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Speaker 1: Who Zone media. What if I told you that at

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Speaker 1: one point in time, Warner Brothers was paying young comedians

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Speaker 1: to lock themselves in a room on a live stream

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Speaker 1: for twelve hours, take so many edibles they ended up

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Speaker 1: in the hospital, and get colonics on screen, all in

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Speaker 1: the pursuit of creating a viral video. Because, my friends,

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Speaker 1: that was true. I was there. I was the girl

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Speaker 1: that got the kolonic. Because for as long as videos

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Speaker 1: have existed on the Internet, even before the very first

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Speaker 1: YouTube video.

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Speaker 2: All right, so here we are one of the elephants.

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Speaker 1: And cool thing what these guys is that they have really, really,

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Speaker 1: really long promises. Shout out to the cinematic classic me

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Speaker 1: at the Zoo. Since the dawn of the online video,

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Speaker 1: there has been cursed video content, and every era of

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Speaker 1: cursed video content has its own flavor. The time I'm

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Speaker 1: talking my trash is from the late twenty tens, a

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Speaker 1: little after BuzzFeed pioneered the underpay a twenty something comedian

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Speaker 1: to react to something on screen. This is the tried

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Speaker 1: and true Disney Princess reaction format. I know that it's

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Speaker 1: pretty ridiculous to blame Disney for people's body image issues,

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Speaker 1: but when you think about it, it isn't that crazy.

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Speaker 1: And my time came shortly after Vine, the six second

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Speaker 1: video app that becomes extremely relevant in today's episode extremely soon.

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Speaker 1: The late twenty tens curse content comes shortly before the

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Speaker 1: true explosion of TikTok. These few years of videos were

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Speaker 1: often bankrolled by huge companies in a too late attempt

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Speaker 1: to meaningfully get in on the money to be had

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Speaker 1: in online video, specifically on YouTube and weird as it

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Speaker 1: might sound now, video on Facebook. These videos were professionally

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Speaker 1: shot and edited, but were so low budget and made

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Speaker 1: with mostly untested talent that they sort of looked like

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Speaker 1: diet versions of content that existed on TV already, if

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Speaker 1: you only cooked a TV show in the microwave halfway.

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Speaker 1: There were a lot of models like this. There were

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Speaker 1: companies like Mike and Weiss, which funded short documentaries that

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Speaker 1: boiled down to, Hey, this person don't belong in this place,

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Speaker 1: no shade. I did a million things like this, And

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Speaker 1: there were places like where I worked at a vertical

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Speaker 1: called super Deluxe, where I co hosted a show called Upgraded,

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Speaker 1: where my co host and I would get the most

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Speaker 1: disgusting and controversial beauty treatments in la on screen and

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Speaker 1: just see if they killed us, And they almost did.

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Speaker 1: I once had to tape a diaper to my torso

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Speaker 1: for three days while waiting for my blood to clot

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Speaker 1: after a woman who was not a doctor put leeches

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Speaker 1: all over my body in a basement in Brentwood. I

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Speaker 1: was paid seventy five dollars to do this before taxes.

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Speaker 1: How many leeches are in my bellet button right now?

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Speaker 1: Only one? Just one. They're going to town.

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Speaker 2: They will improve circulation to the tissue.

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Speaker 1: But it was fun, it was messy. It was just

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Speaker 1: professional enough to make it clear that there was a crew,

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Speaker 1: but not professional enough to make it feel like it

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Speaker 1: belonged anywhere except on the Internet. It's not every day

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Speaker 1: that you're discovered eating dog food on stage at a

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Speaker 1: stand up show. And I then offered a job making

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Speaker 1: videos that got millions of views, except okay, did they

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Speaker 1: get millions of views? The jury's kind of out on that, because,

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Speaker 1: at least on Facebook, the answer was absolutely not. The

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Speaker 1: view numbers on this and most videos turned out to

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Speaker 1: be pretty fake. But by the time that information became

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Speaker 1: public knowledge, it was already too late. We had already

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Speaker 1: and I can feel the throats of thousands of laid

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Speaker 1: off millennial journalists catching we had already pivoted to video.

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Speaker 2: Hey, I have an idea, Yeah, hit me with it, Tony,

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Speaker 2: how about.

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Speaker 1: If we pivot to video? That was Tony Hawk For

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Speaker 1: some reason, the pivot to video. God balk, the pivot

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Speaker 1: to video. Anyone working in media during this stretch of

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Speaker 1: years was furious at the pivot to video. CenTra reviled

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Speaker 1: era of the Internet that it has its own Wikipedia page.

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Speaker 1: The pivot to video is expanded on in gruesome detail

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Speaker 1: in front of the show Max Fisher's book The Chaos Machine,

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Speaker 1: But it boils down to this. In twenty fifteen, Facebook

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Speaker 1: made the claim that video was the future and that

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Speaker 1: the majority of content that did well on the site

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Speaker 1: were no longer the linked pieces and photos that the

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Speaker 1: platform was known for at the time. Advertisers being advertisers

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Speaker 1: and the media landscape being on pretty thin ice, people listened.

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Speaker 1: So by twenty sixteen, every Facebook executive was leading with

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Speaker 1: video that spring college pervert turned adult milk cart and

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Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg told BuzzFeed News the following.

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Speaker 3: We're entering this new golden age of video. I wouldn't

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Speaker 3: be surprised if you fast forward five years, and most

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Speaker 3: of the content that people see on Facebook and are

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Speaker 3: sharing on a day to day basis is video.

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Speaker 1: And particularly at this time, Facebook is the biggest game

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Speaker 1: in town. So advertisers took this very serio, and it

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Speaker 1: led to big media companies like Vice, Mashable, and Mike

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Speaker 1: to lay off journalists and their editors to make way

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Speaker 1: for this pivot to video right at a moment when

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Speaker 1: reliable journalism was needed on social media the most. Maybe

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Speaker 1: you remember there was an election in twenty sixteen that

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Speaker 1: really could have used some reliable journalism. And what's worse,

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Speaker 1: all of these journalists lost their job for no reason

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Speaker 1: because drumroll please, the pivot to video was based on

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Speaker 1: a lie. What Mark Zuckerberg was saying there was not true.

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Speaker 1: Facebook was lying. Can you believe it? But at this

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Speaker 1: time Facebook lying was a bit of a shock to

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Speaker 1: the average user. In twenty sixteen, a lot of people

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Speaker 1: still thought that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg were cool.

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Speaker 1: It's embarrassing, but I refuse to let my generation forget.

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Speaker 1: So the year after, Zuckerberg says everyone's watching video. Five

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Speaker 1: years until we're only doing video Suzan Bronica at The

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Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook had been overestimating their

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Speaker 1: video numbers for the better part of two years, and

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Speaker 1: Facebook was forced to fess up to this. They admitted

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Speaker 1: in a public post from Vice president of Business and

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Speaker 1: Marketing David Fisher that they'd been lying about viewership times

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Speaker 1: by as much as sixty to eighty percent. But okay,

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Speaker 1: they admitted it. Problems solved right, Well, no, because even

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Speaker 1: in their admission, Facebook is still lying. In twenty sixteen,

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Speaker 1: Facebook says oops are bad and the media doesn't really

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Speaker 1: panic in the way you might expect. So the pivot

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Speaker 1: to video chugs along through twenty seventeen. Because advertisers were

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Speaker 1: assured the glitch was fixed. Major publishers like The Washington Post,

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Speaker 1: Vanity Fair, and Sports Illustrated all start foregoing articles and

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Speaker 1: turning them into cheap video content instead. Some were as

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Speaker 1: basic as animated slide shows that summarized more detailed reporting.

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Speaker 1: Fox Sports and MTV News nuked their entire writing teams,

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Speaker 1: and this was an extension of the slow and painful

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Speaker 1: decline of well funded American journalism, a problem that has

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Speaker 1: only continued to grow. Works. I'm sorry Amazon owns your

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Speaker 1: unbiased newspaper. You're listening to a show on iHeartRadio. But

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Speaker 1: nothing really reaches ahead until twenty eighteen, when evidence is

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Speaker 1: released in court that all but confirms that Facebook was

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Speaker 1: knowingly lying to advertisers, impacting the state of journalism online

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Speaker 1: on purpose. Now the public gets mad. The video viewership

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Speaker 1: numbers were juiced, and the pivot to video served no

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Speaker 1: one including Facebook, and so my era of trash videos online,

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Speaker 1: this corporate sponsored video starts to go away as it

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Speaker 1: slowly becomes clear that Facebook hadn't just found out about

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Speaker 1: this problem, but likely we're aware of it back when

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Speaker 1: Zuckerberg made the original five years to video comments. But

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Speaker 1: it's cold comfort. By the time Facebook is caught red handed,

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Speaker 1: the newsroom layoffs have already happened. The video revenue streams

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Speaker 1: that had been put in their place were forced to

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Speaker 1: struggle with the new reality that well, maybe not a

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Speaker 1: lot of people were actually watching our videos. Media companies

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Speaker 1: started to close. It's overly simplistic to say that this

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Speaker 1: lie lost journalists their jobs so that I could get

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Speaker 1: paid seventy five dollars to have bull seam and squeezed

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Speaker 1: on my face to see if it hurt, but unfortunately

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Speaker 1: it's pretty close to the truth. The video vertical I

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Speaker 1: worked at was shut down after a corporate merger between

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Speaker 1: Warner Brothers and AT and T. But what pivot to

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Speaker 1: video came to mean was a company's last ditch effort

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Speaker 1: at survival based on faulty Silicon Valley info before leaning

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Speaker 1: into layoffs. It was over whatever it was, and during

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Speaker 1: this same strange post vine pre COVID era of video,

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Speaker 1: one of the most successful flash in the pan video

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Speaker 1: apps rose and fell. I'm talking about HQ Trivia. Now

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Speaker 1: you either just gasped in recognition or were like, huh,

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Speaker 1: I've never heard of it. I truly have not encountered

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Speaker 1: an in between reaction to HQ Trivia. If you didn't know,

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Speaker 1: HQ Trivia was an interactive video trivia game made by

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Speaker 1: the guys who founded and subsequently fumbled Fine, an app

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Speaker 1: that caused millions of users to stop what they were

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Speaker 1: doing and watch as host Scott Ragowski, who called himself

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Speaker 1: quiz Daddy, ask five questions.

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Speaker 2: Is this your first time stepping into the ring with

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Speaker 2: us at HQ? I want to be a good, clean fight,

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Speaker 2: all right, nothing below the belt. Also, wash your hands seriously.

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Speaker 2: All right, let's go over the rules. I'm gonna have

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Speaker 2: twelve questions for you. You have three options for each question.

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Speaker 2: You have ten seconds to answer the question after I

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Speaker 2: start reading the question. If you get that question right,

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Speaker 2: you one in the next round. Make it to the end.

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Speaker 2: Answering all questions correctly, you win or split the prize.

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Speaker 1: And if you got them right, you could win an

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Speaker 1: actual cash prize, though that prize was usually pretty small.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't about the money. It was the rare piece

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Speaker 1: of video content that was actually interactive and fun. People

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Speaker 1: freaked out over this. Here's a video of a woman

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Speaker 1: winning eleven dollars on HQ Trivia in January twenty eighteen.

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Speaker 1: This young woman is going bananas. Thirty two year old

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Speaker 1: Lawn Nay just won a trivia game on her iPhone

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Speaker 1: and HQ is often lumped in with this era of

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Speaker 1: fancily bankrolled, semi professional looking video entertainment in the back

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Speaker 1: half of the twenty tens. It was massively popular, and

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Speaker 1: like most of the other video efforts, I described that

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Speaker 1: Crater during the pivot to video had sputtered into oblivion

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Speaker 1: by the time COVID Lockdown began in the spring of

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty. But is it really fair to lump in

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Speaker 1: HQ Trivia with this? Were they really a casualty of

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Speaker 1: things like the algorithm, massive corporate shakedowns, and the fleeting

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Speaker 1: interests of Internet users. Honestly, it's far messier than that.

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Speaker 1: When you peel back the layers, HQ Trivia was run chaotically,

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Speaker 1: had a strop fickly badly, leaving employees and fans to

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Speaker 1: mourn what many of them still think could have been

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Speaker 1: the twenty first centuries Jeopardy. And no one feels this

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Speaker 1: more strongly than quiz Daddy himself, Scott Gragowski, HQ Trivia

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Speaker 1: and the quiz Daddy. Your sixteenth minute starts now six

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Speaker 1: All right, ancient Internet users, we did it. We found

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Speaker 1: a way to talk about Vine, an app that burned

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Speaker 1: so briefly and beautifully that most people still remember it fondly.

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Speaker 1: It never even had a chance to get evil. To

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Speaker 1: this day, when I'm having a shitty day, I will

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Speaker 1: sometimes turn on an old Vine compilation at my apartment.

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Speaker 1: It's like a millennial yule log. And like any video platform,

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Speaker 1: Vine became a home for some of the most rancid

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Speaker 1: video comedy you can think of. But it was also

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Speaker 1: the home of some of my favorite clips of all time,

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Speaker 1: stories I want to cover on this show. And they

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Speaker 1: were roommates.

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Speaker 2: My god, they were roommates.

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Speaker 1: Dream episode. Please dm me. Vine was around for almost

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Speaker 1: exactly four years, twenty thirteen to twenty seventeen, and the

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Speaker 1: app where users posted six second video clips, ended up

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Speaker 1: launching social media personalities and genuine crossover successes who are

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Speaker 1: well known today whether we like it or not. On

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Speaker 1: the chaotic evil side, Vine launched the Paul Brothers and

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Speaker 1: David Dobrick, and on the fun side, my friend Demia Diguebay,

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Speaker 1: one of the funniest people on the planet. Vine launched

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Speaker 1: now iconic YouTubers whose work I love like Drew Gooden,

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Speaker 1: Danny Gonzalez, Liza Koshi. Also, Sean Mendez got his start

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Speaker 1: on Vine. I feel like he wants us to forget that,

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Speaker 1: but we can't. But one of the things Vin didn't

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Speaker 1: do well is make their most famous users loyal to

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Speaker 1: the app. In fact, as a chapter of Taylor Lorenzo's

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Speaker 1: Extremely Online Gets Into Vine was often openly hostile to

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Speaker 1: its biggest creators, and so many found it a no

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Speaker 1: brainer to jump ship to platforms more willing to embrace

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Speaker 1: and fairly compensate them. And the story of Vine is

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Speaker 1: worthy of its own episode of sixteenth Minute because even

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Speaker 1: though it was only around for four years, it has

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Speaker 1: a massive impact on what social media looks like right now.

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Speaker 1: We wouldn't have TikTok without Vine, we wouldn't have Reels

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Speaker 1: without Vine. But for the purposes of this episode, here's

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Speaker 1: what you need to know. Vine launch huge personalities who

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Speaker 1: went on to have more success on other platforms, and

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Speaker 1: Vine was only around for such a short time because

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Speaker 1: its founders, a guy named Dom Hoffman and the two

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Speaker 1: guys who would go on to found HQ, russ Usopov

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Speaker 1: and Colin Kroll, had sold the app to Twitter before

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Speaker 1: its launch, and Twitter ran it into the ground through

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Speaker 1: a bunch of terrible, short sighted management choices, and the

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Speaker 1: founders of Vin were pissed about this. Yusupov posted on

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Speaker 1: Twitter in October twenty sixteen after Vine was announced to

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Speaker 1: be shutting.

