Speaker 1: Yay. We received an iHeart Podcast nomination for Best Pop
Speaker 1: Culture Podcast. There are thousands and thousands of podcasts, thousands, millions.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know. I know there are thousands. I
Speaker 1: don't know if there are millions. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of podcasts. I mean every day there's a podcast popping up.
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful and honored. The best kind of nominations
Speaker 1: or recognition or awards or anything, acknowledgment, is when you
Speaker 1: didn't even know the thing existed. Like that's when it's
Speaker 1: really fun. It's like a surprise. Someone's like, oh, wait,
Speaker 1: you were nominated for, you know, an Academy award. I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh I was. I didn't even know. I was like,
Speaker 1: I didn't know I was submitted. I'm so excited, Like, yay,
Speaker 1: it happened. In the beginning when I started the podcast,
Speaker 1: I remember someone saying Hillary Clinton just tweeted at you,
Speaker 1: like what because Karen Swisher, this big tech reporter, had
Speaker 1: mentioned that Hillary Clinton and myself and her were all
Speaker 1: in the top five podcasts, and I was like, top five.
Speaker 1: I didn't know there was even a list. Yay, Like
Speaker 1: it's so fun to not know anything. Ignorance is bliss.
Speaker 1: And the reason is because it's doing something that you
Speaker 1: just love to do. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: a rating doesn't matter, the money doesn't matter. Like it's
Speaker 1: just a place to vent, to discuss, to express, to laugh,
Speaker 1: to learn, to inspire, to be inspired. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: truthfully the situation. And I haven't told that many people this,
Speaker 1: but in the beginning, the podcast cost me money. I
Speaker 1: had a really bad deal. The first year. I had
Speaker 1: been told by several people, including ironically Andy Cohen, that
Speaker 1: I should have a pot I guess I'd be great
Speaker 1: at podcasting. That was sort of connected to him wanting
Speaker 1: me to go back to Housewives and like use it
Speaker 1: as a storyline like my podcast. But still he was
Speaker 1: right that I'd be good at it. And years before
Speaker 1: I had been on serious radio very briefly. And then
Speaker 1: they wanted me to have a show every day. And
Speaker 1: I said to myself, as this pre pandemic, I can't
Speaker 1: imagine a world where I have to go into serious
Speaker 1: radio every day in midtown. Like I said, I don't
Speaker 1: think there's a number you could pay me to have
Speaker 1: to sit in an hour or two and from traffic.
Speaker 1: I literally said, if you gave me ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in air mez like I still wouldn't want to get
Speaker 1: in the car and be two hours, Like I just
Speaker 1: don't like traffic and stress. I just like things being free.
Speaker 1: I'm mean, I'm literally in a Winning the Pot shirt
Speaker 1: now with him doing yoga poses and I slept in
Speaker 1: the pan semic because I was doing yoga and I
Speaker 1: came down to rant. But so then I agreed I
Speaker 1: would do once a week and maybe twice a week,
Speaker 1: and they wanted it to be I think they wanted
Speaker 1: it to be live. And it was this woman Melissa
Speaker 1: that used to be at the Today Show. And then
Speaker 1: because of these really really obnoxious women connected to Goldman,
Speaker 1: Sachs and Trump, and they were really really obnoxious at
Speaker 1: this concert and I doused them in orange juice. And
Speaker 1: it happened to be a concert that was put on
Speaker 1: by Sirious and the guy whose wife I doused happened
Speaker 1: to be the Series A investors and serious and you know,
Speaker 1: I thought I was gonna be like the next Howard Stern.
Speaker 1: And then they pulled the show because of the orange
Speaker 1: juice splash, which is funny because like Howard Stern is
Speaker 1: so irreverent. I will say and do anything to anyone,
Speaker 1: but I'm certainly not Howard Stern. I didn't have that
Speaker 1: kind of power. And anyway, it was the best thing
Speaker 1: that ever happened to me, because years later I was
Speaker 1: asked if I wanted to do a podcast and I
Speaker 1: said yes during the pandemic, but I didn't even know
Speaker 1: what it meant, and I didn't know what the deal meant.
Speaker 1: And long story longer, the deal that I made just
Speaker 1: it sounded like, Okay, it's gonna be a couple of
Speaker 1: hundred all was each like episode to produce and have
Speaker 1: a production company do it. But it ended up being
Speaker 1: that the production money, combined with the faulty way that
Speaker 1: this particular company was selling advertisements, meant that I ended
Speaker 1: up making no money the first year. I was like,
Speaker 1: I had such a successful podcast but was making no
Speaker 1: money and it was hard to figure out the accounting.
