 minutes, if we have time, um, to really get into it it's. It's really pushing back against the trend culturally that we've seen content go in terms of, you know, we went from you know, short videos to now literally like three seconds of just dopamine you know it was no context.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Context um brain rot, as the kids in the classrooms that we teach I mean it's literally like they're. They're sort of like self-indulgent in the way that they talk about brain rot.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Well, it was the oxford, uh dictionary word of the year, I think yeah, it was um, but podcasts and the type of and especially the type of podcasts you do, which is not just sort of I mean, you do some talk shows right, but you also do long form storytelling that's right that builds like series um. Folks have probably probably remember the uh serial and sort of like how that brought sort of this like sort of storytelling format um into this space and you've continued that work um. Can you tell us about some of the stories that you've told in that format?
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):Yeah, definitely, like I said, part of what we try to do is really value the listener's time and really engage them and entertain them.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):There's a show about cacao and wild cacao that we did called Wild Chocolate, but the way we pitched it was, and it's ultimately an environmental story, but we pitched it as an Indiana Jones of chocolate.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):Or we did a story that was about a Soviet cosmonaut who got stuck in space because the Soviet Union disbanded beneath him and he was stuck there for 300 plus days and his only connection to the world was this ham radio operator in Australia that he managed to connect with. Or I did a show that ended up being much more personal than I was expecting, but it was about how astrology is seen so differently in the East than the West and and and the ways that you know it's. It's such a pseudoscience here and and it's it's a way of life in India and and and these, these stories that felt really fun and and emotional and like big adventures and in some ways we were trying to trying to go against the grain of of, at least in the beginning of of all. The really long chat shows that that they were going on for like three or four hours Like this. These were things that were meant to pull you in and entertain you and, at the end of the day, leave you feeling smarter.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, we were just talking before, um picking things off about some of our favorite sort of youtube shows, and there's this model, just like, bring people together, put them on some couches ikea couches maybe um, just banter, and you know, I think like I'll give some props. It's still longer form and's opportunities to at least, you know, dive into a little bit more depth of content. It's not necessarily always educational content, but there's a lot more work that goes into telling a story about cacao, which could be interesting, but you know, I could also see this be I mean, like you can imagine a lecture and something that's informational informational and people obviously have short attention spans. What are some of the ways that you break past? Because, also, your shows are among the most listened to shows on Apple Podcasts and you've won a few awards.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):Yeah, and, to be clear, I actually really value really long interview shows and I think different shows have different purposes.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):Long sort of interview shows and I think different shows have different purposes, right, and so, in the same way that sports radio people would turn it on and keep it on in the background, as you're like, maybe painting a room or you know something to keep you company, as you're doing that the commute to work, where you might have 25 minutes or 30 minutes in a car and you want to be told something very clearly, or you want to learn specifically about markets or whatever.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):Right, like, every podcast has its own flavor but also purpose, and so I think we went in very intentionally with the idea of telling these really gorgeous stories and we tried to invest in the sound design in a way that other people hadn't. We tried to look at the space in a way that especially like, if you think about when we'd started this company, it was coming out of the pandemic and so it was people had been stuck in their houses for a very long. In the lockdown period people had been stuck in their houses. They'd still had this like tremendous wanderlust and to be able to place someone in a different environment through their earphones was something that we felt was really meaningful and how many shows do you have out right now?
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):how many shows have we done?