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Speaker 3: Down, don't sell your company.

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Speaker 1: Not bad advice, But the thing is, no one really

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Speaker 1: knows who russ Usupov is. The founders of Vine have

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Speaker 1: made this wildly successful social media platform and they fit

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Speaker 1: the bill of the Silicon Valley prototype. They're white, they're young,

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Speaker 1: they allegedly harassed women at work, but they don't get

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Speaker 1: the Zuckerberg jobs or Jack Dorsey treatment. Hell, they don't

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Speaker 1: even get the Tom from MySpace treatment. What people remembered

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Speaker 1: about Vine were the celebrity users, not the founder. So

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Speaker 1: when Vine ended, it was a sad day on the Internet.

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Speaker 1: But its biggest stars didn't really need Vine by then,

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Speaker 1: and they certainly didn't need to be associated with the

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Speaker 1: likes of Yusupov and Kroll. So what are we gonna

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Speaker 1: do next? Enter HQ trivia. Come with me if you

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Speaker 1: will to twenty seventeen. Twenty seventeen the year Russian bots

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Speaker 1: are revealed to have helped elect an American fascist, the

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Speaker 1: year the Me Too movement began, the year I embarrassingly

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Speaker 1: have sex with two mics and two Joshes. And it's

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Speaker 1: the year that HQ Trivia becomes a global sensation. And

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Speaker 1: for this section, I just want to quickly shout out

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Speaker 1: the twenty twenty podcast Boombust from the ringer and reporter

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Speaker 1: Alyssa Beresnak, who covered the rise and fall of HQ

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Speaker 1: in extreme detail. After Vine folds, the founders move on.

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Speaker 1: Tom Hoffman goes off to start a new video app

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Speaker 1: called BTE, and Russ Usopov and Colin Kroll decide to

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Speaker 1: stick together and found HQ Trivia in August twenty sixteen,

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Speaker 1: a few months before Vine is abruptly killed off and

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Speaker 1: HQ is initially launched as a spinoff of an interactive

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Speaker 1: video platform the two had made called Hype. Interactive Trivia

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Speaker 1: had become popular among Hype users, and Russ Usopov was

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Speaker 1: the original host. When they decided to pivot to trivia entirely,

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Speaker 1: Russ was out and they hired a professional. Remember that,

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Speaker 1: and like a lot of memorable tech Bro partnerships, Usopov

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Speaker 1: and Kroll were opposites in personality. Usopov was the charmer,

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Speaker 1: the guy who talks, and Kroll was the tech wizard

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Speaker 1: less concerned with the spotlight. The first game of HQ

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Speaker 1: went into beta a few months after Vine's demise. They

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Speaker 1: were shot live in New York and were hosted by

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Speaker 1: I'm Your.

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Speaker 2: Host, Doctor Quiz Medicine Woman, The Quizard of Waverley Place,

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Speaker 2: Scott Ragowski.

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Speaker 1: Scott Rogowski. From day one, Scott was a stand up

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Speaker 1: in New York who was far from a household name,

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Speaker 1: meaning that when you thought of Scott, you thought of

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Speaker 1: HQ trivia. There were always a lot of rotating hosts

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Speaker 1: like Sarah Pribus, Sharon Carpenter, Matt Richards, and Lauren Gambino,

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Speaker 1: but from moment one, Scott was the HQ guy. Broadcasts

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Speaker 1: were around fifteen minutes at nine every night, and outside

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Speaker 1: of the trivia questions, the host would completely improvise, and

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Speaker 1: when you were watching Scott, the puns were coming hard

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Speaker 1: and fast. My God, the puns.

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Speaker 2: I'm your host with the toasted raviolis. Shout out to

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Speaker 2: my Saint Ludatics, Regis Trilban, Pat Slayjack, the Woke Woolery,

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Speaker 2: the Musugar of Martindale, Rich Homie Dawson, Host Malone, the

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Speaker 2: Bad and Boogie Barker, The Trap, Trebek, Scott Ragowski.

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Speaker 1: People loved the app and in the fall of twenty seventeen,

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Speaker 1: the audience grew very quickly. By early twenty eighteen, over

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Speaker 1: a million people were watching on any given night. It

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Speaker 1: was becoming a cultural force. I remember people watching it.

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Speaker 1: Everyone would stop everything to play HQ. I brought my

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Speaker 1: friend's birthday party to a screeching halt to have people

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Speaker 1: will recall I don't know if I would set an

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Speaker 1: alarm for six o'clock or if we would just be like.

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Speaker 2: Watching work and everyone would get kind of quiet.

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Speaker 1: The one time that the answer was burg nest soup,

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Speaker 1: because then the next day they were going to get

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Speaker 1: referencing and now I know how that's old. And the

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Speaker 1: community aspect was part of what made HQ unique. It

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Speaker 1: was the rare app that actually brought people physically together.

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Speaker 1: If you were playing HQ and a work friend was

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Speaker 1: sitting next to you, all of a sudden they were

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Speaker 1: playing HQ. The word of mouth moved very quickly and

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Speaker 1: Scott quickly becomes a major part of the app's appeal,

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Speaker 1: along with the intermittent tech glitches that were very annoying,

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Speaker 1: but also supported this idea that this was a scrappy

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Speaker 1: app on the come up, and so of course people

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Speaker 1: wanted to talk to Scott. If there was ever a

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Speaker 1: person to write a puff piece on, it was this guy.

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Speaker 1: And so who does friend of the show and character

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Speaker 1: in just about every story we've covered so far, Taylor Lorenz.

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Speaker 1: She reaches out to Scott in November twenty seventeen to

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Speaker 1: see if she could write a short piece about his

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Speaker 1: background and feelings on the success of the app, and

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Speaker 1: he said yes. They did the interview, Taylor sent russ

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Speaker 1: Usapov a few follow up questions, and then things get

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Speaker 1: really fucking weird because the title of Taylor's piece isn't

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Speaker 1: local comic becomes household name. The title of the piece.

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Speaker 3: Is CEO of HQ, the hottest app going. If you

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Speaker 3: run this profile, we'll fire our host.

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Speaker 1: Okay. So this is where, by most accounts, russ Yusupov's

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Speaker 1: ego enters the chat in a major way. In Boombust,

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Speaker 1: as well as the twenty twenty three documentary by Selena

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Speaker 1: Coroma called Glitch The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia,

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00:19:47,080 --> 00:19:51,200
Speaker 1: many former HQ employees imply or just say that russ

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Speaker 1: was jealous of Scott Ragowski's centering in this narrative and

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Speaker 1: speculate that he regretted ever having given up the hosting

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Speaker 1: gig himself. After all, this is the guy whose last

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Speaker 1: successful app made a lot of users household names. Employees

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00:20:06,480 --> 00:20:09,359
Speaker 1: have implied that he was determined to not let this

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Speaker 1: happen with Scott. Well, let's just read from the article.

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Speaker 3: Usopov, the CEO of HQ, called the reporter's cell phone

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Speaker 3: and immediately raised his voice. He said that we were

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Speaker 3: quote completely unauthorized end quote to write about Scott or

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Speaker 3: HQ without his approval, and that if we wrote any

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Speaker 3: type of piece about Scott, he would lose his job.

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Speaker 3: Usopov continued to threaten Scott's job even after The Daily

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Speaker 3: Beast explained that the story was framed around Scott's daily

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Speaker 3: life and that he revealed no corporate information. Quote you're

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Speaker 3: putting Scott's job in jeopardy? Is that what you want?

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Speaker 3: Scott could lose his job.

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Speaker 1: I cannot trace the logic of why he would do this.

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Speaker 1: In my mind, it has to be an ego thing,

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Speaker 1: because what are you doing. You can't do that. You

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Speaker 1: don't own the Daily Beast. They'll just publish that man,

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Speaker 1: But for some reason, he does. And it gets more

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Speaker 1: bizarre from there.

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Speaker 3: From the article, when the Daily Beast read Usopov a

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Speaker 3: quote from Ragowski saying, quote, I can make people happy

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Speaker 3: and give them the trivia they so desperately love and want.

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Speaker 3: It's been so great to build this community end quote.

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Speaker 3: Yusopov implored the reporter to take that out. Asked for clarification,

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Speaker 3: yusopop replied that Ragowski was absolutely not allowed to say

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Speaker 3: that he quote enjoys making people happy and giving them

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Speaker 3: the trivia they want end quote, and.

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Speaker 1: At the time everyone's favorite moment in this unhinged.

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Speaker 3: Interview, Yusupov's objections began with the line quote Scott said

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Speaker 3: that despite the attention, he's still able to walk down

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Speaker 3: the street and order his favorite salad from Sweet Green.

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Speaker 2: Without being accosted end quote.

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Speaker 3: He cannot say that, Usupov shouted, we do not have

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Speaker 3: a brand deal with Sweet Green. Under no circumstances can

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Speaker 3: he say that.

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Speaker 1: You won't believe this, but this article was pretty bad

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Speaker 1: for HQ's public image because whether russ Usopov liked it

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Speaker 1: or not, HQ players, we're very attached to Scott Ragowski

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Speaker 1: and we're now worried that he was hosting with a

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Speaker 1: gun to his head. He wasn't allowed to say he

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Speaker 1: liked salad or his job. This story went viral and

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Speaker 1: caused a lot of internal discord and a need for

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Speaker 1: pr cleanup at HQ. Hashtag free Scott began taking off

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Speaker 1: on Twitter as parasocial. Scott fans asked is he good,

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Speaker 1: particularly because Taylor Lorenzo's piece ends with a follow up

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Speaker 1: comment from Russuzopov after he is informed that his threats

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Speaker 1: would be included in the article.

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Speaker 3: Well, my feeling was that it was unethical and that

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Speaker 3: you were compromising the app Yusupov said to Gragowski while

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Speaker 3: on the phone with The Daily Beast. Now they want

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Speaker 3: to reframe the story. Is me threatening to fire you?

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Speaker 3: Do you think that's a good idea?

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Speaker 1: This puts additional pressure on Scott to perform in order

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Speaker 1: to keep his job. It is a weird day online,

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00:22:53,800 --> 00:22:57,119
Speaker 1: but as always, Scott goes live on HQ Trivia the

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Speaker 1: night The article set the Internet on fire back in

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Speaker 1: November twenty seventeen.

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Speaker 2: Technical difficulties about sums things up and I mean everything.

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Speaker 2: But here I am hello, Hi Scott. Nice to be

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Speaker 2: here having a totally normal Tuesday, completely average day, nothing

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Speaker 2: going on. Look, we are all good here at HQHQ.

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Speaker 2: How are things in your neck of the woods? Name

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Speaker 2: of the way? Huh?

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Speaker 1: But HQ gets out of this unscathed and they semi

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Speaker 1: successfully manage this PR crisis. Yuzubov apologizes to Taylor Lorenz

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Speaker 1: talking it up to being stressed. He tweets at.

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Speaker 3: Her question, who's a cliche stressed out startup founder? Answer me,

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Speaker 3: sorry for being a jerk lunch sometime.

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Speaker 1: Yuck, I hate it. Yuzubov also takes a selfie of

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Speaker 1: him and Scott Ragowski at a sweet Green, but the

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00:23:53,520 --> 00:23:57,359
Speaker 1: hostage vibes have already been established. But none of this

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00:23:57,400 --> 00:24:00,520
Speaker 1: slows HQ down even a mid tech issues. The app

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00:24:00,560 --> 00:24:04,560
Speaker 1: continues to grow along with Scott Rogowski's profile. At the

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Speaker 1: end of the year, around half a million people played

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Speaker 1: a massively successful, massively glitchy New Year's Eve game, and

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Speaker 1: while employee treatment was a question, Scott seemed to be

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Speaker 1: having a great time. When Yusupov and Kroll approved. He

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Speaker 1: did media appearances like New Year's Rock and Eve and

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Speaker 1: co hosted HQ with celebrity guests including Dwayne Johnson.

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Speaker 3: Scott, Hey, man, I'm trying to do the thing here.

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Speaker 2: Hold on, yeah, listen, it's great to have you here.

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00:24:30,440 --> 00:24:35,880
Speaker 2: But we're live. Yeah, we're live. Y know. H is live.

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Speaker 2: HQ is always live, no takes, no redos. Look, I

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Speaker 2: get it, you're not.

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Speaker 1: Used to this sort of thing.

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Speaker 2: Wow, Okay, this is like my regular gig. So maybe

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Speaker 2: I gave you some pointers?

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Speaker 1: How about that?

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00:24:45,760 --> 00:24:47,280
Speaker 2: Okay, I would love some pointers. Yes.

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Speaker 1: The success of HQ rolls into twenty eighteen, with more

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Speaker 1: and more ad partnerships and international verticals being launched. All

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Speaker 1: of a sudden, there's HQ Australia, HQUK, HQ Germany, as

431
00:24:59,359 --> 00:25:02,720
Speaker 1: well as addition programs on the app. HQ after Dark

432
00:25:02,800 --> 00:25:06,280
Speaker 1: aired later and you could swear there was HQ Sports,

433
00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:11,960
Speaker 1: HQ Words, HQ jokes, partnerships with big companies like Nike, Wendy's,

434
00:25:12,040 --> 00:25:14,720
Speaker 1: and the crimes of Grindle Walt I don't know. It

435
00:25:14,760 --> 00:25:18,240
Speaker 1: was twenty eighteen and the app peaked in March, when

436
00:25:18,320 --> 00:25:21,720
Speaker 1: nearly two and a half million players were on at once,

437
00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:25,640
Speaker 1: But the problems that haunted HQ from the beginning remained

438
00:25:26,040 --> 00:25:28,920
Speaker 1: even with the huge popularity of the app. Money flow

439
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:31,960
Speaker 1: remained an issue as player numbers increased, and there were

440
00:25:31,960 --> 00:25:36,400
Speaker 1: frequent controversies with payouts. HQ was having trouble raising additional

441
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:40,520
Speaker 1: money from venture capitalists, and this confused tech writer Kurt Wagner.

442
00:25:40,800 --> 00:25:43,400
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't vcs want in on one of the fastest

443
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:46,439
Speaker 1: growing apps in the world. After doing some digging, the

444
00:25:46,480 --> 00:25:50,840
Speaker 1: answer appeared to be russ Yusupov and Colin Kroll's reputations

445
00:25:51,080 --> 00:25:54,280
Speaker 1: as the Sweet Green incident betrayed. Yusupov had an ego

446
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:58,160
Speaker 1: and Kroll had been accused of sexual harassment while working

447
00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:02,280
Speaker 1: for Twitter. Kurt Wagner published piece expanding on this in Recode,

448
00:26:02,320 --> 00:26:06,680
Speaker 1: and Colin Kroll became the liability. He assured his coworkers

449
00:26:06,680 --> 00:26:09,439
Speaker 1: that these allegations were not true and issued a public

450
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:13,440
Speaker 1: statement apologizing to his former Twitter coworkers. But it affected

451
00:26:13,440 --> 00:26:16,320
Speaker 1: how he was perceived in the workplace, and it affected

452
00:26:16,359 --> 00:26:19,639
Speaker 1: his partnership with usupof And while this rift between the

453
00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:24,160
Speaker 1: founders would remain, HQ did eventually get additional funding from

454
00:26:24,520 --> 00:26:29,080
Speaker 1: Peter Teel Awesome so two and a half million players

455
00:26:29,240 --> 00:26:33,320
Speaker 1: in March twenty eighteen. After this peak of viewership, in March,

456
00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:36,840
Speaker 1: HQ numbers start to decline a little. People were getting

457
00:26:36,840 --> 00:26:40,160
Speaker 1: burnt out, the novelty of the broadcasts were wearing thin,

458
00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:44,879
Speaker 1: and frustrations about payout issues caused many users to bail.

