339 - TIME’s Top Creators, Anthropic’s AI MCP & Podcast Data

0:04 Good morning podcasting Morning Chat. Today is Wednesday, July 16th, 2025, and today we're breaking down Buzz Sprouts, fresh AI tools, Mopods, big moves to help podcaster track rankings on multiple platforms, A sneaky scam targeting podcasters, and more. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, bottom left hand side of the screen and share it. However, Clubhouse lets you. And if you're listening via podcast, please share this episode with a fellow podcaster. And now give us about 30 seconds and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here. Good morning again, podcasting, Morning chat. Thanks so much for being here.

1:24 I am your host, Mark Ronick, and currently on stage with me we have producer Ashley Feller, Dr. Faye and Nick Nallback. And where's everybody? It's a little quiet in here, not just the rest of the team, but our usual faithful live listeners that file in first thing. Where are all of you this? Is weird. This is weird. I know to our podcast audience, it doesn't really mean anything. They don't see the difference. But it is weird being in a virtual room that feels a little, a little quiet, a little empty. But that's OK. I'm not complaining. And I was just stalling to find my crickets, you know, behind the scenes, the sound effects thing has become a little bit of a thorn in our side, as Ashley knows.

2:16 Because we do run this show through Offonic, right? So Ashley cleans up any, anything that needs to be cleaned up, and then we run it through Offonic and it takes out all of the different sound effects. Like those crickets wouldn't be heard, but Ashley then has to go in and add them back. So it's a little bit of a pain in the butt. We're trying to figure out that solution to that issue. And by the way, Speaking of Ashley, before we get into news, I want to take a minute to discuss yesterday's episode with James Cridland where we spent at least half the time talking about podcasting. 2 point OA lot of us, I felt don't really understand it or didn't.

3:01 And I knew that James is really well versed in that area. So we had them come on to explain a lot more of it. And I'm curious, I asked Ashley as our producer how she felt it went if she found it valuable. And Ashley, would you share with everybody what you exactly what you told me or best as you can? Good morning y'all. So I thought it was valuable hearing about James's dedication to doing pod news daily, but to be perfectly honest I didn't completely grasp the whole podcasting 2.0. I understand it's valuable, but I don't really understand the how so much as you know the explanation. And really, looking back on it, I wish I had spoken up a little more and also maybe had prepared some questions that were more about the newsletter.

3:54 Not that I don't find the Podcasting 2.0 valuable, but as a person who writes newsletters, that would have been something good to find out about. Yeah, that's fair. And I'm curious if anybody else felt that way. I know Nick was there for definitely for the podcasting 2.0 conversation. Sid, I know is there for the entire duration. Sid, did you feel similarly? Did you feel like or did you feel like you got a better grasp of podcasting 2 point O? I'd not heard of podcasting 2 point O before yesterday. I'm with Ashley. I'm not sure that I fully understand it. I mean, it probably would be good to dive deeper into it. I do think this newsletter conversation was very interesting. How he does it and you know, all the automations and stuff that he put it together is very interesting because newsletters can be a really heavy lift.

4:42 Officially what he's doing to be really heavy lift, I think would be also interesting too. He comes back to talk about how he was able to manage getting so many sponsors of his newsletter. Obviously it's a profit Center for him because there's tons of advertising in that. There is, yes. That's a great point, Sid. And here's what I learned. I appreciate Ashley, your honesty and Sid, yours as well for that matter. And here's what I gathered. And I think, I think I've got it. I think I've got it right. I think he was emphasizing a lot of practical ways that podcasters can leverage podcasting 2 point O. And there was at one point I asked him a question to really help us understand how to take advantage of podcasting 2 point O.

5:34 And there was something that he shared. He said, really for most of us, we are already taking advantage of podcasting 2 Point O, whether we know it or not, because most of these hosting platforms, Buzz, Brout, Libsyn, Captivate, etcetera, they're the ones that are actually incorporating podcasting 2 Point O features, right? So we're not like James who has built his own software to do his own podcast distribution. Most of us are going through a third party to do that and those third parties are adopting these different features. That's how, for example, how we're getting transcripts attached to the audio or video files, mainly audio files. If we're talking Buzz Sprout and Libsyn, that's how those transcripts are getting attached. So that when people are listening on their favorite podcast platform, that's how they can connect with those transcripts as an example, right? So back in the day, the only things that that were attached to our podcast episode were things like title and description.

6:45 And then slowly podcast cover art, episode cover art started to become a thing that was a podcasting 2 point O feature that was added to your, to your podcast hosting platform, right? So it's really nothing for us as podcasters that we have to do other than if we really want to take advantage of all these new features, we've got to make sure that that hosting platform that we're choosing has that built in. And it might even help to ask some questions like are you going to be adding in more 2 point O features before we make that decision to either switch or start on a hosting platform.

