Speaker 1: A seminal is the protection of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2: The most important thing about making a podcast is getting
Speaker 2: the tape SYNCD.
Speaker 3: Somebody's got a clap with me?
Speaker 2: Do y'all do a clap sync?
Speaker 4: But it's more of the ritual of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, I love it all right? Who wants to count? You?
Speaker 2: Do it?
Speaker 5: Because you're the boss of this?
Speaker 2: The way do we we count on? Where do we clap?
Speaker 6: Do you just want to go with one?
Speaker 5: Living on the edge?
Speaker 3: Nine after?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 3: Hurry up?
Speaker 5: What three?
Speaker 1: Two?
Speaker 2: One? Then clap? That's the most involved clap for the
Speaker 2: time being, at least in its current home. This is
Speaker 2: going to be the last episode of Ephemeral.
Speaker 3: We are canceling the show what why Well?
Speaker 7: The algorith of them felt it wasn't hitting the right
Speaker 7: taste clusters.
Speaker 2: It seemed like the right moment to tackle a question
Speaker 2: I've been curious about since the very beginning of this show.
Speaker 2: How ephemeral are podcasts in twenty twenty three. It's easy
Speaker 2: to assume their ubiquity. I've seen it estimated that between
Speaker 2: three and four million podcasts currently exist, most available to
Speaker 2: essentially anyone, anytime, anywhere. But if this feed went dark
Speaker 2: today and disappeared from every podcast player. What then, don't
Speaker 2: worry that's not going to happen, at least not for
Speaker 2: the foreseeable future. But it makes me wonder just how
Speaker 2: much ownership any one of us has in this dynamic,
Speaker 2: and how history might look back upon this era in
Speaker 2: which people have recorded, distributed, and archived for their own
Speaker 2: voices to an unprecedented degree. Surely there's no shortage of
Speaker 2: opinions on this. People that could talk about the business,
Speaker 2: the tech, the cultural ramification, Google how to make your
Speaker 2: podcast successful, and see how many hits you get. But
Speaker 2: I am most interested in what other creators have to say,
Speaker 2: and luckily I happen to know the hosts of some
Speaker 2: of the longest running, most successful shows around. At least
Speaker 2: with the words stuff in the.
Speaker 6: Title, Welcome to stuff, you should know it's you meet Chuck.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's about to say.
Speaker 5: Just like the old days, stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 9: Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My
Speaker 9: name is Robert.
Speaker 10: Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 5: Stuff you missed in history class. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 5: the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
Speaker 11: Stuff they don't gort you to know.
Speaker 12: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 12: my name is Nola.
Speaker 4: They call me Ben.
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Savor Prediction of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 5: I'm Annie Reach and I'm Lauren vogel Bomb.
Speaker 2: But to me, this show is always Thill food Stuff.
Speaker 6: Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum and
Speaker 6: I'm Annie Reef and we are your hosts of this
Speaker 6: a new show from How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna put your right on the spot off the
Speaker 2: bat here. How long have you each been podcasting?
Speaker 9: Oh geez, that's a tough question.
Speaker 6: I would have done the math if I had done.
Speaker 6: This was going to be one of the questions. I
Speaker 6: guess I've been working with the company for about twelve
Speaker 6: eleven years, So I guess I've been podcasting for about nine.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it'd be ten.
Speaker 1: That sounds about right, because I started in twenty ten.
Speaker 1: You started a year after me. Okay, right. I haven't
Speaker 1: always been a host of podcasts, but I've always been
Speaker 1: working in some capacity on podcasts since twenty ten.
Speaker 10: Oh wow, hoof, I think I started in twenty twelve.
Speaker 10: I think I've been on Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 10: since twenty fifteen. Is that right?
Speaker 9: That sounds about right. I know that in twenty twenty
Speaker 9: put out a ten year anniversary special of Stuff to
Speaker 9: Blow Your Mind. So going back to when it was
Speaker 9: Stuff from the Science Last that I hosted with Alison Loudermilk.
Speaker 9: So yeah, what going on fourteen years? Does that sound
Speaker 9: right now? Wait? Yeah, that would be right.
Speaker 8: Josh has been doing it longer than me.
Speaker 3: But only by a few months. Two thousand and eight
Speaker 3: to twenty twenty three.
Speaker 9: Is what?
Speaker 3: This is our fifteenth year? Fifteenth? No, that's not right,
Speaker 3: is it?
Speaker 8: This is our fifteenth year in April?
Speaker 3: I think crazy? Yeah, fifteen years, there's your answer.
Speaker 5: The twenty eleven when we started that sounds about right
Speaker 5: right around there. Yeah. We had a different podcast called
Speaker 5: pop Stuff that we worked on for a couple of
Speaker 5: years that had a very devoted but also very small listenership.
Speaker 2: God bless those fans, the small devoted fans.
Speaker 5: They were so lovely.
Speaker 2: I loved the very buch.
Speaker 5: We moved on to Stuff You Missed in History Class
Speaker 5: in twenty thirteen, So we are coming up on our
Speaker 5: ten year anniversary. Yeah, but I had done some episodes
Speaker 5: in twenty twelve. All right, so I think I already
Speaker 5: passed mine, you did, WEFs didn't even notice.
Speaker 11: Matt and I were in How Stuff Works before How
Speaker 11: Stuff Works started messing with podcast We had someone in
Speaker 11: the marketing department of How Stuff Works say, Hey, this
Speaker 11: is shiny new thing. It's called podcasting. We're going to
Speaker 11: do podcasting and it'll only be five minutes long. Everything.
Speaker 11: We'll have stuff in the title right, and it'll refer
Speaker 11: directly back to these articles because we're a print edutainment
Speaker 11: company or a digital print company. And we quickly realized
Speaker 11: we had misjudged our scope.
Speaker 12: Well, yeah, we were making a show called brain Stuff
Speaker 12: with Marshall Brain I think that was in two thousand
Speaker 12: and seven, because Stuff you should Know officially started in
Speaker 12: two thousand and eight.
Speaker 11: We really started the pivot toward podcasts with That's when
Speaker 11: Nole came aboard as well and for a time edited
Speaker 11: what every podcast.
Speaker 4: It was twenty thirteen when I started more producing podcasts
Speaker 4: and then gradually started being on Mike And now I've
Speaker 4: kind of pivoted from producing to completely just you know,
Speaker 4: talking on the things. So definitely been in the you know,
Speaker 4: it's so hard to get on the ground floor of
Speaker 4: anything these days, and I think all three of us,
Speaker 4: hell all four of us, we're really lucky to be
Speaker 4: able to do that for podcasting for the most part.
Speaker 2: How many podcasts episodes do you estimate you have published
Speaker 2: in that span of time?
Speaker 5: One million, thousands?
Speaker 6: Yeah, those thousands over certainly over one thousand, multiple thousand.
Speaker 11: It gets kind of in the weeds pretty quick, man.
Speaker 9: No clue, no clue, there's no, not really a good
Speaker 9: way to count, as far as I know.
Speaker 10: More than seventeen less than three trillion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wait, why is there not a good way to count?
Speaker 9: You know, because it's like, over the years, the new
Speaker 9: episodes you were, and then you end up running repeat episodes,
Speaker 9: and initially they were in a very hap dash sort
Speaker 9: of fashion, you know, just whenever you needed some, and
Speaker 9: then vault or rerun episodes became more of a standard
Speaker 9: part of the production. And yeah, and then just over
Speaker 9: the years, you know, sometimes you go back and take
Speaker 9: out an old episode that just doesn't hold up anymore.
Speaker 9: So there's there's not any like really solid record keeping
Speaker 9: of the core stuff to blow your mind episodes. And
Speaker 9: then eventually we reached the point where we're doing all
Speaker 9: sorts of extra content as well, like short form episodes,
Speaker 9: listener mail episodes. We've been in two years of weird
Speaker 9: House cinema episodes on Fridays talking about strange movies. So like,
Speaker 9: where do you count? How do you cut it? To
Speaker 9: do the count is just yeah, years of content.
Speaker 10: Somebody would have to just directly go count with a
Speaker 10: human brain. I don't know of any automated way to
Speaker 10: do it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and it just better things for human brains to do.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 5: We do two new ones a week every week. We'd
Speaker 5: never take hiatus. We've done this math before of like
Speaker 5: you know, two times fifty two, So one hundred and
Speaker 5: four a year?
Speaker 12: What is it?
Speaker 9: Josh?
Speaker 3: Well, we publish one hundred and four episodes a year,
Speaker 3: not including leap.
Speaker 2: Years or short stuffs.
Speaker 3: N Oh, you're right, actually, so yeah, there'd be one
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty carry the one now one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty six. So we published one hundred and fifty six
Speaker 3: a year.
