Thank you all for coming.
First of all, I want to know how many of you are here because you're interested in having
a podcast?
How many of you already have them?
Cool.
And how many of you are just interested in learning about the business of it?
Cool.
All right.
You are.
Okay.
Cool.
And I wasn't quite the executive producer of the moth, but I wasn't a producer there
for a while.
I recently became the head of audio at BuzzFeed, and we are launching a couple of podcasts
this month that I'm very excited about.
But let's introduce you to the rest of these people.
Why don't you guys introduce yourselves?
Sure.
Perfect.
My name is Anna Sayle.
I host Death, Sex, and Money at WNYC, which is a podcast we launched in May of 2014.
So we're getting close to one year, which we're pumped for.
Before that, I covered news for public radio for 10 years, most recently covering politics
for about five years straight.
Jenna worked for Death, Sex, and Money for six weeks, during which time she got the offer
to work for BuzzFeed as the director of audio, so we take credit for that.
And the other thing that we share is we both were in bands with the same bassist, but not
the same band.
Really?
Yeah.
Radley.
Oh, yeah.
Cool.
All right.
The Roots of Podcasts.
That's a success.
A lot of us are in bands.
It's kind of weird to hear you say Anna Sayle, like sitting next to you here, you say your
name.
My name is Max.
I am a co-host of a podcast called Longform, which is the same name as a website that I
co-run, that's also called Longform, and I feel like my role tonight is representing
amateur podcasters.
These are professional people, and we did not know what the fuck we were doing, and
has somehow figured out how to pretend like we do.
A big part of how we pretend to know what the fuck we were doing is that Jenna edits
the podcast.
So what we give Jenna is quite bad, and then what comes back is like passable.
My name is Mike Peska.
I was the bassist in Jenna and Anna Sayle.
My job here tonight is to convince Max that he's doing a great job, yet suddenly communicate
better than him.
I am actually the host of this Slate podcast, and just for 10 years I was a reporter for
NPR, mostly covering sports, but doing a lot of politics before that.
I was the 1982 pass-punthen kick champion for the New York Jets 10 and under division.
My series of tweets on Benjamin Knot, Netanyahu's address to Congress, recently won a James
Thurber Award for American Humor.
Awesome.
Very recently.
Yeah, it just happened.
Sorry, it's just been retracted.
So I think it's a really interesting time for podcasting.
I feel like there's just intense interest in it all of a sudden that we do.
We owe a lot of it to Serial, although we were all making podcasts before Serial, but
not nearly as popular as Serial.
And Serial was an interesting time because it was sort of like a time that everyone I
knew started getting, like everyone I knew in audio who had sort of always been in public
radio, started getting tons of job offers because I think it made people at media companies
all of a sudden all feel like they all needed podcasts.
So it's a very good time to get into this business, I would say.
And it's been very exciting for us.
So I want to ask each of you, how did you get into podcasting?
I know both, two of you started out in radio and then kind of moved into podcasting.
You did not do anything in radio, but started podcast.
I think we have like a traditional podcast story, which is like we were sitting at the
bar and we were like, you know what would be interesting is if we made a podcast of this
conversation.
And it wasn't interesting at all.
And so we realized very quickly actually the first idea for our podcast was we were going
to do like we were going to rip off the gab fest, except we're going to do it like about
magazines.
So every week it'd be me and the two guys I do with Aaron and Evan and then a fourth
guy.
We were going to, yeah, because it was like four 30-year-old white dudes in Brooklyn because
everyone wants to hear that.
And we were going to talk about magazines and we're going to really like talk shit about
them.
And then we realized that like we're all cowards and no one was going to ever say anything
mean.
And so we decided to rip off a different podcast, which was WTF, which we were all like pretty
big fans of.
And basically the idea was we're really interested in these journalists.
We have this website where we record that articles.
We noticed that people were starting to follow specific readers, specific writers rather.
And the idea was like, could we have those kinds of conversations, could we go back and
sort of trace the arc of someone's career and really try to figure out like how to do
their job.
And that's what we did.
Cool.
I guess you could say I got into podcasts when I first started listening to podcasts,
which was I think before the word podcast existed.
Not that I'm an early tech guy, but I love all things audio and I used to listen to a
lot of radio shows under the covers like shows that maybe some of the older people in the
room might recognize.
Ira Fistel was this guy on WABC at midnight who would always talk about weird stuff.
And what was her name?
Sally Jesse Raphael had a talk show.
She had a radio show?
Oh yeah, for like 10 years on the talk network.
This is talknet.
Anyway, I was the first NPR person to have a podcast, it was called On Gambling with
Mike Pesquet, it was about animal husbandry.
And then about four years ago, the guys from Slate said, hey, we have a political gap fest,
we have a culture gap fest, we want to start a sports one, and we want you to start it.
And Josh Levine, who was the sports editor there, will be a part of it.
So I've been doing a Slate, and then Steph and Fats has joined it.
I have been doing a Slate Sports podcast for years and years, and Andy Bowers, who runs
the podcasting division of Slate, which is now called Panoply, which we have 15 new podcasts
under our banner, for years talked to me.
I think a Daily News podcast could work, I said, I do too, I just don't want to be the
one to do it, I like NPR.
And then finally like everything aligned, I was feeling creatively like I really wanted
to go there.
I wanted to get a lot of the stuff I could do at NPR.
It's weird to leave a dream job, but this new job is even better.
All right.
So I didn't have to change jobs.
