Speaker 1: I'm off my game today. No, you're not. People are
Speaker 1: going to have to start making better content. I think
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about this for a long time.
Speaker 1: When you program for everyone, you program for no one.
Speaker 1: I think it's that we're purpose driven platform, like we're
Speaker 1: trying to get to substance. How was that? Are you
Speaker 1: happy with that? This is marketing therapy right now? It
Speaker 1: really is? What's up? I'm Laura Currency and I'm Alexa Kristen.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Atlantia. Today we are talking to Nick Qua,
Speaker 1: none other than Nick Qua, the guy who was probably
Speaker 1: one of the first kind of signal in the noise
Speaker 1: signals for podcasting UM. And we met Nick a few
Speaker 1: years ago when we did g Podcast Theater and then
Speaker 1: when we started Atlantia, and he's just got a really
Speaker 1: clear perspective, not just on podcasting, but I also think
Speaker 1: about what's gonna happen in the future of the media space,
Speaker 1: maybe um in in light of or in addition to
Speaker 1: audio totally. Yeah, I think the decoupling of those two things.
Speaker 1: And I know something we've talked quite a bit about
Speaker 1: is that, you know, many brands and advertisers and creators
Speaker 1: are saying you know, what's my approach to podcasting. It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily about what is your approach to podcasting, it's
Speaker 1: what's your approach to audio? Um, and how do you
Speaker 1: think about podcasting as a mechanism to deliver a narrative
Speaker 1: within that. Earlier in the week, Nick and I got
Speaker 1: to sit on a panel with The New York Times
Speaker 1: during for Advertising Week, and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: on the show, UM, has it hit the point of maturation?
Speaker 1: Are we in a mainstream phase of podcasting? Really interesting?
Speaker 1: What is mainstream? Right? What is mainstream? And to get
Speaker 1: next take on that? But I still think we're we're
Speaker 1: very early days and we have a lot to learn
Speaker 1: about how to leverage this channel to create conversation and
Speaker 1: engage with consumers. So if you don't subscribe to Nick's
Speaker 1: Hot Pod newsletter, you should because I always found UM
Speaker 1: when I started researching what was happening in the audio
Speaker 1: space like three or four years ago, he was this
Speaker 1: you know, he had a community and he had he
Speaker 1: was this voice UM that kind of cut through all
Speaker 1: the um mystical ship of what was happening. So with that,
Speaker 1: Nick Kua, we'll be right back, and we're back in
Speaker 1: the studio with none other than Nick Qua, founder of
Speaker 1: hot Pod and contributor to Vulture. Nick, welcome, so great
Speaker 1: to have you on the show. We were just reminiscing
Speaker 1: about our first time meeting you back at the Atlantia
Speaker 1: launch party UM, which is almost two years ago now,
Speaker 1: which is incredible to think about. And obviously the space
Speaker 1: has evolved tremendously since then. But hot Pod, your podcast
Speaker 1: industry must read newsletter, has just exploded. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us about the journey you've been on, and before you
Speaker 1: get into that, really why you decided to create the newsletter. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's explode. It it's more just
Speaker 1: like grown slowly month over month, year over year, much
Speaker 1: like podcasting in general. I got into it because back
Speaker 1: in two fourteen, I was working in another news room
Speaker 1: and I had been a listener to podcasts for a
Speaker 1: long time by them, and the first season of Cyril
Speaker 1: had been sort of reaching its apex at the point
Speaker 1: I believe it was it was November. It was somewhere
Speaker 1: like it's six or seventh episode, and a good number
Speaker 1: of mainstream outlets started writing about Cyril in the podcast
Speaker 1: industry at large. But it didn't quite map with what
Speaker 1: I understood about the community. Um and it's sort of
Speaker 1: like just drove me to build a small, sort of
Speaker 1: free side project just to like get some thoughts out
Speaker 1: and essentially blog. But after a while more people started subscribing,
Speaker 1: and after a while after that, people from w n
Speaker 1: y C and a few other sort of like podcast
Speaker 1: companies New Synasty were stead of subscribing, and it just
Speaker 1: sort of never stopped publishing. Since what have you noticed
Speaker 1: over the time of writing about the industry people are
Speaker 1: are most curious about, I think people. So I've always
Speaker 1: thought about Hot Pot as a community paper. It breaks
Speaker 1: new sometimes, but it doesn't always like and I try
Speaker 1: not to do it very often until it's important. But
Speaker 1: they usually sort of design it as basically a water
Speaker 1: cooler for various people from the community to sort of
Speaker 1: look at an issue and sort of understand the lay
Speaker 1: of the land. A given week, I try to sort
Speaker 1: of put in a lot of stories about how people
Speaker 1: are thinking about the space, how people operate within this space.