Speaker 5: And then we also do classics, which we record intros for,
Speaker 5: but those aren't really new. They're the three runs, three runs,
Speaker 5: three runs with a new frame, no, four times fifteen.
Speaker 3: I don't know, like fifteen sixteen hundred episodes, I'd.
Speaker 8: Say, yeah, at least fifteen hundred. I bet it's with
Speaker 8: the short stuffs. It's creeping toward eighteen.
Speaker 5: So one million is I'm standing by that number.
Speaker 2: Yes, math checks out for me. Do you ever reflect
Speaker 2: on how much of your likeness is just floating around
Speaker 2: out there on the internet, out there in space? And
Speaker 2: if so, I mean, what do you what do you
Speaker 2: think about that? What does that bring to mind? I do?
Speaker 1: I do, mostly because I've talked about things on the
Speaker 1: show that I have never talked about with, like my family,
Speaker 1: my closest friends, And I think about that sometimes of
Speaker 1: like the impact or outcome of a family member perhaps
Speaker 1: stumbling upon that and thinking, oh, well, I know everything
Speaker 1: about her because she's in my life, and then they don't.
Speaker 1: There is sort of your professional voice, or you're the
Speaker 1: person you put out there that might not necessarily be
Speaker 1: entirely you. It's mostly you, but it's sort of like
Speaker 1: a performance you're doing. It's sort of like a thing
Speaker 1: you're doing. And so sometimes I wonder about that, and
Speaker 1: I wonder about what people who know me think about that.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I get in my head about people
Speaker 1: analyzing it, which is probably just saying more about me
Speaker 1: and analyzing me than anything else. But yeah, I do,
Speaker 1: I do think about it.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's an aspect of you, for for sure,
Speaker 6: but right's it's not all of you. I kind of
Speaker 6: like grew up professionally doing science videos on YouTube and
Speaker 6: being the moderator for those, which, if you guys have
Speaker 6: never been in the comment section of a YouTube video,
Speaker 6: it is a wretched hive of scum and vilany. It
Speaker 6: can be really harsh there, and especially towards ladies who
Speaker 6: are doing anything. That was a very harsh but a
Speaker 6: very useful mindsetting kind of jellification of what it is
Speaker 6: to have this avatar of yourself out there running around
Speaker 6: on the internet through people's lives that is not you.
Speaker 5: It's related to you.
Speaker 6: It's something that you did. You know, you went into
Speaker 6: that room for half an hour and recorded a video
Speaker 6: that got cut down to five minutes. But just because
Speaker 6: someone consumes that they don't they don't know you, And
Speaker 6: that's like kind of a point of view that I
Speaker 6: really had to develop in order to just preserve my
Speaker 6: own skin. But so after that, I guess it does
Speaker 6: not bother me. What other people might think of this
Speaker 6: like weird facet of myself that I put out there.
Speaker 6: But knowing how different I sound on different shows is
Speaker 6: really hilarious to me because I've had people who know
Speaker 6: me and who don't know me tell me like like
Speaker 6: you sound so different, like this is such a different thing,
Speaker 6: and like like what's the real you?
Speaker 5: And I'm like, oh, it freaks me out a little
Speaker 5: bit sometimes, Like there was a period where I tried
Speaker 5: to get verified on Twitter. This was way before the
Speaker 5: current drama of Twitter verification, but I felt like people
Speaker 5: had a way to access me twenty four to seven
Speaker 5: in some cases to tell me the minutia of what
Speaker 5: they thought I had done wrong, and it was me
Speaker 5: out a lot, And I was like, maybe if I
Speaker 5: could make this a verified account and have it be
Speaker 5: like my official work thing that is only work and
Speaker 5: not personal stuff, maybe that would help. But Twitter said
Speaker 5: I didn't meet the criteria to be verified, and then
Speaker 5: I was like, I'm just going to use this publicly
Speaker 5: facing thing less and turn off notifications for people I
Speaker 5: don't follow, because it can really be a lot one.
Speaker 5: I mean, I almost feel like more of my Internet presence,
Speaker 5: at least on social media has to do with Star Wars,
Speaker 5: and it does history and sewing and sewing, and so
Speaker 5: I almost feel bad for people who follow me for
Speaker 5: history content and get like NonStop greedo discussion. But I
Speaker 5: also am highly cognizant of the fact that my age
Speaker 5: has given me the gift of not having my youngest
Speaker 5: and just most stupid behavior captured on social media. Same
Speaker 5: so I'm kind of like, eh, whatever at this point,
Speaker 5: Like I'm an old my world is settled in terms
Speaker 5: of like where I live and who I'm with and
Speaker 5: all of that. Like, I don't feel quite as much
Speaker 5: fret about things in that regard of like how will
Speaker 5: a future person that meets me perceive me. It's like
Speaker 5: that ship is saled. I'm good. I'm but really, I
Speaker 5: think if you in the future when aliens come, they're
Speaker 5: gonna find more pictures of me, like in an Amidala
Speaker 5: costume than they are doing anything historical. I think the
Speaker 5: thing that's been troubling me more recently has been the
Speaker 5: just lightning fast development and quality of artificial intelligence and
Speaker 5: that kind of stuff just over the last few years,
Speaker 5: because like I know, when we were doing like writing
Speaker 5: and editing articles every once in a while, there would
Speaker 5: be this push to try to get like an automated
Speaker 5: editing software, and ten years ago it was terrible, like
Speaker 5: the results would be very bad. But there's stuff that's
Speaker 5: being turned out now that seems like almost indistinguishable from
Speaker 5: something that is created by a human being. And some
Speaker 5: of the stuff that's going on now is specifically about
Speaker 5: recreating the sounds of people's voices. And I'm like, how
Speaker 5: long is it until there's just a fake version of
Speaker 5: me that's got my voice but it's not me, you know.
Speaker 9: I was just listening to an audiobook of Jory Lewis
Speaker 9: Borges's short stories in the Car, and one of the
Speaker 9: stories is about him contemplating the difference between himself and
Speaker 9: the version of himself that he that has been put
Speaker 9: out into the world via his writings, and I've got
Speaker 9: it rather insightful. It's definitely worth a read for anyone
Speaker 9: contemplating this sort of thing. But he sort of like
Speaker 9: looks at it almost kind of like there's this sort
Speaker 9: of antagonism there, like there's that guy, there's that Borges,
Speaker 9: and then there's me. But then by the end of
Speaker 9: the story he acknowledges that he's not really even sure
Speaker 9: which Borges has written this story, written this little essay,
Speaker 9: if you will.
Speaker 10: I certainly have that experience if I listen to an
Speaker 10: old episode. I mean, I know writers have this experience
Speaker 10: all the time where you read something that you wrote
Speaker 10: more than I don't know, two years ago, and you
Speaker 10: don't it doesn't feel like something you wrote anymore. It
Speaker 10: feels like you're reading something somebody else wrote, or at
Speaker 10: least I have that experience. I think this is common
Speaker 10: to writers. Rob would you say the same thing, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 9: I always consider it so weird when you have an
Speaker 9: admirable I guess when you have like a writer or
Speaker 9: some other somebody involved in some sort of creative process
Speaker 9: where they have something that they made years ago and
Speaker 9: they still kind of like stand by it. It's like
Speaker 9: still out there and they're like, yeah, that's me. Where
Speaker 9: it's like, I just don't feel that connection to anything
Speaker 9: like that. Like I have a real hesitancy to even
Speaker 9: put an episode in for a rerun, a Vaulved episode
Speaker 9: that's more than a year old. And part of that
Speaker 9: is science. You know, our understanding of the world moves
Speaker 9: along and you have to worry about was this was
Speaker 9: this evergreen have there been updates? But then other parts
Speaker 9: of it are just like, I don't really know who
Speaker 9: this guy was that did this episode, say three or
Speaker 9: four years ago. I mean, especially now, it just seems
Speaker 9: like such a long time ago.
Speaker 10: I mean I wasn't even necessarily talking about would you
Speaker 10: still stand by it or would you still make the
Speaker 10: content the same way you did? I mean, regardless of that,
Speaker 10: I just mean like the kind of basic alienation from
Speaker 10: anything that comes out of your own creative process over time.
Speaker 10: You know, I read something I wrote a couple of
Speaker 10: years ago, and it doesn't have that same level of familiarity,
Speaker 10: you know how you like, you can't. It's hard to
Speaker 10: catch your own typos in something because it's still a
Speaker 10: part of you, and so when you read over it,
Speaker 10: you don't see the mistakes. But after a certain period
Speaker 10: of time, I think, whatever it is that finally lets
Speaker 10: you see your own typos also makes it feel like
Speaker 10: an alien piece of writing that you didn't actually write.