7:30 So I think that's ultimately why James was more focused on the different features and less about how to take advantage of them because for the most part, that's up to our hosting platform. Nick, I saw you wanted to jump in. Go ahead. I think we have to step back even further and even if the hosting platforms offer these features like the transcripts or James have talked about the the monetization like the the little dollar sign in the pocket cast app, podcast listening platform itself has to be receptive to most features before podcast host in my opinion is going to include that feature.

8:12 And something like pocket cast. I feel like there's a little bit more open. I haven't seen the little dollar sign like Patreon, buy me a coffee link in something like Spotify or Apple. And those are the two biggest listening platforms. So I kind of feel like the hosting platforms aren't going to take as much advantage of these when majority of listeners are on platforms that don't accept it. Now where James has had an advantage is he's built his own hosting platform and knows the different platforms that do accept that. So he's able to build that into his RSS feed for those platforms that do accept it. And I don't know, it's, it's kind of a, an interesting conundrum, if you will, just because you have these features exist.

8:58 But if Apple and Spotify don't take those features, they're kind of, I'm not going to say pointless, but they they don't serve as much of AA purpose as some of the other platforms. Which Nick, I think maybe goes back a little bit to something you shared last week, which is or maybe earlier this week, which is to direct people to your own website. Because if you're embedding, let's say Buzz Sprout is where you, where you schedule and publish your episodes. If you're using their embedded player or embedded codes to, you know, to incorporate into your website, you may then get to have more of those features for your audience to take advantage of, right? I'm not saying in all cases, but that might be a one way to be able to take advantage of it for your audience. I.

9:49 Definitely agree with that and I think the habit of listeners to turn to these apps, especially when they're listening, not to move around the go, it's almost impossible to break that at this point. Like I feel like Spotify and Apple would have to legitimately disappear off the face of the earth to get people to turn somewhere else in many cases. I know there are people that don't use either platform. They have their own apps that they listen on, but for the vast majority, those are the two platforms they're listening on. And yeah, turning to the website when someone's sitting at their computer, maybe stationary might be a little bit more doable, but I feel like an on the go person, we're called GPR, listening to podcast. That's where it gets a little more tricky. It's an interesting situation.

10:32 Absolutely. And by the way, hello to Jeff and Bez who joined us in the audience. Thanks for keeping U.S. company this morning. We were at the start of the show wondering, where is everybody? It's a weird morning. And that's OK. We're going to keep going because thankfully, our podcast audience continues to grow. And I know we've got a lot of podcast listeners right now enjoying. And I say right now because I'm talking into the future right now, enjoying today's episode. And Bez in the chat says it's summertime with a smile emoji. And totally agree with you, Bez. I do this every summer. We have these rooms over the summer where they're a little lighter than usual, and I'm always questioning, why is that? And yeah, it's summertime, of course, Happens every summer when we do this.

11:21 OK, so with that, I just realized now I have to reset my board here. I was going to go right to the music, but I refuse to hit the wrong button. So give me a moment. Here we go. It's that music that is music to Amanda's ears. And Amanda Sharp has joined us this morning. Good morning to Amanda. So let's get into it. Let's get into some of the latest news and headlines around the world of podcasting. And as I like to do, let's start with some podcast data. I have a note here that I need to mention something to you, but we've taken enough time, so I'll do that in a little bit. Podcast data as of yesterday, July 15th, the number one Apple podcast, Devil in the Desert, an ABC News production, and we've been mentioning them at the number one slot for several weeks in a row now.

12:14 And Speaking of mentioning #1 often the Joe Rogan Experience is number one on Spotify. By the way, over the last week, 184,051 podcasts published at least one new episode, which is slightly down .1%. And let's go to Dr. for some of her top five lists. Go ahead, Dr. Good morning. Good morning, good morning. OK, so at #5 this is the Spotify list at #5 it's the daily at #4 this past weekend with Theo von #3, Timpani's OK Crime, jumpy, jumpy Crime junkie #2 the Tucker Carlson zone number one. I'm shocked the Joe Rogan.

12:56 Experience. Amazing. How fascinating. It's amazing. So now, you know, week after week, I pick a random chart and I try and make that go. And then I always think, did I do that last week? Maybe it was too soon? I don't know. I don't know if I did this last week. So this time I went to a completely different chart with a completely different category. And my kitchen alarm is just about to go off, so I'm going to catch it. This is from the Apple charts, and the category is food. Food. OK Food. Yeah, so at #5 it's something called dish #4 it's in the kitchen #3 is gastropod #2 is things bakers know, the King Arthur Baking podcast, and #1 is walk and talk podcast. Walk and talk podcast where the back of the house stories take center stage.