Speaker 1: Of my bread and butter work has always been look
Speaker 1: at this team, this is how they're thinking about things,
Speaker 1: is what they're doing, and this is what they're worried about,
Speaker 1: but sometimes I step in to do sort of like
Speaker 1: thirty thou feet analysis into what I think is the
Speaker 1: bigger picture and trying to draw lines that readers kind
Speaker 1: otherwise drove by themselves. The world of podcasting in the
Speaker 1: last to four years has completely changed. It's kind of
Speaker 1: mainstream now in terms of at least people listening talking
Speaker 1: about it, media companies getting into it, um, journalists getting
Speaker 1: into it, etcetera. What do you think right now are
Speaker 1: the kind of biggest signals of where the industry is headed? Um.
Speaker 1: It's actually really interesting because I do wonder whether it
Speaker 1: has achieved a sort of sort of mainstream status, and
Speaker 1: I do wonder about that still a larger question of
Speaker 1: what it means to be mainstream and knows where the
Speaker 1: media goes. We sort of functioned to really like fragmented
Speaker 1: media ecosystem right now because the Internet has basically flattened everything. Um.
Speaker 1: But the thing that's been super interesting to me about
Speaker 1: the past four years is I think we're going to
Speaker 1: look back at to mid is a sort of really
Speaker 1: interesting in between period and now we're only we're about
Speaker 1: to see, you know, what scale really means and what
Speaker 1: it um sort of an industry growing into something that
Speaker 1: has a bigger architecture really means that the biggest signals
Speaker 1: to me are UM, you know, are hard Media acquiring
Speaker 1: stuff Media a couple of weeks ago. That's a significantly
Speaker 1: It's a once a massive radio giant acquiring a veteran
Speaker 1: very sort of hard at work, very functional, highly functioning
Speaker 1: podcast publishing company UM. And that to me is sort
Speaker 1: of a harbinger of things that come. I think we're
Speaker 1: going to see a lot of big legacy via companies
Speaker 1: by its win to the space and inject a lot
Speaker 1: more resources into it. And the question then would be
Speaker 1: how how do you sort of grow this thing UM
Speaker 1: in a way that hasn't been just in like in
Speaker 1: a much quicker way, right like the past four years,
Speaker 1: in the past ten years before that has largely been
Speaker 1: a story of the industry or the community organ organically
Speaker 1: trying to figure things out on its own. Now we're
Speaker 1: going to sort of see UM sort of fire from
Speaker 1: a different direction. Any in your opinion that fire from
Speaker 1: a different direction. Is it the same model that has
Speaker 1: been followed, like a more ad supported model that's been
Speaker 1: you know, the decades, you know, sixty seventy years of
Speaker 1: media or do you think that's going to change. It's
Speaker 1: one of those situations where I think advertising is not
Speaker 1: gonna go anywhere. It's it's it has been sort of
Speaker 1: the predominant business model for so many different kinds of
Speaker 1: media formats and different kinds of industries. So what we're
Speaker 1: going to probably see on that front is, um, what
Speaker 1: we've learned from ad tech over the past ten years
Speaker 1: in earth set of technology industry being an attempt to
Speaker 1: apply it to podcasting, which is largely sort of developed
Speaker 1: the really storm of reputation and value proposition around um,
Speaker 1: you know, host red ads that are you know, intimate
Speaker 1: and baked into to the medium and baked into a
Speaker 1: podcast episode. Um, we're going to see sort of all
Speaker 1: those two models clash and figure out what the new
Speaker 1: what the new sort of thing is? Yeah, what the what?
