How Netflix and Disney+ are Being Used to Teach Emotional Intelligence: ThinkHumanTV’s Groundbreaking Method

ThinkHumanTV delivers evidence-based emotional skills training and assessment by integrating with major streaming sites like Netflix and Disney+. The platform employs a research-based training methodology and curricula developed by our founding team of Columbia cognitive scientists. The methodology involves explicitly teaching emotion science principles in a systematic manner and illustrating these concepts by leveraging popular media.

ThinkHumanTV is one of the winners of the 2024 Tools Competition.

Ilya Lyashevsky, Co-founder and CEO of Affectifi, which created ThinkHumanTV. Faculty member at Columbia Teachers College with a background in cognitive science and social-emotional learning.

Melissa Cesarano, Co-founder and President of of Affectifi Inc (ThinkHumanTV), cognitive scientist, and professor at Columbia University. Expert in coaching and consulting for students and media companies.

💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:

1. How ThinkHumanTV uses Netflix and Disney+ to teach emotional intelligence.
2. The science behind emotion-based learning and cognitive appraisal.
3. The importance of reflection in building emotional competence.
4. The vision for achieving universal emotional literacy using AI.
5. Insights into the National Science Foundation-funded research behind ThinkHumanTV.

✨ Episode Highlights:

• [00:03:30] Introduction to ThinkHumanTV and its impact in the edtech space.
• [00:07:50] The experience of learning emotional intelligence while watching streaming content.
• [00:14:00] How emotion science improves social-emotional competence in older learners.
• [00:19:27] Sneak peek into ThinkHumanTV’s future mobile and second-screen experience.
• [00:14:46] Winning the Tools Competition and its impact on ThinkHumanTV’s growth.

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🎉 Presenting Sponsor:

This season of Edtech Insiders is once again brought to you by Tuck Advisors, the M&A firm for EdTech companies. Run by serial entrepreneurs with over 25 years of experience founding, investing in, and selling companies, Tuck believes you deserve M&A advisors who work as hard as you do.

Chapters

• 3:48 Introduction to ThinkHumanTV and its impact in the edtech space.
• 8:08 The experience of learning emotional intelligence while watching streaming content.
• 14:41 How emotion science improves social-emotional competence in older learners.
• 15:27 Winning the Tools Competition and its impact on ThinkHumanTV’s growth.
• 20:08 Sneak peek into ThinkHumanTV’s future mobile and second-screen experience.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Melissa Cesarano: We are tapping into the power of digital media.

There are these incredibly complex and interesting emotional dynamics and movies and TV shows. And we feel like that's really untapped and media is a really great vehicle for learning about your emotions. So we're combining the power of art and science to help people learn about their consciousness and about their emotions and yeah, how to manage, how to.

Provide themselves with self care and ultimately be more resilient, self actualized and happy individuals

[00:00:33] Ilya Lyashevsky: Especially for older learners, when you're trying to Kind of build kids emotional skills. What doesn't work very well is to come at them and sort of wag your finger and say, do this, don't do that.

What works better is if you actually help them understand how their brain works, how their emotions work. And then that actually changes the fancy term, mental model of understanding of their emotions. And that actually then impacts how they. Think about their emotional experiences, how they think about the emotional experiences of others, and that then changes how they manage emotional challenges, social challenges, and so on.

So the learning of emotion science is really this fundamental piece of this, where we help people develop just a more accurate understanding of their emotions, which then translates into greater social, emotional competence.

[00:01:17] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry. From funding rounds to impact to AI developments across early childhood, K 12, higher ed, and work. You'll find it all here at EdTech Insiders. Remember to subscribe to the pod, check out our newsletter, and also our event calendar.

And to go deeper, check out EdTech Insiders Plus, where you can get premium content. Access to our WhatsApp channel, early access to events and back channel insights from Alex and Ben. Hope you enjoyed today's pod.

Ilya Lyashevsky and Melissa Cesarano. Are the CEOs of think human TV, think human TV delivers evidence based emotional skills, training, and assessment by integrating with major streaming sites like Netflix and Disney plus the platform employs a research based training methodology and curricula developed by the team of Columbia cognitive scientists that are the founders methodology involves explicitly teaching emotion, science principles in a systematic manner.