13:55 And it's hosted by Carl. Don't ask me to pronounce his last name. Yeah. Fiadini. OK, thanks. Yeah, I'm going to be going to that chart often now, so yeah. And I'm off to the kitchen. I. Was going to say, Speaking of food, now you're off to the kitchen to make some breakfast for the hubby. Go for it, enjoy. And Speaking of charts, I'm going to jump ahead for a moment because this is on point. Let me pull this up. So Mopod and Pod News actually just announced a little bit of a partnership, but more so pod. Mopod charts just delivered a big upgrade. Podcasters can now easily track their Spotify rankings alongside Apple ranking. So if you remember a few months back, I had shared with you that Mopod introduced rankings, Apple ranking specifically, and you couldn't track your own show to see where the show falls in your particular genre or chart.

14:56 And they did that off the heels of one of the services, I think charitable that went away that a lot of podcasters relied on for that kind of information. Mopod jumped on that and 1st incorporated Apple, but now they've incorporated Spotify as well. The update also features a strategic partnership with Pod News, offering podcasters valuable exposure through editorial highlights and newsletter integration. It's definitely a big upgrade and of big interest, I think, for creators looking to maximize visibility and celebrate their successes across top podcast platforms. You've heard me talking about how I've been tracking our show as of late because ever since we did the Steve from Blue's Clues episode, it catapulted us in the how to charts. And that's how I knew that was thanks to Mopod. So they have the Spotify rankings now they have this strategic partnership with Pod News. And if you ever visit Pod News, you know that podcast data section, I take that straight from Pod News. And now it's been a little bit redesigned and renamed podcast data, something like powered by Mopod. So that partnership is fully underway. And the other cool thing about Mopod, their new charts is that you can have it emailed to you regularly. So if there's anything that happens with your show, with AM the charts, if you've moved up

16:29 in the charts, down in the charts, etcetera, those things will be emailed to you. So you can always check on that. So you wanted to let you know about that. And also, by the way, we've got more people from the team joining us. Jonathan and Alex have joined us. Good morning to both of you guys. Good to have you here. And now let me get back to some other news. I think that's it for the data. So let me tell you about some events that are coming up. And just for palate cleanser, play the music. So first, the London Podcast Festival is back for its 10th year and just announced an impressive lineup of big shows. And it's a big schedule.

17:14 It's happening in early September in North London from September 4th through the 14th. That's 10 days. And it happens to be hosted just 10 minutes from where they hosted the podcast show a couple months back. And for those keeping score, a cast is the official partner of the London Podcast Festival this year. We'll share a link in the show notes to learn more about the different things going on there. Also from Riverside today, July 16th, 12:00 PM Eastern, they're doing a whole intro to video podcasting from setup to strategy. Again, that link will be in the show notes.

17:56 If you are interested, this show should be out well before 12:00 PM Eastern, so if you're interested, jump on that. And of course, Podcast Movement 2025 starts August 18th in Dallas, TX and they've just dropped the first batch of confirmed speakers for their Dallas event next month. And here's some bonus news from pod news. None other than the pod father himself, Adam Curry is set to return thanks to sound stack. Adam Curry leading, I think being one of the keynote speakers of podcast movement. And as you may know, he's the Co inventor of podcasting in the brains behind podcast index and podcasting 2 point O.

18:43 He'll take the stage August 19th. Also, I've shared before radio days Asia is coming September the 1st to Indonesia and podcast Summit Summit YYC 2025 that's September 19th in Canada. And also of course, the empowered podcasting conference. We've just sent out all of our speaker announcements. So anybody who we've accepted as a speaker should be notified by now one way or the other. Unfortunately, man, I got to tell you, it is challenging to have to send rejection, for lack of a better term, letters out. Because really, honestly, I'd say just about every application was worthy of speaking. There were some that were very, I'll just say it, half assed as far as their applications go.

19:33 No effort put into them, but the vast majority it made it really challenging to pick. Hey Mark, will you give us an idea of what they have to send in? For instance, like for next year, do they have to send in a sample of what they're going to talk about? How did you know that? They were like half assed? Yeah. And so we have a team that goes through the applications, picks and collaboratively votes on. The winners, I was going to say, but the accepted speakers now. So you're asking me Dr. about the process itself? What do they submit in order to? You know what I'm saying?

20:16 So we want people to really provide some sort of outline and I think that this really should apply to any speaking gig in the podcast industry. Haven't a well constructed outline, thought out outline, something that easily can I could look at and say, yeah, I get where this presentation is going to go, right? A lot of times we might just get a little blurb. I'd like to talk about how to monetize your podcast effectively, right? Like, and that's literally like about all we would get that that would be considered 1/2 assed application. So we want, we want something really well thought out and outline something that's going to really take us on the journey. We also ask if and, and we give you a spot in the application for this.