459
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:49,880
Speaker 1: And while Colin Kroll's reputation was a problem, investors mainly

460
00:26:49,920 --> 00:26:53,960
Speaker 1: blamed this on the CEO leadership of russ yusopof whose

461
00:26:54,080 --> 00:26:59,480
Speaker 1: view of h Q Trivia strongly resisted change or collaboration. Eventually,

462
00:26:59,640 --> 00:27:02,240
Speaker 1: the boy voted that Yusupov would need to step down

463
00:27:02,280 --> 00:27:06,359
Speaker 1: as CEO and be replaced by Colin Kroll, and Yusupov

464
00:27:06,720 --> 00:27:11,200
Speaker 1: was hissed. He pitched literally anyone else for this job

465
00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:14,479
Speaker 1: besides Colin Kroll. He was even said to have pitched

466
00:27:14,600 --> 00:27:17,560
Speaker 1: Scott Bragowski at one point and said they could make

467
00:27:17,600 --> 00:27:20,639
Speaker 1: a reality show about Scott as CEO while he learned

468
00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:23,080
Speaker 1: how to do the job in real time. After much

469
00:27:23,080 --> 00:27:26,639
Speaker 1: foot dragging, though, Colin Kroll is made the CEO and

470
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:30,840
Speaker 1: launches a number of new programs as numbers continue to decline.

471
00:27:30,960 --> 00:27:34,200
Speaker 1: By the end of twenty eighteen, HQ was still very

472
00:27:34,280 --> 00:27:36,960
Speaker 1: much a thing, but the founders appeared frustrated by the

473
00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:42,000
Speaker 1: audience reaching critical mass and then tragedy. Colin Kroll was

474
00:27:42,040 --> 00:27:45,119
Speaker 1: discovered dead of an accidental overdose in his apartment in

475
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:49,560
Speaker 1: December twenty eighteen at age thirty four, completely rocking the

476
00:27:49,600 --> 00:27:52,320
Speaker 1: culture of the small company. The app went live that

477
00:27:52,440 --> 00:27:55,679
Speaker 1: evening as planned, but there was no game, just the

478
00:27:55,720 --> 00:27:58,600
Speaker 1: following message from Scott Rogowski with.

479
00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:01,399
Speaker 2: A heavy heart, I must share some tragic news that

480
00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:06,160
Speaker 2: has befallen the HQ family. Our friend and founder, Colin Kroll,

481
00:28:06,240 --> 00:28:09,199
Speaker 2: passed away unexpectedly early this morning at the age of

482
00:28:09,240 --> 00:28:13,520
Speaker 2: thirty four. Colin, or Ck as we called him, was

483
00:28:13,560 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 2: a true visionary who changed the game twice, first with

484
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:20,240
Speaker 2: Vine and then with this very app that you're hearing

485
00:28:20,280 --> 00:28:23,520
Speaker 2: and seeing me through right now. HQ Trivia, the game

486
00:28:23,560 --> 00:28:27,240
Speaker 2: show that you love so much, would not exist.

487
00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:30,800
Speaker 1: It's hard to overstate the impact of this loss. Most

488
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:33,720
Speaker 1: employees didn't know that Colin Kroll had struggled with addiction

489
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:37,040
Speaker 1: and a creative momentum that he'd begun since taking over

490
00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:41,640
Speaker 1: from Yusupov as CEO. Now felt tainted and now there's

491
00:28:41,760 --> 00:28:45,320
Speaker 1: no CEO. So in the middle of navigating the grief

492
00:28:45,360 --> 00:28:49,160
Speaker 1: and magnitude of this loss, russ Yuzapov began to work

493
00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:52,640
Speaker 1: to get the title he had lost back and lingered

494
00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:55,480
Speaker 1: for a long time in the role of interim CEO.

495
00:28:56,040 --> 00:28:59,239
Speaker 1: And at this point Scott Ragowski and many employees at

496
00:28:59,360 --> 00:29:02,640
Speaker 1: HQ were having none of this. As the streams were

497
00:29:02,680 --> 00:29:05,840
Speaker 1: bleeding viewership. They needed someone at the helm that was

498
00:29:05,920 --> 00:29:09,880
Speaker 1: ready to take creative risks, and russ Usopov just wasn't

499
00:29:10,280 --> 00:29:12,800
Speaker 1: Scott Rogowski got so frustrated that at one point he

500
00:29:12,840 --> 00:29:16,080
Speaker 1: attempted to arrange a mutiny and a host strike until

501
00:29:16,160 --> 00:29:20,120
Speaker 1: Yusupov stepped down as CEO. But in the end Yusubov

502
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:23,840
Speaker 1: prevailed and the now severely burned out staff, who were

503
00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:27,959
Speaker 1: still reeling from Colin Kroll's death, started to leave. Scott

504
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:30,280
Speaker 1: took a dream gig hosting a baseball show for a

505
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:33,640
Speaker 1: pivot to video platform called Desown, a job that required

506
00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:37,120
Speaker 1: less days on than the grueling HQ schedule and paid

507
00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:39,640
Speaker 1: him better. He told reus Uapov that he'd like to

508
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:42,880
Speaker 1: stay on board for one HQ broadcast a week, but

509
00:29:43,040 --> 00:29:45,720
Speaker 1: was told no, he was done. He didn't even get

510
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:49,080
Speaker 1: a send off show. This was April twenty nineteen. Scott

511
00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:52,120
Speaker 1: Rogowski was out, and stand up Matt Richards, who had

512
00:29:52,160 --> 00:29:55,160
Speaker 1: been a fill in, became the new permanent host. Scott's

513
00:29:55,160 --> 00:29:58,600
Speaker 1: departure was another pr hit for the company, and HQ

514
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:02,720
Speaker 1: continues into this period of decline. The search for a

515
00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:05,800
Speaker 1: new CEO stalled, and a bunch of last ditch changes

516
00:30:05,840 --> 00:30:08,920
Speaker 1: are made to bail the app out of financial stagnancy.

517
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:14,240
Speaker 1: Prize money is discontinued in favor of nebulous valueless coins.

518
00:30:14,560 --> 00:30:17,960
Speaker 1: The company experiences its first wave of layoffs, and there's

519
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:23,080
Speaker 1: an internal directive to wipe Scott Rogowski's existence from their platforms,

520
00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:25,440
Speaker 1: to the point that his name was banned from their

521
00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:29,520
Speaker 1: comments sections. Things were heading south fast, even as the

522
00:30:29,520 --> 00:30:35,240
Speaker 1: core HQ crowd remained loyal, and then February fourteenth, twenty twenty,

523
00:30:35,560 --> 00:30:39,000
Speaker 1: Kerry Flynn at CNN Business reported that it was game

524
00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:42,640
Speaker 1: over for HQ Trivia and that the last broadcast would

525
00:30:42,680 --> 00:30:45,640
Speaker 1: be that night. And as you may have guessed, the

526
00:30:45,680 --> 00:30:49,640
Speaker 1: employees also found out HQ was folding. The day it happened,

527
00:30:50,040 --> 00:30:53,480
Speaker 1: Good morning, you have no job, and there is infamously

528
00:30:53,920 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 1: one last broadcast. HQ host Matt Richards and Anna Rousman

529
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:01,680
Speaker 1: went live for HQ after dark that night, and it

530
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:03,880
Speaker 1: was well, listen.

531
00:31:06,280 --> 00:31:06,680
Speaker 4: Come.

532
00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:20,280
Speaker 2: To the of the road, they go, is sun too?

533
00:31:21,560 --> 00:31:22,160
Speaker 1: Not gonna lie?

534
00:31:23,360 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 2: This fucking sucks.

535
00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:26,040
Speaker 3: This is the last HQ ever.

536
00:31:27,520 --> 00:31:30,480
Speaker 1: I'm a lot of broom hosts by and this five

537
00:31:30,640 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: dollars prize is coming out of my own pocket.

538
00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:37,000
Speaker 2: We ran out of money. We just kept giving it away.

539
00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:43,280
Speaker 1: Fuck yeah. Not a sober broadcast, but an iconic one

540
00:31:43,680 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 1: like Matt Richards is saying there the two are drinking

541
00:31:46,080 --> 00:31:49,800
Speaker 1: from a gigantic champagne bottle that russ Yusupov had bought

542
00:31:49,840 --> 00:31:53,200
Speaker 1: almost two years earlier to be cracked when the broadcast

543
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:57,600
Speaker 1: reached three million concurrent players, and that never happened, and

544
00:31:57,640 --> 00:32:01,000
Speaker 1: now it was over, and as far as fans were concerned,

545
00:32:01,360 --> 00:32:06,040
Speaker 1: this was it for HQ. Things fluctuated after this. HQ

546
00:32:06,200 --> 00:32:08,160
Speaker 1: would come back for dribs and drabs, but by the

547
00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:11,280
Speaker 1: end of twenty twenty two everything had stopped, and it

548
00:32:11,320 --> 00:32:13,880
Speaker 1: was removed from the App Store in twenty twenty three.

549
00:32:14,160 --> 00:32:15,920
Speaker 1: And it's a real shame, right, I mean, I can't

550
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:18,440
Speaker 1: help but think how comforting games of HQ might have

551
00:32:18,520 --> 00:32:21,400
Speaker 1: been during the pandemic lockdown if they had had the

552
00:32:21,480 --> 00:32:24,400
Speaker 1: runway and the leadership to keep going. But that just

553
00:32:24,440 --> 00:32:29,360
Speaker 1: never happened. HQ remained firmly in the before times, and

554
00:32:29,440 --> 00:32:31,600
Speaker 1: it's easy to claim that the death of this app

555
00:32:31,720 --> 00:32:34,000
Speaker 1: was due to the state of the Internet at the time,

556
00:32:34,320 --> 00:32:37,560
Speaker 1: because there were a lot of similar, high funded video

557
00:32:37,640 --> 00:32:41,120
Speaker 1: content aimed to look good and go viral. Bigger empires

558
00:32:41,160 --> 00:32:45,160
Speaker 1: have fallen over smaller algorithmic tweaks. But the real answer

559
00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 1: as to why things didn't work out for HQ Trivia

560
00:32:48,360 --> 00:32:51,640
Speaker 1: lies somewhere in between. So how should we remember this?

561
00:32:51,920 --> 00:32:55,520
Speaker 1: Seven years later? I went to the source quiz daddy himself.

562
00:32:55,800 --> 00:32:57,920
Speaker 1: When we come back, my dumb ass takes the bus

563
00:32:57,920 --> 00:33:00,080
Speaker 1: all the way to Venice Beach to talk with Scott

564
00:33:00,120 --> 00:33:03,000
Speaker 1: Ragowski on the floor of his storage unit. Never say

565
00:33:03,040 --> 00:33:19,600
Speaker 1: I didn't do anything for you. Welcome back to sixteenth minute.

566
00:33:19,680 --> 00:33:22,920
Speaker 1: Here's my review of Despicable Me four. Why do they

567
00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:26,320
Speaker 1: think I want to see more of Gru's family. There

568
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:28,560
Speaker 1: is no circumstance where I want to see more of

569
00:33:28,600 --> 00:33:31,200
Speaker 1: Gru's family. You want me to get invested in Gru's

570
00:33:31,360 --> 00:33:34,320
Speaker 1: baby son. I have news for you, pal, Gru has

571
00:33:34,400 --> 00:33:38,239
Speaker 1: thirty thousand sons. They're called the Minions, and today we

572
00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:41,280
Speaker 1: are talking about HQ Trivia. A few weeks ago, I

573
00:33:41,280 --> 00:33:43,240
Speaker 1: took a bus down to Marina del Rey, on the

574
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:46,280
Speaker 1: outskirts of Los Angeles, to meet up with the quiz

575
00:33:46,360 --> 00:33:49,800
Speaker 1: daddy himself, Scott Ragowski. He was in town to host

576
00:33:49,840 --> 00:33:53,400
Speaker 1: a slew of shows at VidCon, the annual Anaheim convention

577
00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:56,600
Speaker 1: where the Internet's biggest star is go to meet fans

578
00:33:56,600 --> 00:33:59,400
Speaker 1: and talk about VID. I don't know, I haven't been,

579
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:02,160
Speaker 1: but before Scott left town, he wanted to sort out

580
00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:05,880
Speaker 1: and photograph some of his carefully collected vintage T shirt stock.

581
00:34:06,160 --> 00:34:09,840
Speaker 1: Opposed to his online store, Quiz Daddy's Closet. There was

582
00:34:09,880 --> 00:34:12,480
Speaker 1: actually a brick and mortar location in Santa Monica for

583
00:34:12,520 --> 00:34:15,320
Speaker 1: a few years, a time that Scott remembers very fondly.

584
00:34:15,520 --> 00:34:18,480
Speaker 1: But the combined realities of the pandemic and a desire

585
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:20,720
Speaker 1: to live closer to his family in New York brought

586
00:34:20,719 --> 00:34:23,440
Speaker 1: Scott's business online. So I'm at the gate of this

587
00:34:23,520 --> 00:34:26,040
Speaker 1: storage unit place. I'm sweating my ass off, and I

588
00:34:26,080 --> 00:34:29,400
Speaker 1: realized that I am very starstruck to be meeting Scott.

589
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:32,680
Speaker 1: But he's so nice. He comes out wearing this very

590
00:34:32,760 --> 00:34:36,120
Speaker 1: on brand vintage T shirt, a purple shirt with snoopy

591
00:34:36,200 --> 00:34:39,400
Speaker 1: dress like a little grandpa, that says the dad. And

592
00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:43,000
Speaker 1: Scott is just as nice and easygoing and punny as

593
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:46,200
Speaker 1: he always seemed on HQ. He even gave me a shirt.

594
00:34:46,239 --> 00:34:49,000
Speaker 1: He's so nice. And the two of us decide, bucket,

595
00:34:49,040 --> 00:34:51,680
Speaker 1: there's air conditioning here. We're just gonna sit down on

596
00:34:51,719 --> 00:34:54,040
Speaker 1: the floor of this storage unit and do the interview

597
00:34:54,120 --> 00:34:57,560
Speaker 1: right here and for an hour. Scott agreed to return

598
00:34:57,640 --> 00:34:59,840
Speaker 1: to the fever Dream. That was his time with a

599
00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:04,000
Speaker 1: here's our talk, Hi, Scott.