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):We've done more than 10 and we have another 10 to 12 coming out this year. I think about half of the portfolio of what we do is going to be weekly more chat style content and half is going to be weekly more chat style content and half is going to continue to be these highly produced cinematic stories.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):I mean, in my mind, what we're really trying to do is always create someone's favorite show, and when I was at iHeart we did a show called Call your Grandmother and it was an 80-year-old host and a 90-year-old host and they were like a hoot and you wanted to spend time with them and at the end of this half an hour with them you're reminded how much you love your own grandmother and for someone like me whose grandparents have all passed, it was just such a pleasure and to be able to create that space. There's so many flavors of show to provide that, I think, and there's so many lanes. I don't really think of other podcasts as competition right. I just think there's space to really sort of provide something beautiful and let audiences find it and evangelize it. I really do think good content makes its own luck find it and evangelize it.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):I really do think good content makes its own luck. I want to talk about this format and we're going to go a little meta and maybe you can even imbue some sage wisdom on me and my team as we're trying to figure out how to build our own. Again, I really don't know if this is a show. I think, like right now I'm thinking about it more because and you will be the first to tell me right that, like when you pitch an idea for a show, there's a really coherent sort of like framing. You have a sense of the format and we're still experimenting.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):And so I'm trying to give myself a little bit of, you know, wiggle room to really kind of see what works and see what works for our guests.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):Well, that's fun. I mean you find that you find the format in the doing right, so you don't have a firm launch date. It's quite nice because you can iterate and iterate until you find exactly what works for you and then take that out as the product, or you can launch it and iterate it in progress, especially these more chat-driven formats. You see how much they evolve from episode 1 to episode 10 to episode 100.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):I've only listened to three of the shows that you've released. The first three, wild Chocolate, skyline Drive and the Last Soviet and yeah, those were incredible. Also, the Last Soviet, amazingly narrated by Lance Bass, who I never realized he actually served in the. It was like a Russian sort of cosmonaut summer camp.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):He was prepping to go to space and he spent time at Star City, learned Russian, did all this testing. It was pretty incredible what I think.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):What stood out to me is I never had an interest in chocolate. In fact, I don't really even like chocolate, although I did, I do have the, the, the, the collab that y'all did.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):um, that chocolate was amazing. Um, I actually developed an appreciation for chocolate, but basically it was not the type of show I would normally have committed to. But there was something about being transported to, like literally being in the Amazon, the interviews with people in these remote villages, and it brought me back to this. Yeah, it's sort of like this age of like much more adventurous, like the value of media was sort of like bringing you to places that you couldn't necessarily go yourself.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, um, and I'm someone who I, I sort of I respect, you know, the marvel universe and I respect sort of you know, these like big blockbuster movies, um, but it does feel like that we have a lot less of that culturally now. You know, you're sort of or you're transported to 50 or 100 different parts of the world in the span of like two minutes on Instagram or TikTok and you don't, you don't really connect. There's no, there's no opportunity to actually connect and sort of hear the almost like the tenor of this old woman's voice and sort of like the roughness, and you can kind of tell that she's been like working in, you know, in this, in this trade, for 30 years and like the fact that you can hear that in her voice is sort of a subtlety to it, and I'm curious if you feel like this is a?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):I mean, do you feel like this medium is underappreciated? I mean, everything now feels like niches. Everybody has their, you know, there's folks spending 20 hours a week watching people play video games, not playing video games, watching people play video games, right, and so, and actually my favorite, so my favorite niche is it's a YouTube channel called Townsend and sons, and this is this guy, john Townsend, in Indiana, and he, uh, is a reenactor, but his, specifically, he reenacts um 18th century cooking and so he has the whole gar built like a hut and he had all the materials and he like teaches, he like looks into old recipe books and like cooks 17 or 18th century cuisine, um, and he's millions, like 2.5 million followers.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):His videos get hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of views, um, and I love that. I love that. That's actually like part of what the internet has done is you don't have to have like the best show that literally every single person is talking about. You have to have like the best show that literally every single person is talking about. You have to figure out how to hook you know just that right type person, um, and and so you have three shows that are kind of all over.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):I mean, like you know, chocolate space astrology, um, but I I think it's one of those things that people don't know what they're interested in until they're shown right. And so one a a show about chocolate. Probably you wouldn't expect that. It starts in the Amazon with a journalist circling because he can't land a plane and it finally lands and the whole, and they finally find a patch of land to land on and the plane comes to a stop and then four men with guns come out and tell them, you know, like, this is a drug lord's land and you shouldn't be landing here, right? I mean, like, that isn't the expectation of what a chocolate show should be about. But also it is engaging, right, and I think that I certainly, like you know, netflix has shows about glass blowing that, like I wouldn't have.