My story is just kind of, I was covering politics, I'd covered the 2012 election, traveling
all around swing states, was covering the 2013 mayoral race, and was just getting to
that point where you get really tired of talking to political consultants.
So I was trying to figure out what I was going to suggest my next beat to be after the election
was over.
And around that time a memo went out to all WNYC employees, which said, hey, you're talented
smart people and you work here, we want new content, we're having a contest.
And it was kind of the dream memo because it gave us, gave me sort of a homework assignment
to figure out exactly if I could do whatever I wanted to do, what would the show sound like,
what would it be like, you know, if I could kind of step out of being afraid of losing
my kind of journalistic bona fides, which I'd worked really hard for and, you know,
with my political reporter colleagues, you know, being in that pack and proving myself
like, what would I really want to do?
And death, sex, and money kind of came from the idea that I was having all these incredible
interesting intimate conversations with swing state voters in Walmart parking lots in Iowa
and Ohio and Colorado, and we all cared what the divorced woman thought about, you know,
her future until November 4th, and then we didn't care about her for another four years.
So that was sort of the genesis for the show, was I just wanted to hear more of these stories
and kind of make the argument that personal story for its own sake was actually really
important journalism, given how much is in flux in the American experience of family,
economy, et cetera, and I was also in personal flux in my life, so I had a lot of pressing
questions that I needed to just ask people.
So that was the pitch, and death, sex, and money, the name came to me walking the dog,
and I was just like, what do I, like, what are the things that we all worry about?
And I thought of death, sex, and money, and then I thought, oh my gosh, that's DSM, like
the psychiatric manual, that is hilarious, so that's where it came from.
And so people want to call it sex, death, and money all the time, but it's really important
that it's DSM to get the joke.
And I think another thing that a lot of podcasters are talking about now and that a lot of people
don't understand and we don't fully understand is, like, what are the differences between
radio and podcast?
Are there differences?
And I feel like there definitely are, and I feel like your show, especially, and Mike's
too, well, all of us really, they sort of, like, but your show, because it's at WNYC,
I think, really highlights that, and I know we've been working on it for, like, six weeks.
One of the amazing things is that you don't have to think about a clock, so you can make
them whatever length you want, and that's, like, very, very freeing in a lot of ways.
But what are other differences that, starting with you, that you've noticed, or, like, yeah,
that you've seen in podcasts versus radio in your career?
I mean, I feel like when you come up as a public radio reporter, you learn a formula
really quickly, how to do the, you know, 30-second spot, the 90-second spot, the three-and-a-half
minute feature, and the eight-minute feature if you work on it for a couple of weeks.
And you figure out how to write a really great lead for a host, and then a really great lead
for you, and then a really nice kicker at the end, and then your out cue.
And there's a lot of creativity within those formulas, but losing that structure when you
start a podcast, it was terrifying, and also just, like, whoa, you know, what can we do?
And so that was the first thing that I thought a lot about in development, and I think as
we've been producing the show, it's dawning on me, like, how much freer I feel to push
on edgy topics, and this idea that we have this intimate community of listeners, and
that relationship, and I feel pushed by the listeners to, like, go there even more on
kind of questions that I wouldn't ask if I were sitting in on a talk show that was being
broadcast, where you didn't know if people seven-year-olds were listening, you know,
in the background.
And so we can curse, we can, and we can also know that listeners are listening at a time
when it's convenient for them, and people are opting in.
So that really changes the way that you, I think, prepare the thing that you're making
for them.
Well, yeah, in the abstract, I would say that it freeings a good word.
I think that podcasts are inherently niche even when they're serial, and I think that
the guiding principle of a place like NPR is, you know, don't lose anyone, okay, maybe
there'll be a small single-digit percent of the audience that doesn't know what you're
talking about, but your references should go slow enough that you kind of hold everyone's
hand, and the organizing principle is that people don't say, huh, what's that about?
My principle is sort of to go fast and to say, this isn't for you, this isn't for you,
but to really find the passionate audience that it is for.
And so that means a lot of things, because that's how I consume media, too.
Like, I never quite got the, well, don't use that word, people might be confused.
As a consumer, I always said, well, I want to know what a factotum is, and then I found
out, and it was disgusting.
So that's in the abstract.
You know, in the specific, all the stuff you talk about, it all has good sides and bad
sides, like you could go long and that's freeing.
It's also to the audience sometimes boring, you know.
I believe that limitations, that creativity and limitations go hand in hand, and I believe
that if you look at the history of the most creative periods, things like the era of film
noir, it was when there were so many strictures on what you could possibly do.
So within those parameters, you get so creative.
And now that all bets are off, you know, sometimes I wonder what the definition of creativity
is.
And also, it's not all about me, like one good thing about NPR is service the audience.
So I still have that instilled in me, and I do think a lot of podcasts, maybe not the
popular ones, do have this level of indulgence that they need to check against.
Might be a connection there, though, popular ones that don't have that indulgence.
Yeah.
But some of them do, too.
I mean, I love WTF, but that, at times, is like a super-indulgent podcast.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, ours is also super-indulgent.
I have no, like, ground to stand on there at all.
It's not particularly, like, super popular out there, or something like that.
I've never done radio before, so I don't really have a good answer right now.
Very cool.
That's what you get free passes around.
Thanks.
Really great.
Cool.
Yeah.
I've found, actually, that moving to, like, just podcasts where there is no radio element
has sort of made me set more extreme limits on myself than I had before where, like, I'm
not going to make any podcasts that are more than 45 minutes long at BuzzFeed.