Speaker 1: What comes out from that? I don't know. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure that the value proposition will change as a result
Speaker 1: all the sort of messaging around podcastings intimacy and the
Speaker 1: effectiveness of its ad reads. It's going to be substantially
Speaker 1: challenged when you set of applied programmatic thinking to this.
Speaker 1: But hopefully you know the numbers will lead to a
Speaker 1: better place and hopefully that we productive outcomes. But I
Speaker 1: think it's like, how do you think podcasting has changed journalism?
Speaker 1: I mean, if you look at New York Times and
Speaker 1: you look at the Daily, I think the Daily probably
Speaker 1: got a lot more audience for the New York Times,
Speaker 1: and the New York Times was getting before the Daily.
Speaker 1: I think you can cut into this question from two directions.
Speaker 1: One UM what it offers legacy news companies and legacy
Speaker 1: journalism organizations that this opportunity to as you mentioned, reach
Speaker 1: new audiences UM and largely that comes from this dynamic
Speaker 1: in which newspaper organizations have beene for a lot of time,
Speaker 1: have often adopted like a voice of God kind of approach,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of a monolithic, faceless we are the
Speaker 1: authority on the subject style of news distribution and information dessemination.
Speaker 1: And we're in a moment in not just America but
Speaker 1: the world where trust in institutions are are challenged. And
Speaker 1: what UM Audio broadly of sort of offers is this
Speaker 1: opportunity for UM people to connect people to connect institutions,
Speaker 1: people to connective journalists, and people to sort of really
Speaker 1: form of emotional emotional bond with this side that works
Speaker 1: really hard at producing the news but has historically been
Speaker 1: sort of embattled by a sort of people who question
Speaker 1: truth and things like that, but sort of people think
Speaker 1: it from the other direction. It's it's sort of this
Speaker 1: in between place between old legacy news organizations and sort
Speaker 1: of the blogging, rapid fire news news organizations or sort
Speaker 1: of new media companies that sort of came to age
Speaker 1: in the mid to late two thousand's, places like Gawker,
Speaker 1: places like BuzzFeed, sort of sites that really built their
Speaker 1: identity around being one of the people being very voicey.
Speaker 1: I feel like the Daily and Specific has been able
Speaker 1: to sort of build a space where it feels like
Speaker 1: this in between ground, that you're talking to a real person,
Speaker 1: that this person has a voice, but this person isn't
Speaker 1: particularly like isn't irreverend, And it's still sort of able
Speaker 1: to embody authority in a really interesting way. And I
Speaker 1: think I think that's the wedge. What are your thoughts
Speaker 1: are sort of recommendations are best practices given what you've
Speaker 1: seen in this space for brands who are eager to
Speaker 1: either dip their toe or go all in, Because I
Speaker 1: think over the last two years, we've seen many different
Speaker 1: brands across many different categories go at this in different ways.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. My recommendation would be to trust the natives
Speaker 1: of this community. The heart of this product is an emotion,
Speaker 1: and the heart of this product is like an an
Speaker 1: intimacy of relationship, and so that is what you're either
Speaker 1: trying to develop if you were to create a branded
Speaker 1: podcast of your own, but that's also what you're trying
Speaker 1: to bite into. And as anybody in the sort of
Speaker 1: healthy nurging long term really you should can tell you
Speaker 1: it's sort of like it's a lot about listening. It's
Speaker 1: a lot about being being attentive to how this community
Speaker 1: works and how this um, how this space does its job.
Speaker 1: And I think I would recommend this like listening to
Speaker 1: not just podcast publishers but um but too, but listen
Speaker 1: to what podcast audiences want. And that's that's kind of
Speaker 1: what you're renting into it the end of the day,
Speaker 1: what are your thoughts on what's happening in the programmatic
Speaker 1: space in audio in podcasting? Kind of as the maybe
Speaker 1: counter to that, yeah, I don't, I don't know. So
Speaker 1: i I'm Morather the young person and the sort of
Speaker 1: the kind of person that I really tuned out commercial
Speaker 1: radio because I find radio ads this extremely assaulting and
Speaker 1: overwhelming and just unpleasant. Um. And so that's my memory
Speaker 1: and that's sort of that's my um my relationship with
Speaker 1: the notion of programmatic, right, Like I came up of
Speaker 1: age in the Internet when sort of patter ads were
Speaker 1: like not great at its peak assault of this and
Speaker 1: so I think the question is that of can you
Speaker 1: use programmatic to scale quality and into the scene? Um?