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):I don't care about glass blowing, or I don't think I do, but then I watch. You know, like I don't really care that much about baking. I watch great british bake off all the time. You know like, and suddenly I do care about it. You know like, there there's so many things, so many things to appreciate and so many ways to appreciate it, and I feel like you just have to be led in in the right way.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):I think not for nothing. I mean, the connective thread between those three shows is their quest adventures that relate in one way or another to science and, in some cases, technology. So with Wild Chocolate, you have these people who are so obsessed with this pre-columbian, semi-mythical cacao in the amazon that can only grow if it has enough uh canopy coverage that it's in the dark for most of the day. And these people risk it all and bet their whole life savings on trying to find these beans right. And so you go on this adventure with them. In the process, you learn about the amazon, you learn about the history of cacao cultivation, you hear about his role in pre-Columbian culture In the case of the Last Soviet.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):You have a guy who goes to space, is in the Mir space station. The Soviet Union collapses beneath him and he's faced with a choice Do I come home and abandon the Mir space station to spin off into space, or do I wait here for as long as it takes until someone can bring me home? Because this mere space station is the last redoubt and the final pride of the of the country and the empire I've given my life to. And again, in that, you get to the history of the space race, you get to rocket technology, propulsion technology in the case of mangashe's show, uh, the astrology show, skyline drive. This was, in a sense, a skeptic's guide to, you know, a spiritual topic.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Because you, your family obviously believed, believes in astrology. You were yourself a skeptic going into the show.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):Yeah, I mean, I think it's one of these things that I don't believe in astrology. But astrology has happened to me, right, like my parents met because they were introduced to one another because their charts matched, you know, and it was almost like this dating service where, like they could, only their family only introduced them to people who they matched up with and they dated for a bit, liked each other, you know, ended up getting married. But I'm only here because of astrology in this strange way and so, and you also find, astrology, whether you believe it or not, has affected the world drastically in that one search for understanding astrology led to an understanding of astronomy. Right, it was only through, like it's the desire to understand the future that led us to, like, investigate the stars closer. But also, astrology is what convinced Reagan for the nuclear disarmament, to have talks with Gorbachev. It was his astrologer, who was in his ear, who said now is a great time to do this, this is the time, this is the reason.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):And he was such a believer that if you look at the times of his inaugurations or the times he's sworn in, they're at astrologically significant times and moments. And similarly, boris Yeltsin, mitterrand, like all these people you know, it's one of these things that when people need hope or they're in grief or they need like consoling, right, like people turn to the stars, in the same way they turn to religion. And so when people don't know what to do, it's convenient. And so there are teams in San Francisco baseball teams that don't know which players to pick in drafts, and so they use astrologers to guess which one will have better longevity with the team. And we don't see this. It's invisible. But when we're rooting for our favorite teams, we don't know that actually astrology has played a part.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Okay, so you talked about making obscure topics engaging. We work with teachers every day who this is their daily struggle, whether they're teaching linear algebra or the fall of the Soviet Union, to actually come up with an example that maybe is relevant, or the Scarlet letter. You know, these are some things that students occasionally will sort of develop an interest in, but for the most part kids are looking out the window waiting for the bell to ring and I'm curious, like is there anything that teachers can learn from the work that you do telling stories?
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):I think one of the things I learned along the way is that people love feeling smart, and I think that part of what we do is try to infuse our storytelling with a lot of joy and a lot of quirkiness, and the weird facts on the edges often are the things that end up pulling you into stories.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):And so something like the Last Soviet was, I believe it was like a one-off fact about a Soviet that had been stuck in space that your friend told you about, and then we were like wait, that can't be true.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):And then we looked into it and then we dove into it and then we realized, oh, this is incredibly rich story, and I feel like, if you can figure out what that first fact is, that gets someone curious, that's fun to repeat, right. Like whether it's the fact that, like I think, belgium tried to use cats to deliver the mail to use cats to deliver the mail, you know, and they equipped 37 postal cats with, and the whole experiment was a disaster. But or that, like you know, there are pirate ships that ran out of cannonballs and won battles with Edom cheese. Or or, you know, like there there's so many ways into history and math and science and storytelling and even like Pythagoras, is more interesting when you know he had a cult and wouldn't eat beans and, like you know, I, I think there are so many aspects that let you feel a little smarter and and if you can walk out of a room with that sort of joy, that sort of sense that you want to evangelize a topic that makes learning fun.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):Mary Poppins spoonful of sugar. We had a meeting yesterday with the former director of the Exploratorium here in San Francisco and he had some interesting insights for us. One of the most fascinating things he told us is the number one complaint about the Exploratorium is it's impossible, if you're a parent, to get your kids to leave. But he had this interesting phrase that's strategy equals sacrifice. And so he basically said you have to decide where you want to be. Is it engagement or is it information that you want to lead with?