Like, that's, like, I just feel like, after that, people get bored.
I like to think of it as, like, a commute thing.
A lot of people commute either, like, 20 minutes, so they'll listen to the first half
on their way there, and then the second half on their way home, or, like, they have 40-minute
subway commutes.
I actually, like, hold a lot of people to ask how long their subway commutes are, and
40 seemed like the average, so I feel like that's a really good time.
And that is actually, like, the time that the vast majority of people are listening to
podcasts is on their feed.
We're on the treadmill.
Oh, yes.
5K is, like, a good way to think about, you know.
Yeah.
And, like, and over the holidays, like, podcast numbers shot down because people, when they're
with their, like, home with their families, they're not listening to their podcasts.
It's, like, very much a part of your routine, and when you're not doing your regular routine,
you're not really listening to podcasts.
We have little clips that we want to play from each of our shows, and, Mike, why don't
we start with yours?
Because this is from today, right?
I think it was from two days from Friday.
From two days.
Okay, cool.
From Friday.
It was, like, you were talking about the dress.
Yeah, okay.
So, I think I started just by saying, I was reading this article in the Wall Street Journal,
and they were talking about how leggings are really popular now, even more popular than
yoga is, and it's part of the athleisure category, and I said athleisure.
This idea that you're going, somehow this idea, you're going to invent this category
called athleisure, and I'm going to sign on for it, and you've hyphenated it bizarrely
because it can be athle, and then the hyphen, like, athletic and leisure, or it can be ath,
and then the hyphen and leisure, right?
So where's the hyphen?
And this idea that somehow you could throw a hyphen in there, and I'm going to sign on
to it, and then I started talking about the dress, and, like, you know, this notion that
just because we have two different ways of viewing a piece of fabric, that it's all
going to go viral just because it has gone viral, it's infuriating, and then I reveal,
all right, my spiel, which is what I call, like, the, sometimes it's a rant at the end
of the show, wasn't really about what I'd just been saying, and then I think this is
where we join the clip.
And that, just listeners, and I should also add now, panoplesians, that is my theme today.
Now, nothing about the dress, nothing about yoga, phrase I said, the idea that somehow
it's the preamble that has it all.
It's embraced by the right.
There's this notion that somehow there's moral equivalence between what the terrorist
did and what we do.
And the left.
This notion that somehow there was this ready-made, moderate Syrian force.
So right there, you heard Cheney and Obama speaking out of this idea that somehow, but
this notion.
Notions are good.
Notions are good to use in those phrases.
Notions are like ideas, but with less ballast, right?
You gotta respect ideas.
I mean, Booker T. Washington spoke of slavery as the idea that the disadvantage of one man
is the good of another.
Whereas notion, that's taken less seriously, let me quote, I'd like to know where you got
the notion to rock the boat, don't rock the boat, baby, rock the boat, don't tip the boat
over.
Don't accuse corporation and remember corporations are people under the law.
This idea that somehow a corporation is a person.
The idea that somehow there is an absolute rejection of the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri.
It's so much more convenient than explicitly saying, hold on a second while I construct
my straw man, it's so much less time consuming than actually and accurately quoting opposition
figures who are putting forth bad arguments.
It's not in the congressional record, it's in the ether.
The notion that somehow I ran for public office or members of Congress are in this so that
they can go around pulling the plug on grandma.
The idea that somehow it's such a great throat clearer.
It's a great scene setter.
It's a great generator of drama.
Remember drama is conflict.
It immediately sets up an opposition and sets it up on your terms.
You can use it to quickly conjure arguments that you know are out there or you can use
it to simply make up arguments that you wish were out there like this.
I had this idea that somehow if I controlled what I ate, I could never get hurt again.
The idea that somehow is a gift, a trick, a gambit, a ruse, a go-to and a friend.
The idea that somehow you shouldn't use it.
This notion that somehow people will ever notice what you're doing and call you on it.
That notion is fanciful.
Fanciful at best.
That was long.
That was long.
It was great.
That was great.
I actually have a question about that because I was talking to someone before this who was
wondering how much of your podcast or how much of like all of our podcasts are scripted
versus how much is just you kind of going on and that definitely seems like that seems
like it was scripted.
Is that true or?
It's 75% scripted.
It's bullet pointed and then phrases are written out and interviews are not scripted.
Mostly intros to the interviews are.
Sometimes depending on how much time I have I'll script more but I always go off script
and sometimes get facts wrong in the process.
And how much of your scripted?
Mine is pretty scripted.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My interviews are like we do like preps, death sex and money is basically a produced
interview show.
So we do extensive research preps, timelines of people's lives and then a list of questions
I'll sort of take in but I find that I don't look at those very often, sort of know the
narrative arc of the interview when I go in.
But the actual episodes we do a lot of group editing, we listen to chunks, we pay attention
to when we stop listening and then we cut that part out.
And then you know really kind of winnow down the writing a lot and then I take a script
in and when I'm voicing it I sort of kind of like don't improvise a bit while I'm reading
but it's pretty close to scripted.
I mean you listen to the raw, you know it's not scripted.
The one thing that sort of relates to that though is like when we started I was going
in with like tons of questions, like way more questions than I could ever ask, like a notebook
full of questions.
And then what I found I was doing was I wasn't really listening to people very well, I was
just kind of like waiting to have the next question on the list.
And then I started doing a list of just like fewer questions like maybe 10 or something.
