Aaron Makelky on AI Scouts, Snow Globes, & Building vs. Consuming

Aaron Makelky on AI Scouts, Snow Globes, & Building vs. Consuming

From Artificial Intelligence: Real Talk by Eli Davis

June 24, 2026 · 29 min · Episode 40

About this episode

Matt Karabinos and Aaron Makelky discuss the journey of integrating AI in education and the importance of building AI literacy.

Matt Karabinos sits down with Aaron Makelky—former history teacher turned Community & Developer Relations Manager at Descript—to explore the wild, humbling, and often hilarious journey of discovering AI. From a student showing Aaron ChatGPT after a Thanksgiving break to both men leaving the classroom within a month of each other, this episode is a real conversation between two educators who went all-in on AI before it was mainstream. They dig into the "tech lash" in schools, Aaron's powerful "snow globe" analogy for how schools operate, why every staff needs AI scouts, how they're raising AI-literate kids at home, and what vibe coding is really unlocking for everyday people. After this episode, you should be asking yourself, "are you consuming, or are you building?" Timestamped Show Notes 0:00 — Intro: How Matt & Aaron Met — A LinkedIn DM friendship and parallel paths out of teaching 2:56 — Aaron's AI Origin Story — A student shows Aaron ChatGPT after Thanksgiving break; he's never the same 11:59 — From Classroom to Dev Relations — Aaron describes his new role teaching creators and developers instead of students 14:08 — The Snow Globe: Schools & AI — Aaron's analogy…

People in this episode

Host: Matt Karabinos

Guest: Aaron Makelky

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Descript

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