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):I think, in a culture of TikTok and like dopamine highs, to be an effective educator you have to figure out how to meet people at the place of engagement and then, you know, educate them. Following that, I think coming in with the assumption that people want to know facts to improve themselves brings you a very narrow audience of students in this day and age. And so far be it from us to give advice to teachers. But I think thinking about not being allergic to the word engagement even though it's a little bit of a dirty word given the TikTok of it all is crucial to winning any kind of audience.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):I mean, I see it with one. My mom was a preschool teacher and what she was so good at was finding out what each kid was interested in and then tailoring the subject to them. And so, uh, she would. She would make the room feel like an airplane and give everyone passports and take them to Egypt, and take them to various places, and like and you know where you got it from Um but.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):but you know at the same time, like she would get these preschoolers and teach them like oh, this is, this is how you're going to finger paint like Paul Clay. This is how you're going to finger paint like Paul Clay. This is how you're going to finger paint like Van Gogh. This is how you're going to do like Monet. And it was just unbelievable that these kids would walk out of these classrooms like feeling so confident and so good, and that they could, a lot of times, like older siblings, would cry because, like their younger kids, knew more about the solar system than they did, but I saw it with my own
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):kids where this incredible teacher brought worms into the classroom as the class pet. Everyone else has one pet, but we've got 500 here and they learned everything. The places where disciplines mix and they can talk about you know the. The places where disciplines mix and they can talk about the environment. They can talk about biology, they can talk about like uh, uh, you know food systems and all these things.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):Like I, I think that kids are sponges and and they they do want to learn.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):You just have to show, you know, you just have to engage them a little bit.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):And I realized that sounds easy or something, and obviously a teacher's work is is is the hardest thing in the world and and like I mean I think in various places, like my journalism teacher in in high school is the one who who made the intro to an investor, who invested in mental floss and he invested in kaleidoscope, you know, and like I still communicate with my like teachers from third grade and sixth grade and people who listen to Skyline Drive, and I mean I was really lucky in that there was such a focus on creativity in my school and the creative applications of sort of the inquiry-based learning we did space I found is that when you talk to a lot of folks who've been doing this work and it's, and certainly that work of teaching is thankless and underpaid and yes, you get summers off, but it's even the summers are not as long as people assume yeah, Um, and a lot of them have these sort of like uh, origin stories that start with that one teacher, um, that had a transformational impact in their life.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):And yes, it is easier said than done, and preschool teacher, elementary school teacher, fourth, fifth grade there's a lot of scope to be creative and sort of like bringing these different experiences in as you go further along and even when you hit fifth grade. In some cases, teachers are starting to be burdened with standards and all the boring content stuff that they have to teach, and so that is often the challenge. It's not necessarily that teachers are not creative or just don't realize it.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):I think it's much easier when the kids are younger, I mean especially as you're teaching to tests and et cetera, but there's still so much space.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah. So let me, let me, um, um, so I I say all of that because, as you were sort of describing some of these ideas to me, I was trying to think about, like how could a teacher, kind of like tomorrow, take that and make an actionable and it might be hard for a teacher to figure out that weird, quirky connection to whatever it is, the lesson that they're teaching. We don't normally push AI as a tool that teachers should be using every single day across the. We don't believe AI should be replacing the work of teachers, but it occurs to me that this is actually a really interesting use case.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):Yeah, what a great you could say could say you know, I have student a who's this, these are their passions, and student b, these are their passions. And students see these, their passions. What, what are some suggestions on the best way to engage them on the topic at?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):hand.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):I think that would be a perfect use case.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):I think it'd be a perfect use case. Um, and, and the call out is still that you need a teacher to. You know, some percent of the time, probably a big percent of the time, in that specific prompt it's going to hallucinate, make it up. So, again, not replacing the work of teaching. You're still gonna have to do a little bit of homework, but I think that's the sort of thing that could make this a lot easier. And so when we think about how does ai fit into the classroom, you know well it can make learning more engaging and more personalized. It just occurred to me that this is maybe a really like a tangible example of that it's subtle but it actually to your point.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):like the point is the hook. You know you spend a lot of time, I assume like significant amount of time thinking about like that first episode.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):It's always the hardest one so much time.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):And but I, yeah, exactly, I don't want to be dismissive of the work that teachers do, because I, I saw it firsthand, right Like and and also my mom used to make us uh, she pulled my dad and me into like turn refrigerator boxes into like various things, and she was like, well, this one's a castle. And I was like I, amma, we just made a. And she's like no, no, that was a rocket ship.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):This is a castle.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):This is something else, but I was constantly helping her cut things and make things and work sheets and whatever, and obviously that work is so important. But I think the benefits to the kids and the way kids walked out of that classroom so confident, like I think that's what I was fascinated with, was like these kids that really had a stronger sense of self because they knew things and then could go into kindergarten, where the socialization is really hard right, but if they've got the academics covered then, like, they can focus on the socialization is really hard right, but if they've got the academics covered then they can focus on the socializing.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):One of the ways I sometimes like to prepare for interviews is to open an LLM and say imagine you are a Goldman Sachs analyst and you're going to interview this person. What are your top three questions? Now imagine you're the editor of Wired magazine. And now imagine you're Katie Couric magazine. You're going, and now imagine you're, you know, katie couric, and so basically to, to, to to have the llm like, imagine its way into different interrogation or questioning approaches and then kind of understand, use that to piece together okay, what is the most interesting way to engage this person?