But still it wasn't quite working all that well, like I was looking down at the list
and I wanted to cross boxes off and people would be talking about something super emotional
and I would cut them off and be like, and when did you start doing it, it was just terrible.
And then eventually I had it, so I just had like acts basically, like I was just like
we'll talk about this and then this and then this and that's the show and now actually
I go in with a notebook and I have these acts and I end up taking tons of notes during
the interview.
So like I started with like a huge notebook and now I've gone to I like build the notebook
up during the interview.
So, but so how often then is a show as you preconceived the structure that you've gone
into the acts?
The acts thing generally, generally, it generally follows that.
That's like about as much as you can structure one of these conversations I think is like
you just know that you want to talk about a certain piece they wrote or a certain time
in their lives or a certain aspect of their work or something, but that's about as much
as you can do.
And Mike, is there anything else you wanted to say about this or feel pretty like you're
kind of an expert?
Yeah, I'm interested in a few things, but I'm interested in words and rhetoric and
I didn't really realize how much I was until Ira, I think Anna and I both got a pretty
good pop when Ira put us on, you know, separately on This American Life and his thing was, well,
we got to do something with yours, your stuff about rhetoric, I'm like, well, what's my
stuff about rhetoric?
And he said, you know, when he lists all these things, I'm like, oh, yeah, I guess I talk
about rhetoric a lot.
So we're going to be doing some more of them.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, I can't help it.
So the Ira thing is actually usually when people are featured on This American Life,
their podcasts kind of blow up the next week.
So it's like, we sort of, I'll call it like the Ira bump.
It doesn't always last forever, but you can usually count on the week after you were on
This American Life, your own podcast being in the top 10 on iTunes, pretty much, pretty
much always happens.
Yeah.
Or in the top two, which I think happened to you.
Number one.
That was free.
But it was, so I just want to, like, that speaks to, I mean, just Ira Glass and his generosity
of sharing that platform with emerging producers and emerging podcasts.
It's just like, it's so gracious.
And I think every day.
All right.
So Max, why don't we play your clip now, did you want to answer with it anyway?
Okay.
This is George Saunders talking in the back of a bookstore, and I was very excited to
talk to him, and he's a very special person, and when Jenna asked me for a clip, I was
like, well, maybe we shouldn't let people hear that time when George Saunders, like,
talked about the meaning of life.
And so that's what this is.
And you'll notice, I mean, there's not a lot of me in there, but there's two really important
sort of moments where I interject, where I think it's a good description of my style.
You know what you're saying, goodbye to somebody at the airport that you love, and you get
all soft.
You're like, oh my God, I didn't even hardly, I hardly knew you, you know, that kind of feeling.
But if that's the truth, that that mode is the mode, that times 10, you know, maybe,
is the mode that we should exist in all the time, then another day you're just yourself,
you know, there's a big gap between those two people.
So my regret would be how much time did I spend in that regular old stupid habitual mindset
of taking everything for granted, as opposed to this exalted state of being super tenderized
to the people you care about.
And I'm guessing that, you know, if there's a heaven, it's that at the airport times 10
or 20 or 1,000, you know.
So I think the regret would be that you, like a lunkhead, you spent so much time in that
normal state, well, I wonder what I'm going to do today, oh, my book is selling, you know.
How do I look?
Oh, I'm going bald.
But instead of, that mode is habitual, but we know from the occasional foray into it
that the other mode is possible.
So then the speech basically says, hurry up, take my advice, hurry up.
Take it into the higher state while you can.
How do you do it?
I don't know.
I'm stupid.
I'm like a latecomer, but there's these thousands of years of spiritual traditions that wouldn't
be a bad place to start.
And you know, a lot of times in our culture, there's this de facto humanist swagger that
says, oh yeah, religion, we used to do that shit, you know.
But you know, what my advice would be to anyone who wanted it was reconfigure your understanding
of quote unquote religion and make it exactly equal to that which will give you that airport
state of mind more often, and then go into the existing traditions and cull through them
to make it that, you know, or to try to find the authentic elements of those traditions
that are really about that.
Because that's really what they're about, you know.
You guys laughed when I laughed like nervously, and that was the only thing I did.
And that clip was like nervously laughed while he was saying that stuff.
The other reason I picked that though is I do think the thing that's really powerful
about podcasting, and it has a lot to do with that consumption stuff, about when people
listen and how they listen, most people listen to these alone, like with headphones, and
it's very personal and very intimate, and there was something really magical about that
moment, and part of what was great about it was it really wasn't that different than the
conversation I would have had with him if there were no microphones.
Like we were just sitting in like the back of a cramped office, and a phone kept ringing
all the time, and I kept like hanging it up.
And I think it was pretty close to bridging that gap between feeling like he's dropping
on an actual conversation and something sort of performative, like that is just how he
is.
We just happen to have mics on, and I think that's kind of these podcast at their best
is when it doesn't just feel intimate because you happen to be listening to it on headphones
but it actually is.
Yeah, and another, something I always tell people when they're making podcasts is like
why is this audio and not written?
I think it's important to have like a compelling reason why you're putting something in audio,
and that's the kind of thing like with this interview where like it just has a bigger
impact I think, then to like if I saw that written I would think it was beautiful, but
hearing him say it, there's something that it really adds to it.
Is that something that you guys think about a lot, like what like you know why am I doing
this in audio, what makes it compelling in audio versus like another medium when you're
making these things?
Or you just do not think about that?
No, I do.
