Jerry Kolber has cracked the code on podcast growth, with more than 50M podcast downloads, including 2 top 0.5% shows, one top 1.5%, and one top 0.05% series, all with over 90% consumption.  Prior to his work in audio, he was the co-creator and Showrunner of National Geographic’s #1 series, Brain Games, for which he received a Prime Time Emmy Nomination. Kolber and Atomic are frequent collaborators with icon Pharrell Williams, having created and produced Brainchild (Netflix) with Pharrell, as well as a documentary about Pharrell's iconic music festival.

​

Moving into audio in 2020, Kolber realized that most of the growth advice was focused on downloads, not engagement, and spent the next five years developing a system that not only catapulted his shows to more than 1.5M monthly downloads, but worked for other people's shows ranging from startups, coaches, and authors to Fortune 100 CEO's, true crime shows, and narrative shows. He's on a mission to save 100,000 podcasts from unnecessary death.

 

Kolber is the co-creator and host of the world’s most popular 3x weekly kids educational podcast Who Smarted?, which has had over 30M downloads itself, and the cohost of the top 0.5% true crime series Slaycation. He works with a diverse array of podcast growth clients including Siemens corporation, best-selling author Marcus Collins, and the Lancaster Herald, all of whom have experienced growth in their desired results, not just growth of the shows. 

​

Kolber’s other TV creator and Showrunner credits include Inked (A&E), Confessions of a Matchmaker (A&E), GE in the Wild (with Mythbusters’ Adam Savage), and the space documentary 14 Minutes from Earth (Netflix).​

 

Kolber grew up in the swamp in South Florida. He was an avid cyclist, theater kid, and nationally ranked Lincoln-Douglas debater.

 

Kolber didn’t know regular people could make movies until he met a group of regular people at NYU who were studying to make movies, where he was studying theater production and design.  Kolber’s first job was as Business Manager of the legendary Jean Cocteau Repertory Theater on the Bowery.

 

Kolber followed his time at the Cocteau Rep with a summer in the immediately- post-Communist Czech Republic, attempting to produce theater in circumstances better suited to producing a nervous breakdown. Upon his return to the States, Kolber began working in the stage theatrical departments at major movie studios, including Universal and Disney.

 

Kolber began his career in television in the production finance department at Dick Wolf’s Fox hit New York Undercover, bridging the gap between finance and creative. He was the production auditor on the first seasons of HBO’s Sex and the City, and Bravo’s Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, ultimately becoming line producer of more than fifty episodes of Queer Eye while learning to put the hair product in from the back.

 

Kolber went on a wild ride in the rapidly expanding early landscape of unscripted television, working for E!, fuse, Bravo, Disney/ABC, National Geographic, Discovery ID, MTV, Animal Planet, and multiple A&E series as an in-demand Co-EP,  showrunner, and writer of unscripted entertainment.

 

He always knew that one day he would bring his love of entertainment and disdain for outdated one-size-fits-all education together, and Brain Games provided the first of many opportunities to show what was possible. Since 2010 Kolber, his team at Atomic, and their amazing partners have been responsible for some of the most successful and beloved edutainment programming in the world.  Kolber is a long-time resident of Manhattan’s Lower East Side.