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):I think I think that's what's what's really fascinating is, like the, the way you get so many options out of this.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):I won't say what should I ask this person?
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):I will say provide inspiration on an approach and I'll choose between suggested approaches I mean I we were talking about this earlier that like I have a friend who started this company called pseudo right, and it's to help writers, uh, particularly when there's like writer's block, to give you like options of where your story could go and that inspiration, or taking what you've written. And I had this friend, daniel alicon, and and he uh said that he took a map and he like redrew it and tried to imagine a landscape and like had to do all this work to figure out, like what this imaginary land would be. But ai can do that for you, right, it can create what your fantasy visuals are to inspire you and to give you even more clarity on what you want to do. And so I think there are all sorts of ways of creating options for yourself when you're unsure.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):This is a beautiful segue, because I wanted to have an opportunity to ask you about this question that you've already sort of led us to, which is what are the ways that AI either is helping you do your work or could help you do your work?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):And before we dive into it, I just want to sort of set the stage for the type of folks that might be listening, in short, teachers, maybe some administrators, but also parents, and I talked to a lot of parents who are like my kids. In fact, our director of communications is his son loves creating art. Yeah, um, not like youtube video, like like literal, like draw, like collages and painting, spray paint. Um, we get questions from a lot of parents that are like my kids, are really interested in art, media, design, and they're reading the news they're seeing, maybe they're playing with Dali or Midjourney, and you type in one sentence, in not even a minute but like five seconds, and you get this very compelling painting, photograph, 3d rendering, and I think I've actually seen some audio books on Amazon now that are narrated by AI Voices.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):AI Podcasts.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):There's AI Podcasts, and so, to the discerning parent, the question that we get is is there going to be space for for creatives if ai is going to be able to do all this stuff that we traditionally associate with creative work? Um, is this kind of a dead end for for my kids, and should they be learning something else? Maybe they should be learning ai stuff instead of instead of doing art. And before I weigh in with how I respond, I'll tease it and say that, um, I I vehemently, uh, uh, not aligned with that perspective I think that there is this important room for creatives, but you're on the front front lines of this um and we're far enough along now.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Chat gbt came out at the end of 22, so it's been what like two and a half two two years and some change. Um, okay, is it? Has it actually changed the way you work meaningfully? Has it changed the way you hire? Is it changing the way you're thinking about your strategy? Um, why don't we start with like have. Are you using ai day to day? Did you use ai in the last week? If so, how?
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):Practically speaking, we use AI all day, every day, in fact. It's completely integral to our production process, not in the form of telling us what to say, but in the form of actually efficiently editing. And, magus, you want to explain about Descript and how we use it?
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):Yeah, we use a program called Descript and we import our files into it and it basically transcribes all your content. It can filter out, sounds for like if there's mic bleed, it fixes that and it allows you to edit like you're editing a text document, so you just delete a sentence and it cuts it from the audio.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):You don't have to. You know you don't have to have any audio. And now to have a perfect product, of course it's not good enough, but to be able to go from a lengthy interview to an effective rough cut, you can do that as easily as you can edit a Google doc, whereas even three years ago that would have required.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):What was?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):it like before you had the script.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):Before that, that would have required specialists. What was it like before you had Descript? Before that, you would have to send the files to a transcriber.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):You would send, which cost like a dollar a minute. I mean, it was expensive.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):Yeah, it was too expensive to get stuff.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):When I started podcasting in 2019, it was too expensive to get all our audio transcribed. It was too expensive to get all our audio transcribed. Can you believe that? So the production flow we would literally decide? Is this interview important enough to spend $300 to get transcribed, to figure out what the best moment is without listening to it for three hours?