They wanted to turn my spills into kind of columns, and Jacob Weisberg who's in charge
of the slate groups or editors-editors like no one's doing this, no one's doing you know
a column like a well thought out column a day, and I said okay here's the problem so
many of them don't work as written columns, like some would, but then I throw to a clip
without explaining it, but then I, and some of them are just like weirdo sketches, they're
not all you know ranty spills, like the other day someone came in pretending to be our executive
producer and broke down because I called them a bear, okay.
So that wouldn't work.
Yeah.
I mean every medium is, I don't even think just why isn't it written, I think why isn't
it visual, why, but because like all of us were, well, Ann and I were radio people and
we always think in I think audio form, right?
Yeah, I mean the voice, like just hearing someone tell their own story in their voice
is just arresting in a way that even reading like the most confessional personal lesson
isn't.
I mean I remember I was getting on the F train during that moment in the George Saunders
interview, like I can remember precisely where I was, because I was like wow, and I was surrounded
by all these people, but I can, that was the, yeah I think there's, I mean it would have
been in hindsight like way easier for us to just do like Q and A's over email with writers,
and there's something about like the work it takes to get two people in a room that
I think is valuable in these conversations too, like again like the setting there I
think is important, like it wasn't an NPR studio, like we just had microphones on a
desk, but it had been this whole thing, it took a while to find a time that like we had
to get, he was about to go do a like reading with Ben Stiller, like at the bookstore, right
afterwards, and there's all these people waiting outside for him, you know, and it just never
would have been like that if we'd just been trading emails, we never would have gotten
to that point, and the thing we were talking about was the speech he gave, which is the
same thing, this is like, you know, one of the great writers of our time, and what we
actually ended up talking about was another time where he spoke to people.
Yeah, and I think a lot of people think about the difference between like TV and movies
and radio, and I feel like it's just really exciting, like when I'm listening to this
American Life, I'm totally using my imagination, and kind of more than I ever do, because I'm
trying to picture everything they're talking about, and so there's something about it not
being right in front of you that makes your brain sort of have to work a little more,
which is fun.
Yeah, did you all listen to this American Life about cops, the first segment of the
first episode, like when the, if you haven't listened, listen, but there's a sound of
a window breaking, and if you had seen it, it wouldn't, like I don't know, it would've
just like, but when you hear it, it's just like the most terrifying thing, and it was
like a viral video that I experienced it in such a different way on the show.
The other thing I'll say is that I think if we were doing them as like written interviews,
people would be a lot more self-conscious about what they said, and I think like if you just,
like if you just talk to anyone for 45 minutes or an hour, like you kind of drop your guard
inevitably and start being a little bit more honest.
The other thing that's happened with us several times is like towards the end of an interview,
particularly when people don't come to our studio, but like when I'm going to their house
or whatever, at the end of the interview, people will be like, how many people have
been listening to this anyway?
And I'll be like, eh, I don't know, like 50, 60,000, and then we'll be like, ahhh!
So I try and like, that's the other part of it though, is just like a guy shows up at
your house with some microphones, it feels, it's not something that you're going to like
worry about while you're having a conversation.
Also putting aside all the kind of calls to craftsmanship, you can't watch TV or read
while driving a car.
The reason that this forum is definitely going to succeed and prosper, it's the only form
of, for all the new media that's getting invented, it's the only form of media that you can do
while doing something else.
People are busy, and they like that.
It does work well.
Let's play your flip.
And so is this from the most recent episode?
And did you want to intro it?
Yeah, I'll just set it up a little bit.
So that's Sex and Money, we do a combination of different things.
Some interviews are interviews with famous people talking about key moments of transition
in their lives.
Some interviews are deep dives with people you haven't heard of, that are about kind
of a particularly sort of gripping story like we did an interview with a couple, a young
couple who had been together before and after one of their transitions, gender transitions
and just what that was like in the relationship.
And then some more and more we're doing episodes built around stories that listeners send
in, and these are, this we just sort of started doing, we asked everybody, we presumed that
a lot of people had smartphones because they're listening to podcasts, so if you have a smartphone
you have a way to record yourself.
And so we just started asking these really broad questions about how do you deal with
money in your relationship, tell us your story, or what is it like if you live alone, tell
us your story.
And then we did, the most recent one we did was about cheating and relationships.
And the quality of the tape of just people confessing either their complete heartbreak
and humiliation of being cheated on or their shame of currently cheating or having cheated
was really kind of striking to sit at my desk and listen to these memos that are coming
in into my inbox.
So we stitched an episode together about that and this just kind of gives you a sense of
that.
And I think it's, I don't know, I think it's really cool because it speaks to just the
ways that we can, the relationship that a podcast can have with its listeners in an
ongoing conversation.
Just to set this up, we're starting with a guy who's, it's not his real name but I
called him Joe from Texas and the setup was he's in his mid 40s and since high school
he said he's, he's only been with women who were unavailable who were in other relationships
and he was the third party and so I asked him about that.
There's a pattern that you can look back on your life and see that you've, you've been
with a series of women who weren't available to be just with you.
That sounds like you don't, you haven't quite figured that out why that is.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I do have, I've got reasons why I believe that physically, you know, I'm
not, I'm an overweight guy.
So I feel like that's probably why I can't be the number one choice.
They may love my sense of humor and my kind of compassionate side and the fact that I'm
not afraid to let out my feelings and tell them different things.
All that loses to the fact that I'm not six foot four and have rock heart abs and look
fabulous or something, you know.
Yeah.
How tall are you and how much do you weigh?