And illustrating these concepts with popular media. Ilya Lyashevsky is co founder and CEO at Effectify, which created Think Human TV. And he's a faculty member at Columbia Teachers College, where he co teaches a course on social emotional learning. He was previously a co founder of WeShelter, a non profit using mobile tech to alleviate homelessness, and a senior technology consultant at the New York City Department of Social Services.

He holds a PhD and a master's in education in cognitive science with a social emotional learning concentration from Columbia and an MS and BS in computer science with a creative writing minor from Stanford. Melissa Cesarano is a cognitive scientist, also a professor at Columbia University and co founder of Affectify.

Think Human TV. She has over a decade of experience in coaching and consulting for students, school leaders, and media companies. She also has experience reviewing SBIR grants for the National Science Foundation. Mel holds a BA in Cognitive Neuroscience with a minor in Poetry from UPenn, Masters in Education from Teachers College, and a PhD in Cognitive Science from Columbia University.

Mel and Ilya have collaborated on social emotional learning, teaching, and research for the past decade. Today, we have very special guests, doctors, Mel Cesarano and Ilya Lyshevsky. They are both Columbia professors and the entrepreneurs behind the fascinating program. Think Human TV. Welcome to the podcast.

[00:04:04] Melissa Cesarano: Thank you for having us. 

[00:04:06] Alex Sarlin: We're here today because you are one of the recipients of the tools competition winner. This is an incredible competition going over the last year, right? Multiple phases. And you are one of the big winners, which is fantastic. But before we get into that, give us a little bit of an overview, you know, Mel, tell us what think human TV is and why it's so interesting, such an unusual idea in the ed tech space.

[00:04:27] Melissa Cesarano: Yeah, thank you so much. So essentially, Think Human TV is a platform that leverages streaming media on sites like Netflix and Disney to teach students, kids, educators about the science of emotions. So in a nutshell, that's what the technology does. But what's cool is that we are tapping into the power of digital media.

There are these incredibly complex and interesting emotional dynamics and movies and TV shows. And we feel like that's really untapped and media is a really great vehicle for learning about your emotions. So we're combining the power of art and science to help people learn about their consciousness and about their emotions and yeah, how to manage, how to.

Provide themselves with self care and ultimately be more resilient, self actualized and happy individuals. 

[00:05:21] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, emotional intelligence, emotional well being is so important. And it's such a crisis for students right now. You're both experts in this particular area from your academic work and for your entrepreneurial work.

So, Ilya, tell us for people who are trying to envision this, you know, you're using Netflix, you're using Disney, For emotional intelligence, what is the experience of a student or a family? How would they engage with Think Human TV? And what would it be like to actually be engaging with media while learning in this way?

[00:05:49] Ilya Lyashevsky: Yeah, sure. So, I mean, the current incarnation of this. Just sort of like the way it actually works right now is in the browser. But as a side note, we're also working with a major media partner and have developed a prototype where it works in a mobile device. But the essential idea is that you watch a piece of content as you normally do, right?

So you're on Disney, you're on Netflix, you watch Star Wars, or you watch Avengers, or you watch whatever happens to be your preferred piece of content. And at certain moments, preset moments within the film or the TV show, Playback pauses and some activities occur. So those might be questions about the characters interactions.

And so how the characters might be feeling, why they might be feeling that way, how might they manage their feelings? But there's also in the current version, which is aimed at slightly older learners. So mostly, you know, upper elementary, middle school, high school and beyond. So for those learners, there's also more sort of explicit didactic activities where you learn emotion science, essentially learn about how emotions work.

And that's a really central part of this because what we've seen, you know, kind of practitioners in this space have seen is that especially for older learners, what doesn't work very well when you're trying to Kind of build kids emotional skills. What doesn't work very well is to come at them and sort of wag your finger and say, do this, don't do that.

Right. What works better is if you actually help them understand how their brain works, how their emotions work. And then that actually changes the fancy term, mental model of their understanding of their emotions. And that actually then impacts how they. Think about their emotional experiences, how they think about the emotional experiences of others, and that then changes how they manage emotional challenges, social challenges, and so on.

So the learning of emotion science is really this fundamental piece of this, where we help people develop just a more accurate understanding of their emotions, which then translates into greater social, emotional competence. 

[00:07:47] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, 

[00:07:48] Ilya Lyashevsky: it's just stepping kind of like getting back to your original question. So the experience is that you watch playback pauses, you do an activity, playback resumes, and you go back to watching it.