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):And also it often wouldn't be you listening to it, it would be someone else listening to it and you'd hope they'd make the changes. And you try to consolidate those two things and try to meet somewhere what's closer to your vision versus. You know, I do a show called part-time genius. It's a very quick show but but I look at it, I make the tweaks that I heard as I was recording something. I knew this sentence was wrong. I knew I made a hiccup here, all these things and then I send it to get mixed and mastered and all the other steps that used to all the like QC, the quality control that used to take place have been eliminated, like it's a much, much faster and more seamless process.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):But this is a great example. This is not like we're not going out and saying like or sometimes we are, but in this case not. How do I use AI? It's more like it's not. We don't think about it as using ai, we think about it as using an application. In fact, we've forgotten how bad it was or how difficult it was before the script.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):I think you know one of the other areas, obviously creative inspiration, and I'm super, super happy and relieved to report that I think ai does a great job of summarizing information. Obviously, often with halluc it has no ability to write with voice, and even like Notebook LMI is pretty interesting. Like it can make a pretty competent two-way conversation podcast between like a male voice and a female voice. It's also entirely reliant on what you feed it. So like. If you just say like here's 10 articles about like the Superbowl, it will do a really boring job, whereas if you say like okay, here's 10 articles about like the Superbowl in 1963. And I want to understand how this social phenomenon affected the you know the sports environment, you might get something interesting, but at that point you've done a lot of the creative labor yourself, right? So you know this, I think.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):Coming back to your question about technology and and what should parents think about for their children, I remember so vividly, like the 2010 era learn to code. Like forget the humanities, learn to code. Thank god, that was the worst advice ever, right, um? And similarly now, like you know, I read jack clark, one of the anthropic founders newsletter a couple of days ago and obviously he has like a vested interest, but his, his main point was, like the winners of the future will be the most curious people, the people who keep finding the most interesting ways, the most forward-thinking ways to ask um questions. And how do you get to be a good question on asker? By feeding your curiosity as a child, as a young person. So I I really think that like the future is is is not about, um, you know, getting being like. Oh well, ai can like make an image, so why would I become an artist? It's really. How do I develop into the type of person who can think creatively about how to make the most of technology to serve me and my community and my society?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):What I'm hearing is the type of work that you're describing. That's being replaced. I don't think anybody is in school thinking I want to be a transcriber. I don't think anybody's in school thinking I want to be a transcriber. I don't think anybody's in school thinking I want to spend 12 hours a day in Photoshop, you know, removing objects from the background of videos.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):And it was meaningful work for people for decades. But yes, I agree. I mean, like I don't think that was anyone's ambition, right? But yes, I agree.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):I mean, like I don't think that was anyone's ambition, right? Yeah, so there is a question about what, like where do those dislocated workers go? There's this sort of you know, the talking point is we're going to empower them to do more interesting creative work. The reality is, you know, there are sort of there aren't that many roles at companies like Kaleidoscope to do creative work. But I want to put a pin in that conversation because I want to actually hear more about Sorry, can I just say one other thing.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):Most people don't know this, but our album art for our first six shows was all done on an early version of Dolly. The art was done on it and then we got an artist to to draw over it and highlight certain elements and stuff, but but the the starting point was was ai okay.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):so that is fascinating because when you first told me that, I was incredulous because I I sort of pride myself at being able to spot AI art and my I like Spidey senses didn't tingle when I was looking at your album art.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):It does for a lot of other stuff on, like Spotify and Apple. But I understand why now, because you, you also brought in that human component to take it to that next level, and I think that's that's to me this like really interesting takeaway, which is the there's always going to be this need, if everybody has access to this baseline of content, this common denominator of just AI-generated whatever, there's going to be so much of that that I think people are going to actually seek out and identify quality and the only way to do something that ai can't do is to tap human potential and human, uh, creativity, um, has it impacted hiring? I mean, like, have you? I guess one question is have you hired anybody just to like be the ai tool user? Because I think that's what some people are saying is that, oh, you don't need to learn, you don't need to don't study art, just learn how to use ai and prompt engineer, um, and I'm interested in that because I'm curious if that's the type of. Is that a job posting on Kaleidoscope's page?