I'm six one and I'm very happy to say that I'm about 295 right now.
I lost about 45 pounds in the last year.
Congratulations.
Thank you very much.
I'm kind of done being, I'm trying to be done being ashamed of anything about me and just
putting it out there and saying, this is me, this is who I am.
I've been married three times and each time I went out and cheated to find, I guess, love.
It's so much harder being on this side of things that I think people realize.
You need to talk about endings before you're beginning.
You need to talk about if it all falls apart, how would we behave?
How would you want to behave?
We don't offer enough support to those that have made mistakes like this.
I'm trying to be loyal in that area.
I hope that it works out this time.
And it has to be said, when you're talking about sex, sometimes there are consequences
beyond busted relationships and emotional wounds.
Cheating can lead to a child.
I found out later that he had gotten a friend of his pregnant.
That's the end of the clip.
So now you have to listen.
But so you can hear there.
So Joe in Texas was a guy who sent in a voice memo and then we followed up with him in
a set up a studio interview.
And then the women that you heard, kind of the montage, those were all just voice memos
and then the memo about the sound of the boyfriend giving the woman pregnant was then
voice memo.
And then I go on to talk with her and learn more about that story.
And your podcast is like, you know, you have like my favorite podcast.
And I feel like I tell you that a lot and I tell everybody else because like something
that's so great about podcasting is that there is this like real kind of intimacy with your
listeners.
And I feel like you have that like on this amazing level where you're just like totally
listening to your listeners.
And like how did that start and sort of how has it progressed and what kinds of, I mean
like, and do you still have, are you still like talking to any of these people or like
how does that work?
Because it's so intimate.
Yeah.
It's really interesting.
I mean, it is so odd because I used to be a politics reporter and I used to, you know,
be a straight kind of conventional reporter.
And so I think it started early on in the podcast because one of the first episodes, the one
that aired on This American Life was a story that was just kind of this cuckoo thing that
happened in my own life where I was broken up with my boyfriend and he asked for help
from a former retired Senator Alan Simpson in Wyoming.
And this was all happening as I'm developing this podcast.
So I was like, shit, now I have to do this whole episode about my life and how I have
commitment fears and how I'm divorced and in my mid 30s and don't know if I'm going
to have kids and blah, blah, blah, blah.
So but I had to do it because it's like, you're going to have a show about that sex and money
and life choices.
Like you got to go there.
And it's also one of the best talkers in the history of American politics and his wife
who he's been with for 60 years.
So that I think just kind of starting the show with this idea that like I'm figuring
it out too and let's just kind of fumble our way through together.
And to clarify, your boyfriend wanted help from Alan Simpson to get you back.
Oh, to get me back.
Sorry.
Did I leave that out?
Yeah.
He got me back.
We're getting married.
It's a good story.
We should also add, your boyfriend, we should disclose, your boyfriend is Erskine Bowles.
Yeah.
And we are going to solve the debt crisis.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which is very cool.
Yeah.
Cool.
So yeah.
So it sort of started with you being super vulnerable.
And then I think that that seems like allow other people to be vulnerable with you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it's also like, it's something about like social media and Twitter and like the
ongoing relationship you have with your listeners is like, it's just so much more in your face
with podcasting than it ever was in broadcast.
Like, you know, I'm sure people would yell at the radio at how I covered ex zoning decision
in West Virginia when I was starting out, but they weren't getting up in my face and
saying like, this really affects my life.
You know, they were sometimes, but like Twitter and so you, so you know these people.
And so it's much easier to kind of follow what's happening in listeners lives and into
feel like you have an ongoing relationship.
The last clip I'm going to play is from a show that is not yet released.
And if you guys were at the WNYC panel last week, you heard some, which I know a few of
you are.
But yeah.
So at Buzzfeed, we are hoping to launch podcasts at the end of March.
We don't have specific dates yet, but look for those.
At buzzfeed.com slash podcast, which should be launching in the next couple of weeks.
And basically what I'll say about this is that one of the podcasts is to two women,
Heaven Negatu and Tracy Clayton, who are some of our, some of Buzzfeed's like funniest and
best writers, and it's them hosting a podcast together.
And this is, is Tracy talking about going to a party that she thought was going to be
like a lot of like hot, young Brooklyn artists.
And it turned out that it was a 65 year old birthday party in Flatbush.
And she's just, she's describing the crowd and she's describing a type of person there
that she calls cat daddies.
So a cat daddy for those listening who are not familiar, a cat daddy is a 65 year old
plus man who dresses in nothing but Steve Harvey suits, Stacey Adams shoes of very
loud colors, very loud, very loud.
And they go to these like clubs on the weekends and they just like to go and like buy young
girls drinks.
Yeah.
Which is why I love a cat daddy.
I'm broke.
It's not payday.
Listen, let's go to Frank in Brooklyn and see what we can do, you know.
So they woke up to, you know, it's like, Hey, how are you doing?
How are you doing?
Uh, I'm like, I'm, I'm fine.
Oh, I can see you fine, but I asked you how you doing.
So this is a cat daddy.
Okay.
Every man there who was not a DJ, there were only two DJs.
So basically every man there is a cat daddy.
Now in a club situation, you, there's something that we can trade, right?
You can buy me a drink.
I'll give you a few minutes of conversation and I take my black ass home here.
The drinks are already free, so I don't want to talk to you guys, however, so we're sitting
on a bench, me and all five of my friends, and like there's a literal arc of cat daddy's
just like, they like built a wall like a flying V of poorly dressed geese is what this was.