600
00:35:05,120 --> 00:35:09,000
Speaker 2: I'm fantastic. I'm spending this beautiful sunny sunny what is

601
00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:12,880
Speaker 2: it Sunday? Sunday is gorgeous sunny Sunday indoors in my

602
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:15,200
Speaker 2: stores you can to hear Marina Delray that's wow.

603
00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:18,280
Speaker 1: Really living the Venice Beach Street.

604
00:35:19,280 --> 00:35:19,759
Speaker 2: This is it?

605
00:35:20,680 --> 00:35:24,359
Speaker 1: So yeah, we were at the extra space storage. Let's start.

606
00:35:24,480 --> 00:35:26,520
Speaker 1: Just introduce yourself however you want to.

607
00:35:27,239 --> 00:35:34,840
Speaker 2: I am Scott Ragowski. I am a human m last

608
00:35:34,880 --> 00:35:39,040
Speaker 2: I checked what am I? I'm here because I am

609
00:35:39,080 --> 00:35:40,480
Speaker 2: a main character on the internet.

610
00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:46,400
Speaker 1: I think it was, which is the best way to

611
00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:48,720
Speaker 1: be making it was is way better.

612
00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:51,560
Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm a main character anymore, but

613
00:35:51,600 --> 00:35:53,600
Speaker 2: I don't know if I want to be these days. Frankly,

614
00:35:54,760 --> 00:35:57,160
Speaker 2: what else can I tell you? I am the current

615
00:35:57,719 --> 00:36:02,120
Speaker 2: proprietor of quiz Daddy's Vintage Clothing business, which now exists

616
00:36:02,200 --> 00:36:05,960
Speaker 2: online at quiz days dot com and Quizdady's dot net. Okay,

617
00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:08,640
Speaker 2: I secured both yours. I used to have a store

618
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:11,399
Speaker 2: in Santa Monica for two years, closed it. It now

619
00:36:11,480 --> 00:36:14,040
Speaker 2: lives behind me in the storage unit so I was

620
00:36:14,080 --> 00:36:16,640
Speaker 2: a vintage freak from like back high school days.

621
00:36:16,840 --> 00:36:18,759
Speaker 1: Okay, where did you go? Where did you grow up?

622
00:36:18,760 --> 00:36:21,319
Speaker 2: As I grew up, I went to a school called

623
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:27,279
Speaker 2: horse Man in Riverdale, Bronx, New York. I grew up

624
00:36:27,320 --> 00:36:31,319
Speaker 2: in Harrison, New York, west Chester County, New York. And

625
00:36:32,280 --> 00:36:36,120
Speaker 2: my dad's closet is where I first discovered vintage, which

626
00:36:36,160 --> 00:36:39,040
Speaker 2: I think if you ask people, yeah, that's mostly where

627
00:36:39,040 --> 00:36:40,880
Speaker 2: they first discovered it, like their parents close.

628
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:44,120
Speaker 1: So you got into drifting as a teenager, and then

629
00:36:44,160 --> 00:36:46,160
Speaker 1: how does that passion sort of develop over time?

630
00:36:46,280 --> 00:36:48,400
Speaker 2: Well, I kind of like started hoarding stuff, right. I

631
00:36:48,400 --> 00:36:51,120
Speaker 2: would buy things that I would see, you know, school

632
00:36:51,120 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 2: stuff didn't even fit me, and I would say, well,

633
00:36:53,600 --> 00:36:55,200
Speaker 2: I can't leave this on the rack for fifty cents.

634
00:36:55,200 --> 00:36:58,799
Speaker 2: So I'd buy the terry cloth, you know, tracksuit or

635
00:36:58,840 --> 00:37:04,080
Speaker 2: whatever it was, and these would just start accumulating very quickly,

636
00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:07,040
Speaker 2: to the point where in two thousand and three I

637
00:37:07,160 --> 00:37:10,799
Speaker 2: decided I'm going to get into e commerce because there

638
00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:12,879
Speaker 2: was a there was a website called Vintage Vantage, which

639
00:37:12,920 --> 00:37:15,560
Speaker 2: I was, you know, I shopped from like once or

640
00:37:15,560 --> 00:37:18,280
Speaker 2: twice just to kind of sample see how they package

641
00:37:18,320 --> 00:37:20,480
Speaker 2: their things and I was taking inspiration from these, like

642
00:37:20,880 --> 00:37:22,400
Speaker 2: there's a group of people out in San Diego. I

643
00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:24,480
Speaker 2: think they look so cool on their website. They were

644
00:37:24,520 --> 00:37:27,120
Speaker 2: like just hanging out by the beach selling vintage clothing.

645
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:30,560
Speaker 2: Like this sounds like a career. And I didn't know

646
00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:32,239
Speaker 2: how to build a website. But my buddy Scott Bula

647
00:37:32,320 --> 00:37:36,040
Speaker 2: did shout out Scott, so he built the site. I

648
00:37:36,080 --> 00:37:38,600
Speaker 2: started loading things up, taking using my sister and her

649
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:41,520
Speaker 2: friends and my friends as models. We take photos, put

650
00:37:41,520 --> 00:37:43,480
Speaker 2: them on the put them on the website.

651
00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:43,800
Speaker 1: The coolest.

652
00:37:43,880 --> 00:37:47,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, but nobody bought anything because this was two thousand

653
00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:51,560
Speaker 2: and three and I didn't know how to market a website. Yeah,

654
00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:54,720
Speaker 2: so that was a short lived experiment that quickly failed.

655
00:37:54,760 --> 00:37:56,280
Speaker 2: But I went to college and I brought my stuff

656
00:37:56,320 --> 00:37:58,160
Speaker 2: with me and I sold my vintage on the quad

657
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:03,320
Speaker 2: and I kept it going all through and kept buying, buying, buying,

658
00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:06,200
Speaker 2: and then you know, life kind of got in the way.

659
00:38:06,200 --> 00:38:09,520
Speaker 2: But I've always been buying, always collecting, to the point

660
00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:12,439
Speaker 2: where I had like four thousand pieces when I moved

661
00:38:12,440 --> 00:38:17,520
Speaker 2: to LA and I decided in twenty twenty two after

662
00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:20,960
Speaker 2: something fell through where I had some like escrom, I

663
00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:22,160
Speaker 2: was going to try to buy a place and it

664
00:38:22,160 --> 00:38:23,840
Speaker 2: fell through. I had my escrow money come back, and

665
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:25,600
Speaker 2: I'm like, what am I gonna do with this? I

666
00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:27,320
Speaker 2: already budgeted away. I'm like, let me just put it

667
00:38:27,360 --> 00:38:29,520
Speaker 2: towards the store, and I just I use that as

668
00:38:29,520 --> 00:38:32,759
Speaker 2: the town payment for rent. That rocks and that was

669
00:38:33,040 --> 00:38:34,960
Speaker 2: that was it, And I ended up being like so

670
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 2: much more fun than owning a crappy condo that I

671
00:38:38,200 --> 00:38:41,279
Speaker 2: almost bought. That would have been a disaster. Frankly, now

672
00:38:41,280 --> 00:38:43,960
Speaker 2: that I look back on it, it was the best,

673
00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:46,560
Speaker 2: so much fun. I miss it. I hope to do

674
00:38:46,600 --> 00:38:50,960
Speaker 2: it again. But my clientele was geez. Everyone from Ethan

675
00:38:51,080 --> 00:38:55,640
Speaker 2: Cohen of the Cohen Brothers to Ali McGraw of a

676
00:38:55,760 --> 00:39:00,839
Speaker 2: Love Story to Geena Davis bought a T shirt. Am

677
00:39:00,840 --> 00:39:02,560
Speaker 2: I allowed to say this? Am I like outing my

678
00:39:02,680 --> 00:39:06,359
Speaker 2: celebrity clientele? But just a lot of regular people from

679
00:39:06,400 --> 00:39:09,560
Speaker 2: Santa Monica and West Side and people would come from

680
00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:12,040
Speaker 2: all all parts of LA. And then the international clientele

681
00:39:12,080 --> 00:39:16,839
Speaker 2: was really cool Germans and Finnish people and South America

682
00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:20,080
Speaker 2: and everywhere. I mean it was. I met so many

683
00:39:20,120 --> 00:39:22,920
Speaker 2: great people. I made a lot of friends. My buddy

684
00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:24,920
Speaker 2: Tim Melville, I became very good friends with Tim, and

685
00:39:24,960 --> 00:39:30,320
Speaker 2: my employees started out as just customers, oh cool, almost

686
00:39:30,320 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 2: like Hyphadeli. They would just like hanging around the shop,

687
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:33,799
Speaker 2: and they came and need some help. I'm like, yeah,

688
00:39:33,800 --> 00:39:36,080
Speaker 2: actually I could use some help right here. So I,

689
00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:39,279
Speaker 2: you know, got some people working for me with me,

690
00:39:39,400 --> 00:39:41,879
Speaker 2: and I don't know it. It became like a real

691
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:42,839
Speaker 2: kind of community hub.

692
00:39:42,840 --> 00:39:45,799
Speaker 1: It felt like, okay, So going back a little bit again,

693
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:47,759
Speaker 1: what else were you passionate about as a kid.

694
00:39:48,560 --> 00:39:51,800
Speaker 2: Oh? God, My problem was I had too many passions

695
00:39:52,560 --> 00:39:59,200
Speaker 2: baseball sports, but baseball primarily baseball cards, sports cards. I

696
00:39:59,280 --> 00:40:02,680
Speaker 2: like players, I like the game. I like to watch

697
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:04,479
Speaker 2: the boys play the game.

698
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:06,880
Speaker 1: I like to watch the boys hit the ball.

699
00:40:06,880 --> 00:40:08,040
Speaker 2: The boys hit the ball, they catch the ball to

700
00:40:08,080 --> 00:40:08,960
Speaker 2: throw the ball, they run.

701
00:40:08,960 --> 00:40:09,560
Speaker 1: And you're cheering.

702
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:11,120
Speaker 2: I'm cheering, you're cheering and your loving.

703
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:14,680
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so you're you're here right now, but you're

704
00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:15,879
Speaker 1: you move back to New York.

705
00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:18,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I moved back January.

706
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:19,720
Speaker 1: How's that feeling.

707
00:40:19,920 --> 00:40:23,319
Speaker 2: It feels good. It feels a little unsettling, though, because

708
00:40:23,320 --> 00:40:25,440
Speaker 2: I don't really have a place there either. I'm staying

709
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:30,040
Speaker 2: with my partner and it's her place. And uh, I'm

710
00:40:30,080 --> 00:40:35,919
Speaker 2: trying to respect that, not like fully moving my stuff in. Yeah.

711
00:40:36,000 --> 00:40:38,600
Speaker 2: So it's like I'm kind of, you know, split between coasts.

712
00:40:38,640 --> 00:40:42,080
Speaker 2: But I also don't have like, you know, a solid

713
00:40:42,160 --> 00:40:45,399
Speaker 2: place of my own and either. But it's nice. I mean,

714
00:40:45,400 --> 00:40:48,360
Speaker 2: I'd love being back in New York with her, my friends,

715
00:40:48,360 --> 00:40:49,520
Speaker 2: my parents, my dog.

716
00:40:49,920 --> 00:40:50,160
Speaker 1: Yeah.

717
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:53,040
Speaker 2: So it's a good life. I'm very happy to be

718
00:40:53,440 --> 00:40:56,239
Speaker 2: where I am. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, Jamie.

719
00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:58,960
Speaker 1: It's true, that's what they say. So how do how

720
00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:02,640
Speaker 1: do you get into comedy originally? When does that become

721
00:41:02,680 --> 00:41:03,440
Speaker 1: a part of your life?

722
00:41:03,480 --> 00:41:08,360
Speaker 2: That was like a kind of a I guess started

723
00:41:08,360 --> 00:41:10,480
Speaker 2: in high school again, where I was a student body

724
00:41:10,480 --> 00:41:13,480
Speaker 2: president my senior year. It was my proto stand up.

725
00:41:13,600 --> 00:41:17,320
Speaker 2: Was was delivering these speeches at my school assemblies, which

726
00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:20,279
Speaker 2: made me realize, like, well, I even the fact that

727
00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:23,319
Speaker 2: I won was on the basis of my speeches, which

728
00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:27,080
Speaker 2: were just funny speeches. I had zero governing experience, no

729
00:41:27,239 --> 00:41:31,640
Speaker 2: interest to student governance. Like I beat all these career

730
00:41:31,880 --> 00:41:34,560
Speaker 2: school of politicians, which I felt a little bad about,

731
00:41:34,920 --> 00:41:37,600
Speaker 2: but you know, I had the funnier speech and that's all.

732
00:41:37,640 --> 00:41:41,879
Speaker 2: That's all. You needed. You won on Rizzz and then

733
00:41:41,960 --> 00:41:44,640
Speaker 2: you know you think about, like again, this was twenty

734
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:48,680
Speaker 2: something years ago, but you think like, oh, is this

735
00:41:48,760 --> 00:41:52,000
Speaker 2: like a proto trumpion approach? Even like he had zero

736
00:41:52,120 --> 00:41:54,160
Speaker 2: experience too, and he just won on.

737
00:41:54,040 --> 00:41:57,399
Speaker 1: His He won on his version of his version of.

738
00:41:57,360 --> 00:41:59,239
Speaker 2: It got So I don't know if it was like

739
00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:02,040
Speaker 2: a good precedent to set frankly, because like, no, seriously,

740
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:04,440
Speaker 2: every student by president was like the most serious minded.

741
00:42:04,760 --> 00:42:07,600
Speaker 2: They all went to Harvard. They're all like, you know,

742
00:42:07,880 --> 00:42:10,960
Speaker 2: student president, class presidents, blah. And I just came in.

743
00:42:10,960 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 2: I mean I actually loved it and I was all

744
00:42:12,680 --> 00:42:14,960
Speaker 2: about I was like, I had this whole recycling initiative,

745
00:42:15,480 --> 00:42:19,560
Speaker 2: and I hired a whole booze free initiative as well.

746
00:42:20,760 --> 00:42:25,279
Speaker 2: Temperance movement I tried to start that wasn't very successful,

747
00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:29,719
Speaker 2: but I was like, guys, it's against the law. We're

748
00:42:29,800 --> 00:42:33,320
Speaker 2: not twenty in jail. That wasn't that wasn't my most

749
00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:38,279
Speaker 2: popular platform, but but the recycling was cool. I ended

750
00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:40,759
Speaker 2: up doing it myself, mostly because this is there's like

751
00:42:40,760 --> 00:42:44,359
Speaker 2: a couples where Bloomberg suspended New York City recycling. Oh wow,

752
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:46,400
Speaker 2: And this was like when I. Yeah, it was just

753
00:42:46,560 --> 00:42:48,800
Speaker 2: as I was taking office. So I said, guys, I

754
00:42:48,840 --> 00:42:52,000
Speaker 2: live in Westchester. We still recycle up there, y'all. Put

755
00:42:52,040 --> 00:42:55,359
Speaker 2: your cans and bottles in the I brought like my

756
00:42:55,360 --> 00:42:58,279
Speaker 2: own recycling mins to school and then I would bring

757
00:42:58,320 --> 00:42:59,400
Speaker 2: them home to Westchester.