21:04 And I think others do as well. If you've got other work that you could point to on online, on YouTube, on a website that we can go and watch and see some of your presentations, that's also helpful. It's a bonus. It's certainly not a requirement, but it is really helpful. That's basically how it works. Dr. Empowered Podcasting to September 26th through the 28th happening in Charlotte, NC. That happens to be the weekend of International Podcast Day. Technically, International Podcast Day I believe is the 29th. So we won't actually be there for the day, but that's the weekend. So we will celebrate that day there. You can go to empoweredpodcasting.com to get your tickets now.

21:46 There's also a link to get your hotel room, which is discounted for anybody attending our conference, so the link is there as well. Come check us out. Let's get into some more news stories, some actual news stories. No, not events, not data for you. Let's just dive right in, in case you missed it. And I say that because I don't know, I don't think I've gotten to this yet, but I may have last week. But a lot of us in this community happened to use Buzz Sprout. So Buzz Sprout added some new AI features to their Magic audio tool that they have, I forget what they call it, magic something, but one of the features is what they call Filler Killer. This cautiously detects and removes filler words like the UMS and ahs and also it has Power Clean for particularly bad recordings.

22:39 Power Clean can remove complex noises like background chatter, wind, traffic or echoing AKA reverb. So if you use buzz Sprout, yes it is an extra cost to use their magic audio feature but I think for pretty well worth it, especially because it saves you a step. I shared earlier that we use Authonic to do that audio enhancement, and that requires Ashley to do all of her editing and then exporting the file, then importing the file into Offonic and then waiting for Offonic to do its thing, then exporting it from Offonic and then importing it to Spotify for Creators. That's our hosting platform.

23:25 So it's a lot of steps. Whereas if you're using a a hosting platform like Buzz Sprout, you can just take your edited finished file uploaded there and say, yes, I want to apply this magic audio feature and that's it. You've just saved yourself multiple importing and exporting steps. So I think it is well worth it. But do we know how much more it is? Alex, you've used that feature, don't you? Isn't it something like 10 bucks or so a month? It depends on what plan you're on, right? But what's the answer? I use Buzz Sprouts Co host AI is what I used. We predominantly use it for blog writing and episode titles and stuff like that. And I pay $20.00 a month and that includes, let's forget how many hours, like 2 1/2 three hours of content a month.

24:12 So I think it's an extra $10 mark. Yeah, that sounds about right. It it really depends on which plan and it's between 10 to $20.00 a month depending on what plan you have. I think, right. And just to be clear, for everyone they have that is an add on. So you'd pay your usual monthly fee for Buzz Sprout. And then if you want to take advantage of a feature like that's how you do it, you pay a little extra and then you get that, that audio enhancement and yeah, Co host. I think you're right, Sid. I think that is what they call all of their different AI features, their package of AI features. OK, also let's keep it going. Rode just yesterday dropped a surprise bonus for creators launching a compact wireless microcamera receiver that you can clip right on your camera for dual channel wireless audio. So as some of you may know who who use video and use cameras, a lot of times these cameras don't have a mic built into it or don't have a good mic built into it and don't have a great way of incorporating a good microphone into it. Well, that's what Rode has done is they've created a device that you can plug into your camera and then plug your Rode wireless micro microphone into it.

25:38 So it works seamlessly with their wireless microphone. And let me keep going here. It says here on the camera receiver that works with up to two wireless microtransmitters, so that's pretty cool. And it has intuitive gain control, plug in power detection for longer battery life, universal camera compatibility, and a best in class transmission range. The coolest part is that if you already have the wireless micro microphone, you get this device for free. All you have to do is cover the shipping. If you've already purchased the microphone, they will send you the receiver for free with the exception of paying for shipping.

26:26 I think that's a really good deal. And if you go, if you don't have the microphone, you buy it now that will automatically come with it. So they've done a great job of making integration between camera and microphones much easier and affordable for that matter. So kudos to them. Dr. You want to take story #4 Are you back from cooking? I am back from cooking. Hold on, let me Scroll down just a little bit. OK #4 Now if you're a podcaster, you should absolutely check out Pocket Casts 3 Partner newsletter. I subscribe to Pocket Cast, so I get this newsletter and it's pretty great.

