Speaker 1: I'm off my game today. No, you're not. People are
Speaker 1: going to have to start making better content. I think
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about this for a long time.
Speaker 1: When you program for everyone, you program for no one.
Speaker 1: I think it's a word purpose driven platform. Like we're
Speaker 1: trying to get to substance? How was that? Are you
Speaker 1: happy with that? This is marketing therapy right now? And
Speaker 1: it really is? What's up? I'm Laura Currenti and I'm
Speaker 1: Alexa Kristen. Welcome back to Atlantia. Episode for I Like
Speaker 1: even Numbers, Yes, And this week we have podcast O
Speaker 1: g and Atlas Obscura CEO David Plotts on the show.
Speaker 1: We like to call him Platsy, Yes, plots and he
Speaker 1: was okay with it, yeah somehow. So we talk a
Speaker 1: lot about Alice Obscura with him and how experiences and
Speaker 1: a media company are coming together, converging and creating audiences
Speaker 1: that I think people didn't even know existed. Yeah. This
Speaker 1: whole idea of offline experience built from online discovery is
Speaker 1: one that we were super fascinated with and really excited
Speaker 1: to talk to David later in the show. But first
Speaker 1: we want to have a conversation about some of the
Speaker 1: things that have been happening with a lot of traditional publishers. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: if you've been following at Landia podcast on Twitter, you'll
Speaker 1: notice a flurry of tweets over the last few weeks
Speaker 1: that have been focused on this convergence of legacy publishers.
Speaker 1: So in the news, Fox, Turner and Viacom, who have
Speaker 1: um come together to talk about the future of measurement
Speaker 1: as it relates to broadcasting, presumably cable television, and saying
Speaker 1: that we as an industry need to challenge the way
Speaker 1: standards have been bought. You know, this is proceeding this
Speaker 1: year's upfront, which will be interesting to see how the
Speaker 1: implications and how people think about buying models. When you've
Speaker 1: got three of the biggest broadcast cable network standing up
Speaker 1: and saying, we know that our audiences are proliferating across technology,
Speaker 1: we know that viewing behaviors have changed, and we also
Speaker 1: know that the whole person becomes a part that a
Speaker 1: brand and an advertiser want to get to write. And
Speaker 1: so you've got this interesting tension now happening where you've
Speaker 1: got a model that is quickly approaching later in the
Speaker 1: second quarter, which asks brands to commit dollars based on
Speaker 1: upfront ratings. So, now, how do you ask advertisers to
Speaker 1: pay premium for a model you just profusely claimed as
Speaker 1: broken and by the way, on the same platforms that
Speaker 1: you've been using. So I think it's big media companies
Speaker 1: are going at audience in different ways. So you've got
Speaker 1: the Turner Fox Viacom relationship and they're talking about, Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got to take data, we've got to look at
Speaker 1: it across the networks, right, and have a different conversation
Speaker 1: about who the audience is and how we're going to
Speaker 1: reach them collectively. Right, So you've got that model, You've
Speaker 1: got the scale game that others are playing with the
Speaker 1: convergence of NBC, Vox and now Conde nasked coming to
Speaker 1: the table to reach a wider and presumably deeper audience
Speaker 1: pool that currently exists in their network. So what does
Speaker 1: that totally mean? That means you can buy right across NBC,
Speaker 1: Vox and we say Vox, v X, v o X
Speaker 1: through the Conde portfolio and totally get why NBC and
Speaker 1: Vox partnered in early days, right, NBC was looking to
Speaker 1: go younger, looking for new thought leadership, especially around people
Speaker 1: like Carrot Swisher and recode and leaning into the super
Speaker 1: smart micro uh communities are subcultures. And then Conde came
Speaker 1: to the table. And when Conde came to the table,
Speaker 1: it's set off that red flag. We call it the
Speaker 1: f It was like that we describe as the flare
Speaker 1: going off, and we're looking for a sound effect for
Speaker 1: the flair and when that happened, right, it's confused, Susian
Speaker 1: because Connie Nast presumably has the quality of content, but
Speaker 1: are they really pulling the audience? Are they pulling the audience?
Speaker 1: And then are you competing with vox You're both going
Speaker 1: down very niche paths. So that one is a really
Speaker 1: interesting one and one we need to watch because it
Speaker 1: signals a couple of things to me, and I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what direction is going, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: you think about it. On the other side, the Viacom,
Speaker 1: Fox and Turner, I find that one to be more
Speaker 1: interesting because they were the first major networks to say
Speaker 1: we have to think about this differently, and we recognize
Speaker 1: that audiences aren't just made up of simple age, sex
Speaker 1: and location demographics. Right that we've got you're far pasting
Speaker 1: generations we've got a market to the whole person, and
Speaker 1: so I think that that one is more interesting about Listen,
Speaker 1: we know that we've got this audience, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: get really fucking smart about who they are, right A men,
Speaker 1: Sister Peace talking about audience and building experiences within a
Speaker 1: media company. We'll be right back. So welcome back, everybody
Speaker 1: to a landy. We are so excited to have the
Speaker 1: O G of podcasting David Plots in the house. Welcome, welcome,
Speaker 1: thank you. And I just have to say O G
Speaker 1: of podcasting with gab Fest. You are a co host
Speaker 1: of Political gab Fest. Correct, I am. We've been doing
Speaker 1: it since the year the word podcast was coined. We've
Speaker 1: been podcasting that long, but you've been very long time.