Speaker 10: And I'd say the same thing is kind of true
Speaker 10: of podcasting. If I listen to an episode I did
Speaker 10: a few months ago, it's like, oh, yeah, that's still me.
Speaker 10: I remember thinking all those things I remember, you know,
Speaker 10: I can still kind of like feel the texture of
Speaker 10: where all these words and the sequence I spoke them
Speaker 10: came from. But if I listened to something from several
Speaker 10: years back, I don't feel that at all. It's just like,
Speaker 10: who is this person talking?
Speaker 8: I would say that it's something that you grow more
Speaker 8: comfortable with, especially a show like ours, where we end
Speaker 8: up telling anecdotal fun stories about our lives and our
Speaker 8: families and loved ones and friends and things we do
Speaker 8: in the real world.
Speaker 2: It's kind of the fabric of.
Speaker 8: The show, and so a lot of stuff is out there,
Speaker 8: so you kind of have to kind of think about
Speaker 8: what you want, you know, a couple of million people
Speaker 8: to know about you when every time you open your mouth, Yeah.
Speaker 3: What's is we we're like podcasts famous, so that means
Speaker 3: we can walk down the street in basically any town
Speaker 3: or city in the world and not get recognized. But
Speaker 3: we still, you know, have lots of listeners and people
Speaker 3: that like to write into us and you know, share
Speaker 3: their stories with us and all that. So I feel
Speaker 3: like we have the best of both worlds because we
Speaker 3: never get thronged. Although I think even if we did
Speaker 3: get recognized we probably still wouldn't get thronged anyway, but
Speaker 3: I think you get the point.
Speaker 8: My daughter asked me if I was famous the other
Speaker 8: day in the car, what'd you say?
Speaker 4: I said, not really, we don't get thronged.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And she said, okay, I don't want anyone throng
Speaker 8: in us.
Speaker 4: I mean, if somebody wanted to take the time to
Speaker 4: sift through all of that, they could probably find us
Speaker 4: telling the same story fifty or more times. You know,
Speaker 4: we're saying the same little turn of phrase. I think
Speaker 4: about that. You know how many times I've said the
Speaker 4: exact little thing like it was me saying for the
Speaker 4: first time. That bothers me and keeps me up nice.
Speaker 4: But also you can't let it too much. You have
Speaker 4: certain shows where it'll be listeners that go back and
Speaker 4: mine old episodes and find little catchphrases and things that
Speaker 4: the hosts say and sample them and put them into songs.
Speaker 4: I think it's kind of cool, but it also freaks
Speaker 4: me out a little bit that all that stuff is
Speaker 4: available for the taking.
Speaker 11: It's like any other skill, right there becomes this sort
Speaker 11: of reflexive muscle memory aspect to some things. But then
Speaker 11: you have this huge consideration of you know, being on
Speaker 11: for lack of a better phrase, a permanent record, right,
Speaker 11: and you begin to think more carefully about what you
Speaker 11: put out in the world. And different people react to
Speaker 11: that in very different ways. We are pretty open about
Speaker 11: the fact that we only exist because an audience exists, right,
Speaker 11: So we want to, to a reasonable and healthy degree,
Speaker 11: allow those folks in. It's weird because then you encounter
Speaker 11: parasocial phenomenon.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 11: People who listen for a long time feel that they
Speaker 11: have a personal relationship with you because they know a
Speaker 11: lot about you.
Speaker 4: And sometimes they feel entitled to tell you what you
Speaker 4: should or should not say or do, because they feel
Speaker 4: like they've got skin in the game, you know, and
Speaker 4: and and you you can let them down, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, and like you know, and while you
Speaker 4: don't want to let that cripple you and and make
Speaker 4: you scared to say anything. Uh, it's certainly always in
Speaker 4: the back of your mind, or at least in the
Speaker 4: back of my mind. And I think I probably speak
Speaker 4: for most of us when I say that it's a
Speaker 4: calculation that goes into how we how we you know,
Speaker 4: comport ourselves on Mike as to not quote unquote let
Speaker 4: down our audience by saying something stupid.
Speaker 12: I feel like every time I talk to you officially
Speaker 12: on Mike, Alex, I end up getting really emotional. H
Speaker 12: But this, like this made me think about my son
Speaker 12: and thinking about the amount of things that I've said
Speaker 12: into a microphone, number of conversations I've had with these
Speaker 12: guys and you and others, and like, it's weird. You
Speaker 12: can hear me get older and evolve on Mike, Like
Speaker 12: anyone that has access to a computer can hear that.
Speaker 12: Right now, you can hear me change and like went
Speaker 12: we went back. We were going through our classic episodes
Speaker 12: to get all the Illumination Global Unlimited ads, and going
Speaker 12: back through those episodes, you could hear Ben and I
Speaker 12: and we're not kids, but we're pretty fresh out of
Speaker 12: college guys like trying our career, doing the best we
Speaker 12: can do, making this thing happen, and creating something of
Speaker 12: our own. And then to hear us, you know, now
Speaker 12: we've been in a career for a long time and
Speaker 12: we're still thriving and we're still bringing new things to
Speaker 12: the table. But we're very different people. And when I
Speaker 12: think about my son, sometime in the future, anytime in
Speaker 12: the future. He can go back. He can hear what
Speaker 12: I cared most about in twenty fourteen. He can learn
Speaker 12: about how I thought about things in twenty seventeen. He
Speaker 12: can hear the dogs on Mike in the background that
Speaker 12: are probably long past, you know, He'll hear like Penny
Speaker 12: and Meadow. He could hear that if he wanted to,
Speaker 12: you know, well after I'm gone. He can hear me
Speaker 12: having a conversation with a couple of my best friends.
Speaker 12: Thousands of times we watched.
Speaker 4: Like actors, for example, grow up on long running television series,
Speaker 4: you know, like the Sopranos. You know, you got like
Speaker 4: AJ starts off as a little kid, and by the
Speaker 4: end of it, he's like, you know, in his twenties,
Speaker 4: and it's similar to that. But it's also not because
Speaker 4: it's real. You know, where we are, who we are.
Speaker 4: We're not playing characters. I mean, you can't help but
Speaker 4: bring a tiny amount of the tiniest amount of affectation
Speaker 4: when you're doing this for a living, you know, But
Speaker 4: I don't think we do very much. So we really
Speaker 4: are to your point, Matt, you know, kind of growing
Speaker 4: up on Mike, and it really is the real version
Speaker 4: of us that you're experiencing.
Speaker 11: There is something beautiful about it, and nobody really knows
Speaker 11: how far this is going to go. Keep in mind
Speaker 11: that although the big corporations got involved with casting very
Speaker 11: early on, the industry is still so young that there
Speaker 11: aren't a lot of people who've retired from it, which
Speaker 11: I think is amazing. You know, the luminaries, the big
Speaker 11: names are still very much there.
Speaker 4: And Alex, the question for you is which ones end
Speaker 4: up getting committed to wax cylinders and shot into space.
Speaker 4: You know, Like the show is called ephemeral. You know,
Speaker 4: it's like it is. It exists purely digitally, and so
Speaker 4: it's not an object you can pick up until somebody
Speaker 4: commits it to that for you know, whatever future time,
Speaker 4: whether it be an apocalyptic event when you know, the
Speaker 4: infrastructure goes away, for someone to pick it up and
Speaker 4: play it on an old Victrola that they crank.
Speaker 12: You know, dude, you need to do that, Alex. This
Speaker 12: you need to print all of your ephemeral episodes onto
Speaker 12: vinyl and then you could sell like that collection. That
Speaker 12: would like so that would be so freaking cool. It's
Speaker 12: that would be a dream come true.
Speaker 4: But that's like us thinking as like archivists, you know,
Speaker 4: and thinking of the future, whereas advertisers and like executives.
Speaker 4: It is a disposable medium, and as much as it
Speaker 4: can be recommodified and re monetizes the word that's used,
Speaker 4: that's the only value it has to them. They're not
Speaker 4: thinking of it in terms of some sort of big picture,
Speaker 4: you know, storytelling device. If they are, it's just as
Speaker 4: a selling point to advertise it.
Speaker 12: Make me sad, dude, geez.
Speaker 2: I also do love those very early stuff. They don't
Speaker 2: want to know babyface Ben and Matt with the hair
Speaker 2: of it is.
Speaker 12: Matt with the hair before I lost it all right.
Speaker 11: So many hearts broken on those cheekbones.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you, I.
Speaker 4: Used to see it right against them. It's a sharp object.
Speaker 2: You guys have made obviously a lot of episodes of this.