27:08 It's packed with opportunities to get your podcast featured, insights on how they're at the largest independent podcast platform really works, and some valuable tips on advertising. And it's totally free, so I highly recommend signing up. I personally recommend it. And we have a link that's going to go into the show notes for you. Thank you Dr. And I remembered I wanted to also to share with everybody a new movie called Age of Audio recently premiered at the Oak Cliff Film Festival. It's directed by Sean Michael Collin. The film follows run Ronald young Junior as he chases down his dreams of creating a hit indie podcast. Along the way, he talks to legends like Adam Curry, Ira Glass, Kara Swisher and Marc Maron. And I'll actually play the two-minute trailer for you. And now, like I said, it is only two minutes. And what I might try to do here, just because there's a little bit of visual, I may narrate in the sense that when they're there, you're going to hear different voices and I'll quietly just tell you who it is as they're talking so you can follow along a little bit easier. So again, this is called Age of Audio. It's a movie about an independent podcaster and his journey.

28:32 Let's listen. You had to be a pretty devoted fan to listen to a podcast. First of all, you had to figure out they even. Existed. Somebody at some point figured out, oh, you can. You can put anything inside of this. I am known as the Co inventor of podcasting. We should record one of these podcasts. I remember asking Marc Maron, the president, you know, are you nervous? It just gradually. Grew and grew and grew until. Podcast audiences larger than the radio audience. Throw a blanket over your head and create a show that would have a million listeners.

29:18 Oh my God, we just got. 50,000 people downloading our. Show what the hell just happened. I honestly don't know what I'm going to do if I do not make it, I don't know what I'm going to do. The person talking right now is the person who's the focus of the movie. I had never met somebody before who had at least three different editions of stickers of his own face. In 2023, I started a podcast called Wait for It WEIGHT. We pitched a bunch of people Wait for it. A bunch of people passed. They're going to see that they made a mistake passing on this show and the winner is Wait for It and.

30:04 The winner is wait for it. Is this good? Are people even going to like it? But. I guess I don't have to wonder anymore. And the winner is. Yeah, I can't even lie. This feels good. But with every award, every new kind of honor and acclaim, I'm like, where is the money? Sometimes it feels like I've shown up at the party a little bit more than fashionably late. I'm Ronald Young Junior and this is age of. There you go. Age of Audio and Ronald Young. Yes, you can. You can tell has had quite a run as an independent podcaster, and I think it's cool to that he's put this together and showcasing his successes, his challenges along the way, I think a lot of us can certainly relate to.

31:00 I think Billy has more than one picture of himself on a sticker, though. That might be true. That might be true, so check that out. Age of Audio, we'll put a link to that trailer. I, I get it that it's probably better to watch it than listen to that trailer, but I wanted to play it for you nonetheless. And you can check out the whole thing on YouTube. Dr. Let's let me hand it back to you with story #5 take it away. Sure. Sure. So if you caught yesterday's episode with James Cridland, we talked about that at the top of the show. He was discussing podcasting 2 point O, and this update will likely make a lot more sense to you.

31:42 NPR has just integrated the funding tag into all of its podcasts Podcasting 2 Point O feature that lets listeners directly support shows through RSS feeds. Supporting Cast noted today that this feature keeps gaining traction and is now supported by popular apps like Rocket Casts and Podcast Addict and Antenna Antenna Pod, which I've not heard that last. 1. Before me neither. Things are slowly coming together for me. It's like this big jigsaw puzzle. I'm talking about podcasting 2 point O.

32:23 It's like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing. But as little things like this come through, then it's like finding a piece and putting it in place. Oh, I see now, you know, one of those kind of things. That's where it's at. Yeah. But now that we talked to James, I definitely feel like when I start hearing some of that talk around podcasting 2 point O it, it's a little more clear now. And again, like I said at the top of the show, the bottom line is pay attention to the podcast hosting platform you're using and see if they're incorporating these types of features into their platform. That's the way you take advantage of podcasting. 2 point O, by the way, and I'm going to hand this back to Dr. in a second, but I'll just set it up for her.

33:09 Has anybody seen the recent Time magazine 100 Most Influential Creators list that came out probably a couple weeks ago? Why are you giggling over there, Dr. Where do we get to the list? So what is interesting that I haven't seen talked about until very recently, and I think this was part of pod news, podcast hosts are dominating this list with almost 50% of the list. It's podcasters. The surge highlights the massive cultural power of the medium with creators across genres from business deep dives to comedic banter, captivating audiences worldwide. So Dr. do you want to share a little bit from this list? And, and this is just ten of the, I think it's 48 that are podcasters.

34:04 And in true form, we're going to go from bottom to top. OK, OK. So Alex Earl hot Mess is number 10. Madeline, is that how you pronounce it? It's from Pretty Lonesome. Now, Mark, help me out here because I see the name, I see Pretty Lonesome, and then in in parentheses I see entertainers. I think that's, I think that's kind of the the category within the 100. Yeah #8 is Theo Von for his past weekend with Theo Von and he's in leaders. He's not an entertain, he's a stand up comedian, but he's in a category called leaders Mel Robbins.

