The first thing that went wrong with The Artificial Intelligence Show was the calendar. Paul Roetzer had people he wanted to interview, an industry worth explaining, and a microphone. He also had to find guests, coordinate schedules, and prepare. The result was a familiar small-business problem: a promising idea that could not reliably get out the door.
- A free weekly AI briefing for people making decisions at work.
- Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput turn developments into business questions.
- The show belongs to SmarterX’s wider education and events business.
The calendar was the first bottleneck
“I personally wasn’t getting it done,” Roetzer recalled in the hundredth episode. The solution was sitting in his messages. He and Mike Kaput were already sending AI links back and forth. In September 2022, he proposed making that exchange public. Episode 20, in October, established the weekly format. The business had found a subject it could discuss without waiting for someone else to become available.
That decision gave the hosts a deadline for their own thinking. Research became a conversation, then material for other channels. For a company teaching a fast-moving subject, the appointment had value before anyone pressed play. The audience was joining a habit the hosts needed themselves.
Three stories. One practical question.
The current product has a simple rhythm. Tuesday’s AI News episode takes three leading stories, adds a rapid-fire round, and asks what the developments mean for business. AI Answers draws questions from classes and events. The Road to AGI explores the longer horizon of increasingly capable systems. Listeners can choose the week’s briefing, a specific question, or a sustained argument about where the technology is going.
The show’s audience includes business leaders, marketers, creatives, and technologists. Those people share an awkward responsibility: they must make decisions about technology they do not build. A release announcement tells them what a vendor wants noticed. Useful analysis helps them decide whether that announcement changes a budget, a job, or a workflow.
The title eventually caught up with that audience. On February 13, 2024, The Marketing AI Show became The Artificial Intelligence Show. Its episode description explained that listeners had expanded beyond marketing. The schedule and format stayed. Removing one word made room for the people already listening.
For a manager, that breadth has a practical advantage. A story about new models can raise questions for marketing, customer service, and operations at once. Listening gives colleagues a shared reference point. They can disagree about the implications while discussing the same development, instead of arriving with three unrelated headlines.
“AI literacy for all”The show’s stated mission
Roetzer brings the perspective of an agency founder who sold PR 20/20 in 2021. Kaput, SmarterX’s chief content officer, brings work with AI tools, speaking, and business education. Their expertise is in explaining adoption to professionals. The relevant question is how a capability affects work, rather than how to reproduce a research result in a laboratory.
Founder, educator, co-host.
Content chief, practitioner, co-host.
The free conversation, the paid classroom
The podcast is free to access through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. Around it sits a commercial education business: SmarterX, AI Academy, and the MAICON conference. A listener can stay with the public conversation or pay for more structured learning. That relationship explains why the show regularly points people toward classes and events.
AI Academy lists its individual AI Mastery Membership at $999 a year. Its business plans price seats at $399 annually for 5-99 licenses, $349 for 100-999, and $299 for 1,000 or more. Those are training prices, checked in October 2026, not charges for listening. The curriculum moves from fundamentals to piloting and scaling AI, with collections for particular industries and departments.
The arrangement gives the show a useful position in the market. An AI newsletter can be scanned between meetings. A research interview can take a listener deep into one person’s ideas. This show offers recurring interpretation for professionals who need enough context to act. Its commercial connection also deserves attention: the people explaining AI sell education about it. Readers should evaluate the analysis with that relationship in view.
The purchase decision, then, starts with the learner’s problem. Someone trying to follow the week’s developments can begin with the free episodes. A team seeking a planned curriculum has a different need. Treating those needs separately makes the business easier to understand and gives the listener a reason to stay without immediately becoming a buyer.
The interviews return, with a different job
By 2026, interviews had returned in a more specific form. AI Transformations, hosted by Kaput and presented by Google Cloud, asks leaders how adoption works inside an organization. Episode 242 featured Christine Kotler, chief marketing and communications officer at Baptist Health South Florida. She described a two-year effort involving a learning curriculum and peer coaching, including the friction after the easy early steps.
That is a valuable extension of the news format. A model’s new capability is one event. Helping a team use it is a sequence of decisions about training, confidence, responsibility, and time. The interview gives that sequence a name and an accountable person. Google Cloud’s presenting sponsorship is disclosed in the episode.
The weekly briefing continues alongside these specials. Episode 245 appeared on October 6, 2026. The show’s Apple Podcasts trailer reports more than two million downloads and over 200 episodes. Downloads count listening activity, not distinct people. The number is evidence of repeated distribution; it is not a headcount of customers.
Borrow the appointment
A practical way to use the show is to bring one question to a weekly team meeting. Choose a development that touches an existing task. Decide on a small test, assign an owner, and return next week with what happened. This is an editorial suggestion for applying the material, not a promised result from the hosts.
The test should be ordinary enough to judge. Can a draft be produced faster, with acceptable accuracy? Does a summary miss something a colleague needed? What review remains necessary? These questions turn a broad discussion into a decision about one piece of work. They also make room for an honest answer when the experiment disappoints.
- 01ListenPick one relevant development.
- 02TranslateName the task it could change.
- 03TestGive one small experiment an owner.
- 04ReturnDiscuss what actually happened.
The approach depends on someone doing the reading and someone doing the experiment. A podcast cannot verify a vendor’s claims for your particular workflow, teach every technical skill, or make a reluctant team adopt a tool. Its payoff is earlier in the process: a better-informed conversation. Roetzer’s original scheduling problem makes the lesson concrete. Useful thinking needs an appointment, too.