So I think what's interesting about or like what I'm really excited about it with this
podcast, among a lot of things, I think it's going to be hilarious.
It's going to be smart, fun, interesting.
But there's been a really interesting conversation going on recently, especially in the public
radio world.
This guy named Chandra Kmonika wrote kind of a manifesto about what it's like to be
black and making a radio, like working in public radio specifically.
So he wrote this thing and then BuzzFeed republished it called the whiteness of the public radio
voice, which is really interesting and I really recommend reading it.
And it was basically about how like even if you're a person of color working in public
radio, you're sort of expected to have a very like white sounding voice.
And then a lot of people were kind of talking about this issue and they were like, well,
what are some podcasts by people of color and it's really the numbers are very low.
Really kind of embarrassingly low.
It's very it's it's kind of like a white male dominated space.
And so I'm really excited that like at BuzzFeed, we're kind of we're we're going to try to
make podcasts like this.
And we're going to try to make more and more podcasts featuring people of color and young
people and just kind of a lot of people who wouldn't necessarily have podcasts outside
of BuzzFeed.
So yeah, that's that's a fun thing.
It's called it's called another round.
They get pretty drunk while they're recording and they get drunker and drunker and by the
end, it's kind of it gets pretty wacky and then we end the show so a lot of bourbon.
Well, so we are going to wrap this up in about five minutes and ask questions.
The one last thing and this is something that like everyone always comes up to me after
any sort of event and asks because I feel like it's a little bit hard to talk about
and barely and rarely gets asked at these events.
A lot of people want to know how podcasts make money.
And yeah, right.
So we don't have to get too far into it.
But Max, I mean, your experience is interesting because you're not working for a company that's
raising the money.
You're basically like doing it all yourself and you had to learn how to do that.
And you've done it very well.
I mean, yeah.
So do you want to talk a little bit about how?
Yeah, I mean, I think like it's interesting when you guys are talking about like the I-Rub
bump because you know, I got no I-Rub bump, but I did get the like the long form bump.
And you know, we were able to launch the show off of like a relatively successful website.
And I don't know how, I honestly don't know how a podcast is supposed to sort of like
take off without some lift from somewhere.
So we had a bunch of people who were coming to a website every day who were interested
in reading these articles, turned out that some percentage of them were also interested
in hearing from the people who wrote them.
And on the business side, like, it's very similar to, in a way, it's very similar to
how we run the business of the website, too, which is like looking for advertisers who
are interested in reaching the audience that we're reaching and trying to not do things
that we think suck.
So those are like basically our two rules is, you know, work with people who are interested
in working with us and also try and do things that we're like excited about.
And we do a bunch of advertising on the website that I think is actually like pretty good.
And the podcast advertising, we sort of do a combination of stuff we sell ourselves and
then we work with a podcast network that sells ads as well.
And it has turned into like a pretty decent little business for us.
And I think part of that is just like, I mean, you guys all listen to these shows, you know
that these are kind of better ads than you encounter almost anywhere else.
They're just the people that you've been listening to talking to you about a thing.
And I think it's like abundantly clear what's going on.
There's never any question about like whether this is paid or not, which I think is like
a nice thing.
So yeah, I mean, we've been able to sort of jump into an ecosystem that I think like podcasts
that the sort of whatever some percentage are able to get into that loop where you're
in the advertising loop.
I don't know how you get to that level.
I think that's really, really hard to get to like where you've got tens of thousands
of people listening to every episode.
That's a leap that I think is really challenging, remains really challenging.
Once you're there, the advertising money is kind of like sitting there for you.
It's true.
It also has increased a lot since we started the show, like more and more people are coming
to us who are interested in doing their first podcast ads, don't really know what that means.
They're kind of like holding their hand through the process, which is pretty different than
most advertising relationships.
The other thing that I don't know, this doesn't totally connect to the business side, but
I got a call this week from like an NFL franchise that wants to start a podcast.
So you know, it's like everyone's trying to do it now.
It wasn't the Jacksonville Jackers.
I will say it was not the Jacksonville Jackers.
It is a will be gone franchise, but you know, they're not going to put out a very good product
on the field to look for other opportunities.
Are they looking to tank the podcast to get a top graphic?
Get a top graphic?
Yeah.
That's why they hired me, Mike.
So anyway, the answer to the business question is like, we do not make a ton of insane money.
Like no one bought a house from the podcast, but like people did buy many dinners from
the podcast for sure, like maybe even paid rent a couple of times.
And I do think that is a large part about the sort of efficiency and style of those ads.
Even when we have a lot of them, like, I never hear anything negative about the ads on the
show.
It's only positive.
And if you guys listen, we've had a tiny letter has sponsored every episode for like two years.
And people come over to me and are like, it's a simple elegant way to send an email on
these letters.
You know?
People are into it.
It works, you know?
And speaking of tiny letter, there's a really great tiny letter you can subscribe to called
Hot Pod.
It's by Nicholas Qua, who I believe is here today, in these areas.
And he's kind of writing like the podcast industry newsletter through a tiny letter.
So sign up.
I'm happy to tell you more after.
Did you guys want to end with anything or should we just open it up to the question?
Is there a better business answer that you would like?
No, that's perfect.
Yeah.
It's an important medium.
Yeah.
Advertisers are getting more into it because of, I think, Serial.
Now, huge brands right now are a little uncomfortable because the biggest audiences aren't what Chevy
wants it to be.