Speaker 1: Didn't coin it now, but you could have definitely would
Speaker 1: have coined it had someone else not beaten me to it.
Speaker 1: So you've become kind of an unofficial mentor to us,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about that because I think that's really
Speaker 1: interesting about podcasting in general. And uh, some of the
Speaker 1: advice you've given us. If the school oji prayer hands
Speaker 1: is our sign of the day, yeah, exactly, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. But I think first we got to know
Speaker 1: you when you were at Slate. You were the editor
Speaker 1: in chief of Slate, and now you are on the
Speaker 1: business side. You're the CEO of Atlas Obscura, a new
Speaker 1: media company, right that is really blending experience and media together. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is extremely well put. So in I took over
Speaker 1: what was a beautiful little venture that had been started
Speaker 1: by Joshua four and Dylan Thurris, and they had created
Speaker 1: the site called out a Secure, which is where people
Speaker 1: could share knowledge of the world's unusual places, so like
Speaker 1: the secret apartment at the top of the Affril Tower
Speaker 1: or the splunking in New York City subways. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love that, Yes, subways or do you know if you
Speaker 1: take the six train past the end? You can take
Speaker 1: it past the end and you keep going. Legally, they
Speaker 1: won't kick you off it because it goes and does
Speaker 1: it turnaround. You can stay on it and you go
Speaker 1: into this abandoned City Hall station, which is this beautiful
Speaker 1: station that was built in the early twenty century. It's gorgeous,
Speaker 1: it's lit and you can just get a glance of
Speaker 1: it as you just go. Podcast. We're going, actually I
Speaker 1: think we go on the six. We do a record
Speaker 1: if we can. Is that considered spunking If you go
Speaker 1: on a subway spunk and you gotta climb in, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we could do that too. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: want to see any climbing on this. Do not encourage
Speaker 1: your listeners to splunk. Nobody's blunk. Nobody Nobody's slunk. But
Speaker 1: Alice is talking about the unknown, travel and treasures and
Speaker 1: the idea, and the idea that Dylan and Josh had
Speaker 1: was that we're all explorers, that everyone's an explorer. You
Speaker 1: don't might not know what you're an explorer, but around
Speaker 1: the corner from you is something that is going to
Speaker 1: surprise you and it's going to light you and amaze you,
Speaker 1: and we're going to give you that experience digitally. So
Speaker 1: we created this huge compendium, or rather our users created
Speaker 1: this huge compendium of these unusual places around the world.
Speaker 1: That's part of it. But also we created experiences for
Speaker 1: people so that you can come with us and go
Speaker 1: hike to the secret fort in the middle of Rock
Speaker 1: Creek Park in Washington, d C. Or come do a
Speaker 1: falconry workshop in the desert with us. Work you get
Speaker 1: to like hunt with a falcon. No way, that's that's cool.
Speaker 1: That will really brought outside my comfort home. My favorite,
Speaker 1: my favorite thing that we did at Alice since I've
Speaker 1: been there, were there so many things, but one is
Speaker 1: that we took over this bar in green Point one night.
Speaker 1: So it's had about people in this bar and broken land.
Speaker 1: You like, kicked out all the hipsters and brought your
Speaker 1: own We brought our own hips, bring your own. It
Speaker 1: was the hipsters paid us to be there, and we
Speaker 1: brought a wolf to the bar and so the door opened.
Speaker 1: Everyone realized that this is when the wolf comes in.
Speaker 1: The bar went. It's totally dead silent, and then you
Speaker 1: hear I can't reenact up with the clatter of these
Speaker 1: wolf claws on the wooden floor. It was incredible. One
Speaker 1: of the cool things you've talked to us a bit
Speaker 1: about is how you've kind of went at this idea
Speaker 1: of the problem of building brand in the modern media world.
Speaker 1: You talk about how Google and Facebook on your audience,
Speaker 1: and it's very deff a goal for you to kind
Speaker 1: of go and do things cost effectively, right. I think
Speaker 1: I'm one of the things that you guys, I'm sure
Speaker 1: experience like all the time is that if you're a
Speaker 1: media site you think you have an audience, but really
Speaker 1: your audience is coming to you because that someone has
Speaker 1: done them a Facebook link or they maybe saw you
Speaker 1: on snapchack discover Um that the platform owns your audience.
Speaker 1: You don't own your audience. Your audience doesn't necessarily know
Speaker 1: who you are. They don't. They follow the link and
Speaker 1: they see your story and you get to count them
Speaker 1: as someone who's seen you, but they don't really know
Speaker 1: who you are. And I think one of the the
Speaker 1: that's a very deadly position to be in because all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, these people who you think are connected
Speaker 1: to you the way a newspaper subscriber used to be
Speaker 1: connected to the newspaper that they paid for, they're not
Speaker 1: connected to you. They don't care, they don't really know.
