Does the AI producer actually run the interview, or do I still show up?
You still show up. The AI producer preps the interview, drafts the questions, and runs everything around the recording — but the conversation itself is yours. Podcasts work because listeners hear a specific human thinking in real time; replacing that with synthetic audio would kill the format. What the AI producer replaces is the 6-10 hours of invisible work around each interview: research, prep, editing, note-writing, distribution, feedback synthesis. You record for an hour; the producer handles the other 9 hours. Most solo founders using Tycoon go from one episode a month (crushed by production load) to one episode a week at higher quality.