758
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:00,759
Speaker 1: It's so nice.

759
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:02,120
Speaker 2: Put them in the machine and get a nickel for

760
00:43:02,120 --> 00:43:04,360
Speaker 2: each one. And I made them at like three hundred

761
00:43:04,400 --> 00:43:07,480
Speaker 2: bucks over the course of the year. Well, I think

762
00:43:07,520 --> 00:43:09,839
Speaker 2: that that is I think I deserved it at that point.

763
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:13,160
Speaker 1: That's more than Trump has done.

764
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:16,160
Speaker 2: I think that that's actually yeah, like thousands of cans

765
00:43:16,160 --> 00:43:20,359
Speaker 2: and bottles from my school. Yeah, funny speeches. And then

766
00:43:20,400 --> 00:43:22,840
Speaker 2: I went to college and then I took a course

767
00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:27,320
Speaker 2: to get a couple of credits in like this optional

768
00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:32,040
Speaker 2: winter semester and it was a stand up comedy class.

769
00:43:32,600 --> 00:43:35,120
Speaker 2: The first one this guy taught us. A grad student

770
00:43:35,160 --> 00:43:39,000
Speaker 2: taught it. And the final project was like five minutes

771
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:41,839
Speaker 2: of original material. And I got up there and there

772
00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:43,279
Speaker 2: are like twenty people in the class. I was the

773
00:43:43,360 --> 00:43:46,960
Speaker 2: last one on stage. And when I say I headlined

774
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:49,879
Speaker 2: my first thing, they put me. He threw me at

775
00:43:49,880 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 2: the end and it was crush City. Yeah. People are

776
00:43:54,200 --> 00:43:55,640
Speaker 2: like coming out to be stranger. It's like, have you

777
00:43:55,719 --> 00:43:58,080
Speaker 2: done this before? I go, no, Like you should do this,

778
00:43:58,160 --> 00:44:01,920
Speaker 2: You're good. I was like, really, all that external validation,

779
00:44:02,040 --> 00:44:07,040
Speaker 2: it was just the greatest surge through my body. So yeah.

780
00:44:07,080 --> 00:44:08,799
Speaker 2: Two weeks later, I did the same set at an

781
00:44:08,840 --> 00:44:14,000
Speaker 2: open mic in DC the Soho Coffee House Soho Tea

782
00:44:14,040 --> 00:44:18,920
Speaker 2: and Coffee in DuPont Circle, and it was a bomb

783
00:44:19,760 --> 00:44:22,680
Speaker 2: because no one was paying attention. It's like the same

784
00:44:22,719 --> 00:44:25,279
Speaker 2: material there. It was like, wait a minute. It was

785
00:44:25,280 --> 00:44:27,600
Speaker 2: a very early lesson I learned. Okay, so the same

786
00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:31,640
Speaker 2: exact jokes in front of two hundred students going nuts

787
00:44:32,239 --> 00:44:36,480
Speaker 2: in front of like fifty apathetic coffee drinkers on their laptops.

788
00:44:36,640 --> 00:44:40,080
Speaker 2: Right's who are don't want comedy?

789
00:44:40,400 --> 00:44:42,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, it took me a long long time to accept that.

790
00:44:42,200 --> 00:44:44,400
Speaker 1: You're like, no, this is I am doing this against

791
00:44:44,400 --> 00:44:46,879
Speaker 1: their will. Yeah, it's okay if they don't like.

792
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:51,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Forcible comedy is never a good idea. So

793
00:44:52,800 --> 00:44:55,200
Speaker 2: that was But anyway, I still enjoyed it, so I stepped.

794
00:44:55,239 --> 00:44:57,359
Speaker 2: I just kept kind of doing it slowly and moved

795
00:44:57,400 --> 00:44:59,320
Speaker 2: to the city for two summer of two thousand and

796
00:44:59,360 --> 00:45:02,720
Speaker 2: six and did a whole like comedy boot camp for myself,

797
00:45:02,760 --> 00:45:06,360
Speaker 2: hosting open mics, going open mics, meeting people, seeing, invite

798
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:10,120
Speaker 2: them up, seeing, you know, going to raffife, being lucky

799
00:45:10,200 --> 00:45:12,759
Speaker 2: enough to do a couple of really cool shows like

800
00:45:12,800 --> 00:45:16,480
Speaker 2: oh Hello with Nick and John in two thousand and six.

801
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:22,160
Speaker 2: That's refife. Yeah yeah, but uh, I haven't heard from

802
00:45:22,200 --> 00:45:27,240
Speaker 2: them since. No, No, they're great, love them, love everyone,

803
00:45:27,560 --> 00:45:30,040
Speaker 2: and I love my life. And how are you, Jamie.

804
00:45:29,680 --> 00:45:33,319
Speaker 1: Loftus, I'm good. I'm good. I've had similar comedy moments

805
00:45:33,320 --> 00:45:35,680
Speaker 1: where you're like, well, if this is as good as

806
00:45:35,680 --> 00:45:36,719
Speaker 1: it gets, great.

807
00:45:36,560 --> 00:45:38,959
Speaker 2: Exactly, I love it. That's how I feel. I feel

808
00:45:39,000 --> 00:45:41,879
Speaker 2: so blessed to just have these moments. And then, you know,

809
00:45:42,520 --> 00:45:44,160
Speaker 2: if we want to skip to HQ, it's like then

810
00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:47,600
Speaker 2: HQ comes along, then it's like, shit, yeah, now I

811
00:45:47,640 --> 00:45:49,320
Speaker 2: really feel I could retire.

812
00:45:49,960 --> 00:45:53,040
Speaker 1: It's I mean, I do want to get to HQ

813
00:45:53,239 --> 00:45:55,680
Speaker 1: and ask about So at this point, you've been in

814
00:45:55,719 --> 00:45:57,440
Speaker 1: the city for years, you've been doing stand up.

815
00:45:57,600 --> 00:45:59,880
Speaker 2: Yes, this is like from two thousand so I graduated

816
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:03,920
Speaker 2: and seven I come back. I moved to Brooklyn and

817
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:07,759
Speaker 2: fall two thousand and seven. From then to twenty seventeen,

818
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:12,719
Speaker 2: ten years, I'm doing comedy in New York and he

819
00:46:12,760 --> 00:46:16,480
Speaker 2: had a weekly show, right, it wasn't quite weekly, try

820
00:46:16,520 --> 00:46:19,600
Speaker 2: to do it monthly. Maybe it would be every two months, whatever,

821
00:46:20,080 --> 00:46:23,400
Speaker 2: whenever I can get. But yeah, running late with scotridgusscause

822
00:46:23,440 --> 00:46:25,000
Speaker 2: my talk show. I had a show called Twelve Angry

823
00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:27,480
Speaker 2: Mascots before that, which was like a sports comedy talk show.

824
00:46:28,320 --> 00:46:33,280
Speaker 2: And you know, my stand up as it wasn't much,

825
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:35,600
Speaker 2: but like I kind of transitioned to doing the talk

826
00:46:35,640 --> 00:46:37,759
Speaker 2: shows because I just enjoyed it more, right, and I

827
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:39,680
Speaker 2: got to do my own like monologue, which was my

828
00:46:39,719 --> 00:46:41,880
Speaker 2: own version of stand up, Like I don't want to

829
00:46:41,920 --> 00:46:45,239
Speaker 2: sit through an hour of other people whatever. I'm just

830
00:46:45,239 --> 00:46:48,120
Speaker 2: gonna do my own thing on my own show. And

831
00:46:48,440 --> 00:46:51,880
Speaker 2: that was that was how I enjoyed doing it. Yeah,

832
00:46:51,920 --> 00:46:55,759
Speaker 2: And that then led to I don't know if it

833
00:46:55,800 --> 00:46:58,239
Speaker 2: led to it directly, but I got a call to

834
00:46:58,280 --> 00:47:01,920
Speaker 2: audition for HQ and Bring Up twenty seventeen and I

835
00:47:01,960 --> 00:47:05,440
Speaker 2: got the gig, and then that just changed everything. What

836
00:47:05,680 --> 00:47:14,200
Speaker 2: happened was that the Internet wasn't quite I don't know.

837
00:47:14,600 --> 00:47:18,759
Speaker 2: I think what happened was you had regular people who

838
00:47:18,800 --> 00:47:22,240
Speaker 2: were not writers or comedians. They were just like making

839
00:47:22,280 --> 00:47:24,640
Speaker 2: content on their own. All this UGC stuff that just

840
00:47:25,080 --> 00:47:27,239
Speaker 2: was coming up, coming up. Nobody's paying them to do it,

841
00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:30,520
Speaker 2: nobody's producing it. There's no big company writing a check.

842
00:47:31,280 --> 00:47:34,080
Speaker 2: And that stuff was getting views just as much as,

843
00:47:34,160 --> 00:47:37,040
Speaker 2: if not more than, all the highly produced stuff that

844
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:40,359
Speaker 2: was very expensive, right, And these companies are like, what

845
00:47:40,400 --> 00:47:42,920
Speaker 2: are we doing this for? Why are we funding all

846
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:45,920
Speaker 2: these you know, quote unquote funny people who are funny,

847
00:47:46,280 --> 00:47:50,720
Speaker 2: professionally funny sometimes, but there's something about just I guess

848
00:47:50,719 --> 00:47:53,399
Speaker 2: a girl in her room doing a dance that's more

849
00:47:53,520 --> 00:47:56,640
Speaker 2: entertaining for the digital natives, like I still can't figure

850
00:47:56,640 --> 00:47:56,920
Speaker 2: out that.

851
00:47:58,080 --> 00:48:01,399
Speaker 1: Yeh. What was your relationship with the Internet like when

852
00:48:01,440 --> 00:48:06,000
Speaker 1: you started doing HQ's.

853
00:48:04,719 --> 00:48:10,520
Speaker 2: A good question, and I would say it was I

854
00:48:10,680 --> 00:48:16,240
Speaker 2: used it, I didn't abuse it. I didn't love it. Yeah,

855
00:48:16,719 --> 00:48:18,680
Speaker 2: I didn't. You know, I was very late. I was

856
00:48:18,719 --> 00:48:22,680
Speaker 2: a late bloomer, late adopter to like everything, Okay, Twitter,

857
00:48:23,239 --> 00:48:25,399
Speaker 2: I didn't even have an Instagram when I started HQ.

858
00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:29,000
Speaker 2: I just didn't. I don't know if I'd cared enough

859
00:48:29,440 --> 00:48:33,880
Speaker 2: or I didn't appreciate the importance of it or whatever,

860
00:48:33,960 --> 00:48:36,080
Speaker 2: but I just I just didn't feel like I'm gonna

861
00:48:36,080 --> 00:48:38,680
Speaker 2: I didn't I want to waste my time engaging so

862
00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:41,840
Speaker 2: heavily online. Like to this day, I don't go on Reddit.

863
00:48:42,280 --> 00:48:48,160
Speaker 2: I really stopped using Twitter, you know, mostly completely for

864
00:48:48,200 --> 00:48:51,440
Speaker 2: a couple of years now. Didn't want to just go

865
00:48:51,600 --> 00:48:53,560
Speaker 2: that deep with this stuff. I don't know, I just

866
00:48:53,560 --> 00:48:57,880
Speaker 2: just never clicked with me, okay, And in fact, I

867
00:48:57,960 --> 00:48:59,400
Speaker 2: kind of looked down on it all because I have

868
00:48:59,480 --> 00:49:03,000
Speaker 2: come from that old school mentality of like, what is

869
00:49:03,040 --> 00:49:06,600
Speaker 2: this worthy snapchat comedians? Like what is this garbage that

870
00:49:06,600 --> 00:49:07,800
Speaker 2: people are calling comedy?

871
00:49:07,840 --> 00:49:10,200
Speaker 1: Now we'll be right back with the rest of my

872
00:49:10,280 --> 00:49:27,640
Speaker 1: interview with Scott Ragowski. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. After

873
00:49:27,640 --> 00:49:29,640
Speaker 1: Scott and I spoke, my boyfriend and I took a

874
00:49:29,640 --> 00:49:33,520
Speaker 1: walk on Venice Beach, and boy does their misogynist peer

875
00:49:33,600 --> 00:49:36,640
Speaker 1: trash still hit down there? I passed and I'm not

876
00:49:36,760 --> 00:49:43,440
Speaker 1: joking booty shorts that read Mike's bitch, John's Property, Phil's pillow,

877
00:49:43,960 --> 00:49:53,239
Speaker 1: and Matt's lunch. Here's the rest of my interview with

878
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:58,800
Speaker 1: Scott Ragowski. So you go into HQ in twenty seventeen seventeen,

879
00:49:58,920 --> 00:49:59,799
Speaker 1: you're not big on.

880
00:49:59,760 --> 00:50:04,120
Speaker 2: The now disparaging the Internet culture already I'm coming into think.

881
00:50:04,120 --> 00:50:06,480
Speaker 2: I mean, in fact, my first reaction when they said, okay,

882
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:08,879
Speaker 2: you want audition for this show, it's like a talk shit,

883
00:50:08,880 --> 00:50:11,239
Speaker 2: it's like a game show on your phone. The hell

884
00:50:11,360 --> 00:50:14,640
Speaker 2: is this? I just didn't know where this was gonna

885
00:50:14,719 --> 00:50:16,520
Speaker 2: land me or where it would take my career. And

886
00:50:16,560 --> 00:50:20,200
Speaker 2: I was very much at the time, like I said,

887
00:50:20,239 --> 00:50:22,040
Speaker 2: ten years into a comedy career.

888
00:50:22,200 --> 00:50:23,680
Speaker 1: Right, you're an adult.

889
00:50:23,360 --> 00:50:26,719
Speaker 2: Too, in an adult and I'm wondering to myself, you know,

890
00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:29,800
Speaker 2: where is this going? How much more do I have

891
00:50:29,920 --> 00:50:32,719
Speaker 2: left in the tank? I was moving to LA that

892
00:50:32,760 --> 00:50:34,040
Speaker 2: was the plan. So I was gonna move to LA

893
00:50:34,040 --> 00:50:36,279
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen. I gave him my apartment. When I

894
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:39,359
Speaker 2: got the HQ audition, I I already decided I'm moving

895
00:50:39,400 --> 00:50:41,560
Speaker 2: out of Brooklyn move in LA. I was gonna take

896
00:50:41,600 --> 00:50:44,040
Speaker 2: my running late talk show here and try to make

897
00:50:44,080 --> 00:50:46,880
Speaker 2: it here with that show. But meanwhile, lo and behold

898
00:50:46,880 --> 00:50:49,160
Speaker 2: this internet show is what did it? I think what

899
00:50:49,239 --> 00:50:52,319
Speaker 2: made it so successful is it was that blend of

900
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:56,759
Speaker 2: like slightly produced but it was an anonymous host me.