Speaker 1: And I remember calling Dave Portnoying a bunch of different
Speaker 1: people on the podcast space to be like, how do
Speaker 1: people sell advertising? Because they pitched to me to sell
Speaker 1: like a hair growth product when Hillary Clinton was on,
Speaker 1: and it just seemed like a like a bargain batch
Speaker 1: advertisement versus like curating it to a big guest that's coming,
Speaker 1: so we would have the same shitty advertising if Matthew
Speaker 1: McConaughey was coming or Mickey Mouse was coming. And it
Speaker 1: just felt like Hodgepodge botched. And this partner that I
Speaker 1: was with at a big entertainment company, I was like,
Speaker 1: you're gonna let me the fuck out of this, Like
Speaker 1: I kept badgering them, be like you're gonna let me
Speaker 1: out because I I'd called other people who said, you know,
Speaker 1: my podcast was successful and they wanted to produce it.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't get out. And I don't remember what
Speaker 1: it was, but I was just like, I'm not a
Speaker 1: person you want to fucking have a bad divorce with,
Speaker 1: So like get me, let me add of this. Like
Speaker 1: you're not happy, I'm not happy. I don't want to
Speaker 1: take this up the chain at your company, but I
Speaker 1: will and like, just let me the fuck out, which
Speaker 1: I've done to other times and other deals. By the way,
Speaker 1: when I know that the marriage is not going to
Speaker 1: work in business, I wanted to be seamless clean, no arguing.
Speaker 1: There's always a loophole. I just want to get out
Speaker 1: properly and break up nicely before it gets not nice.
Speaker 1: So that was basically what happened. But in order to
Speaker 1: get a podcast on iHeart, I had called a couple
Speaker 1: of people and one of them was Connell Byrne. He
Speaker 1: is the head of iHeart podcasting. He's like a powerful,
Speaker 1: powerful guy in podcasting. And I don't know why I
Speaker 1: knew that. Oh, I know because I had been on
Speaker 1: Riah years before and a guy that I matched with
Speaker 1: who his title said iHeart, and I called up and said,
Speaker 1: do you know anybody? And he put me in touch
Speaker 1: with the chairman, who I called on a Saturday Halloween
Speaker 1: and was like, listen, I this podcast. Is like, we're
Speaker 1: well aware of your podcast, and I'm like, how do
Speaker 1: I you know, how do I get in the game?
Speaker 1: So we did a podcast deal. It was really fairly easy.
Speaker 1: He's a very cool guy. The guy who works right
Speaker 1: under him, who also is like sort of in charge,
Speaker 1: also a very cool guy. They kind of let me
Speaker 1: do what I wanted, and like when a year later
Speaker 1: it wasn't exactly how I wanted to go down. There
Speaker 1: were just things that I thought needed to be changed.
Speaker 1: They got on the phone with me. I told him
Speaker 1: I needed to be changed and like it jolted and
Speaker 1: it it got great and this past year was amazing.
Speaker 1: We were number one in the world and we have
Speaker 1: had so many successful guests and stories and it's really like,
Speaker 1: you know, like your massage a dough not too much,
Speaker 1: you don't overwork it does so it gets tough, but
Speaker 1: like a little bit, so you figure out what it's
Speaker 1: going to be molding it. And this podcast is like that,
Speaker 1: and it sort of became a space for people to
Speaker 1: come and share something that might be an unpopular story
Speaker 1: or they'd been misrepresent or you haven't heard the full
Speaker 1: story or the story's been told for them, you know,
Speaker 1: or they are just not liked, but how do we
Speaker 1: know what person they really are because of how they're
Speaker 1: being positioned in the media. So it's been really, really,
Speaker 1: really nice, and I'm really grateful and I'm really grateful
Speaker 1: to you. So hopefully we'll win the award, but actually
Speaker 1: I don't care, Like I'm just excited, and I'm sort
Speaker 1: of bummed because it's a south By Southwest, which is
Speaker 1: like super legit, and I want to go because I
Speaker 1: want to accept my award. Problem is it's the day
Speaker 1: before I'm supposed to be in Australia for these two appearances.
Speaker 1: I'm going to Melbourne and Sydney. By the way, buy
Speaker 1: tickets to my events in Australia. I'm so excited. I
Speaker 1: live for Australia and I love the people and I
Speaker 1: love the culture, and I'm taking Brian and I'm doing
Speaker 1: an appearance in both cities, which I've never done Melbourne before,
Speaker 1: So buy tickets. But the most important thing is that
Speaker 1: I'm leaving for Australia the day after south by Southwest,
Speaker 1: So I mean, I don't know how I could finagh
Speaker 1: all that. If this award was in the morning, I
Speaker 1: go fly home and then the next day I'm getting
Speaker 1: on a plane for like almost thirty hours. I'll do it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna win a fucking award. I'll do it. I
Speaker 1: don't know when they figure out who wins the awards,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I don't know. I don't know. My heart,
Speaker 1: let me know. M