Speaker 1: You're just a flip in the feed exactly. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: haven't used that. That's a good expression. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: our premise is that that, um, if we can build
Speaker 1: genuine liken unity, in genuine sort of real experiences for people,
Speaker 1: that we can then create a brand that actually has
Speaker 1: meaning for them. And people are coming so like your
Speaker 1: community right of of readers or I don't even know
Speaker 1: what you call them, like explorers right, are contributing to
Speaker 1: the events, contributing to some of the local points that
Speaker 1: you guys are talking about. Do you recruit them? Do
Speaker 1: they just talk to you guys and say, Hey, this
Speaker 1: is something that's really cool, Like how do you guys
Speaker 1: find those people? Well, it depends some of some of
Speaker 1: them find us. There. In every town, there's somebody who
Speaker 1: knows like here's the weird history, or here's the house
Speaker 1: that al Capone lived in for seven years when he
Speaker 1: was a kid, or whatever particular thing it is. There's
Speaker 1: always someone in town who knows it. And sometimes they
Speaker 1: have an outlet, but often they don't have an outlet,
Speaker 1: so so they stumble across us and then they start
Speaker 1: to contribute. There's this kid, I shouldn't call him a kid.
Speaker 1: He's a full grown adult in Washington named Elliott Carter
Speaker 1: who knows more about Washington, d c. And it's distinctive
Speaker 1: history than anybody. And he kind of found me and said,
Speaker 1: I took him out to coffee one day and here's
Speaker 1: this person. Now every time I turned around, he's like
Speaker 1: pointed out some other incredible thing. There's this uh, like
Speaker 1: did you know the US Constitution is at the National
Speaker 1: Archives and every night so you can go see it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever seen it, the Declaration
Speaker 1: of Independence and Constitution, and every night there's this mechanism,
Speaker 1: this elevator that lowers it into a safe in the ground.
Speaker 1: I lived in d C. I can tell you my
Speaker 1: my tours of DC are different than finding the Constitution.
Speaker 1: I was there for college. Oh yeah, as far as
Speaker 1: with great history too, yes, I love this idea of
Speaker 1: modern folklore. I was actually um on the train the
Speaker 1: other day going home to Connecticut, and I was on
Speaker 1: Atlas Obscures website and immediately GEO located me and was like,
Speaker 1: here are things in Connecticut and there are things like
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I live in Stanford, Connecticut home. There
Speaker 1: were some really cool things that I had never I
Speaker 1: had no idea about. That's I mean, that's really that's
Speaker 1: really interesting, Like how do brands? Because I think something
Speaker 1: that we've talked a lot about, Laura and I have
Speaker 1: talked a lot about, is this idea of local community
Speaker 1: becoming more important, especially post election, Like what's happening in
Speaker 1: your local community? Do you really know who are the voices?
Speaker 1: Who are the people? You know? How do brand start
Speaker 1: tapping into something that Alice Obscure is doing in certain
Speaker 1: communities that are important to them. That's a really good question.
Speaker 1: Let me think about that. I think one way is
Speaker 1: and now, and I think eight US cities we have
Speaker 1: what are called Atlas Obscure Societies, and these are local
Speaker 1: organizations and they're run by somebody who works for us,
Speaker 1: usually in a part time basis, and every week they're
Speaker 1: putting together local experiences. So in Washington, d C. I
Speaker 1: noticed that we're going to do a tasting of George
Speaker 1: Washington's whiskey and so they'll be a whiskey tasting down
Speaker 1: the mountain, getting it to a totally different side of
Speaker 1: the president. Huge, he was a huge where that somewhere
Speaker 1: my boyfriend is putting in next trip. Um, it's one
Speaker 1: way a brand could engage. Right, Well, we've been doing
Speaker 1: these tours. If you're listening, Johnny Walker, if you're listening, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a historic whiskey tour be amazing. There's all this
Speaker 1: kind of great whiskey history through Apple Acchian Kentucky. You
Speaker 1: could do so much cool stuff. So, David, when you
Speaker 1: talk a lot about you know, these um new ways
Speaker 1: of curating experiences in this blend of what we call
Speaker 1: like mixed reality. Right, you've got the offline thing happening,
Speaker 1: you've got the online creation of editorial. One of the
Speaker 1: interesting lines I've heard of late came from Jed Hartman,
Speaker 1: the c r OH of UM Washington Post. He said,
Speaker 1: you know, we're at a time when you're always um
Speaker 1: one click away from somebody never coming back to your site,
Speaker 1: and in a in a space where you're playing in
Speaker 1: a world that's blurred. How are you gauging the effect
Speaker 1: of this and success of Atlas Obscure? What does that
Speaker 1: look like? Well, we're in a lot of different lines
Speaker 1: of businesses. So we have published a book. We you know,
Speaker 1: are piloting podcasts, We do digital media, we do events,
Speaker 1: we do international trips. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: different ways we can measure success. I think, like most people,
Speaker 1: we look at the kind of top line audience number,
Speaker 1: but that is not sufficient. I mean that's sort of
Speaker 1: just like you can get a Reddit spike and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, your top line audience number looks great.
Speaker 1: So we are trying to and I could use some advice,
Speaker 1: and we're trying to get some kind of measurement, which
Speaker 1: kind of combines the durability of time on site with
Speaker 1: like user action around events and you know, buying things
Speaker 1: from us. But because we're a young brand, that's all.