901
00:50:57,239 --> 00:50:59,200
Speaker 2: People don't know who I was, so I was kind

902
00:50:59,200 --> 00:51:02,879
Speaker 2: of like a regular Joe or just a normal Internet person. Right,

903
00:51:03,000 --> 00:51:05,040
Speaker 2: versus like if they plugged the big celebrity in there,

904
00:51:05,680 --> 00:51:08,239
Speaker 2: it probably wouldn't have worked the same way, right, because

905
00:51:08,239 --> 00:51:11,000
Speaker 2: it has that veneer of like, oh, this is corporate

906
00:51:11,040 --> 00:51:13,919
Speaker 2: media trying to control the Internet again you just said,

907
00:51:14,160 --> 00:51:17,080
Speaker 2: so that was a bit of the secret sauce. I

908
00:51:17,080 --> 00:51:19,439
Speaker 2: think they made it worked, Like who's this random guy?

909
00:51:19,960 --> 00:51:22,919
Speaker 2: What is this show? It's interactive, it's live, they're giving

910
00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:25,960
Speaker 2: away money, it's free. Like it was just like the

911
00:51:26,000 --> 00:51:29,600
Speaker 2: perfect mix of ingredients to make it work. We're in

912
00:51:29,640 --> 00:51:32,480
Speaker 2: some small office and soho, you know, we got it

913
00:51:32,600 --> 00:51:35,360
Speaker 2: mostly engineers. I mean, I guess five of the people

914
00:51:35,400 --> 00:51:37,280
Speaker 2: I just you know, of the nine to ten people

915
00:51:37,320 --> 00:51:42,880
Speaker 2: were engineers. And then you your office manager, designer, creative director, producer,

916
00:51:43,520 --> 00:51:47,080
Speaker 2: and me and the engineer sits there quietly and kind

917
00:51:47,080 --> 00:51:50,319
Speaker 2: of do their thing, and it looks pretty quiet office,

918
00:51:50,640 --> 00:51:53,759
Speaker 2: not a whole lot of action. But me and the

919
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:55,960
Speaker 2: producer Nick, we would kind of like go into the street.

920
00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:58,000
Speaker 2: We're like, let's just try let's interview the hot dog

921
00:51:58,080 --> 00:52:01,200
Speaker 2: vendor and see if he'll ask a trivia question. Let's

922
00:52:01,239 --> 00:52:02,840
Speaker 2: like we were just trying to throw stuff against the

923
00:52:02,880 --> 00:52:05,960
Speaker 2: wall and see what's stuck. And it was super fun

924
00:52:06,000 --> 00:52:09,360
Speaker 2: and it felt like, uh, you know, total freedom to

925
00:52:09,400 --> 00:52:11,800
Speaker 2: do whatever you wanted. There was no manual, no handbook,

926
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:13,800
Speaker 2: and I got to just go. And then this is

927
00:52:13,800 --> 00:52:15,840
Speaker 2: all in the beta phase, the very early phase of

928
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:19,120
Speaker 2: kind of trying it all out, and then it's like,

929
00:52:19,120 --> 00:52:20,839
Speaker 2: all right, we're time to go live, let's do it.

930
00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:23,839
Speaker 2: And it was still just like go live, that's it,

931
00:52:23,920 --> 00:52:26,720
Speaker 2: just just be you just start talking, which was super

932
00:52:26,800 --> 00:52:30,680
Speaker 2: which was super again liberating and yeah and fun and exciting.

933
00:52:30,680 --> 00:52:33,440
Speaker 2: And I think all of that made for the success

934
00:52:33,440 --> 00:52:36,840
Speaker 2: of the show because there was no corporate script to

935
00:52:36,920 --> 00:52:40,520
Speaker 2: stick to, no you know, talking points like it was

936
00:52:40,600 --> 00:52:43,160
Speaker 2: just like very organic and natural and fun.

937
00:52:43,360 --> 00:52:47,320
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I'm curious, like what capacity were you technically

938
00:52:47,320 --> 00:52:48,960
Speaker 1: working in. You're there as a host, but then you

939
00:52:49,080 --> 00:52:52,120
Speaker 1: also kind of inadvertently become the face of the company.

940
00:52:52,160 --> 00:52:54,920
Speaker 1: What is that. I've talked to a lot of Internet

941
00:52:54,960 --> 00:52:58,279
Speaker 1: main characters who become so against their will, but it's like,

942
00:52:58,360 --> 00:53:00,840
Speaker 1: it's it's part of your job that this is happening.

943
00:53:00,880 --> 00:53:03,400
Speaker 1: How do you like manage that? Mentally?

944
00:53:04,320 --> 00:53:08,000
Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't really, I don't know. I never

945
00:53:08,120 --> 00:53:09,640
Speaker 2: like thought of myself in that.

946
00:53:09,600 --> 00:53:11,680
Speaker 1: Way, right, I mean there's no press.

947
00:53:11,680 --> 00:53:15,400
Speaker 2: I mean yeah, and you know, my initial role was

948
00:53:15,440 --> 00:53:16,960
Speaker 2: like you're the host, but in the very beginning, I

949
00:53:17,000 --> 00:53:20,040
Speaker 2: was also writing the questions. I was also just you know,

950
00:53:20,239 --> 00:53:24,399
Speaker 2: in you know, making the show with the producer, and

951
00:53:24,440 --> 00:53:27,879
Speaker 2: we were, like I said, just just trying a bunch

952
00:53:27,880 --> 00:53:31,480
Speaker 2: of stuff out. And it was super liberating, super creative.

953
00:53:31,880 --> 00:53:34,759
Speaker 2: And it stayed that way as it got more popular

954
00:53:35,600 --> 00:53:38,319
Speaker 2: and I started making some mistakes with like the oh,

955
00:53:38,360 --> 00:53:41,759
Speaker 2: I guess the capital of Arizona isn't Tucson. They brought

956
00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:44,440
Speaker 2: in writers, they brought in teams of fact checkers and researchers,

957
00:53:44,480 --> 00:53:48,120
Speaker 2: so it definitely got more professionalized. And with every you know,

958
00:53:48,719 --> 00:53:52,240
Speaker 2: new layer of professionalism to the company, the HR person

959
00:53:52,280 --> 00:53:54,360
Speaker 2: comes on board, you know, it started to get a

960
00:53:54,440 --> 00:53:59,040
Speaker 2: little a little less like Wild West. That was the

961
00:53:59,120 --> 00:54:01,400
Speaker 2: question we kept asked, like, what's the model, what's the

962
00:54:01,400 --> 00:54:03,560
Speaker 2: business model? How are you making money? And we weren't.

963
00:54:04,600 --> 00:54:08,479
Speaker 2: Were just weren't. We were just giving away money doing

964
00:54:08,480 --> 00:54:10,440
Speaker 2: these shows, spending a lot. They were spending a lot

965
00:54:10,440 --> 00:54:13,319
Speaker 2: of money on overhead and servers and everything. But but

966
00:54:13,360 --> 00:54:15,400
Speaker 2: that was the model, right. It's like gain a following,

967
00:54:15,520 --> 00:54:18,160
Speaker 2: get users, and then you can monetize them the whole

968
00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:20,840
Speaker 2: face of a thing, like you know, the boss. My

969
00:54:20,880 --> 00:54:25,799
Speaker 2: bosses were actually very much trying to keep me in

970
00:54:25,920 --> 00:54:29,919
Speaker 2: my place, so to speak. Like, you know, they they

971
00:54:30,040 --> 00:54:32,880
Speaker 2: wanted to be one in particular, I'll say, wanted to

972
00:54:32,880 --> 00:54:38,000
Speaker 2: be the face of it. They founded Vine previously. And

973
00:54:38,400 --> 00:54:41,000
Speaker 2: what I heard through kind of the grape Vine at

974
00:54:41,000 --> 00:54:44,000
Speaker 2: the company is that, you know, they felt a little

975
00:54:44,040 --> 00:54:46,719
Speaker 2: burned by what happened with Vine in the sense that

976
00:54:46,920 --> 00:54:52,200
Speaker 2: they created this platform. They created all these stars, Bill

977
00:54:52,320 --> 00:54:56,320
Speaker 2: Paul Brothers, Sean Nendez, Like, I mean, major, major talent

978
00:54:56,560 --> 00:55:01,520
Speaker 2: was discovered on Vine, right, Like all these viners got

979
00:55:01,560 --> 00:55:04,520
Speaker 2: just super popular, made all this money, got super famous,

980
00:55:04,800 --> 00:55:07,319
Speaker 2: and no one knew who started the company. No one,

981
00:55:07,840 --> 00:55:11,200
Speaker 2: you know, really cared about that. But I guess their

982
00:55:11,239 --> 00:55:15,080
Speaker 2: egos involved and and and these guys wanted to control

983
00:55:15,120 --> 00:55:16,640
Speaker 2: then error little more and not let it get away

984
00:55:16,640 --> 00:55:18,120
Speaker 2: from them in the way that it didn't Vine. This

985
00:55:18,200 --> 00:55:20,840
Speaker 2: is what I was told, and what I heard it

986
00:55:20,880 --> 00:55:25,480
Speaker 2: was a theory, right, So so that was it. I mean,

987
00:55:25,480 --> 00:55:28,200
Speaker 2: there was a meeting in October, early October. I'll never

988
00:55:28,200 --> 00:55:31,279
Speaker 2: forget it because I was feeling like a little bit

989
00:55:31,360 --> 00:55:34,600
Speaker 2: of of the of that creative freedom kind of you know,

990
00:55:34,719 --> 00:55:36,640
Speaker 2: closing up around me a little bit, getting tight getting

991
00:55:36,640 --> 00:55:39,120
Speaker 2: tightened on me. And I just wanted to get in

992
00:55:39,160 --> 00:55:40,640
Speaker 2: the same page with my boss, so I called a

993
00:55:40,680 --> 00:55:42,680
Speaker 2: meeting with him. I said, hey, just like tell me

994
00:55:42,719 --> 00:55:44,719
Speaker 2: what what you want out of this. And I was

995
00:55:44,760 --> 00:55:46,480
Speaker 2: on six week contracts at the time too.

996
00:55:46,800 --> 00:55:50,719
Speaker 1: I also to say, are they paying you? That's that's

997
00:55:50,760 --> 00:55:53,359
Speaker 1: the other thing. Talent just paid dog shit.

998
00:55:53,520 --> 00:55:55,839
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, for these like six week deals where it's like, okay,

999
00:55:55,880 --> 00:55:58,680
Speaker 2: six weeks are up, all right, we'll resign you. So

1000
00:55:58,800 --> 00:56:01,359
Speaker 2: also like no secure. Already I was applying to other jobs.

1001
00:56:01,400 --> 00:56:04,759
Speaker 2: I applied to The Daily Show, to Jordan Klepper's show.

1002
00:56:04,880 --> 00:56:05,680
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.

1003
00:56:06,200 --> 00:56:07,640
Speaker 2: I was like, I want to be a correspondent for

1004
00:56:07,719 --> 00:56:10,359
Speaker 2: Jordan Klepper. I'll be a fucking segment producer. I don't care.

1005
00:56:10,520 --> 00:56:13,400
Speaker 2: I was literally applying to be segment producer and didn't

1006
00:56:13,440 --> 00:56:13,839
Speaker 2: get it.

1007
00:56:14,200 --> 00:56:18,480
Speaker 1: That's so, I mean, all, well, getting Huger and Huger.

1008
00:56:19,880 --> 00:56:23,560
Speaker 1: You're also kind of being muzzled to even pursue the exposure.

1009
00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:26,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly like I was not. I was told no interviews.

1010
00:56:27,200 --> 00:56:29,719
Speaker 2: I was told anytime when request comes in, you got

1011
00:56:29,800 --> 00:56:31,280
Speaker 2: to send it to me, send it to the boss.

1012
00:56:31,560 --> 00:56:34,120
Speaker 2: He's still squash it. And all those early articles, if

1013
00:56:34,160 --> 00:56:35,920
Speaker 2: you go back the ones that first started coming out

1014
00:56:35,920 --> 00:56:40,279
Speaker 2: of byt HQ in October November of twenty seventeen, my

1015
00:56:40,360 --> 00:56:41,920
Speaker 2: name was not in any of them. It was just

1016
00:56:41,960 --> 00:56:45,440
Speaker 2: like the two founders, the two founders, the founders, founder founders.

1017
00:56:45,520 --> 00:56:48,360
Speaker 2: So I had a meeting with with my boss and

1018
00:56:48,400 --> 00:56:49,759
Speaker 2: I just said, like, just tell me the deal. This

1019
00:56:50,680 --> 00:56:54,520
Speaker 2: is this HQ with Scott Rigowski? Is this HQ with

1020
00:56:54,960 --> 00:56:58,960
Speaker 2: filling the host? Is it the Scott Rigowski Show with trivia?

1021
00:56:59,560 --> 00:57:02,680
Speaker 2: You know? I just want to set the expectations for

1022
00:57:02,719 --> 00:57:04,560
Speaker 2: both those on the same page, right, And he's just like, no,

1023
00:57:04,640 --> 00:57:08,960
Speaker 2: it's very much HQ. The host doesn't matter. In fact,

1024
00:57:09,000 --> 00:57:11,000
Speaker 2: we're going to hire Jim Parsons. When this things get

1025
00:57:11,160 --> 00:57:13,440
Speaker 2: gets big enough, we'll hire like a big celebrity to

1026
00:57:13,440 --> 00:57:14,080
Speaker 2: come host it.

1027
00:57:14,520 --> 00:57:14,719
Speaker 1: Right.

1028
00:57:14,880 --> 00:57:17,040
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, Jim Parsons, And I'm not making

1029
00:57:17,040 --> 00:57:20,080
Speaker 2: this up. This was what the name because it wasn't the.

1030
00:57:20,000 --> 00:57:23,480
Speaker 1: Big bank theory still on, like whatever, Yeah, I mean, yeah,

1031
00:57:23,480 --> 00:57:26,800
Speaker 1: good luck, Yeah, paying Jim Parsons what he would have

1032
00:57:26,840 --> 00:57:29,200
Speaker 1: needed to do that instead of realizing that you have

1033
00:57:29,280 --> 00:57:30,720
Speaker 1: a homegrown talent.

1034
00:57:31,280 --> 00:57:36,120
Speaker 2: It was becoming popular that you own so cheaply and

1035
00:57:36,160 --> 00:57:38,959
Speaker 2: you can support and nurture and make feel good about

1036
00:57:39,000 --> 00:57:41,640
Speaker 2: himself and happy at his job. Right, But now that

1037
00:57:41,720 --> 00:57:43,240
Speaker 2: wasn't the decision he wanted to go with.

1038
00:57:43,600 --> 00:57:46,840
Speaker 1: So, yeah, you're managing tech guy, He goes, and I

1039
00:57:46,880 --> 00:57:51,959
Speaker 1: want to talk about the you know, the parasocial sort

1040
00:57:51,960 --> 00:57:54,720
Speaker 1: of like blow up if you're going kind of from

1041
00:57:54,760 --> 00:57:57,920
Speaker 1: like to a hundred very very quickly. I mean, so

1042
00:57:58,000 --> 00:57:59,800
Speaker 1: much of what I remember about that time is in

1043
00:58:00,360 --> 00:58:04,080
Speaker 1: his people's parasocial attachment to you. Like they enjoy playing

1044
00:58:04,120 --> 00:58:07,360
Speaker 1: the game, maybe they'll get five dollars at some point,

1045
00:58:07,600 --> 00:58:11,160
Speaker 1: but like, the parasocial attachment to you is huge. So

1046
00:58:11,280 --> 00:58:13,760
Speaker 1: how do you as that starts happening? How do you

1047
00:58:13,960 --> 00:58:14,480
Speaker 1: manage that?