Speaker 2: You've also worked on a lot of other shows, a
Speaker 2: lot of other podcasts and other kinds of projects. I'm curious,
Speaker 2: what do you think gives any kind of media or
Speaker 2: creative project staying power, like something that makes it stick
Speaker 2: around in the culture, And what in your experience you
Speaker 2: think contributes to the longevity of podcasts like yours.
Speaker 8: Boy Alex said is a great question, and I think
Speaker 8: that anyone who says they have that answer is lying
Speaker 8: or owns a marketing firm, right, because if the formula
Speaker 8: were out there, it's like saying, go make a viral video.
Speaker 8: You can't do that. I think it's a show like
Speaker 8: stuff you should know has. I think there are some
Speaker 8: things that can lend to lasting power, and one is
Speaker 8: sort of what we call in the industry evergreen content.
Speaker 8: In other words, it's not super of the moment and newsy,
Speaker 8: and in one hundred years somebody might want to learn
Speaker 8: about something that we've talked about, so hopefully we've got
Speaker 8: some staying power.
Speaker 3: I mean, the difference is putting Chuck and I together.
Speaker 3: That's what we've always been told. And at first, I
Speaker 3: remember when we first started kind of getting popular, we
Speaker 3: were trying to figure out what that was, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's a pretty normal desire to
Speaker 3: try to at least capture understand like what it is
Speaker 3: that's making things successful. But we figured out we can't
Speaker 3: see it, like we don't. We don't. We feel like,
Speaker 3: you know, connected to one another, but we don't see
Speaker 3: that chemistry that other people who are listening to us,
Speaker 3: you know, get to hear or get to witness, and
Speaker 3: we've just finally just taken it on faith that it
Speaker 3: exists and it's fine and we don't need to understand it.
Speaker 3: As long as everybody else is, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: vibing on it. That's that's what counts.
Speaker 8: I totally agree with Josh, and I think I even
Speaker 8: had less of an interest in examining that years ago
Speaker 8: than he did, because I'm one of those sort of
Speaker 8: people who's just like, I don't know what that is,
Speaker 8: but it's working, so I don't want to examine it
Speaker 8: too closely.
Speaker 3: Well, I remember the reason I was I wanted to
Speaker 3: so badly is because I was so terrified about that
Speaker 3: sophomore season curse. You know, I'm saying, like, when a
Speaker 3: new TV show comes out and it's a big hit
Speaker 3: in its first season, it becomes really self aware, and
Speaker 3: very often the second season isn't nearly as good as
Speaker 3: the first. So I was really scared we were going
Speaker 3: to do that. So I think that's why I wanted
Speaker 3: to understand it. But at the same time, I think
Speaker 3: giving up on trying to understand it helped us get
Speaker 3: around that second season thing.
Speaker 10: I guess I would make a distinction between a podcast
Speaker 10: having longevity in the sense that the same show is
Speaker 10: continually putting out new episodes for many years, versus the
Speaker 10: same finished product, like a piece of audio, having staying
Speaker 10: power in the sense that people keep listening to it
Speaker 10: over the years. I mean, there are some shows that
Speaker 10: you know go on for a long time. I mean
Speaker 10: that you know, The Simpsons has been going for however
Speaker 10: many seasons. But I would say that some episodes of
Speaker 10: The Simpsons really have longevity and others do not. I mean,
Speaker 10: everybody's going to remember episodes from season or whatever for
Speaker 10: decades and decades, and you know who's going to remember
Speaker 10: that episode from season seventeen. I think it tends to
Speaker 10: be something that has a has a unique or distinctive quality,
Speaker 10: something that separates it from everything else that was being
Speaker 10: produced in the same genre.
Speaker 9: At the same time, there's sort of a number of
Speaker 9: different questions wrapped up in it, right, like why do
Speaker 9: people listen to the show? Why do people keep listening
Speaker 9: to the show, or why did new people start listening
Speaker 9: to the show? And I guess all of those are
Speaker 9: all kind of unanswerable in their own ways, right, I mean,
Speaker 9: you just can just kind of guess at these things
Speaker 9: and hope that the sort of standards you stick to
Speaker 9: are the reasons that all of these people have listened,
Speaker 9: are listening, or will listen in the future. And I
Speaker 9: guess on that count, like we just try and be
Speaker 9: honest ourselves, approachable and engaging in curiosity, like honestly engaging
Speaker 9: in our own curiosity, and sort of hoping and trusting
Speaker 9: that that level of honest cureiosity will be embraced by
Speaker 9: the people who listen.
Speaker 4: To the show.
Speaker 5: I mean, the bottom line is that, like for something
Speaker 5: to have a cultural moment, it has to grab the
Speaker 5: attention of like X number of people to begin with.
Speaker 5: But there are lots of things that do that and
Speaker 5: then they kind of vanish, Like so much of our
Speaker 5: show is that, like did you know that this person
Speaker 5: was super super famous in nineteen twenty and you've never
Speaker 5: heard of them? Like that happens all the time. But
Speaker 5: in terms of staying power, I think there has to
Speaker 5: be some element to it that is either controversial, which
Speaker 5: would be my less favored version, or just so rock
Speaker 5: solid in terms of consistency that people know that they
Speaker 5: can continue to access that thing and that it's not
Speaker 5: going to be suddenly a completely different thing that they
Speaker 5: have to learn and understand. Like there's a comfort level
Speaker 5: to it. It's got to be one of those too, right,
Speaker 5: Like I don't want to ever be part of one
Speaker 5: of the controversial ones. But those are the things that
Speaker 5: like sticking people's minds forever. And you see it happen
Speaker 5: in the Twitter cycle all the time, where someone will
Speaker 5: do something stupid and terrible and then it'll kind of
Speaker 5: fade away, and then like six months later, someone will go,
Speaker 5: do you remember when so and so did this stupid thing?
Speaker 5: We should rehash that versus the quieter version is the
Speaker 5: consistent version, which is fine with me. I think some
Speaker 5: of it is really just luck, and some of it
Speaker 5: is having the people who are working on something really
Speaker 5: care about what they're doing. I think it's hard to
Speaker 5: make something that really captures people's attention if you do
Speaker 5: not care at all about what's going on. But at
Speaker 5: the same time, I know a lot of people who
Speaker 5: have really poured their hearts into projects and those projects
Speaker 5: have never taken off in a big way. Right, So
Speaker 5: there's an element to it that I don't know that
Speaker 5: anybody necessarily has control over it all, and to return
Speaker 5: to Holly's example, there are so many people that are
Speaker 5: just doing thoughtless, obtuse things on social media all the time,
Speaker 5: and only like a tiny ninety fraction of them becomes
Speaker 5: the main character of social media for the day, you know,
Speaker 5: So some of it I think is just random chance.
Speaker 5: The other thing though, that I think separates the podcasts
Speaker 5: that have longevity and have legs versus that don't, aside
Speaker 5: from being able to just stick to making them, is
Speaker 5: that I always say that like, your ear can perceive
Speaker 5: disingenuous sound faster than your brain can process it, and
Speaker 5: so if it's something that's like a nonfiction like what
Speaker 5: We Do or whatever, you have to be more real
Speaker 5: than polished in my opinion, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: Like there are shows where people sound completely perfect, and
Speaker 5: it's like your brain buzzes right out of it, like
Speaker 5: it just doesn't stay engaged. And even I think in
Speaker 5: cases where you're making something that is more produced or
Speaker 5: more fiction oriented, it's the same thing they teach actors
Speaker 5: all the time, like, yes, you're playing a part, but
Speaker 5: you have to be in that moment for it to
Speaker 5: really play. And it's kind of the same thing like
Speaker 5: there just has to be a level of engagement, a
Speaker 5: genuine intellectual engagement with the material that carries forward to
Speaker 5: the listener because remember they're listening in We always talk
Speaker 5: about intimacy in the podcasting industry, Like, it's not like
Speaker 5: when you go to a movie theater and you watch
Speaker 5: something on a screen, or even when you're in your
Speaker 5: house and it's on TV where you're at a remove,
Speaker 5: it's usually in your bubble of your car or right
Speaker 5: on your person. So there's such a depth of intimacy
Speaker 5: to it that I think that's why that divide of
Speaker 5: like genuine versus not feels so big in podcasts.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: One of the many jobs that I had before becoming
Speaker 5: a podcaster, which is still a little weird to me
Speaker 5: ten years in, twelve years in whatever, I was a
Speaker 5: massage therapist. And one of the things that we learned
Speaker 5: in massage school is that when you are doing a massage,
Speaker 5: you need to be really present in the room with
Speaker 5: the person and like part of what is healing and
Speaker 5: restorative to for lack of a better, less new agy
Speaker 5: word about getting a massage that somebody is in the
Speaker 5: room with you, being present with you and paying attention
Speaker 5: to you the whole time, and when you're getting a massage,
Speaker 5: if the person is just mentally checked out and on autopilot,
Speaker 5: you can tell. And I think the same is true
Speaker 5: about listening to things that people have created. Somebody is
Speaker 5: tossing something off without really engaging with it. As Holly
Speaker 5: just said, it's audibly evident, even if the person thinks
Speaker 5: they're doing an okay job of phoning it in on
Speaker 5: their on their show. Yeah, it's like your brain without
Speaker 5: you having any conscious part of it, your brain goes well,
Speaker 5: if they're not into it, why should like there's just
Speaker 5: an exit that happens without you even really participating in
Speaker 5: the decision.