But, you know, we've done cars because we've sold it with other slate stuff.
So that's where it's going.
Yeah.
I mean, we had the show that goes up tomorrow, HP is the sponsor of the show that goes up
there.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's what I said.
My podcast is still supported by your pledge dollars and I'll be doing the pledge drive
tomorrow morning, during morning edition, so call in.
Did that, when you did like the text me $10 thing, did that work out?
Yeah.
That was good.
And that's like, because it's interesting working for a company, and I don't know if
you have this experience, Mike, but working for a company, it's like, there's the pledge
money that comes in because people have a relationship to the big organization that
you are lucky to work for, like WNYC.
And then there's like, when you're a new brand, trying to show the bosses that people care.
And so, you know, things like a text campaign can be like, look, we have all these listeners
in Colorado that you don't think about because they're not the ones who show up at WNYC events
in Brooklyn or in Manhattan.
So.
Do you have to kick that money upstairs?
We get to keep it for you.
It all goes into the big pot.
And then they, then I get one.
So you're just trying to like be a good earner.
Yes.
Exactly.
With enough to let you be.
Yeah.
I mean, you've got to get yours, but yeah, murder with both hands over here, Capello.
So let's open it up to questions.
Hi.
My name is Steve.
I'm from J.C.
University.
Do you ever find the use of like visuals as in like amendments, I guess, to your podcast
like extra stuff?
Do you find that limiting to the audience or like, would we consider like limiting for
a podcast for the, for like the listener?
You mean sort of like adding multimedia?
Yeah.
I think it's great.
Yeah.
I don't think like, I think like putting up a photo of somebody, it doesn't necessarily
take away from somebody's imagination of listening.
I don't know if you guys know that way.
Well, we do a vexalology segment, which as you know, is the study of flags, and I'm just
like you went to PACE, right?
So yeah.
So yeah, it helps to look at the flags.
But other than that, well, I think to connect me a little bit to that newness question,
I think the, I actually don't totally buy the idea that like everyone's saying it's
so new.
I think it's just like a bunch of people are paying attention to it who weren't paying
attention to it before.
That's actually what's new.
What's not new at all is the technology, which is still like terrible.
And I think the thing that might change, I really hope will change, is that the technology
and how these things are distributed improves.
And then I think there's some real opportunities there.
And because like I'm the person I have to answer the business question, the thing that
I think about is like, you know, it'd be great is if I didn't have to say like go to Squarespace.com
and there's going to be a box, when you find the box, type in long form if you remember
and then you can get like two dollars off.
If I get, if, if when you were listening to that, I was like look at your phone now and
then like just use your eyes to, to look at the ad.
That would be great.
That would be a huge, huge report.
So in that way, I think visuals would be really nice and a way to like connect that.
The other thing is, is another business thing, but the way that ads work now is, is kind
of broken.
So like, you know, you're cheating episode, right?
That's going to like, people are going to be finding that episode for years.
And there'll be people who are cheating and trying to like work through their, their problems
and they're going to come back to that.
And someone's going to link to it at some point, it's going to get 20,000 listens somewhere.
And whatever that MP3 is, is whatever those people are going to listen to, and whoever
paid to advertise on your show has already paid.
So you're putting out all of these listens and you're not getting paid for those.
So another way that I think it'll be interesting to see how it evolves from a tech standpoint
is will be, you'll be able to like monetize your backlist and while advertising work the
same way it does on TV where it's like, it's not like you buy an ad on a show and then
you get every rerun for life, you know?
My name is Elantara Short and I have a little niche product that's called the Dyslexia Quest.
It's for the Dyslexia community and it's an interview based podcast.
And I'm curious what you guys think about this dynamic that more and more people are
creating podcasts and these networks are coming at the same time.
Like what happens to all the people in the middle that like are maybe small and niched
and not affiliated with networks when more and more networks like you said next year
there'll be like 12 big names are kind of like becoming the podcasting world and then
like all these other people that are coming on the platform but also some really shitty
content that's out there on iTunes and like people are becoming more and more skeptical
of just like hitting search and searching like a topic because it might just be like
really badly produced just terrible like rant for 45 minutes.
I think it's a legit concern and I worry that the networks are good for those in the networks
but I want the ability to find an undiscovered gem I was talking to Adam Davidson about
this podcast that he got into about fertility treatments and they don't really ever want
to have an audience more than 2000 I guess they would but they don't expect it and it's
very niche it sounds like maybe your podcast is that way and exactly what you're saying
you know how can you tell the good one versus the person or doesn't even know the mic themselves
and you try clicking on that three times and then all of a sudden you're out so I do think
the biggest or among the biggest challenges for our industry is you know curation and
pointing people to the right stuff.
I think that's true there's not a great mechanism right now to surface that stuff that's great
and I do think part of that is more people being like ira glass and like finding that
is how audiences shift with podcasts is like you are brought up to the big leagues and
you bring some people back down with you you know so I do think that's part of it too is
people who do have larger audiences finding ways to highlight people who don't.
I would also say like if you're making a podcast that you are proud of and you like the way
it sounds if I search for dyslexia in iTunes yeah well if there comes to be like six or
eight or ten like I will sort of sample and it's like I'll make a ten second decision
whether I'm going to download an episode so I think it's an argument for making sure
you're putting out episodes that you're proud of and sound good on that very first impression
because people are fickle consumers but then once they love you they'll be very loyal.
Alright we have to end now but we'll be here for a little while if you want to talk to
us. Thanks for coming.