1048
00:58:14,960 --> 00:58:17,160
Speaker 2: In the beginning, I would like reply to everybody who

1049
00:58:17,160 --> 00:58:19,560
Speaker 2: emailed me, who tweeted me, you know, just trying to

1050
00:58:19,600 --> 00:58:22,600
Speaker 2: show gratitude for playing, thank you for playing. Was fairly

1051
00:58:22,600 --> 00:58:25,160
Speaker 2: early on, so I you know, the volume was at

1052
00:58:25,520 --> 00:58:28,560
Speaker 2: a level that I could handle for a while, and

1053
00:58:28,640 --> 00:58:31,760
Speaker 2: I was trying to engage because I was genuinely grateful

1054
00:58:31,800 --> 00:58:33,840
Speaker 2: for these people who were taking time out of their

1055
00:58:33,920 --> 00:58:36,200
Speaker 2: day to join me on this app and play this game.

1056
00:58:36,240 --> 00:58:38,800
Speaker 2: It was incredible and I love the community that built

1057
00:58:38,840 --> 00:58:42,200
Speaker 2: around it. And then it got so big that I

1058
00:58:42,240 --> 00:58:44,000
Speaker 2: would be you know again, I wasn't even on Instagram

1059
00:58:44,040 --> 00:58:46,800
Speaker 2: when I started. I finally got Instagram, and then the dms.

1060
00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:49,800
Speaker 2: There must have been hundreds a day. I couldn't even like,

1061
00:58:49,840 --> 00:58:53,000
Speaker 2: I can't keep track of this. I can't reply to everyone.

1062
00:58:53,320 --> 00:58:54,760
Speaker 2: I would play this game my friends like let's do

1063
00:58:54,840 --> 00:58:57,400
Speaker 2: let's do let's do rolette DM roulette, and I would

1064
00:58:57,520 --> 00:58:59,520
Speaker 2: you know, you'd have to kind of like scroll up

1065
00:58:59,640 --> 00:59:02,640
Speaker 2: to them to load. So I'd scroll up up, up low,

1066
00:59:02,760 --> 00:59:05,040
Speaker 2: like you know, a thousand of these to load, and

1067
00:59:05,040 --> 00:59:07,840
Speaker 2: then I would okay, swipe down and it would go

1068
00:59:07,880 --> 00:59:10,280
Speaker 2: ju and let me pause. We hit my finger on

1069
00:59:10,320 --> 00:59:12,000
Speaker 2: the screen at one point and boom.

1070
00:59:11,640 --> 00:59:13,240
Speaker 1: We'll open that one.

1071
00:59:13,520 --> 00:59:16,360
Speaker 2: Because I couldn't figure out a better way to do it. Yeah,

1072
00:59:16,440 --> 00:59:17,880
Speaker 2: And a lot of them are just like, hey, love

1073
00:59:17,960 --> 00:59:19,440
Speaker 2: the game, love you, but but you know, it was

1074
00:59:19,840 --> 00:59:21,760
Speaker 2: you know, but then people then you get the thing

1075
00:59:21,800 --> 00:59:24,120
Speaker 2: of people asking for money for a medical thing or

1076
00:59:24,240 --> 00:59:26,320
Speaker 2: my friends in the hospital, can you do this or that?

1077
00:59:26,360 --> 00:59:29,320
Speaker 2: And then again I want to reply to all those

1078
00:59:29,320 --> 00:59:32,560
Speaker 2: people and help all those people. And I ended up,

1079
00:59:32,560 --> 00:59:36,120
Speaker 2: you know, meeting a few people who were very legitimate

1080
00:59:36,120 --> 00:59:40,480
Speaker 2: and had had you know, legitimate charities and and and

1081
00:59:40,640 --> 00:59:42,479
Speaker 2: issues that I could help with and I felt great

1082
00:59:42,520 --> 00:59:44,080
Speaker 2: to be able to help with that as well. So

1083
00:59:44,520 --> 00:59:46,720
Speaker 2: you know, but I had to just pick and choose

1084
00:59:46,800 --> 00:59:49,120
Speaker 2: like a couple of them, like you know, And then

1085
00:59:49,360 --> 00:59:51,840
Speaker 2: there's the tinge of feeling bad for the person that

1086
00:59:51,880 --> 00:59:54,960
Speaker 2: you don't reply to who gets mad that I have

1087
00:59:55,080 --> 00:59:56,160
Speaker 2: cancer too, what the hell?

1088
00:59:56,240 --> 00:59:56,400
Speaker 3: You know.

1089
00:59:56,400 --> 00:59:58,160
Speaker 2: It's like, well, I'm sorry, I you know.

1090
00:59:58,280 --> 01:00:01,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and meanwhile, I feel like there is

1091
01:00:01,520 --> 01:00:05,480
Speaker 1: there is again specific to this era, this veneer, that

1092
01:00:05,760 --> 01:00:08,760
Speaker 1: like you're probably making a shitload of money, why not

1093
01:00:08,880 --> 01:00:10,320
Speaker 1: ask you for money again?

1094
01:00:10,360 --> 01:00:14,080
Speaker 2: Once the quiz Daddy's vintage stuff started happening, like that's

1095
01:00:14,080 --> 01:00:16,200
Speaker 2: a whole another way to connect with because a lot

1096
01:00:16,240 --> 01:00:20,480
Speaker 2: of my customers were initially HQ fans ith qtis, so

1097
01:00:21,200 --> 01:00:23,760
Speaker 2: you know, they come on my live streams or and

1098
01:00:24,040 --> 01:00:27,160
Speaker 2: it's got I've gotten to know my fans in a

1099
01:00:27,160 --> 01:00:29,280
Speaker 2: way that like they've become friends, which is really cool.

1100
01:00:29,360 --> 01:00:32,440
Speaker 1: That's really really cool. I mean, like again, just like

1101
01:00:32,520 --> 01:00:36,720
Speaker 1: thinking back to PKHQ, it just is we even with

1102
01:00:36,840 --> 01:00:40,800
Speaker 1: all the behind the scenes bullshit, like it seemed like

1103
01:00:40,840 --> 01:00:41,840
Speaker 1: you were having so much fun.

1104
01:00:42,240 --> 01:00:45,960
Speaker 2: I was, I really was. And you know, I mean

1105
01:00:47,040 --> 01:00:48,880
Speaker 2: those moments that I'm calling out even like you know,

1106
01:00:48,920 --> 01:00:52,720
Speaker 2: like meeting Joe Biden at the Super Bowl in twenty eighteen.

1107
01:00:52,640 --> 01:00:54,000
Speaker 1: What a sentence. Wow.

1108
01:00:54,200 --> 01:00:57,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like you know, Roger Goodell and all the football

1109
01:00:57,080 --> 01:01:00,760
Speaker 2: owners and Mandy Moore and keegl Michael Keats. I just

1110
01:01:00,800 --> 01:01:04,800
Speaker 2: remember the Rock Coast, the Rock co hosting, Blake Shelton

1111
01:01:04,840 --> 01:01:08,040
Speaker 2: co host and Kelly Clarkson going to the Voice. I mean,

1112
01:01:08,080 --> 01:01:10,600
Speaker 2: you have to like remember all the things. Robert De Niro,

1113
01:01:10,960 --> 01:01:14,680
Speaker 2: Danny DeVito, Kevin Harr, John Mayer singing Old Man with

1114
01:01:14,840 --> 01:01:18,120
Speaker 2: John Mayer to my dad on Father's Day. These are

1115
01:01:18,120 --> 01:01:20,800
Speaker 2: things that happened, and it's like almost like if I

1116
01:01:20,800 --> 01:01:24,520
Speaker 2: don't conjure them up and remember them, you know, maybe

1117
01:01:24,560 --> 01:01:26,200
Speaker 2: I will forget at some point. I don't know. It's

1118
01:01:26,240 --> 01:01:29,320
Speaker 2: just there's been so many crazy moments. Yeah, but put

1119
01:01:29,320 --> 01:01:33,280
Speaker 2: all that aside, the most exciting and memorable parts to

1120
01:01:33,360 --> 01:01:35,080
Speaker 2: me is when I would hear from someone who'd say

1121
01:01:35,320 --> 01:01:38,560
Speaker 2: I didn't I haven't talked to my family in years.

1122
01:01:38,840 --> 01:01:42,240
Speaker 2: I'm reconnecting my extrange son. Me and my mom never

1123
01:01:42,280 --> 01:01:44,960
Speaker 2: bonded the way we did over this game. My girlfriend

1124
01:01:45,000 --> 01:01:47,240
Speaker 2: and I started, we started dating and then we started playing.

1125
01:01:47,240 --> 01:01:49,720
Speaker 2: I mean, now we became girlfriend, now we're married. It's

1126
01:01:49,760 --> 01:01:53,400
Speaker 2: like like the course of whole relationships would come through HQ.

1127
01:01:53,920 --> 01:01:56,840
Speaker 2: And then one of the greatest things was Dan Rather

1128
01:01:57,760 --> 01:02:00,760
Speaker 2: posting on Facebook Christmas time about playing HQ with his

1129
01:02:00,840 --> 01:02:04,320
Speaker 2: daughter and his grandson and the three of them like

1130
01:02:04,720 --> 01:02:09,280
Speaker 2: teaming up to win because they all had different generational knowledge.

1131
01:02:09,520 --> 01:02:10,760
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

1132
01:02:10,600 --> 01:02:15,120
Speaker 2: Chistry, the grandson new Kendrick Lamar answer and Dan Rather

1133
01:02:15,200 --> 01:02:17,040
Speaker 2: new but the Watergate answer and like all the things.

1134
01:02:17,080 --> 01:02:21,919
Speaker 2: So you know, I ended up meeting Dan and Marty Rather,

1135
01:02:22,040 --> 01:02:24,880
Speaker 2: his grandson. They came to my talk show, and then

1136
01:02:24,880 --> 01:02:27,840
Speaker 2: Martin came to my store in Santa Monica last year.

1137
01:02:27,840 --> 01:02:30,440
Speaker 2: I'm still touching them. So it's just again maintaining those

1138
01:02:30,560 --> 01:02:34,520
Speaker 2: relationships and friendships and seeing the community around it.

1139
01:02:34,960 --> 01:02:37,680
Speaker 1: I like hearing about the stuff that was good about

1140
01:02:37,720 --> 01:02:40,160
Speaker 1: it for you too, because I think that that is

1141
01:02:40,280 --> 01:02:42,720
Speaker 1: sort of what made it special was it was sort

1142
01:02:42,760 --> 01:02:46,680
Speaker 1: of the rare social media thing that encouraged you to

1143
01:02:47,160 --> 01:02:51,440
Speaker 1: be physically with other people, or you could be by yourself.

1144
01:02:51,560 --> 01:02:53,960
Speaker 1: But I feel like so much of the social media

1145
01:02:54,080 --> 01:02:57,440
Speaker 1: that we're dealing with right now encourages you to be alone.

1146
01:02:57,720 --> 01:03:01,280
Speaker 1: And it seemed like HQ was better enjoyed people around you.

1147
01:03:02,160 --> 01:03:04,479
Speaker 2: Yes, and then the offices, the co work. I mean again,

1148
01:03:04,480 --> 01:03:06,960
Speaker 2: you just see that the group, the group environments where

1149
01:03:06,960 --> 01:03:09,560
Speaker 2: people got together and play. It was so cool and look,

1150
01:03:09,560 --> 01:03:12,520
Speaker 2: I mean there was it was unfortunate how things ended

1151
01:03:12,560 --> 01:03:15,560
Speaker 2: there with my time there. I wish it ended differently,

1152
01:03:15,640 --> 01:03:20,760
Speaker 2: but you know, it is what it is. I've I've

1153
01:03:21,080 --> 01:03:24,920
Speaker 2: gotten past, you know, any any feelings around bitterness or

1154
01:03:24,920 --> 01:03:28,600
Speaker 2: regret or anything. It's just I was very invested in

1155
01:03:28,600 --> 01:03:31,800
Speaker 2: in that company, but you know, personally because it was

1156
01:03:32,640 --> 01:03:36,000
Speaker 2: so it was so frustrating to realize we had such

1157
01:03:36,000 --> 01:03:42,960
Speaker 2: an amazing thing here. And I really reject the narrative

1158
01:03:43,600 --> 01:03:47,200
Speaker 2: the coarterity. Well, this is things run their course. It's

1159
01:03:47,200 --> 01:03:49,880
Speaker 2: a hits business, you know, flash in the pit. You

1160
01:03:49,920 --> 01:03:56,080
Speaker 2: know that is simply it's just simply covering up what

1161
01:03:56,360 --> 01:03:59,800
Speaker 2: was a very solid, what could have been an extremely

1162
01:04:00,000 --> 01:04:03,920
Speaker 2: solid and profitable and years long business had the right

1163
01:04:03,960 --> 01:04:06,600
Speaker 2: people been in charge, the right decision has been made.

1164
01:04:07,040 --> 01:04:10,760
Speaker 2: You know that we could have had five shows coming

1165
01:04:10,760 --> 01:04:12,880
Speaker 2: out within that first year that were as big as HQ.

1166
01:04:13,840 --> 01:04:18,080
Speaker 2: Why was there just one triviat one show being offered right?

1167
01:04:18,240 --> 01:04:20,600
Speaker 2: Like what was going on there? I mean, there was

1168
01:04:20,680 --> 01:04:23,680
Speaker 2: just we could have built this this this business that

1169
01:04:23,760 --> 01:04:27,880
Speaker 2: lasted to this day, and you know, I'd still be there. Frankly,

1170
01:04:27,880 --> 01:04:30,000
Speaker 2: people would ask me, like, what's next for you? What's next?

1171
01:04:30,000 --> 01:04:31,200
Speaker 2: And I would say, what do you mean, what's next?

1172
01:04:31,200 --> 01:04:33,520
Speaker 2: This is what's next, Like, I'm where i want to be.

1173
01:04:34,160 --> 01:04:36,400
Speaker 2: I'm I'm I'm hosting the show which is getting more

1174
01:04:36,480 --> 01:04:38,960
Speaker 2: views than all these other TV shows and everything, and

1175
01:04:39,000 --> 01:04:41,320
Speaker 2: it's it's changing the world in the sense of like

1176
01:04:41,360 --> 01:04:43,480
Speaker 2: how people interact. This is where I want to be.