Speaker 1: It's all kind of I think off earlier about this,
Speaker 1: I was like, I want to talk to David about this.
Speaker 1: I want to say, like, why even have a website today?
Speaker 1: And I think that that's an interesting question for you,
Speaker 1: and then let's take it further, like I think that
Speaker 1: you guys are well positioned to do something totally different
Speaker 1: in terms of how content comes to life via experience
Speaker 1: and only have that be the centerpiece. You just position
Speaker 1: Obscure as a parent company that's a collective of different
Speaker 1: revenue streams, right, and different platforms that exist. Which kudos
Speaker 1: to you because I think a lot of brands are
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how they go off platform and
Speaker 1: so I think you have an advantage there. But the
Speaker 1: other website, it's like go off of like yeah dot com.
Speaker 1: But the other part that's interesting is also to your
Speaker 1: advantage is you don't have audience. You have explorers. So
Speaker 1: to me, the fact that people can go deep and
Speaker 1: they're not there to just click on an article and
Speaker 1: keep moving there there to immerse themselves in experience and
Speaker 1: potentially then go on one to me things like can
Speaker 1: version rate to experience or you're a lot closer depth
Speaker 1: of exploration is more intriguing to me as a marketer,
Speaker 1: and that Yeah, that's exactly. That's the kind of we
Speaker 1: don't have like a great CRM tool, but we that's
Speaker 1: what we need is to figure that out because right
Speaker 1: now we have we know how many people went to events,
Speaker 1: we know how many people bought the book, we know
Speaker 1: how many people are going on trips, we know how
Speaker 1: many people are the website, but we don't know how
Speaker 1: one gets to the other and game those things. But
Speaker 1: I want to actually just to dig into that into
Speaker 1: the kind of website question is like why I have
Speaker 1: a website. So one of the things I think why
Speaker 1: that was obscured in particular as a website is that
Speaker 1: so much of what we do is actually created by
Speaker 1: our users. So the entire atlas, this compendium of places,
Speaker 1: which is much of what we do online, users started
Speaker 1: all of that. They contributed all of that, and we
Speaker 1: had this amazing moment with so we published a book
Speaker 1: this fall, which, by the way, it gets crazy reviews
Speaker 1: and write crazy reviews. Lena Dunham, like tons of people
Speaker 1: have said, this reinvented what travel should be. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty good endorsements. I'm not quoting her. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that there are so many people who have
Speaker 1: said to that effect, that's what this is, right. I
Speaker 1: think Lena's actual line was this is the only thing
Speaker 1: that makes me get out of my house, which is
Speaker 1: which I love that. But so that book was a
Speaker 1: bestseller before it came out because we pre sold we
Speaker 1: we told our audience about it. We told the people
Speaker 1: on the website preorder this book. This is a book
Speaker 1: that our users had written. The things that are in
Speaker 1: the book are things that they contributed. They bought a
Speaker 1: book that they had written. Do you start doing a
Speaker 1: reb stream with them? We should start doing well. The
Speaker 1: reb stream is that we is that we put out
Speaker 1: a beautiful book and that we we made it useful,
Speaker 1: and that that we are giving them you know, we're
Speaker 1: doing events with them, and we are constantly looking for
Speaker 1: ways to give them these rich experiences. But there is
Speaker 1: a sort of virtuous cycle and the web is important
Speaker 1: part of it because the web is the place we
Speaker 1: give them to contribute contents that adds to your credibility.
Speaker 1: It's like this buy me for me sort of UM model,
Speaker 1: and that there's many travel mags and sites and destinations
Speaker 1: at a talent and yeah, yeah, I mean everything from
Speaker 1: Airbnb having the potential to become a content platform to
Speaker 1: travel and leisure. So the user content is a key
Speaker 1: part of it. One we have to edit it, so
Speaker 1: it needs to be improved, so it needs editing. And
Speaker 1: the other is that we supplement it with professional content
Speaker 1: and stories that we can go out and find which
Speaker 1: have made the audience still bigger and made you know,
Speaker 1: people want to sign up for emails, and it creates
Speaker 1: a whole new richness to what we're doing. So I
Speaker 1: think it's I think um the balance that it's a balance.
Speaker 1: I mean, it does mean our cost of content production
Speaker 1: is lower than it would be if we were pure
Speaker 1: professional journalism play and that that's a good position to
Speaker 1: be in. But I think we need both pieces. I
Speaker 1: want to see I want to see Alice Obscura have
Speaker 1: the ability to go from see this cool thing and
Speaker 1: do it now, like right now, Like if I was
Speaker 1: four Square, I'd buy Atlas Obscura. Are you listening. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's actually really what they need, right, and that's what
Speaker 1: they should have become with. Yeah, but I think Airbnb
Speaker 1: love Airbnb would swallow Atlas Obscura up and make it
Speaker 1: something that it's not. What I think that you guys
Speaker 1: could do is have this immediate like I want to
Speaker 1: do this now. I want to go see a show now,
Speaker 1: like underground this, I want to take the six train now,
Speaker 1: I want to do this now, I want to buy
Speaker 1: the ticket now. And I think like on demand experience
Speaker 1: is really the next kind of step in also in commerce, right,
Speaker 1: like having commerce and experience come together for this like amazing,
Speaker 1: you know, really great idea are you writing? So don't worry,
Speaker 1: it's reported. We had a we had a kind of
Speaker 1: like a very beta extremely like soa beta we barely
Speaker 1: let a thing called we called missions, which was we
Speaker 1: try to do that, which was it wasn't just here's
Speaker 1: a place, it was here's something you can go do now.