Actually, that's a key aspect of this is that we're really helping build this habit of reflection. Meaning that, you know, you're doing this reflection in the moment, right, which is similar to what would need to happen in the real world. And that's really a big, big part of this, is that, that habit of reflection, that capacity to pause and think about what's going on with this other person, what's going on with you.

Is really central to all emotional competencies, really. And as Mel was saying, you know, we're tapping into this amazing content. There's so much of it. Yeah. There's so much of it, but it's really not been leveraged in a systemic way for the benefit of emotional skill development. And so this is an opportunity to do that and to use the engagement that those stories naturally create for people, right?

The care about the characters you want to watch people spend hours and hours on those platforms. Oh, 

[00:08:46] Alex Sarlin: yeah. 

[00:08:46] Ilya Lyashevsky: Leverage that engagement. To provide a vehicle for consistent practice and the building of those skills. 

[00:08:52] Alex Sarlin: One of the things I really love about your approach is you're taking this really serious emotion science and you're both know it really well and marrying it to something that kids and families already completely understand.

And it's not new content. It's not even content that they don't want to watch. Whatever you literally want to watch, you can experience this kind of emotional training in that context. You know, we just saw inside out to break all the records, you know, and that is a movie explicitly about emotion and science and emotion intelligence.

I'm sure you have a lot to say about it, but it's a hot topic. And I think it's a really important one right now. So, you know, Mel, tell us how you got to this approach, because I think it's for others who want to jump into the ed tech space from different directions. I don't think they often realize that they can leverage.

Things like Netflix and Disney and, you know, all of this amazing content. How did you come up with this particular model? 

[00:09:43] Melissa Cesarano: Yeah, that's a really great question. The story actually starts over 10 years ago at Columbia University. Ilya and I were PhD students and we decided to work with one another. And we were both really excited about emotion science about, well, how are we going to tackle this problem of teaching students about their emotions?

We were excited about, you know, we're cognitive scientists, so cognitive processes. But the cool thing is that Ilya and I clicked immediately because we're not only scientists, but we're also artists. Ilya, he is a published fiction author. And at the time I was actually going to comedy school and doing a lot of acting and I'm also a poet and I minored in poetry in undergrad.

So we really have this understanding that like, yeah, emotions can be understood from this scientific objective way, but also emotions are poetry. They're really subjective, right? And you can't go and tell someone else, like, this is exactly how sadness is supposed to feel for you. And so. We were excited about unifying the arts and the sciences to help people understand themselves and understand others.

And when we were at Columbia, you know, we were taking a look at like what existed in the field of learning sciences with respect to emotion and then, you know, also cognitive science and affect science. And there was this idea of deep learning that's used in math and science learning sciences where there's, you know, a deep underlying structure to a subject.

And once you Understand that deep underlying structure, you're able to solve problems like look past the surface features of a problem and solve those problems. So we were like, well, does this exist for the subject of emotions? Is there a deep structure that we can teach people so that they have a framework for understanding how their emotions work can look past surface features and solve social emotional problems.

And yeah, as we were studying cognitive science, the affect science, we realized that there are these universal underlying principles such as cognitive appraisal and balance and cognitive reappraisal that give you a framework for understanding what's going on emotionally. And so. We have this approach where we teach emotion science principles and we ground that learning in storytelling in the case of Think Human TV digital narrative.

And then we allow for lots of diverse and authentic practice so that you can apply that learning of the universal underlying principles of emotion to really authentic Moments of emotional interaction and then hopefully transfer that knowledge and transfer those skills to the world and to your own personal life and beyond.

Yeah, 

[00:12:27] Ilya Lyashevsky: you know, we started out with actually an initial version of this, which was the work has been largely funded by the National Science Foundation and the initial version that we built actually relied on clips. from films. And then we actually realized during the pandemic, I don't know if you've heard of this Netflix party.

It was kind of a, it kind of appeared on the screen, right? And it would use the browser extension to sync up, right? People's watching so that you can kind of like have this sort of a remote party, right? Like people watching together apart. And what that made us realize is that this was an approach that we could leverage kind of getting back to your question of like to utilize all the content, you know, not just for, Oh, you know, it's like, hang out together and let's have fun, but also to use it for kind of like this kind of educational purpose where we can.