34:45 Mel Robbins podcast is #7 under leaders J Shetty. I always have to stop and say his name correctly little. More carefully, with the wrong vowel, you might get us an explicit tag. That's right on purpose. He's under the leaders. Stephen Bartlett is number 5. The diary of the CEO #4 is Sean Evans. He's the hot ones guy #3 it's been a long time since he was #3 it's Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan experience. And we should say this isn't actually a top ten list. Like this isn't, it's not that he's #3 on the list.

35:25 He's just #3 on our list we've compiled. Does that make sense? Or this isn't actually the ranking of these? Oh. OK, I did not realize that. OK, so it's our curation. So our curation has Alex Cooper at #2 for call her Daddy and #1 our curation. I just threw up a little bit in my mouth. I'm so sorry. OK, Number one is Hayley Welsh. You know where you love her? The hawk to a girl. Yes, the hawk to a girl. We had some great discussions around her when she announced her podcast coming. Yeah. And she's on that list, which I found a little surprising just because of, if nothing more, the controversy around her and the alleged scam that she was pulling, even though I think it turns out that she really didn't know what was going on.

36:18 It was the people around her still her responsibility. But, you know, I, I give her a little bit of a pass, I suppose. But yeah, a little surprising to see her on the top 100 list of creators from Time magazine that I just don't know I can get on board with. I don't know if we should be surprised, though, because Time magazine has put some pretty, some questionable people on the cover of their Person of the Year. Yes, so so maybe they do this. For effect, just to get attention. I think at one time they had Osama bin Laden on the cover and I think their reasoning was it has Who has made the biggest impact, good or bad, on the world in the past year?

37:08 I think that was their excuse. Oh, did I sound snide on that one? On. Friday. So the creators list shouldn't come as a big surprise so. Thank you, Dr. I'm going to hand the mic to Nick to cover a couple of AI stories that may be of interest to content creators. So with that, Nick, take it away. All right. First up, I got 2 for you guys here today. First up, Microsoft Copilot. Anybody who is taking advantage of that, they are introducing early access to a new feature that allows the AI to view your open windows on your computer.

37:52 And obviously this doesn't pertain to Mac users as much as it probably does for Windows, but probably. Wow, that. Was an. Amazing laugh, yeah. So a while back when Windows started introducing their Copilot button on all of their computers and started releasing their Copilot computers, they had teased a feature called Recall, which essentially allowed the computer, or Copilot I guess, to take screen grabs of your computer as you're using it throughout the day. And basically you could go back to any moment in your day and recall what you were doing or what you're working on, etcetera, etcetera. That caught a lot of backlash because obviously it's AI literally spying on you 24/7 while you're on your computer. So they came up with this compromise with Copilot Vision, which Gemini has a feature like this already if you use their AI studio, but now it is going to be baked into the Windows system.

39:02 So you can basically open up a screen, share with Copilot and ask you questions, get advice, have it analyze information that it's seen on the screen, and ultimately use it as kind of like a a copilot, if you will. And this isn't this Internet windows, right? Like this is any window you have open on your screen, is that right? Correct, Yeah, It can be web browsers or it could be other applications that you have open on your screen, which is new. It's kind of interesting. I, I like that now I I've used the Gemini 1 and I've had mixed feelings about it. Usually when I try to go ask it something a little bit more complex, it kind of talks itself in circles and doesn't quite give me what I'm looking for. I am interested to see what this Copilot vision can do because it's a little bit more aligned with ChatGPT and what Open AI is doing.

39:56 Like I said, it's in an early access stage right now. So depending on how you are in the Copilot ecosystem, you may have access to that or you might have to sign up for that, but I'm looking forward to seeing that one. Now the next one. So we've touched on this, I've talked about this very briefly. In the past when it was kind of becoming more mainstream and revisiting it, Claude, the company that created Claude Anthropic, they have created what they're calling MCP. It allows you to turn Claude into more of an AI agent as opposed to just a chat bot. And if you are a paid Claude user, you should have access to this right now. And what I mean by turning it into an AI agent, you essentially go into the settings, you turn on MCP and you can connect Claude to the various applications tools that can be on the web as well.

40:54 And it can actually take action for you. So you can talk to Claude, tell it you want it to access a specific application if it's connected. And it can actually go do things for you. Some of the different things like you can actually connect it to your file system on your computer. So where you have all your documents and files, you could tell it that you want it to go into your downloads folder and go analyze or give you a summary of APDF that you have sitting in there. Or you could have it move files from one folder to another that's locally on your computer. Then since it can connect to other applications, you could tell it to, I don't know, go to your Gmail or more recently where this where I wanted to bring this back up is it can now connect to Canva. And this is different than Canva connecting to ChatGPT. There's like the little GPT where you can ask it to design stuff and usually get a 1/2 baked template that you can open in Canva.