Speaker 1: Do you know how many people say all the time
Speaker 1: like I'm bored. Do you know how many how many
Speaker 1: times tons if something stopped you in the middle of
Speaker 1: your tracks and said you can go do this? Now?
Speaker 1: Here are eight things that you can go do now.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that's a that's an extremely good idea. Well,
Speaker 1: that's why we do what we do so in this
Speaker 1: in this shared economy, I mean, do you think that
Speaker 1: the Atlas obscure a model leans into this shared economy?
Speaker 1: Obviously we have shared services like Uber, the Airbnb, is
Speaker 1: the world, excetera. We actually from a colleague just learned
Speaker 1: of this new app called cool Cousin. Are you familiar
Speaker 1: with coin? So similar to what you're doing, but more
Speaker 1: from a host than guide standpoint versus like actually immersing
Speaker 1: yourself in unpacking. It's like an expert down a certain vertical.
Speaker 1: So like one of our colleagues is food. He's like
Speaker 1: the foodie of New York City, so that's what he
Speaker 1: like he does. You know, how do you see styles
Speaker 1: obscured playing in the shared economy? Do you think it
Speaker 1: gets to a place where you can exchange experiences for
Speaker 1: non transactional things or can you see like some of
Speaker 1: your contributors actually um bartering expartering experiences right exactly creating
Speaker 1: their own revenue streams off of a Las obscura. There
Speaker 1: was a great um an example of that, which is
Speaker 1: that we did an event. Last year, we had this
Speaker 1: thing called Obscure Day, which is on May six market calendars.
Speaker 1: On May six all over the world, we it's our
Speaker 1: International Day of Exploration, so we do two events all
Speaker 1: over the world on that day. And one of the
Speaker 1: ones we did in York last year was this person
Speaker 1: who actually in their apartment has all these Victorian electronics.
Speaker 1: So I guess during the nineteenth century there was you know,
Speaker 1: they had electronics. It was early electronics. And because this
Speaker 1: collection and demonstrated all this stuff in their apartment, um,
Speaker 1: and it was this idea that there's kind of people
Speaker 1: with secret knowledge and secret expertise and they want to
Speaker 1: share it, and we we give it a platform because
Speaker 1: many of them as possible. But I like the idea
Speaker 1: that people can start to do it themselves, create it themselves.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got a whole sub revenue stream then
Speaker 1: of people kind of branching off and then becoming their
Speaker 1: own sort of like self organizing, yeah explorer or obscure evangelists.
Speaker 1: I guess that that can create. I mean I see
Speaker 1: a huge partnership with you and meet up with Atlas
Speaker 1: Obscura and meet up to be able to do something
Speaker 1: like us can be amazing. I mean, the potential for
Speaker 1: brands that to do is like totally unlimited in that
Speaker 1: there are so many ways. So like when you talk
Speaker 1: about international you know, Explorer's Day, like our brands like
Speaker 1: Patagonia and go Pro reaching out to you to integrate
Speaker 1: their products and ways that are actually tangible and useful
Speaker 1: and an experience versus just badging that day we should
Speaker 1: be badging means like it. So I'm just curious to
Speaker 1: get your take. Haven't been in this world for a
Speaker 1: couple of years, Like what are people most interested in travel? Like?
Speaker 1: How has it evolved with technology and the sort of
Speaker 1: platform you've created has it shaped it? Yeah? I think
Speaker 1: I think, um people are really interested in kind of
Speaker 1: off the beaten track experiences and and some of it
Speaker 1: is some of it actually think is slightly one upsmanship.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of like I've been there, look at
Speaker 1: my Instagram where I've been, haven't been there, and so
Speaker 1: so part of it I don't like. But part of
Speaker 1: it is is the sense that um that thanks to technology,
Speaker 1: thanks to you know, improve travel, you can now get
Speaker 1: to places where you couldn't get before. And it's a
Speaker 1: genuine curiosity of saying like, well, it used to be.
Speaker 1: It used to be that everyone thought, I've got to
Speaker 1: see the Eiffel Tower and the Tower of London and
Speaker 1: Mona Lisa before I die. And now people, I think, don't.
Speaker 1: I think people you could see that through a digital version,
Speaker 1: they don't care. Like going to the Mona Lisa. It's awful.
Speaker 1: It's a terrible experience. It's super crowded, it's terrible. It's terrible.
