How an Award-Winning MBA Professor Uses AI Podcasts
I sat down with Steve DeNunzio, an award‑winning educator, author, and Professor of Logistics at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business.
We had a chance to discuss how he's using AI tools to better engage with a new generation of digitally-native students. He uses Jellypod to produce a podcast series called Milestones: Behind the Freight Curtain extending his classroom beyond the lecture hall.
Watch our full conversation on Youtube here:
Modern Education Theory
Steve teaches logistics and supply chain after a long industry career with brands like Lululemon and DSW. That background gives his classes real‑world texture, but it also means the stories have to stay current.
“Some concepts are timeless and other concepts are not. You can’t ride those old stories forever.”
He reads supply chain news daily, stays close to companies, and treats pedagogy itself like a craft. Today, student attention is more scarce than ever and a typical 70‑minute class needs nine or ten purposeful pivots from lecture to video to quick simulations, and now, to podcasts.
His goal isn’t just coverage of current logistic events but furthering his connection with his MBA students. They need content that fits into the seams of the day and reinforces core ideas without adding busywork.
AI podcasts became a perfect teaching companion.
Instead of longer supplemental readings and news that gets skimmed, Steve can package key concepts into concise episodes listeners can consume on their commute, between meetings, or while making dinner.
How It's Structured
Steve’s show runs every Tuesday morning and clocks in around seven to nine minutes. It's long enough to anchor a concept while short enough to finish in one sitting.
The format is simple: He picks one hot topic from the week’s logistics headlines, submits a few credible articles as sources, and then tweaks the Jellypod-generated draft to perfection.
Most of his edits are stylistic, such as removing a comma to change cadence or trimming a line that creates an unnecessary fictional story. His goal is clarity of thought and ideas, making the concept usable in class prep or work conversations.
He records with a voice clone of himself alongside his AI co‑host Ellie, a young British voice with a growing backstory of her own. That choice was deliberate. “I’m old, American, and male,” Steve joked. “A good counterpoint might be a young British female.” That interplay keeps the episodes conversational and also caused a colleague to ask at a meeting, “How do you know Ellie?” She’d assumed Ellie was real.
Content Takeaways
Steve was introduced by another colleague at Ohio State who also uses Jellypod and posts his episodes to LinkedIn, testing ideas and gathering feedback from his 5–6k followers, before rolling them out fully. The plan is to use them to flip the classroom, assigning a seven‑minute current‑events brief as class prep, then spend class time on analysis, debate, and applied work.
With key concepts reinforced asynchronously, class can move faster and dive into more depth. He's not chasing AI novelty but designing for reduced cognitive load and real‑world cadence. New technology empowers him to easily produce timely, high‑quality audio aligned to his voice and course tone without the upfront effort of traditional recording.
“It’s not about replacing lectures,” he said. “It’s about reinforcing the arc of learning in the moments students actually have.”
In a field where variability is the norm and agility is the advantage, Steve DeNunzio is modeling both, using AI podcasts to keep his listeners current, connected, and genuinely engaged.