41:53 This is directly connected into Canva. So when you talk to Claude, it will legitimately be designing your graphic, whatever it is, on Canva itself, which is pretty impressive. And if you have access, if you have a paid camera account, if you have a paid cloud account, you should be able to just go turn this on at this point from what I understand. Could this eliminate like notion, maybe not notion, but like you know how you're doing your AI brief, Could this eliminate some of the steps? 100% the way I'm kind of envisioning this, I haven't played with MCPII, don't have a paid cloud account. When there are other ways around it, there's a little bit more technical. It's very similar to your own custom version of Zapier or make.com.

42:42 That's what I was thinking. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. The only difference is that you get to choose the applications that are connected to it. So Zapier comes preloaded, they have access to all these different applications. And usually since they are connected in the API, there's limitations as to what Zapier can actually do on the platform. Here, being connected directly in the cloud when you connect your apps, I think you have a little bit more freedom because it's AI kind of taking control of that instead of just what's kind of built out for you. This is going to be, I'm making a bold statement here. This is going to be the future of AI in working with AI.

43:22 And I would highly recommend some of the stuff gets technical, I'm not going to lie. But I would highly recommend start looking into this, do some research on Claude MCP, dig into how it works, how you can start playing with it, because I, I think this is that next step. If you can start getting this down now before the vast majority can figure it out, I feel like you're going to be miles ahead of other creators and other people in the business industry. I'll say business isn't an industry, but in business in general, this is just going to keep evolving. It's going to be getting better and better. And pretty soon, yeah, AI is going to be able to take control of the vast majority of your your tedious tasks on its own.

44:05 Thank you, Nick. That's really cool. And I see Janae is on stage. Janae, I'm going to hand you the mic and I'm going to, this isn't really directed at you. If this would be to anybody who wants to add on to what Nick's sharing is, let's remember that. Let's not get too technical because I think people, it'll start to really confuse people. And I think we're like crossing the line or at least we're hovering around the line. So I want to make sure that this is digestible. So with that, Janae, go for it. Good morning, Sir. Amen. Good morning, everybody. Claude has launched this MCP. It's basically called model context protocol. So remember back in the days we actually use this every single day HTTP, right? That's the hypertext protocol for servers to serve up web pages to us or FTPZ file transport protocol. So again, this is a language or a model of how large language models communicate with other services. So when first LLM started, we could just talk to them simply, but it couldn't do anything for us. It's just a chat.

45:14 But then we started seeing these custom GPTS where people are like, hey, you can do all of these other things to another version. So back in October of 2024, the AI chat race was going so fast and Claude was like, you know, we're just going to work on this technology, this protocol so that we can give more powers to our large language models. So everybody kept going Claude and tropics that, you know, we're just going to hang back, work on this platform. And when they launched it in November, everybody was like, holy smokes, this is amazing. So now literally all the other companies from Microsoft to Open AI to Llama, like you name it, everybody's using MCP as the communication language, what have you to then, you know, build these MCP servers as actually MCP servers for you to play inside Minecraft.

46:18 So you're running a Minecraft server or a game on your computer, and you can then talk to Minecraft or talk to Claude and say, hey, build this image for me inside Minecraft. You can just drop an image to it and it'll basically take control of your character in Minecraft and build this out with the blocks. Well, that's no fun. It is. Then I mean, I'm not a Minecraft player, but I know it from when my kid used to play it. And I mean, the whole point is to, you know, be creative and build your own stuff. Exactly exactly. But it just speeds up the process. There's also ways there's also an MCP server for Blender.

47:02 Blender is a open source 3D application, so you can literally create a new character in 3D that you can then interact with. I just dropped a list of MCP servers that are already out there that you can integrate with clod that's running on your desktop. Again, this is they have a ton of, you know, document Ashley, you know, dropped a few links if you are interested in learning more about how this technology works. Yeah. Thank you, Janae. Appreciate that and appreciate you tying it together with something relatable like Minecraft. I think we can that gives us a good sense of how it all works. Thank you, Sid. I see has something.

47:42 Go for it, Sid. I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge Jonathan and congratulate Jonathan on the launch of his podcast. This week, if you. Have not gone and listened to it. I've been to listen to it. Jonathan, I love the content. I love to hear your story. I love that these are 10 minute episodes packed with amazing value. So before we let today go by, I just wanted to congratulate Jonathan on a successful launch of his solo podcast. Absolutely. And thank you for bringing that up, Sid. I appreciate that. And yeah, congratulations. Jonathan. You want to share the name of the podcast and anything about it that we should know? Well, thank you.