Speaker 1: And you you if you, you know that if you
Speaker 1: had an alternative experience in like some weird place outside
Speaker 1: of Paris, it would be a better experience. I think
Speaker 1: people are looking for things that are more bespoken, unusual,
Speaker 1: things that you can't typically get access to. I feel
Speaker 1: like it is something that is more valued these days
Speaker 1: than to your point, the mainstream tourist stops, right. I
Speaker 1: think that's exactly right. And also one of the things
Speaker 1: that's happening is that is that because of Asia's getting
Speaker 1: so rich, there are these h Yeah, so there are
Speaker 1: tons of I mean there have been tons of Japanese tourist,
Speaker 1: but now Korean and Chinese tourists who are in in
Speaker 1: in Europe and so there it's like there's just a
Speaker 1: lot more tourists in places which there where there's been
Speaker 1: fewer tourists, and so there's a spill on effect where
Speaker 1: where people who who have tourist experience are looking for
Speaker 1: really unusual in different places to go, and that that
Speaker 1: we think is a huge opportunity. And like you know,
Speaker 1: and people sometimes say like, well you have outos obscure
Speaker 1: and worried that all these weird places are going to
Speaker 1: be ruined. Argue is like, no, ruined because of what
Speaker 1: because suddenly people are going to find them, And it's
Speaker 1: actually much much more. The case of what happens is
Speaker 1: that places that don't get visited die, they get it's abandoned, forgotten,
Speaker 1: and disappear. And what you want is actually for these places,
Speaker 1: these wonderful, weird places to be celebrated and found. Did
Speaker 1: you guys ever cover This is a totally random but
Speaker 1: I was obsessed with this. So remember finding Sugarman? Did
Speaker 1: you remember that? Okay, the musician in Detroit? But I
Speaker 1: was like really obsessed with Detroit culture because of finding
Speaker 1: Sugarman and like just all the stuff that was happening
Speaker 1: some time with like the Chrysler comeback and like all
Speaker 1: of these things I've just moved into brainstorm mode because
Speaker 1: you you do this to me. So what Alexa just described,
Speaker 1: I think is an amazing product opportunity, and it's how
Speaker 1: does Atlas obscurre a move into the search bar of experiences?
Speaker 1: That's right? So when Alexa thinks about finding sugar and
Speaker 1: I think about finding Tony Soprano, what are the experiences
Speaker 1: that I can go in and ask Atlas Obscura to
Speaker 1: curate for me to go after that? And I think
Speaker 1: that is the quintessential moment of digital and discovery and
Speaker 1: search linking up with real world on demands that I
Speaker 1: can go do tomorrow. That's where I was saying, like
Speaker 1: the footh whole four square thing. I was like, if
Speaker 1: I'm right here, what can I do right now? But
Speaker 1: I love the like search the search bar for experiences.
Speaker 1: I mean that you just give you a new tagline.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's really in a lot of ways. Um,
Speaker 1: who if I said I want to see Atlas Obscura
Speaker 1: become something, I'd say, you become that. So can you
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about how you're infusing technology
Speaker 1: to that point? So like you are eleven years in
Speaker 1: the making a podcast are and of your own right.
Speaker 1: How are things like audio and um other forms of
Speaker 1: things like augmented reality, the artificial intelligence playing into the
Speaker 1: experience world. Because Alex and I are bracing for this
Speaker 1: time in our industry where the interface is going away,
Speaker 1: and so you are poised to be at the forefront
Speaker 1: of that. What does technology look like in your world?
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a couple of a r apps that
Speaker 1: we've talked to, and we think there's like a great
Speaker 1: you know whatever the Pokemon go is for adults around
Speaker 1: history and experience to replace. There are some apps we
Speaker 1: looked at that seemed really cool that look at sort
Speaker 1: of historical experience and allow you to kind of place
Speaker 1: yourself in places if you have if you have a
Speaker 1: good idea for that people, So you and I want
Speaker 1: to go into a little bit. You said the founders
Speaker 1: said that everyone's got an explore in them. I would
Speaker 1: argue that that's not true. I would argue that people
Speaker 1: generally are My mother's lived in the same place for
Speaker 1: almost sixty years in the same way like my parents,
Speaker 1: very similar. But I would argue it's not true and
Speaker 1: less engaged in the right way. And I would love
Speaker 1: to know right now when you look at your audience,
Speaker 1: who are they? Well, do you want to argue You're
Speaker 1: gonna say, I think you're wrong. No, I mean I've
Speaker 1: I've lived all my life in Washington, you see. I
Speaker 1: grew up there, and I still every not every day,
Speaker 1: but every month I discover something surprising about this place,
Speaker 1: which I know intimately. I mean, the reason I ended
Speaker 1: up working at Atlas Obscure taking this job was I
Speaker 1: had left Slate and I was just looking around. I
Speaker 1: went for a bike ride with my daughter down in
Speaker 1: a part of Washington I never really spent much time,
Speaker 1: and I saw there's a bike path in Anacostia, which
Speaker 1: is a poorer part of the city. And then so
Speaker 1: we went on this bike path and I noticed as
Speaker 1: we were on this path, which was kind of like
Speaker 1: a crumby path, it wasn't that fun of bike ride, honestly,
Speaker 1: but that everything we passed it was. We went through
Speaker 1: Fort DuPont Park and Fort my Hand Park in Fort
Speaker 1: Wallace Park, and I was like, why is everything called Fort?