Speaker 1: M Well, my knee jerk. Very business answer is relevance.
Speaker 1: But essentially, the staying power to me is really about
Speaker 1: storytelling and connection. That idea of I'm connecting to a
Speaker 1: story or an experience or something with other people, getting
Speaker 1: lost in it and enjoying it and thinking about all
Speaker 1: of the people who For me, I think about the
Speaker 1: people who made it and the time it was made.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'd agree.
Speaker 6: I'd say that the staying power of anything depends on
Speaker 6: how easy it makes it for you to write to
Speaker 6: connect to a story and to connect to the people
Speaker 6: who are creating it, to just really, you know, shoehorn
Speaker 6: yourself into the mind of someone who you find brilliant
Speaker 6: or delightful or terrible or you know whatever, all the
Speaker 6: whyever else you're consuming, whatever type of content. I've hate
Speaker 6: watched enough things that I don't mind. If that's why
Speaker 6: you're listening, that's fine. And so I think that when
Speaker 6: a medium starts failing to do that, it's when you've
Speaker 6: made it too difficult to access, that you've put too
Speaker 6: many loopholes, too many ads, too many you know, pop
Speaker 6: ups or whatever it is, that it is too.
Speaker 2: Many ads, never no such thing.
Speaker 1: Because I started in podcasting when it was like first
Speaker 1: getting off the ground. A lot of people will ask
Speaker 1: me like, well, how do you get into podcasting? And
Speaker 1: my joking answer, which I don't always say out loud,
Speaker 1: is get a time machine because we were on the
Speaker 1: ground in the beginning, and so we built those those audiences.
Speaker 1: I will say, though, if somebody loves the thing that
Speaker 1: you did, I think it can still be lasting if
Speaker 1: it has a passion of fan base, and they will
Speaker 1: work to preserve it and share it. And that is
Speaker 1: something that I love because I do that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff too. I don't want to lose this. I'm a
Speaker 1: very like physical I have to have some copy of
Speaker 1: this somewhere in case it goes away one day. And
Speaker 1: I think there are people out there like that. So
Speaker 1: I do agree it's mostly like timing and resources and
Speaker 1: all kinds of things like that. But I also think
Speaker 1: that smaller things that have these sort of niche, very
Speaker 1: passionate audiences can last too because of that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know the same way that you can have
Speaker 6: a sleeper hit that doesn't do that, doesn't like do
Speaker 6: the numbers or make the money or whatever it is
Speaker 6: that you're ostensibly going for at first, can stick around
Speaker 6: in a way that you know, maybe maybe it's a
Speaker 6: year down the road and someone goes, oh, I'm cooking plantains,
Speaker 6: and didn't Anny and Lauren talk about plantains, And oh,
Speaker 6: someone just mentioned this dish to me. I wonder if
Speaker 6: they've ever heard that episode about it, like let's And
Speaker 6: it's not always in linear way that I think, especially
Speaker 6: in like a corporate version of this job that is
Speaker 6: pleasing to all of us involved, like we want it
Speaker 6: to do those numbers, we want it to do that
Speaker 6: successful thing. But what a success is in terms of
Speaker 6: making a creative piece of work is a large, large category.
Speaker 11: Art does not exist without an audience, right, So podcasting
Speaker 11: is just the same, despite the commodification that happens with
Speaker 11: any form of art, education or entertainment. So I would say,
Speaker 11: from an audience perspective, you're looking for three things. You're
Speaker 11: looking for identification, Do I see myself in this?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 11: You're looking for participation, Am I an active part of
Speaker 11: this rather than just a passive observer? And from there
Speaker 11: you get to this idea of ownership. Right, don't talk
Speaker 11: bad about Ira Glass, that's my guy. So I would just,
Speaker 11: at least from the audience perspective, I would say identification, participation, ownership.
Speaker 12: I think it's changed a little bit. I think it's
Speaker 12: now about shareable snippets, literally, that thing that gets posted
Speaker 12: on TikTok or an Instagram story or whatever. I think
Speaker 12: that's how things catch on now.
Speaker 4: But does it have staying power. Catching on and having
Speaker 4: staying power kind of two different things, don't you think?
Speaker 12: You're absolutely right? But I think that's how big audiences
Speaker 12: grow to create a show that has staying power, Right,
Speaker 12: I think that's one of the only ways that you
Speaker 12: get in. And it does worry me because it becomes
Speaker 12: a strategy for content creators or people who are actually
Speaker 12: making things, wanting to have something that lasts for a
Speaker 12: long time or it gets big. You're like you're grasping
Speaker 12: at those little things on purpose, or you're trying to
Speaker 12: crafter content to those things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know again to the name of
Speaker 4: your show, you know, I mean the content has become
Speaker 4: increasingly ephemeral, but also increasingly disposable. I mean, I guess
Speaker 4: I don't know if i'meral and disposable are kind of similar,
Speaker 4: but not really. It just means like fleeting. You know,
Speaker 4: it's not something that you can put your arms around
Speaker 4: all the time, but at least in the past. You know,
Speaker 4: there's this nostalgia tied to like old mediums and these cycles.
Speaker 4: The technology goes in and now, like vinyl is huge again,
Speaker 4: I think as a backlash largely against things like streaming
Speaker 4: that feel too ephemeral, and it's like, I don't feel
Speaker 4: participatory in this because it's too hard to wrap my
Speaker 4: arms around. And if I own a Vinyl record, then
Speaker 4: I'm participating in it, and I'm having ownership of it,
Speaker 4: whereas no matter how many streaming services I subscribe to,
Speaker 4: I don't ever feel like I own that music. So
Speaker 4: it's and it's just much more of a playlist kind
Speaker 4: of culture, you know. So when I buy a record,
Speaker 4: it's like I'm participating in that art, and I feel
Speaker 4: like I'm you know, I'm filing it away in my
Speaker 4: own personal library of congress. I think that's a sad thing.
Speaker 4: But also there's always going to be backlash. I saw
Speaker 4: this article in the New York Times the other day
Speaker 4: about how I think it's in New York public school.
Speaker 4: There these kids the start of this thing called the
Speaker 4: Luddite Club, where they're like completely eschewing social media and
Speaker 4: and uh and smartphones, you know, so that they can
Speaker 4: walk around and look at like a street art and
Speaker 4: listen to the sound of you know, the birds and
Speaker 4: street musicians. Has experience the world kind of untethered. So
Speaker 4: there's always going to be the backlash. And I think
Speaker 4: gen Z or whatever the other one is on the
Speaker 4: cusp there, they're the ones that are going to kind
Speaker 4: of pioneer that. And as much as they've grown up
Speaker 4: on the internet, I think they know how to use
Speaker 4: it in a much healthier way than we give them
Speaker 4: credit for.
Speaker 11: I agree with the observation about the cyclical nature of things, right,
Speaker 11: I would also I would also posit that the danger
Speaker 11: for a medium like this is one of the most
Speaker 11: beautiful things about it. It's democratized, right, It's relatively simple
Speaker 11: in terms of time and in terms of materials to
Speaker 11: create a show and to put that show on. But
Speaker 11: that same beautiful democratization lends itself to what may be
Speaker 11: one of the great achilles heels of podcasting overall, which
Speaker 11: is that people like to talk. Listening is a skill
Speaker 11: people have to learn talking pushing it out. Uh, that's
Speaker 11: something people naturally like to do. There is a tremendous,
Speaker 11: uh insidious sort of validation in this, right Uh. And
Speaker 11: so I think if you look at a lot of
Speaker 11: the shows in this medium that that do well, that speak,
Speaker 11: that have that stame power to which we're alluding, then
Speaker 11: you'll find, as counterintuitive as it may sound, the creators
Speaker 11: of those shows spend a lot of time listening.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 7: The the there's always you know, gloom and doomy forecasting
Speaker 7: stuff about uh about a saturation point, right, what what
Speaker 7: will there ever be a threshold at which every person
Speaker 7: you know has their own podcast and they're not listening
Speaker 7: to other shows.
Speaker 11: Right because they need to they need to make their podcast, right.