Kind of add in this layer of learning while you watch this popular content. And so that allowed us to take this approach with, you know, tapping into the Disney plus Netflix and, and fortunately do that in a perfectly legal way. Kind of the trying to jump through the impossible hoop of asking Disney for, you know, to license their content, which is kind of like unachievable.

And that's actually part of the reason why this happened. It's because it's so, so hard to get this kind of access to this kind of content, right? There's a way for us to do that again in a, in a legal, completely legal way, but that was possible, actually feasible. 

[00:13:53] Alex Sarlin: And by doing it, you have access to so many different types of shows and movies and you can, and then everything's, you sort of tag the emotional moments in them.

It's, it is such an interesting approach. So we should talk a little bit about the tools competition. This is a, you know, it was an incredibly competitive contest over a year with many rounds and all sorts of applicants. I think there were over a thousand applicants. Is that right? So I think 1700, my God, and really looking for, you know, ideas that have true combination of really grounded in the science and have a real potential to move the needle for learning engineering, learning science, and, you know, ed tech at large.

What did it feel like when you first realized you were actually, you went all the way through it as a winner and I'm curious what it's meant for, for Think Human since then. I met Mel, I'm curious, what was your reaction when you said, Oh wow, we made it all the way through all these, uh, calling rounds and we're, we're still standing at the end.

[00:14:46] Melissa Cesarano: Yeah, well, let's talk about emotions. Utmost joy was my initial reaction. Yeah, just feeling so joyous and honored, obviously, you know, there are so many incredible companies trying to do wonderful things right now for the world and the ed tech space. And so we're just humbled and honored and so grateful, but we're also excited because, you know, The competition and the resources that it provides will really allow us to take the next step with Think Human TV technologically, but also this is a great opportunity for us to, yeah, make a name for ourselves and, and make ourselves known in the space of ed tech.

We've been trying to do that for a few years now. And. We're really excited to, to say, Hey, here we are. This is what we're doing. We have this mission of universal emotional literacy. We really believe in it and tools. Yeah. It's going to help us do that. So we're really excited. 

[00:15:43] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. How about, how about you Elliot?

What, what did it feel like? I'll be honest. My first feeling was relief 

[00:15:49] Ilya Lyashevsky: because we'd gone through this, all these stages, which is, you know, it was great to, every time you pass the next, the next stage, you feel like, okay, great. We're moving on. I'll be honest. Yeah. And then, you know, the last stage was a live pitch, you know, via zoom to a bunch of judges.

And I did that pitch and I felt like maybe I didn't look afterwards, you know, I'm like reflecting on, you know, ruminating on, Oh my gosh, I didn't answer that. This very tight amount of time. It's, you know, there's a four minute pitch and then a five minute question and answer session. And I felt like. Yeah.

Oh, maybe I didn't answer that question quite as well as I might have. So I was beating myself up again, you know, talking about emotions, right? I was just like, Oh man, I, I don't know if I, I did, you know, I did our project justice and answering those questions. And so we got it. I was actually just very relieved that in fact, you know, we did make it all the way through to the end.

And of course, as Mel said, you know, tremendous kind of win in terms of, you Obviously some bragging rights, but also some financial support and recognition. And so, you know, really, really grateful and yeah, excited to, to build on the momentum. And, and, you know, these types of things are always useful because they force you to do some stuff you might not otherwise do.

So with like tools competition, you know, There's the school learning engineering side of things that, you know, we applied to actually tools the year before and got through to the second round and win. And so that kind of started us thinking on some of these things. And so that's just pushed us in the direction of.

You know, we're already coming at this from a fairly kind of academic point of view as being, you know, academics, but just going deeper from the standpoint of from metrics and using the data potentially to enable others to do research around, you know, using the platform and opening it up to other researchers, all that, even though sometimes it can feel like, Oh my gosh, we don't have time for this.

We, we have to like. Succeeded, you know, survive as a business and so on, but it's always, I always find that being forced to do these kinds of things and encouraged to do them always ends up being useful. And so we're sort of, it's great to, that it's pushed us in this direction. 

[00:18:02] Alex Sarlin: To be even more empirical and even more thinking about how you can move the field forward from a research, even though that's clearly all baked into the DNA of what you're doing.

It was about, you know, the emotion science. It makes sense. And I think, you know, the emotions you're sharing are such universal, right? It's a combination of joy and relief and you're sort of beating yourself up. Everybody does that after every presentation, right? It's just like a thing. And yeah, so it's, it's nice to hear that, you know, it was really meaningful.