48:24 Thank you, Sid for listening and everybody. For you know. The nice props I will drop the link in the chat. It is the Story Lab podcast and it's about helping people share their story and understand the importance and power of the story. So it's definitely. I also love that it's 10 minute episodes because. Keeps me moving on in those. I try to pack those episodes full of useful information so you can Share your story, reach more people and, you know, do what? Do what a story does, which is, you know, change people's minds, impact the world in a positive way. And one more time, the name, the story lab. Awesome.

49:05 The story lab. Go check that out. And we have it in the show notes. Sid, did you want to add on? I just had a question for Jonathan and a comment. Jonathan and episode #1 Were the pauses planned or were they natural? Were the pauses planned? They were natural and I actually ran it through. Riverside AI first. And I had to go add them back in. Because it took them out. Because I want to just compliment you on listening to episode #1 gives you the impact and the power of the pause because it was extremely impactful and I had chills listening to it. And when you pause and you can feel the emotion coming up, it was really good. Friend.

49:47 I'm really proud of you and excited for you. That's awesome. Thank you so much, Sid. Yeah, thank you, Sid, and thank you for teasing it properly because now I'm even more interested to go listen. I would have anyway. And now I'm very intrigued to hear what Sid is referring to. Thank you, Sid, and thanks Jonathan. Appreciate it. And hey, I thank you to Nick who had to jet for bringing some of those AI stories. I also wanted to get to an at least one more and this is about Instagram and Google. So as of July 10th, just about a week ago, Instagram expanded its indexing of public business and creator account posts.

50:27 So that includes photos, reels, carousels, captions, alternative text across worldwide. This means that these posts can now appear in Google and Bing search results, offering creators and businesses a new Discovery Channel beyond Instagram. It's essential to optimize your captions, the alt text, the hashtags, Although we do know we've heard it from Instagram that hashtags not really a big factor on Instagram, but may be a factor, I suppose on Google and also Geo tags by the way, to enhance search visibility and treat your Instagram content like Evergreen SEO assets.

51:10 I wish actually, we still had Nick here, but Janae as a tech guy, if you want to add anything about why this is advantageous to us as podcasters. But I think it, it's certainly should be relatively clear to most of us in the sense that, yeah, now any of that content we've been posting to Instagram is now going to be fed into Google, which could help people find our content more easily and find us more easily. So pay attention now when you're, if you weren't already when you're posting content to Instagram to make sure that you're using a lot of rich keywords in those captions in your transcripts. Well, in the words that you're saying if you're making a video or even on the graphics that text their algorithms, the different algorithms reads texts on the screens now too. So everything counts.

52:05 Also, by the way, Headliner has added integration into the social media platform Blue Sky for its automatic audio grams. So lots of Blue Sky continues to be a great platform for these types of integrations. Check them out if you haven't already. Mark, I have a question for Janae. Going back to the whole AI thing, could at this point could what you were talking about with all these triggers, like for instance if an event happens. In the world like the flood did that just. Happened in near us. New York, New Jersey.

52:46 Yeah, New York, New Jersey. Sorry, I keep forgetting. Can it like monitor the news and know that there was something that happened and you could have a trigger on place to automatically do like social media posts? I know eventually it might do that, but are we at that point yet? Something that kind of crazy? Janae, do you know so can, can you set something up like that? Can you basically? Yeah, you can absolutely set something up. It's just like Google has had these alerts set up for, you know, ages. You can easily go and set up alerts that says, hey, if something happens, send me an e-mail. And then you could probably have some kind of action or watcher on your e-mail. Hey, if this kind of alert comes in, go create a post again. You want to make sure that it's viable. And we already see that Facebook provides something like that. Hey, these people are reporting that they are safe in this area. What's going on?

53:43 So if you look at that, but yeah, I mean it sounds like between. Yeah. What what you're sharing, what Nick has shared and some of the other tech that's involved with AI, you could theoretically right now have it send alerts to you and then it knows to pull those alerts and then create those social media posts. I would probably say at this phase, the best kind of posts are going to be text posts. I wouldn't. I don't know that I would trust it to actually create the design in Canva with the text post and publish it. I'd want to be able to look at that before it goes out 'cause you never know what it's going to spit out. But yeah, that's cool. Good question, Alex, thank you.

54:23 All right, listen, we are just at the top of the hour. We are back tomorrow. We've got some mailbag questions to answer and if you have questions to answer, bring them tomorrow. Thank you. By the way, to those of you who have showed up in the live audience, appreciate you being here. Nice to see the audience fill up a little bit. Took a took a minute today and that's OK. Glad to have you here. Thanks for making some time with us. So we're back tomorrow, 7:00 AM Eastern Time. Please come join us then. And until then, make it a great day. Everybody, take care.