Saturday

A thoughtful Saturday for your review, a reflection on a problem I love to think about, prompted by a 10-minute TED Talk by the founder of the Duolingo language learning app. The question isn't how to turn learning into a social media or gaming app; why haven't we already done it? After you chew on that, a follow-up to Wednesday's story on podcasts, with a new story from Columbia Journalism Review, “great” will continue to win. A new interview with the original Talking Heads and a fantastic playlist called “reading a book on a cozy autumn day" we found to be as good for writing. A quote from Charlie Munger reminds us that it's better to start by not being stupid. Cheers 📣

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🤘We are here every day, and every minute you spend with us sends ripples of gratitude through our souls! 🤘

In a TED Talk, Luis von Ahn, the co-founder and CEO of the language-learning app Duolingo, talked at a high level about using some of the techniques in social media and gaming to get people to use a mobile app for learning. This is a TED Talk, which is, by design, a tease of a larger concept, but the concept here is one I've thought about a lot. How can we gamify learning? I have seen and read a lot of information on this concept, but I have not seen anything substantially move into the space.

One of the first concepts I remember seeing was at a South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Conference 15 years ago. This was the first time I heard someone talk about how many times a kid will fail while playing a game and go right back in and do it again, with new knowledge, to make it to the next level. During the TED Talk, von Ahn talked about streaks, which are like leveling up but only require that you show up every day and do something on the app. von Ahn and his team found that streaks were a big motivator in using Duolingo and that over 3 million active users had daily active streaks of over 365 days. That is a significant data point; streaks in education are not new; teachers have put kids’ names on the wall for achievements since wall art was first used – what is new is using a digital app and a mobile phone with a user to motivate using a streak. Your mobile device is a platform, and it will reward you, just like social media, by telling you to keep your streak alive.

We know what works in social media and gaming, and if you don't think we know, Google the earnings of Facebook (Meta) and Activision Blizzard… But putting it into learning and education must be difficult, or the revenue and monetization must be unclear. If it wasn't, the progress would be more widely known. As the info comes across my feeds and the discussions I will seek out, my writing on this subject will increase. Until then, I signed up today for Duolingo, and I look forward to making my first 365-day streak on Sunday, October 27, 2024!

I asked ChatGPT to design a learning system that utilizes the same techniques that social media uses to keep users engaged and mobile gaming uses to keep players leveling up and how it would look to map out the entire process and curriculum?

The results were impressive; if you are interested in the output – put the same prompt into ChatGPT or ping me in the comments, and I'll send you the results. 

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The Columbia Journalism Review featured a weekend read on what looks on the surface to be the rise and fall of the podcast. There have been stories about the rise of podcasts in part due to the ease platforms have made it to publish a podcast; the pandemic also gave artists a reason to find alternative ways to publish content. The fall can be attributed to the opposite; we are out of the pandemic, and many artists have returned to work. 

In the rush to get in and launch a podcast, many companies popped up or expanded to meet the need, and based on the numbers CJR reports in the story, most of those same companies went overboard on hiring and are now cutting 30% or more of existing employees to "right the ship."

What's interesting in the data is the audience growth and demand; both continue to be strong, which leads to my big takeaway. There are not too many podcasts; there are too few great ones, which will continue the market consolidation. Most podcasts are free, with or without ads; if you listen to a podcast on your phone, forwarding through the ads is easy, so from an audience perspective, there is little downside to starting to listen to a podcast. That ease is also why we can dump a podcast that doesn't resonate just as easy.

The Barrier to Entry, in this case, is not the technology or the production to publish; it's the content and the personality of the hosts and guests. I wrote about this on Wednesday after looking at data from the Wall Street Journal on the trust of podcast hosts.

In a recent interview on Late Night with Stephen Colbert, Talking Heads' original lineup gave Colbert his full fanboy experience. Colbert gushed over the group and then told them how he missed a show in the 80s so he could finish an essay on Shakespeare. You should never meet your heroes, you might add. Don't tell your heroes you missed a performance, either…

The interview and the 40th anniversary of one of the best Live Concert Films are worth the watch.

Great writing playlist! - reading a book on a cozy autumn day.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

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🤘We are here every day, and every minute you spend with us sends ripples of gratitude through our souls! 🤘

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

5 minutes of good cheer every day. Become a Fan to get daily posts and updates.

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