Speaker 11: I hope that does not become the case. But again,
Speaker 11: I think that's the primary I don't even want to
Speaker 11: say danger anymore. The primary obstacle to longevity for some
Speaker 11: of these things is to the point about untethering. Untethering
Speaker 11: enough from the addiction to speak, to learn and exercise
Speaker 11: the amazing art of listening.
Speaker 2: What do you imagine for the long term future of podcasting, Like,
Speaker 2: do you think in a hundred years people could be
Speaker 2: listening to podcasts that are made now or archiving them?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 12: Well, I hope not.
Speaker 4: I hope so, boy, I hope so.
Speaker 10: To be honest, I mean i'd be I'd somewhat doubt
Speaker 10: it because people actually consume very little media from one
Speaker 10: hundred years ago, and most of the things they do
Speaker 10: consume are kind of standalone works of art, like a
Speaker 10: single movie or a single novel. People rarely go back
Speaker 10: and like try to, you know, listen to the radio
Speaker 10: serials from one hundred years ago. I mean a few
Speaker 10: people might.
Speaker 9: Well, Alex does, right, this is your thing?
Speaker 10: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so maybe some people with very Nietzsche
Speaker 10: obscure historical interests might still enjoy our podcast the same
Speaker 10: way that some people today might want to go back
Speaker 10: and listen to some kind of obscure radio serials.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and I think that's fine. Like I'm mostly like,
Speaker 9: I just I hope people are listening a year from now,
Speaker 9: two years from now. I don't really think a century out.
Speaker 9: And I don't know, I guess I've kind of I
Speaker 9: kind of I'm cool with the idea that like one
Speaker 9: hundred years from now that that you know, nobody's gonna
Speaker 9: remember me. Maybe you know, people there will be some
Speaker 9: connection looking back on you know, like family connections to
Speaker 9: me or something. But you know, that's just that's just
Speaker 9: how it goes. That's really, I guess how it's supposed
Speaker 9: to go.
Speaker 2: I mean, the other thing that I think about is
Speaker 2: if the if they'll even be available right like, like
Speaker 2: you know, there's some serious work that goes into like
Speaker 2: archiving stuff that's one hundred years old now, archiving and
Speaker 2: also like making available digitally usually or in physical archives
Speaker 2: for people media that's that old. And like with podcasting,
Speaker 2: we kind of think, like with our model it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's everywhere and it's always available and it's free. But
Speaker 2: I wonder, you know, I wonder how true that is
Speaker 2: long term for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 9: Yeah, because who owns it, who's paying for it to
Speaker 9: be stored somewhere? You know, generally digitally speaking, But I
Speaker 9: guess you could look at it from a physical standpoint
Speaker 9: as well. Yeah, like, where where is this stuff one
Speaker 9: hundred years from now? That it's anywhere, so.
Speaker 10: It's still going to have ear splitting ads that enrage
Speaker 10: people baked in one hundred years from now, I hope.
Speaker 9: So I mean that really that's probably going to be
Speaker 9: the main reason they're going back and listening to the show.
Speaker 9: Like you know, nowadays, we look back at VHS tapes
Speaker 9: and we're like, oh, man, whoever recorded this off TV?
Speaker 9: They were thoughtful enough to cut out all of the advertisements.
Speaker 9: And that's the only reason I wanted to find it,
Speaker 9: you know, because you can get a better cut of
Speaker 9: whatever movie they were taping. But it's those ads you want,
Speaker 9: that's the you want the authentic media experience.
Speaker 10: I want to watch that vintage easy bakeup and commercial.
Speaker 9: Yeah, but there's also there's also just no accounting for
Speaker 9: taste in the future. Like how many, like how many
Speaker 9: of the films we've talked about in Weird House, some
Speaker 9: of the lower budget productions. I mean, sometimes you had
Speaker 9: someone with a very high estimation of their talents and
Speaker 9: worth involved in it, But for the most part, did
Speaker 9: any of them think that, well, you know, decades from now,
Speaker 9: people are going to be remastering this and putting it
Speaker 9: out on a pricey blu ray, and there's going to
Speaker 9: be a section of the population is just going to
Speaker 9: gobble it up and want more so, and then there
Speaker 9: are other things that, you know, they're obviously down the
Speaker 9: other end of the spectrum. There are plenty of big
Speaker 9: budget movies that came out with aspirations to just be
Speaker 9: like real cultural touchstones, and just nobody cares about them today.
Speaker 10: That's a great point. I mean Edwood might have thought
Speaker 10: he was changing the world, but the guy who made
Speaker 10: Robot Monster probably did not yet.
Speaker 9: And yet he did right right, Yeah, Yeah, that one
Speaker 9: seems a safe bet.
Speaker 10: I feel like the organization of the content is also
Speaker 10: going to be a problem for future listeners because a
Speaker 10: big part of the experience of listening to a podcast
Speaker 10: like ours I think at least is not just hearing
Speaker 10: a discrete individual episode, but having heard the episodes from
Speaker 10: the previous months, and like that episode appearing in a context.
Speaker 10: We'll often refer back to things we've talked about previously,
Speaker 10: or of course, we have listener mail episodes which are
Speaker 10: almost entirely retrospective about things we've already covered. So each
Speaker 10: like audio file is kind of enmeshed in an ongoing
Speaker 10: experience of relationship with the listeners and coming back to
Speaker 10: and thinking about different topics in different ways. So I
Speaker 10: feel like that would also be lost if you just
Speaker 10: like pull out a random episode from you know, one
Speaker 10: hundred years in the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean sorting out archival materials can be very
Speaker 2: very tricky and stuff to bliw your mind. Would be
Speaker 2: a good candidate for a really hard I mean what
Speaker 2: you were saying earlier about how there's so many different
Speaker 2: things and a different name in the beginning, the format
Speaker 2: has changed all these different times. It would be a
Speaker 2: real like if you just got it dumped like in
Speaker 2: a box with no dates, no context, no index.
Speaker 9: Well, now you've got me thinking, we need to start
Speaker 9: doing time capsule episodes. We need to start producing a
Speaker 9: show that will be popular one hundred years from now.
Speaker 10: Oh that's interesting. Now, another way to look at it
Speaker 10: is that we are we're creating jobs for future archivists
Speaker 10: by establishing these problems. You know, this is this is
Speaker 10: good problems to solve.
Speaker 9: Yeah, we got to keep the AI and the future
Speaker 9: busy with tasks like this.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, God bless the archivis AI or otherwise.
Speaker 5: Listen, there are still people tracking down wax cylinder recordings
Speaker 5: and listening to them. So like some very very hyper
Speaker 5: focused person will figure out a way to find old
Speaker 5: podcasts and listen to them and probably be like those
Speaker 5: ding Dongs didn't have a clue what they were talking
Speaker 5: about in the context of the future. Beyond that, I
Speaker 5: don't know. I do think about it all the time
Speaker 5: because we get so much discussion. I mean, you're part
Speaker 5: of it a lot within our company, where there's an
Speaker 5: awareness that we kind of came in at the beginning
Speaker 5: of a new industry and us kind of figuring out
Speaker 5: how any of us, either as individuals within the company
Speaker 5: or you know, media companies, are charting where that industry goes.
Speaker 5: That I almost feel like, even though we probably feel
Speaker 5: like we're the old, seasoned hags of this business. In
Speaker 5: many ways, it is still in its infancy right when
Speaker 5: you think about where television was, say fifteen years into
Speaker 5: it being a media versus where it is now. Obviously,
Speaker 5: like that seemed still like the infancy to us. So
Speaker 5: while we feel like we've been doing this for a
Speaker 5: very long time and we're in it and we know
Speaker 5: what it is, we don't. So it's very hard when
Speaker 5: I think about it in that context of like how
Speaker 5: we look back at other media historically, we don't know
Speaker 5: because we don't even know the world that will be right,
Speaker 5: Like will holograms stand there and say the words that
Speaker 5: someone has input into a some format where like there's
Speaker 5: a version of me that looks like a Pikachu that's
Speaker 5: still talking about like how people discovered color blindness. I
Speaker 5: don't know, but that sounds cool. That works for me.
Speaker 5: Just in our own limited time span. I mean, we
Speaker 5: still get emails from folks who are listening to the
Speaker 5: whole archive of the show who will sometimes send in
Speaker 5: questions about incredibly early episodes that at this point are
Speaker 5: more than a decade old, and it's you know, a
Speaker 5: small number of people, but a meaningful number of people.
Speaker 5: So I have to imagine that one hundred years from
Speaker 5: now still going to be a small, dedicated, meaning like
Speaker 5: but meaningful group of people plowing through old recordings of stuff.