1177
01:04:43,520 --> 01:04:45,000
Speaker 2: I'll be here for twenty years if this, if the

1178
01:04:45,000 --> 01:04:48,600
Speaker 2: thing lasts this long. Yeah, but it didn't, and you

1179
01:04:48,720 --> 01:04:50,520
Speaker 2: kind of bless them, you know, We're all moving on

1180
01:04:50,600 --> 01:04:53,720
Speaker 2: to other things. And my trust is I trust that

1181
01:04:54,000 --> 01:04:56,640
Speaker 2: some other company will figure it out, someone will get

1182
01:04:56,640 --> 01:04:59,440
Speaker 2: it going, and whether I'm involved with or not, I

1183
01:04:59,680 --> 01:05:01,880
Speaker 2: just hope that, like for the sake of our culture,

1184
01:05:01,920 --> 01:05:05,120
Speaker 2: because like you said, it is nice to have a

1185
01:05:05,240 --> 01:05:09,320
Speaker 2: positive force like that that brings people together, that creates

1186
01:05:09,360 --> 01:05:13,600
Speaker 2: real community and that brings joy to people's lives.

1187
01:05:13,920 --> 01:05:20,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, actual connective social media is still like it's unbelievably rare,

1188
01:05:20,360 --> 01:05:22,760
Speaker 1: and you were such a big part of it. I

1189
01:05:22,760 --> 01:05:24,760
Speaker 1: didn't know you were almost the CEO for a second.

1190
01:05:24,880 --> 01:05:25,600
Speaker 2: Like it was weird.

1191
01:05:25,920 --> 01:05:28,760
Speaker 1: So you went from having no interest in tech and

1192
01:05:28,800 --> 01:05:32,240
Speaker 1: then less than what like eighteen months later, you were

1193
01:05:32,280 --> 01:05:36,000
Speaker 1: almost a CEO for a second. Yeah, wild, wild, wild.

1194
01:05:35,760 --> 01:05:39,040
Speaker 2: Wild, And again I mean, who knows, who knows what

1195
01:05:39,040 --> 01:05:41,120
Speaker 2: would have happened, and that felt the other way, but

1196
01:05:41,400 --> 01:05:45,360
Speaker 2: yeah's it would have been an interesting experience then the

1197
01:05:45,480 --> 01:05:48,200
Speaker 2: less my feelings may may not be sure by everybody,

1198
01:05:48,200 --> 01:05:52,560
Speaker 2: but I firmly believe that that that there's no reason

1199
01:05:52,560 --> 01:05:55,400
Speaker 2: why there should have just been a flash in the pan, Like,

1200
01:05:55,400 --> 01:05:59,000
Speaker 2: like the concepts was so solid, you know, the tech

1201
01:05:59,160 --> 01:06:01,920
Speaker 2: was difficult to maintain and to build, but the engineers

1202
01:06:01,960 --> 01:06:03,480
Speaker 2: were doing a hell of a job keeping it together.

1203
01:06:04,320 --> 01:06:06,800
Speaker 2: And it was just other factors in the business, other

1204
01:06:06,960 --> 01:06:11,480
Speaker 2: other leadership decisions and non decisions that ultimately sunk it.

1205
01:06:12,200 --> 01:06:17,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you decide to leave when.

1206
01:06:16,800 --> 01:06:20,240
Speaker 2: When exactly was I March or twenty nineteen March twenty six,

1207
01:06:20,680 --> 01:06:23,240
Speaker 2: Gilbert Godfried, my co host, and the final show rest

1208
01:06:23,280 --> 01:06:24,600
Speaker 2: in Power incredible.

1209
01:06:24,840 --> 01:06:27,280
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you didn't, but you didn't get your

1210
01:06:27,280 --> 01:06:30,080
Speaker 1: send off show. No, which is bullshit.

1211
01:06:30,760 --> 01:06:33,160
Speaker 2: I mean, it is what it is, you know, it's

1212
01:06:33,240 --> 01:06:37,520
Speaker 2: it's it's it's unfortunate, it's just whatever. I mean, I

1213
01:06:37,880 --> 01:06:41,000
Speaker 2: don't even think about these things anymore. But but you know, yeah.

1214
01:06:40,920 --> 01:06:43,040
Speaker 1: That's I mean, that's the crazy thing about like stuff

1215
01:06:43,080 --> 01:06:46,120
Speaker 1: like this show, where it's like we're talking about less

1216
01:06:46,120 --> 01:06:47,360
Speaker 1: than a year and a half or like a year

1217
01:06:47,360 --> 01:06:47,520
Speaker 1: and a.

1218
01:06:47,480 --> 01:06:48,760
Speaker 2: Half of your life year and a half.

1219
01:06:48,880 --> 01:06:51,440
Speaker 1: So when you leave, is there a sense of relief

1220
01:06:51,600 --> 01:06:54,280
Speaker 1: and you you went to host a show about baseball?

1221
01:06:54,400 --> 01:06:56,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh man, it was there was there was a

1222
01:06:57,040 --> 01:06:59,280
Speaker 2: huge sense of relief to have this other job offer

1223
01:06:59,320 --> 01:07:01,840
Speaker 2: come in. The timing was kind of perfect.

1224
01:07:01,960 --> 01:07:06,680
Speaker 1: Did they offer you actual human money for nice No?

1225
01:07:06,800 --> 01:07:09,919
Speaker 2: I mean it paid almost twice what HQ was paying

1226
01:07:09,960 --> 01:07:13,320
Speaker 2: me for for half the year. That rocks, because it

1227
01:07:13,360 --> 01:07:15,600
Speaker 2: was like a six month job. Yeah, So I was like,

1228
01:07:15,640 --> 01:07:16,720
Speaker 2: how could I not do this?

1229
01:07:17,000 --> 01:07:17,320
Speaker 1: Yeah?

1230
01:07:17,440 --> 01:07:21,240
Speaker 2: I mean and again, had HQ been rocking and rolling

1231
01:07:21,280 --> 01:07:23,680
Speaker 2: on all cylinders and everything's great, I would have turned

1232
01:07:23,680 --> 01:07:27,919
Speaker 2: it down. But it was Unfortunately HQ was going down

1233
01:07:27,960 --> 01:07:32,160
Speaker 2: the toilet right, nothing to do with me. It wasn't

1234
01:07:32,200 --> 01:07:34,080
Speaker 2: my you know, And I was like, unfortunately, riding this

1235
01:07:34,200 --> 01:07:37,920
Speaker 2: sinking ship and I had this, this this parashote. I

1236
01:07:37,960 --> 01:07:39,960
Speaker 2: was able this amazing. Again, the timing could not have

1237
01:07:40,000 --> 01:07:43,680
Speaker 2: been better. Just thank the universe, thank spirit for bringing

1238
01:07:43,680 --> 01:07:45,640
Speaker 2: this to me when it did, and I was able

1239
01:07:45,680 --> 01:07:49,760
Speaker 2: to move on, and it was heartbreaking to watch the

1240
01:07:49,800 --> 01:07:51,800
Speaker 2: ship fully sink less than a year later.

1241
01:07:52,120 --> 01:07:54,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was like, did you keep watching.

1242
01:07:54,960 --> 01:07:57,240
Speaker 2: Well, not not so much watching, but just you know,

1243
01:07:57,400 --> 01:07:59,720
Speaker 2: keeping tabs. I mean, so many people left the company

1244
01:07:59,760 --> 01:08:02,320
Speaker 2: around the same time I did. People were getting fired

1245
01:08:02,400 --> 01:08:04,600
Speaker 2: or leaving, and you know, so I would stay in

1246
01:08:04,640 --> 01:08:08,920
Speaker 2: touch with the former employees, and you know, you just

1247
01:08:09,000 --> 01:08:12,240
Speaker 2: hear things. You hear now there's like fifty thousand people playing.

1248
01:08:12,320 --> 01:08:15,240
Speaker 2: It's like, really, how could there be so few people?

1249
01:08:15,280 --> 01:08:18,120
Speaker 2: We had millions, you know, you just swatching the numbers

1250
01:08:18,160 --> 01:08:21,960
Speaker 2: go down. But again it's I remember getting the news

1251
01:08:22,000 --> 01:08:26,280
Speaker 2: that it finally went bankrupt on Valentine's Day twenty twenty.

1252
01:08:27,200 --> 01:08:29,240
Speaker 2: I was sitting in traffic going through the Holland Tunnel

1253
01:08:29,600 --> 01:08:33,080
Speaker 2: and it was like the holiday weekend and to have

1254
01:08:33,280 --> 01:08:35,320
Speaker 2: to hear that the employees were let go and just

1255
01:08:35,320 --> 01:08:38,760
Speaker 2: told that zero notice, like that's it. Zero, Company's done.

1256
01:08:38,800 --> 01:08:42,599
Speaker 2: It was basically four o'clock on that Friday on Valentine's Day. Hey,

1257
01:08:42,600 --> 01:08:44,439
Speaker 2: you're all out a job. There's no money left.

1258
01:08:44,640 --> 01:08:50,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, brutal, god miser I mean it's.

1259
01:08:49,400 --> 01:08:52,080
Speaker 2: No severance either, they initially there was no severance offered.

1260
01:08:51,920 --> 01:08:55,320
Speaker 1: No severance. I cannot like conceive of how poorly money

1261
01:08:55,360 --> 01:08:58,639
Speaker 1: was managed, oh my god, or how little money existed

1262
01:08:59,080 --> 01:09:02,800
Speaker 1: unclear to me. Yeah, but so I mean in retrospect,

1263
01:09:02,840 --> 01:09:04,760
Speaker 1: you got out when you needed to.

1264
01:09:04,880 --> 01:09:07,360
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and that Baseball Show was a dream job.

1265
01:09:07,520 --> 01:09:10,160
Speaker 2: And I made a friend for life at nan verk

1266
01:09:10,240 --> 01:09:12,519
Speaker 2: my co host there, and so many of the great

1267
01:09:12,520 --> 01:09:15,000
Speaker 2: people at that at that company MLB Network. And then

1268
01:09:15,280 --> 01:09:18,000
Speaker 2: you know, the COVID came and cancel that I was supposed

1269
01:09:18,000 --> 01:09:20,720
Speaker 2: to do. I was signed for three years, god, and

1270
01:09:20,760 --> 01:09:27,120
Speaker 2: then COVID killed the show in year two. So you know, whatever,

1271
01:09:27,280 --> 01:09:30,160
Speaker 2: it's again, it's just I found the next thing. I've

1272
01:09:30,160 --> 01:09:32,519
Speaker 2: always been able to find the next thing, thankfully. And

1273
01:09:33,080 --> 01:09:36,439
Speaker 2: there's there's there's still Like I met a guy a

1274
01:09:36,439 --> 01:09:38,000
Speaker 2: couple of weeks ago. I had a meeting with him

1275
01:09:38,240 --> 01:09:41,560
Speaker 2: about some Web three show that could be big, and

1276
01:09:41,640 --> 01:09:45,680
Speaker 2: there's always opportunities. There's so many smart, inspired people out

1277
01:09:45,720 --> 01:09:49,960
Speaker 2: there creating new platforms, new show ideas, and thankfully they

1278
01:09:50,000 --> 01:09:53,720
Speaker 2: remember me and they they come calling. So I've had

1279
01:09:53,720 --> 01:09:58,760
Speaker 2: plenty of gigs, worked at some really amazing companies, consulting,

1280
01:09:59,520 --> 01:10:03,400
Speaker 2: doing you know, production, doing hosting in the sportscard space

1281
01:10:03,439 --> 01:10:05,360
Speaker 2: as well, which has been near and dear to me

1282
01:10:05,479 --> 01:10:08,519
Speaker 2: from since when I was a kid, and you know,

1283
01:10:09,000 --> 01:10:11,639
Speaker 2: some trivia companies and some other types of live streaming.

1284
01:10:11,640 --> 01:10:14,320
Speaker 2: It's just there's a whole there's still a lot to

1285
01:10:14,439 --> 01:10:18,519
Speaker 2: be tackled here, and I'm just as excited as you are,

1286
01:10:18,560 --> 01:10:21,400
Speaker 2: as the listeners probably are to see where this all goes.

1287
01:10:21,520 --> 01:10:24,840
Speaker 2: And yeah, you know, if an HQ type thing can

1288
01:10:24,840 --> 01:10:27,120
Speaker 2: come back, I believe again. I still believe again.

1289
01:10:28,720 --> 01:10:30,879
Speaker 1: Thank you so much to Scott for being so generous

1290
01:10:30,880 --> 01:10:33,040
Speaker 1: with his time and welcoming me to the floor of

1291
01:10:33,080 --> 01:10:36,080
Speaker 1: his storage unit. And just to be clear, Scott's story

1292
01:10:36,240 --> 01:10:39,320
Speaker 1: is just one perspective on what happened at HQ Trivia.

1293
01:10:39,520 --> 01:10:42,919
Speaker 1: You can check out Boombust, Glitch and host Sarah Prebus,

1294
01:10:42,960 --> 01:10:45,439
Speaker 1: who worked at HQ since the beta phase all the

1295
01:10:45,439 --> 01:10:47,960
Speaker 1: way through the million viewer Mark, who made her own

1296
01:10:48,040 --> 01:10:52,120
Speaker 1: tiktocumentary about her perspective on the toxic nature of the workplace.

1297
01:10:52,400 --> 01:10:54,720
Speaker 1: I'll link all of this in the description, But as

1298
01:10:54,720 --> 01:10:58,400
Speaker 1: far as the main character in the year long HQ

1299
01:10:58,520 --> 01:11:04,360
Speaker 1: Trivia saga, undoubtedly the quiz Daddy Scott Ragowski, and so

1300
01:11:04,720 --> 01:11:12,120
Speaker 1: HQ Trivia your sixteenth minute ends now. Moment of fun

1301
01:11:12,160 --> 01:11:15,840
Speaker 1: this week. Okay, since we are in cursed internet video territory,

1302
01:11:16,000 --> 01:11:19,679
Speaker 1: here's a clip of me putting a jade egg in

1303
01:11:19,760 --> 01:11:23,559
Speaker 1: my vagina on camera. See you next week. What's up, Gang,

1304
01:11:23,720 --> 01:11:26,680
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start fingering myself, Jill say, you know.

1305
01:11:27,320 --> 01:11:29,960
Speaker 4: Put the egg at the base of your labia with

1306
01:11:30,040 --> 01:11:34,639
Speaker 4: really gentle pressure, slowly push with your finger the egg inside,

1307
01:11:34,720 --> 01:11:38,160
Speaker 4: and then once the egg is fully inside, okay, stop pressing.

1308
01:11:38,880 --> 01:11:42,559
Speaker 1: It's honestly going way better than I thought it would.

1309
01:11:43,160 --> 01:11:45,120
Speaker 1: Is the egg all the way in? I think we're

1310
01:11:45,160 --> 01:11:52,439
Speaker 1: getting there. Sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool Zone

1311
01:11:52,479 --> 01:11:56,519
Speaker 1: Media and Iheartradia. It is written, posted, and produced by

1312
01:11:56,640 --> 01:12:00,080
Speaker 1: me Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and

1313
01:12:00,240 --> 01:12:04,320
Speaker 1: Robert Evans. Pretty amazing. Ian Johnson is our supervising producer

1314
01:12:04,360 --> 01:12:08,200
Speaker 1: and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad thirteen

1315
01:12:08,880 --> 01:12:11,720
Speaker 1: and Pet shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my

1316
01:12:11,840 --> 01:12:14,479
Speaker 1: Cat's Flee and Casper, and by pet Rockbert who will

1317
01:12:14,520 --> 01:12:18,520
Speaker 1: outlive us all. Bye.