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I think this is unproven territory. Um.
Speaker 1: There is definitely a model into into which how programmatic
Speaker 1: could work for a technology like this, But you're not
Speaker 1: scaling quantity, your scaling quality um. And so that's that's
Speaker 1: the difficulty here, and therefore it changes I think the
Speaker 1: nature of programmatic right. So right now it's about chasing
Speaker 1: eyeballs and volume. I think that you know, Laura and
Speaker 1: I have talked about a lot in the past that
Speaker 1: programmatic is the right idea executed in the wrong way.
Speaker 1: And that's in digital right add you know, banners and
Speaker 1: things like that, And I think it's possibly going to
Speaker 1: happen in audio unless unless there is some kind of
Speaker 1: genius around creating experience and letting that drive a targeted
Speaker 1: by I think what two things I think there are
Speaker 1: there are two things that might bring us to a
Speaker 1: better place of programmatic right Like. I think the first
Speaker 1: thing is if we see really strong, clear leaders building
Speaker 1: out a model that that both sort of respects the
Speaker 1: meeting's intimacy and also it is able to utilize programmatic
Speaker 1: in the right way. If somebody can figure that out
Speaker 1: and be really strong and messaging that this is how
Speaker 1: it's going to work, it will lead to like the
Speaker 1: creation of norms around how you use programmatic that could
Speaker 1: be productive. So I think I think that is something
Speaker 1: that we should be looking out for, and if we
Speaker 1: see it, we should elevate it. I think that's that's important.
Speaker 1: That to me only gives more thought around subscription models
Speaker 1: and people saying, you know, we'd rather pay than than
Speaker 1: listen to the same sort of experience Nickels alluding to
Speaker 1: within commercial radio. So the curious to get your thoughts
Speaker 1: on the subscription approach and if you have any idea
Speaker 1: insight into those that may be um thinking about this
Speaker 1: and that you're excited for. I've seen unheard of a
Speaker 1: bunch of different plays within the space right now that's
Speaker 1: podcast specific. There as a company called Theminity that's trying
Speaker 1: to build sort of paid platform for podcasting. They literally
Speaker 1: want to be the Netflix for podcasts. UM. There are
Speaker 1: a bunch of other companies to have similar plays. UM.
Speaker 1: Stitcher has Stitcher Premium, which essentially offers like bonuses and
Speaker 1: and interesting UM exclusive shows on that kind of recites
Speaker 1: on top or to the corner of their overarching ad
Speaker 1: driven model. I have written. I wrote a column about
Speaker 1: this a couple of months ago. I think we're looking
Speaker 1: at the wrong models. UM. I think we're looking at
Speaker 1: the wrong metaphors. We shouldn't be drawing from things like
Speaker 1: like Netflix because they just have different histories if how
Speaker 1: they get to to where they are. We should be
Speaker 1: looking at things like head Space, which is a sort
Speaker 1: of meditation app that's able to slip into people's lives
Speaker 1: in a very specific way. UM. And it's and it
Speaker 1: sort of fits into a very specific use case for
Speaker 1: a lot of people that would drive them to say yes,
Speaker 1: I will pay five or six dollars a month for
Speaker 1: this for this content. UM. I think that's the sort
Speaker 1: of model for where people should start before moving out market.
Speaker 1: But UM, I haven't quite seen anything as podcast specific
Speaker 1: that UM that's encouraging or that's interesting. Do you think
Speaker 1: there's a new model that needs to be built for
Speaker 1: Amazon and Google Home and those types of things in
Speaker 1: the podcasting space? You know, right now there are a
Speaker 1: lot of podcasts that are available on Amazon, for example.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that the same experience that we hear
Speaker 1: when we plug in our phones and listen to a
Speaker 1: podcast should be the same experience is when you're listening
Speaker 1: to it in your home. I think that's right, But
Speaker 1: I think there are some things that do retain. UM.