Speaker 5: They're going to bring it back, like vinyl, because what
Speaker 5: do you mean, Well, like vinyl was not the thing
Speaker 5: for a long time, and now people are into vinyl again.
Speaker 2: Oh you think, like podcasts will go out of fashion
Speaker 2: and then they'll come back in fashion.
Speaker 5: It'll be retro. Well I don't even know if it's
Speaker 5: if out of fashion is the right word, but it
Speaker 5: won't be the most popular method of conveying that information, right,
Speaker 5: Like whether that means that things like what we do
Speaker 5: are gonna have to be married to visuals or I
Speaker 5: don't know, some other thing. I have this great vision.
Speaker 5: I don't think this is real. It's just what goes
Speaker 5: on in my freaky imagination of like sound experiences where
Speaker 5: people have like almost your like inside of a lava lamp,
Speaker 5: but the things are moving in time with the things
Speaker 5: that you're hearing. Like to me, I'm like, oh yeah,
Speaker 5: that would be a great way to experience audio, you know,
Speaker 5: even if it's just people talking about like how a
Speaker 5: car works or whatever. That sounds great to me. Something
Speaker 5: completely different than anything any of us can imagine will
Speaker 5: evolve and be the way that that these things are communicated,
Speaker 5: and then eventually someone will be like I found this
Speaker 5: old technology called an iPod, and who knows what will happen.
Speaker 5: Then somehow that made me imagine those immersive art exhibits
Speaker 5: the I love it, and like, we went to one
Speaker 5: when we were in Paris and it was honestly one
Speaker 5: of the best things of the trip. I loved it
Speaker 5: so much. But like, I'm imagining a world where people
Speaker 5: walk into a warehouse sized space with projections on the
Speaker 5: wall and it's our voices, and it's honestly a little
Speaker 5: nightmarish to me. Those poor people, I'm so sorry and
Speaker 5: advanced future people.
Speaker 8: Here in my older middle age, I've started to think
Speaker 8: a little bit about legacy and don't want to dwell
Speaker 8: on that kind of thing, but it enters my psyche occasionally,
Speaker 8: and I think, like, the best legacy I could ever
Speaker 8: ask for is that there is a school classroom in
Speaker 8: one hundred years where a teacher has dug up our
Speaker 8: show and is playing it for you know, the robot
Speaker 8: students of the future, all wearing silver jumpsuits exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that there's probably plenty of episodes that
Speaker 3: we have recorded that would still hold up in one
Speaker 3: hundred years. I think it would also be interesting, maybe
Speaker 3: from like an anthropological standpoint, to look at all the
Speaker 3: episodes that don't hold up and figure out why. I'm
Speaker 3: interested to see what we've said, what we've covered, what
Speaker 3: topics are just completely antiquated, you know, one hundred years
Speaker 3: from now. But I do think that that there's a
Speaker 3: pretty decent amount in those fifteen hundred episodes that you
Speaker 3: could listen to one hundred years from now and be like,
Speaker 3: get virtually the same thing out of it, at least
Speaker 3: information wise as people of to day. And I think
Speaker 3: that's pretty cool.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that'd be really interesting if one day people were like,
Speaker 8: look at this quaint show, remember when there was bitcoin
Speaker 8: and democracy things like that.
Speaker 6: Those are the days that would be wild to me.
Speaker 6: That would be absolutely completely bizarre. However, you know, it's
Speaker 6: twenty twenty three. Certainly consume media from about one hundred
Speaker 6: years ago, especially when it comes to music. I love
Speaker 6: music from that era. I honestly kind of hope that
Speaker 6: they aren't because I feel like the cultural references that
Speaker 6: we're making, and even just some of the stuff that
Speaker 6: we're saying about people in culture will have changed so vastly,
Speaker 6: like the appropriateness of all of that, will have an
Speaker 6: understanding of all of that will have changed so vastly
Speaker 6: as everything does. So I guess if they are I
Speaker 6: hope they're kind to us. I'm a very paranoid soul,
Speaker 6: and I memorize movies and stuff in case the apocalypse happens,
Speaker 6: So I'm not sure. I feel I have grim outlook
Speaker 6: for the future.
Speaker 1: But that being said, I do think it could be
Speaker 1: one of those things where people in the future are
Speaker 1: kind of like, oh, hey, look what they were doing
Speaker 1: this time, or sort of a very yeah time bubble
Speaker 1: encapsulation of this is what they were talking about, this
Speaker 1: is what they're doing.
Speaker 6: They're like, oh, yes, back in the twenty teens when
Speaker 6: the when all the kids were podcasting.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, or like you know in like survival horror
Speaker 1: games where you rifle through people's stuff and they have
Speaker 1: the diaries and it's such like a good example of oh,
Speaker 1: this is what they were worried about, this is what
Speaker 1: they were doing. I think podcasts could have a similar thing,
Speaker 1: hopefully not in the zombie Apocalypse. But you know, a
Speaker 1: good like snapshot of hey, this is what people were doing,
Speaker 1: what they were thinking about, what they were talking about,
Speaker 1: and that is always valuable.
Speaker 6: Like like those those little those little right time capsules
Speaker 6: are are really cool to look into.
Speaker 2: I wonder if they will exist still. I was just
Speaker 2: watching the New Blade Runner and they've just got this
Speaker 2: convenient blackout that like happened at some point in in
Speaker 2: the two movies where it's like, oh, like everything, even
Speaker 2: the hard drives and stuff like lost basically all the data.
Speaker 2: It was just the paper stuff that survived this thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, as far as I know, no one has put
Speaker 6: us out on like like cassette tapes.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's one of those things where it's
Speaker 1: hard for me to envision because there's a part of
Speaker 1: me that thinks, you know, audio is such a good
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. It's a very good way
Speaker 1: of communicating things. I feel like we still use radio
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, and that's pretty old. When
Speaker 1: I explained to like my mom, for instance, who still
Speaker 1: doesn't know what a podcast is, I'm always like, it's
Speaker 1: radio essentially on the Internet. So it's hard for me
Speaker 1: to imagine it goes away completely, but it definitely already
Speaker 1: feels kind of like the name podcasts, for example, is
Speaker 1: very like, hmm, that's.
Speaker 5: Outdated, that's not really what it is.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, I feel I feel like something.
Speaker 1: I feel like something like it will still exist. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure it will be this form.
Speaker 6: And it's so hard to say with just the amount
Speaker 6: of data loss that humanity has experienced over you know,
Speaker 6: the course of human history, and how much more human
Speaker 6: history we would have if we hadn't lost all of
Speaker 6: that stuff. So it's easy to imagine that some kind
Speaker 6: of sunflair would take out everything and right we would
Speaker 6: have this like return to a to a kind of
Speaker 6: dark ages where nobody knows who Madonna was or has
Speaker 6: read about her. But what was that sound like?
Speaker 5: We could not tell.
Speaker 6: But it's also with the amount of backups and the
Speaker 6: way that tech has been advancing, it's also completely reasonable
Speaker 6: to think that we have it a little bit better
Speaker 6: down now than we previously have. I don't know, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 6: let's what we really Okay, Annie, what we need to
Speaker 6: do in twenty twenty three is get a record pressing. Yes,
Speaker 6: because I said Cassette tape earlier. But that's like the
Speaker 6: least permanent. That's like the least permanent of data.
Speaker 2: That's pretty good that probably run into it because thatttes
Speaker 2: is something to play them on exactly. Yeah, well you
Speaker 2: hit seth up. He'll make records for you low five
Speaker 2: mono records for reference. See our episode Handmade Records. Oh
Speaker 2: a right, Okay, Well, I think I like the idea
Speaker 2: of nothing else of yeah, some maybe idiosyncratic young person
Speaker 2: one hundred years in the future that doesn't want to
Speaker 2: learn about Pineapple from like, you know, their hollow book
Speaker 2: education system and prefers to listen to the you know,
Speaker 2: archaic musings of Annie and Lauren about the subjects. So
Speaker 2: I'll hold out hope for that, but get those records pressed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we're on it, promptest.
Speaker 4: It all depends on if the infrastructure, you know, remains,
Speaker 4: and if people are treating it correctly and backing it
Speaker 4: up and backing it up onto physical medium. And I
Speaker 4: think there's only enough room for only certain ones, you know,
Speaker 4: not everything goes in the Library of Congress, just the
Speaker 4: important stuff. So who decides that does stuff they don't
Speaker 4: want you to know get to participate in? That is
Speaker 4: it about rank, you know, is it about listens, is
Speaker 4: it about audience size, or is it like, you know,
Speaker 4: the items that we choose to send up into space
Speaker 4: that go on that gold disc, that are important enough
Speaker 4: to us that we think maybe extraterrestrials or whatever, you know,
Speaker 4: will understand us through participating in that.