Speaker 1: And so I went back home and I was like,
Speaker 1: why is everything called Fort? And I looked and if
Speaker 1: you put your finger on the Capitol and then to
Speaker 1: draw a circle around Washington, maybe three or four miles
Speaker 1: from the capitol. Everything is called fort. There's Fort Totton,
Speaker 1: Fort Stephen, Battery, Kimball, and it's like, oh, these are
Speaker 1: the Civil War defenses of Washington City. But there's no
Speaker 1: forts there. It's like all gone, except there's one spot.
Speaker 1: And so a couple of weeks later, I went out
Speaker 1: for a walk with my family in the woods up
Speaker 1: a mile from where I grew up, off a very
Speaker 1: busy street, off the corner of Military Road in Oregon Avenue.
Speaker 1: You walk into the woods into Rock Creek Park. You're
Speaker 1: in deep woods. You got a couple hundred yards and
Speaker 1: there's a tiny little path off to the right. You
Speaker 1: take this tiny little path off to the right, off
Speaker 1: to the left actually, and you go another fifty yards
Speaker 1: into the deep forest. All of a sudden there's a
Speaker 1: moat and then these earthen walls they're twenty ft high,
Speaker 1: and you climb up on these earthen models and you
Speaker 1: realize that this is a ring and this is Fort Drusie.
Speaker 1: This is like a fort. It's in the middle of
Speaker 1: the fucking city, like right where I grew up, and
Speaker 1: it's just this incredible plan and it turns out has
Speaker 1: an amazing history. It's where you know, there was a
Speaker 1: very important battle thought that fended off a Confederate invasion
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty four, very little talked about, but important battle,
Speaker 1: but nobody knows that, nobody experiences it. So I so
Speaker 1: I think even your you know, your relative, your grandmother's uh,
Speaker 1: well you just said, yeah, it's totally inspired. This This
Speaker 1: thought in my head as you're talking is like the
Speaker 1: furthest my mother is explored as the Jersey Shore And
Speaker 1: I say that and it's not a bad thing, and
Speaker 1: it's not a bad thing, but a creature of habit.
Speaker 1: Sixty years same town, born and raised, raised her family there,
Speaker 1: continues to live there. How can brands help reach the
Speaker 1: fruit on the tree that is not low hanging, which
Speaker 1: are people like her who don't necessarily have the ambition
Speaker 1: or maybe the financial means or whatever the case may be,
Speaker 1: to go to see the mona Lisa, but can get
Speaker 1: out in their neighborhoods and find for and feel and
Speaker 1: you know what happens. What did you feel when you
Speaker 1: like discovered this, It was like, yes, it's literally it's
Speaker 1: literally yea. And I now take groups on I take
Speaker 1: groups to this sport because it's so fun and people
Speaker 1: are like, holy count, I'm seeing the next show, but
Speaker 1: we want bar but Laura's mom to go fuck yeah.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that bar may know. So the
Speaker 1: other piece of it is, like you asked to the audiences,
Speaker 1: and I think the audience is people who are passionate
Speaker 1: about things and that that sense of like they are enthusiasts.
Speaker 1: And I bet that Barb has, like she has some
Speaker 1: deep knowledge of some aspect of her world and her community.
Speaker 1: There's somebody who's history she knows, or some place that
Speaker 1: she knows just intimately. And as much as we are
Speaker 1: about people traveling to the farthest flung and like having
Speaker 1: some like distant remote experience, where also about people like
Speaker 1: connecting deeply to any place, like you can connect deeply
Speaker 1: to the place that I think fingers right now, because
Speaker 1: that right there, to me, brands local communities and making
Speaker 1: people have a sense of life and a sense of
Speaker 1: like excitement, pride and pride and pride it is pride
Speaker 1: right that they didn't know even existed. That to me
Speaker 1: is like amazingly exciting. So let's pivot into David plots
Speaker 1: the podcaster, and I just call you Platsy, one of
Speaker 1: many nicknames, that's the least awful that um, and talk
Speaker 1: to us a little bit about eleven years in the
Speaker 1: making as a podcaster, what you've seen this industry become,
Speaker 1: and what you're excited about or not excited about. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm incredibly excited about. I love podcasting. I just love it.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things. When I was at Slate
Speaker 1: Andy Bowers, who you guys know and work with, and
Speaker 1: Andy created this podcasting world and Slate no one knew
Speaker 1: what podcasting was. I mean, it was literally the year
Speaker 1: that podcasting was invented, and Andy saying, this is the future.
Speaker 1: You've got to try this, and we didn't know. We're like, sure, whatever, Andy, Yeah, fine, yeah,
Speaker 1: but he was so absolutely right and prophetic about it,
Speaker 1: and and so um to me. Uh, what I love
Speaker 1: and what I think is is profound about it is
Speaker 1: that it is the most intimate medium. It is medium
Speaker 1: where you when you hear someone's voice in your ears,
Speaker 1: and when you hear someone's voice in your earbuds. It's
Speaker 1: not even ambiently like like when you listen to the radio.