And one of the things I really love about what you're doing, you've mentioned this deep structure. You know, the idea of there is a deep structure of emotions and by helping people build the habit of stopping and thinking about the emotional tenor of their surroundings, whether it's the movie they're watching the show they're watching, or it's how they're feeling when they do social media or how they're feeling because their friend just told them X, Y, Z.

It feels like such a powerful antidote to some of the Ills that, you know, we've all been stressing about over the last few years, all the pandemic, the mental health crisis, social media, adding to it, the idea of just stopping and thinking and sort of understanding your own emotions, such a powerful message.

So it's so exciting to see somebody going at it in such an original and creative and exciting way. So. Last, last question for you. You've mentioned in passing, Ilya, that there's a sort of mobile structure coming, a sort of second screen kind of movement. Can you tell us a little bit about what that will look like?

What's sort of the next iteration of Think Human and how will it be accessed? 

[00:19:27] Ilya Lyashevsky: Yeah, so we've been working with a major media partner for a year plus, won't name them now, but hopefully that'll be public soon. So one of the challenges we've had is that the existing product, as we mentioned, works in the browser, right?

And that just introduces certain limitations, because obviously, especially when you're talking about younger kids and older viewers, like you have this kind of sweet spot of, you know, high school kids and college kids. So they have their laptops, they do their homeworks on their laptops. And they also watch media, of course, on their laptops a lot of the time.

But everyone else, you know, probably most of the time is consuming their media on, You know, the TV, the iPad, the smartphone, right now, I have little kids and you know, they're definitely watching on the TV on the iPad and sometimes our phones. And so being able to deliver the ThinkHuman TV experience on any one of those platforms, of course, was really, really important.

And so this is what we've been doing with this media partner. We developed a prototype that works on a mobile device and actually does the same thing that we do on the browser extension. But integrated, right? Like you're watching your video and you're, let's say it's a Disney app, your Disney plus app, whatever.

And you're getting the exercises right there, you know, right in the app. The differences that we've targeted with this partner, we've been working to target a little kid. So, you know, four or five, six, seven kind of age range. And so of course the experience there is also different, right? You're dealing with kids who might not be reading yet.

They're young. So. the kind of more didactic side of things where you're sort of directly teaching in a more passive way, you know, as much, there's a lot less of 

[00:21:04] Alex Sarlin: that. And 

[00:21:04] Ilya Lyashevsky: it's much more just active learning through these kinds of interactive activities where you're just, again, just practicing some of those, you know, flexing those muscles, building those skills of, of reflection, of pushing granularity, emotion, vocabulary, these kinds of like fundamental, fundamental skills that we tend to focus on when we're working with.

Younger learners, that's the format. And then you mentioned second screen. That is actually something working on as well, where that's a really kind of more futuristic version of this, where you actually can watch on the TV and then get the learning experience on a second screen on your device as you watch on TV.

So that's a, that's kind of the next phase also that we're working on, which is just a little bit more technologically demanding. So that's a little bit further down the line, but we do already have a 

[00:21:51] Alex Sarlin: Amazing. I'm really looking forward to seeing all that. So we have to have you back on, you know, when your media partner is available.

And as you continue to grow, you have to come back on. I have so many more questions I want to ask about autistic, you know, kids and how this reacts. That would be so fascinating. Want to find out about how you're thinking about, uh, in classroom use, right? There's so many interesting things to talk about, but I think we got to close it off for now.

But thank you so much. This is Dr. Like Shefsky. They said they didn't need to be called doctor, but I'm doing it anyway. And Dr. Mel Cesarano, they're Columbia professors and they are the entrepreneurs behind the really amazing think human TV. Check it out. I've played with it. It is an amazing experience.

It really is so cool. You're watching something comes up and it just like, you know, what do you think is going on right now? How does the, you know, Olaf feel when, you know, Elsa does this and you're like, wow, I would not have thought about it that way. It's really cool. So thanks for being here with us this week on Weekend Ed Tech.

[00:22:47] Ilya Lyashevsky: Thanks so much, Alex. Thanks for having us. 

[00:22:50] Alex Sarlin: Of course. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ed Tech Insiders. If you like the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the Ed Tech community. For those who want even more Ed Tech Insider, subscribe to the free Ed Tech Insiders newsletter on Substack.