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):I don't think so. I mean, at least from my perspective, we are looking for people with voice and outsider ideas that are super creative, and even when I was at I heart, a lot of people would just hire people from the radio industry to to come in and work because, like this is versus like we hired, um musicians who'd never done podcasting, we hired, like you know, people who were uh in all sorts of other fields. There was someone who used to like help, um uh kids who were ill create poetry and art, but I think what we're looking for is really creative, smart people who have a point of view, who can learn the tools and use the tools to advance our own sort of point of view or creativity.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, I think we've had the same experience, like we don't really use AI very much for curriculum development. If you have a certain level of quality, it's actually very hard to get. I mean, I've done, I've tried using ChatGBD to write stuff.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):Same.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):I hear people saying, oh, it can write emails, it can write press releases Like I disagree. I hear people saying, oh, it can write emails, it can write press releases Like I disagree. I think that it can. I think if you're trying to write, let's say, a hundred blog posts a month, then, yes, chatgbt is probably useful. I don't know why you would want to do that.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):If you're trying to write, well, maybe if SEO right people don't like written content on the web uh, except for from super prestige publications like I think, or in forums like reddit and stuff is like losing very rapidly losing its authority, which I think is a big opportunity for audio because, yes, you can make a deep fake of my voice and theoretically have chat, gpt, write something, then have the deep fake read my voice, but, like you can hear that pretty easily and I think, the opportunity for podcasting. The reason we had this podcast election in part is because it's a very trusted medium and I think will retain a moat in that respect. People looking for guidance um, you're way less swayed by the top 10 google results six months from now than you were a year ago we're in a bit of the the wild west right now in terms of of media.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):I mean, I think that there's sort of a definitive shift away from linear tv. We're using a lot of industry speak. You said moat, I'm gonna uh, linear tv is sort of just like broadcast television, cable, new cable channels, um, and you know people were moving to Netflix. I honestly YouTube, especially YouTube premium, without the ads, is like totally dominated the way I consume media. Obviously, people are on Instagram Tik TOK Um, and that's especially pronounced in the new generation, right Like Gen Z, gen Alpha Um, and I'm so.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):So maybe we can close with a little bit of um, sort of meta introspection about sort of what we are doing here at AIEDU studios, um, and I I'd like you to just sort of I'd like your take on this in terms of what we could be doing with the format Um, because one of the things that I found is there's, there's now, yes, there's, this shift to sort of this open universe of content, um, but not every niche is actually like fully like served Um. So you identified long form, high quality, narrative storytelling where they were really. I mean, who else? I mean there was obviously Imlet Media, which what are some of their big shows?
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):Startup was one.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):Reply All.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):Heavyweight.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):Mogul.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):There was, I guess, npr, and there wasn't much else, right.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):I think to me, what is is partially so, so meaningful about all these things, right, and and you saw it with Ira Glass in this American Life was that what made it possible for someone like me to podcast was he was imperfect, he allowed his stutters to go on air, he stumbled and sounded like a person you were actually having a conversation with, and that lent the show a certain authenticity and a little bit of roughness around the edge, a little bit of like I know you've talked about this like a little bit of wobble, right, and I think that when we look at YouTube, when people are in their apartments and podcasting, when you have TikTokers in their cars and showing you that they're passionately talking to you about something, but you know that it's not as polished it's coming, you know, sometimes it's performative, but often there's a bit of heart to it, right?
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):And I think to me that's what you never get from the AI version of your voice. Is that sincerity, that authenticity, and those are words that are overused and abused often, but I also think when you're moved by something, it's because of that. But I also think when you're moved by, something.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):It's because of that, yeah, I think this idea of authenticity seems like maybe one of the biggest undercurrents that is going to shape the way that we consume content, because I would actually push back. I think, yes, you can sort of hear, you can tell when there's an AI voice. Now, I'm just going to assume that in, let's say, five years if we're going to go really far out, maybe sooner uh, it will probably be imperceptible, um, and yet, even if it were imperceptible, I still you can, at a certain point, ai is just, it's very same in art.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):I see this with art all the time. It's like the reason you can easily spot ai art is because it actually can only do a few different sort of flavors. You have like the 3d rendering version. You have sort of like, you know, imitating artists, um, really bad at sketches, you know it's like there's a lot of, and so I I think in any kind of form of media, people are eventually going to saturate with sort of like whatever that sort of average output that the ai can do. Um, and we're already seeing your point about this. Authenticity is interesting because even before ai sort of like complicating it, yeah, I mean, I remember talking to um some companies who had been investing in stuff like this, uh, in like sort of like video series, and they put a ton of money on like tiktok ads and like super like brought in like some like these, like really famous directors and you know cinematographers, and they didn't perform well, because what they realize is that people like didn't want to see polished content.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):They actually were more drawn to something that felt sort of human yeah um, the other, the other, that we're the other big idea for this is in a lot of spaces and so we're sort of straddling, like we're not sort of trying to reach kids with this show. Parents yes, teachers definitely, but also administrators, people that work in the philanthropic sector, that are trying, you know, decision makers within the K-12 education ecosystem. I've tried, you know, decision makers within the K-12 education ecosystem very niche very specific.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):There certainly aren't very many, you know, like shows or YouTube channels or like rabbit holes that you can deep dive, and I know this because I have pursued as many of them as I can possibly find.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):And it's you know it's like old lectures that you know different universities put up. Sometimes the audio is like cutting out half the time. So part of this is the idea is create like a space for for people to nerd out and go deep in like the specific sector and sort of like angle and dimension of the topic that we're pursuing. But it's also to try to break out of, I feel like, where a lot of the discussion that happens in like any any kind of space.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):It's happening. It's happening often at conferences, um, on panels, yeah, and I I really believe that the age of like the panel is just it's so, it's so dead. I mean, I feel like when you sit down and just hear people talk on panels and you get like 10 or 15 minutes at most from any one person, uh, and then you're off to the next thing and it's all feels very scripted, um, my, my instinct is that this format is actually a much better way to like do knowledge transfer from really interesting, smart people like give them, like a lot of time to actually go deep, like, have the conversation, be a little bit more unstructured, right, um, and allow yourself to be sort of surprised and and and not sort of just try to, um, I'll just finish it.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, allow yourself to be surprised, um, what? So you mentioned that you're actually working on some uh like, is it, is it talk shows or like can you tell me more about the format and anything that you've any advice that you can impart on us as we're trying to think about, sort of like, how to like what do with, with this idea that we have?