Speaker 11: It's kind of you know, let's let's look at it
Speaker 11: through comparison. Let's say a hundred years ago, you went
Speaker 11: to a you went to a Ford factory. You found
Speaker 11: some people working on that factory line, and you ask them,
Speaker 11: you know, hey, what do you what do you think
Speaker 11: is going to happen to this car?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 11: They won't think in terms of well, what about this
Speaker 11: car specifically, they'll think of all the other cars they made.
Speaker 11: And the answer, as we've seen, as history has proven,
Speaker 11: is that something like those cars still very much exists
Speaker 11: in innumerable forms. In that specific car when you showed
Speaker 11: up and dropped by their lunch break and ask them,
Speaker 11: that car maybe in a museum. Right, the odds are
Speaker 11: very high that it is not always on the road
Speaker 11: as a daily driver, but the platonic form of it
Speaker 11: exists and is very much alive. So something like the
Speaker 11: ability to communicate to a large mass of people does exist,
Speaker 11: and hopefully it can preserve the depth of communication that
Speaker 11: we're able to explore when we're free from a radio
Speaker 11: clock or a social media real limit.
Speaker 12: I'm just glad we made this because this is real.
Speaker 2: Matt's holding up the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Book available wherever books are found.
Speaker 12: This is a book is authored by Bold and uh,
Speaker 12: it's a thing. It's a real friggin thing that you
Speaker 12: can hold and you you know, while it isn't us
Speaker 12: having a conversation, it's born from our conversations, right, and
Speaker 12: from the same research that we use to have our conversations.
Speaker 12: And it's like the spirit or the soul of the show.
Speaker 11: So it's our three men and a baby, you know.
Speaker 9: Alex.
Speaker 4: In the description for your show, I always love this.
Speaker 4: You talk about how you know, I forget the way
Speaker 4: you phrase it, but you refer to like the town dump,
Speaker 4: you know, and like where what you know, where all
Speaker 4: this stuff goes ideas you know, culture and all that stuff,
Speaker 4: and like you're never going to find a podcast in
Speaker 4: a dump, but you can find a book you a dump.
Speaker 12: Well, you'll find a whole bunch of old iPods. There's
Speaker 12: probably in a dump still somewhere. They got a lot of.
Speaker 4: If the battery is dead, you can't crack it, if
Speaker 4: you don't have the right plug, and if there's no electricity.
Speaker 4: You know, just saying they're in there, in there, but
Speaker 4: they're inaccessible. They're locked up like so much you know,
Speaker 4: geological data and an ice core. You know, if you
Speaker 4: can't get to it, does it really exist for you?
Speaker 4: But the book, you know, exists. And you know, also,
Speaker 4: let's forget about language. We're talking about long enough timeline.
Speaker 4: You know, books obviously decomposed, but language might change and
Speaker 4: it might be completely undecipherable.
Speaker 11: We're doing Beowulf, Yeah, we're doing Canterbury Tales in the
Speaker 11: original form. It also reminds me of music. You know,
Speaker 11: there are are some of the most influential songs in history.
Speaker 11: They have one admitted author, but there are many many variations, right,
Speaker 11: especially when you get into oral folklore in that form
Speaker 11: of communication. So are we then to define the existence
Speaker 11: of something by the person and the guitar they had
Speaker 11: when they first sang it? Or we and then are
Speaker 11: we going to say because that guitar is gone, because
Speaker 11: that person has passed away, that song no longer exists.
Speaker 11: I guess, I'm I guess, I'm like lazily, I'm taking
Speaker 11: the slow route to uh, what is it? The ship
Speaker 11: of thesis?
Speaker 4: The same thing? I was literally, it's yes, is it?
Speaker 4: If the thing is replaced piece by piece by piece?
Speaker 4: Is it the same thing? And that also kind of
Speaker 4: refers to audio and like a story or whatever, like
Speaker 4: is it if you're not hearing it from a person's mouth,
Speaker 4: you're hearing it digitally reconstructed? Like is it the thing?
Speaker 4: That's more of a philosophical question, But ben you hit
Speaker 4: on what I was just thinking, the exact same thing.
Speaker 4: I don't know how to use that analogy or that story,
Speaker 4: but for some reason, my brain goes there immediately.
Speaker 11: And then of course, going circling back to the very
Speaker 11: beginning of our conversation, if there comes a time, right,
Speaker 11: which I think we all believe is on the way,
Speaker 11: if there comes a time when it is possible to
Speaker 11: plausibly automate the creation of something like this, then not
Speaker 11: just this show, but every show ephemeral could just continue
Speaker 11: in perpetuity, which gets some creative people rightly terror right,
Speaker 11: and then get some accountants all a twitter paid and
Speaker 11: over the moon.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 11: That's the thing, man, It's so it's so it's still
Speaker 11: so new, even though we've we've all been in the
Speaker 11: trenches on it for a lot of our adult lives.
Speaker 11: It's still so new that anybody who says they are
Speaker 11: an expert in the field is lying. They'll question is
Speaker 11: are they lying to themselves or to you?
Speaker 4: Probably both?
Speaker 11: Sorry, Alex, you got three guys who are literally paid
Speaker 11: to talk and then say, hey, tell us about yourselves.
Speaker 12: I just want to add a note here wants thank
Speaker 12: you Alex for making this show. I think all three
Speaker 12: of us are major fans of what you create. When
Speaker 12: you put out an episode of this, you and Trevor Max,
Speaker 12: the work you guys put in is just it's beautiful
Speaker 12: to listen to. You become immersed every episode in both
Speaker 12: the storytelling and sound design.
Speaker 2: It's just wonderful.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I think it's what podcasts could be.
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 11: I am beyond proud to play any sort of little part.
Speaker 4: And while it makes me sad that it's ending, you know,
Speaker 4: for the time being, there is a silver lining in
Speaker 4: that there's not so much of the stuff that you
Speaker 4: couldn't just make a vinyl box set of the whole
Speaker 4: damn thing.
Speaker 11: Yeah, we're not letting go of the vinyl thing.
Speaker 9: No, that's going to happen.
Speaker 11: It's a good idea.
Speaker 12: We know a guy.
Speaker 2: You know. There's just one thing that I just was
Speaker 2: thinking of. It's not a question, but it's just a
Speaker 2: little footnote on something that Noel said, and it echoed
Speaker 2: a conversation I had a couple of years back with
Speaker 2: a kind of Ian Nagoski about how we think of
Speaker 2: preservation efforts or like archiving efforts, as we all have.
Speaker 2: We have a tendency to think of them as the
Speaker 2: sort of responsibility of these big cultural institutions like Nash
Speaker 2: shooting stuff out in this space, so the Library of Congress,
Speaker 2: but so much archiving of ephemeral media that I've come across,
Speaker 2: like early television, early radio, or obscure music and all
Speaker 2: kinds of other things. It's very often is from like
Speaker 2: someone that worked on it, or descended someone that worked
Speaker 2: on that project, or a fan of Van you know
Speaker 2: that was just recording that day, you know, on their
Speaker 2: VCR and got something or you know whatever. And I wonder,
Speaker 2: if you know, I would hate to see a world
Speaker 2: like this but there's one hundred years from now and
Speaker 2: stuff they don't want.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like the book is out there, but they can't
Speaker 2: find any record of the podcast. And then one fan
Speaker 2: eden's great great granddaughter comes forward or writer's great great
Speaker 2: grandson comes forward, like I have I have the first episode.
Speaker 4: Yeah, some of them may be actually because we don't
Speaker 4: think to do that. Because it's streaming, it's everywhere all
Speaker 4: the time, until it's not.
Speaker 2: Thanks to Matt, Ben, Noel, Annie, Lauren, Robert, Joe, Holly, Tracy, Josh,
Speaker 2: and Chuck for talking with me this episode and for
Speaker 2: all their support of this show since it's very inception.
Speaker 2: Thanks also to Trevor Young and my brother Max who
Speaker 2: joined me as co hosts in the second season. And
Speaker 2: more gratitude than I can hope to express to the
Speaker 2: countless guests, friends, and especially listeners that have made this
Speaker 2: entire project possible. I never really like long goodbyes. But
Speaker 2: what do you think we should do next? There's certainly
Speaker 2: no shortage of stories left to tell about everything lost,
Speaker 2: Transient and Ephemeral. You can write Twist directly at Ephemeral
Speaker 2: at iHeartMedia dot com, and we're on social media at
Speaker 2: ephemeral show. Avida's aim.
Speaker 11: Always at worst.
Speaker 3: I don't doubt.
Speaker 8: It, but I realize it's true.
Speaker 1: So I just dropped into Say Goodbye.