Speaker 1: It tends to be sort of ambient around you. But
Speaker 1: the earbuds. First of all, you've made an explicit choice
Speaker 1: to listen, Like you can't not opt into a podcast,
Speaker 1: you have opted to listen to it. And with the
Speaker 1: plotsy voice, I mean, how could you not actually just
Speaker 1: mee me, want to go like um, And then it's
Speaker 1: and it's right in your ears, and so it creates
Speaker 1: this intimacy. And television is a distancing medium. Print you
Speaker 1: don't make this human connection with people, um, because it's
Speaker 1: whoever writes it. It's like just you know whatever. And
Speaker 1: digital is digital is ephemera, Digital is flashing across right
Speaker 1: so quickly. Podcasting is unbelievably intimate, and therefore you have
Speaker 1: human connections with people. I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: starting to happen to you guys yet, but you're going
Speaker 1: to meet people who know you because they listen to
Speaker 1: you and they hear your voice, and they'll hear you
Speaker 1: and they'll be like it's Laura, and not because you
Speaker 1: know anything about them, but they know you and they've
Speaker 1: connected to you, and that is a powerful connection. That's
Speaker 1: why the ad rates are so high. Can I ask you?
Speaker 1: Can we ask you one last thing? So we have
Speaker 1: this thing, this series, and this was actually a piece
Speaker 1: of your advice. And after we talked, I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, Laura, we got to bring it back.
Speaker 1: So there's this Have you ever heard of the game?
Speaker 1: I feel like you're too in a lex Mary kill?
Speaker 1: Yeah kidd fuck Mary? But yeah, um we like, yeah,
Speaker 1: just a tongue. Oh it's fun Mary kill? Maybe Cam?
Speaker 1: Is it fuck? I am well? Cam says fun Mary kile,
Speaker 1: We say Mary, And that's our show. So it's my
Speaker 1: wife and I played an hour long game of the
Speaker 1: other name. We were walking We're going to a concert.
Speaker 1: We were walking to a concert. We're just like, it
Speaker 1: was so much fun. Okay, so we're going to do
Speaker 1: that though for marketing brands, technology media with you. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it's kill. What would you kill? What would you
Speaker 1: just get rid of? What would you strike from the earth?
Speaker 1: David Blotts, what would you do yourself? Right? And what
Speaker 1: would you buy? I mean I would definitely kill Facebook.
Speaker 1: Definitely Facebook was dead. When we've talked a lot on
Speaker 1: this podcast about sort of real experiences, I think Facebook
Speaker 1: is the champion of separating you from real experience, that
Speaker 1: creates pretend experience when where there should be real experience,
Speaker 1: and it also has had this dire effect I think
Speaker 1: on journalism and media. Okay, I buy that, all right?
Speaker 1: What would I buy? Would I buy? I would buy? Uh?
Speaker 1: This American life. I think that's American life does what
Speaker 1: it does better than anything it has created. We are
Speaker 1: all children of this American life in the way that
Speaker 1: we're almost children or nothing else. I think it's it's
Speaker 1: created how we do stories, how we think about stories,
Speaker 1: how we listen to stories, more than anything. So I
Speaker 1: would agree with that's a enough answer, and would agree
Speaker 1: with you. And I think a call plots if if
Speaker 1: you want to make a deal, and then he could
Speaker 1: buy me actually, and then what what would I do?
Speaker 1: What would do yourself? Yourself? Because I would do it better?
Speaker 1: Is um American soccer? Like, I'm a huge soccer fan.
Speaker 1: So disappointed you just hit You just hit a pash
Speaker 1: point of miss lor Charanti over here. I played soccer
Speaker 1: at American University, always an eagle. What would you do
Speaker 1: differently about American soccer? Well, it's just there's a huge
Speaker 1: fan base, there's a huge participation, there's an enormous love
Speaker 1: for the game, and yet the quality of the league
Speaker 1: and of the national of the MLS and of the
Speaker 1: national team continues to be low. I think that is
Speaker 1: a huge issue with the MLS organization. You have a
Speaker 1: Hispanic Lettie community that turns out for UM international games
Speaker 1: more than they do their own home team. The league
Speaker 1: does not understand how to put the right folks in
Speaker 1: marketing in these pockets of communities that truly understand them.
Speaker 1: So I could go on about that I learned, but um, anyway,
Speaker 1: David Plots, thank you for coming. Thank you. If you
Speaker 1: haven't already, please go check out Atlas Obscura. We're expecting
Speaker 1: a lot from Alice Obscure. I hope you know. I
Speaker 1: mean I saw you break out the iPhone with some
Speaker 1: ideas that we wrote down. We want to come and
Speaker 1: and see these happen. So, David, how can people get
Speaker 1: in touch with you if they have more interesting experiences
Speaker 1: or ideas they want to share with us? Well, I'm
Speaker 1: on Twitter at David Plots and I'm also David at
Speaker 1: Atlas obscura dot com. Awesome, David Plots, everyone, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Thank you guys. Um that wraps this week's
Speaker 1: episode of Atlandia. A few people we need to thank
Speaker 1: Cameron Drews, our producer Laura Mayer, Mett Turk, Andy Bowers,
Speaker 1: and our team at Panoply. Thanks very much. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Tweet us at at Landia Podcast, Like us, leave of
Speaker 1: us a review, send us your thoughts. We'll be back
Speaker 1: in two weeks with another episode. Full disclosure. Our opinions
Speaker 1: are our own. H