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):I just I just taken over a podcast called tech stuff, which is, um, my heart's uh flagship technology podcast, been around for 16 years, I think, driven tens, tens, if not 100 million lifetime downloads and has a large and loyal audience. And so, you know, the question here for me and my co-host, kara Price, was how do I, or how do we serve this audience, make sure they feel like they haven't just had new hosts foisted on them, but they they feel heard and they want to stick with us, because, obviously you know, retaining the audience is a really important goal for us. And so we just started a gmail account techstuffpodcastgmailcom and constantly soliciting feedback and we're getting some, you know, interesting, supportive, sometimes pointed feedback from the audience.
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):I find there's nothing more valuable than that and, to your point, like the k12 uh world that you're talking about is relatively um niche in a sense that, like you can probably you know, there's probably fewer than 5,000 people, or maybe 20,000 people, I don't know exactly how many people, but you could proactively pilot content, put it in front of those audiences, get their feedback and allow them to collaborate with you and build with you to make this asset as valuable as possible for them. What's an?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):example of some critical feedback you've gotten as possible for them, what's?
Oz Woloshyn (Kaleidoscope):an example of some critical feedback. You've gotten Good question, I think one of the. I'm a former TV news producer and the history of tech stuff. The previous iteration of tech stuff was very much explainer content that was not tied to the news cycle and I've leaned a little bit more into like explainer plus news and some people are like I'm saturated with news, little bit more into like explainer plus news, and some people are like I'm saturated with news. I just want pure explainer. For me it's hard to cover tech in 2025 without some news. Um, but you know that's a preference and I think there is there is an audience who really want old school, you know, explainer content, you know, but that's not my special skill or my passion. So it's like well, how do I serve that to a certain extent, but match it with what drives me as a creative personality.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):The one, I'd say sorry, I'll say two different things. One is about audiences, and I think it's so important to both listen to your audience and reward them, uh, and and try to meet them where you can help them. So this is from my previous experience running a magazine called mental floss. We were, you know, I started out of college had no money, that, like my business partner and I were working part-time jobs. We were doing this in the evenings. We were like doing everything we could to get this magazine out. And this woman wrote us and said I like this, but when are you coming out with a large print edition? And my friend Will and I were saying a large print edition, we can barely get this edition out.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):And then he sent her. He was like look, we're not going to have a large print edition, but we can send you word documents. You can print them out at whatever size you want.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):And that christmas she sent a large font size large font size and and uh, and that christmas she gave like 30 or 40 subscriptions of the magazine. You, I'm sure with every one of those subscriptions she told people. The editors of this magazine reached out to me, wrote to me, responded. I think that where you can create connections with your audience, where you can help them, that word of mouth and evangelism is really really meaningful for a business, and that's obviously not possible for everything.
Mangesh Hattikudur (Kaleidoscope):The other thing I'd say you know we were talking previously about how important it is to think critically and to be creative as we're going into this world of AI. I also think it's really important to learn how to edit and to pare down and to curate, because I think that, even though these three-hour podcasts are great, I think there are lots of tangents Time is a commodity for people and the fact that I might not have three hours but I want to know the most important parts. The Coen brothers when they did a director's cut of their movie Blood Simple it's the only director's cut that's eight minutes shorter and it's a better movie, you know, and so, like I think there's value and you know you can provide the shorter version and extended version, but I think that, thinking about what your listener really wants always and how you can deliver that where it matches your vision of a product is is really important all right.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Well, I guess we have to listen to our listeners. Um oz and gash, such a pleasure having you both on. Thank you for peeling back the curtain a little bit. I have so many more questions I hopefully we can cover it in dinner.