Speaker 1: There are ways in which I can activate Alexa skills
Speaker 1: that overlap with the nature of being on demand, right,
Speaker 1: like one of the sort of bigger value propositions of
Speaker 1: podcasting sort of like you're able to UM, you made
Speaker 1: a choice to listen to this thing, and therefore it's
Speaker 1: something that you bought into and you have a testive
Speaker 1: relationship with to track this out, as opposed to something
Speaker 1: that's more of a linear stream that you catch onto
Speaker 1: and you either choose to opt out or to switch
Speaker 1: around if you if you didn't like what you're listening to. UM.
Speaker 1: The way I've been trying to think about this is
Speaker 1: sort of the shift between desktop two mobile UM. The
Speaker 1: way that we had sites specifically designed for a stesktop
Speaker 1: that never really designed specifically for mobile, and as a result,
Speaker 1: there are breakdowns in that relationship when when one carries
Speaker 1: to the other. UM. The question I think is sort
Speaker 1: of how do you either restructure shows or redesign shows
Speaker 1: that could fit in both environments or and or how
Speaker 1: do you build things specifically for alexa UM. There was
Speaker 1: a point that was raised in the at Week panel
Speaker 1: that that Laura and I did that was so super interesting,
Speaker 1: which is the coupling the idea of podcasts with the
Speaker 1: idea of audio. I think that's definitely an inevitability. Publishers
Speaker 1: need to do that, especially not just when one smart
Speaker 1: speaker is really sort of become the touch, the first
Speaker 1: touch for most audio consumption, but also when platforms like
Speaker 1: Spotify or or pandor really really really sort of buy
Speaker 1: into a co opt um space previously occupied by podcast publishers,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's it's sort of I think it's
Speaker 1: it's it's all audio the end of the day, but
Speaker 1: it's all it all has to be sort of a
Speaker 1: little bit more thoughtful than than what's going on right now,
Speaker 1: thinking about the use case and the utility. Well also,
Speaker 1: then I think forced brands to think about it's not
Speaker 1: just it's not good enough just to create podcast content
Speaker 1: or audio content. It's a strategy, like how are you
Speaker 1: deploying your message accordingly? So I agree, and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, Nick, this is something I'd love to get
Speaker 1: your opinion on. We have been, for lack of a
Speaker 1: better term, in a really linear I think you actually
Speaker 1: said this earlier, like a linear media world, I personally think,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's more of a hope the audio is
Speaker 1: going to actually break that, and so we're gonna be
Speaker 1: looking at more non linear types of media, and that
Speaker 1: could look like something where you start franchising not only
Speaker 1: a brand, but a talent or an idea. So if
Speaker 1: like I'm headed into a meeting with the CMO and
Speaker 1: I need to talk to them about something that's happening
Speaker 1: trend wise, there's no reason I couldn't have Serificial give
Speaker 1: me the top three things right as I'm walking out
Speaker 1: the door that I need to know about X, Y,
Speaker 1: and Z. All of a sudden, those voices, if you will,
Speaker 1: or that content I p becomes almost um uh just omnipresent.
Speaker 1: What's your opinion on that, Nick, I mean, do you
Speaker 1: think that's possible and and and prompted by this kind
Speaker 1: of um potential and audio. Yeah, I think it's super
Speaker 1: interesting because I feel like we were always trending in
Speaker 1: this direction, regardless of the specific context of the media industry. UM.
Speaker 1: Going back to what we were talking about early or
Speaker 1: sort of trust in institutions and trust and authorities have
Speaker 1: sort of been declining over time, and I think what
Speaker 1: has replaced as this notion of you know, trust, trust
Speaker 1: in individuals and you know, you know, folks kind of
Speaker 1: say like always invest in a person in kind of situation.
Speaker 1: And I think I think what we're seeing I don't
Speaker 1: quite know how this translates to every media company or
Speaker 1: every new media context or different kinds of programming UM,
Speaker 1: but I think we're seeing sort of really interesting UM
Speaker 1: new compandia companies being built around individual voices. And one
Speaker 1: of the best examples of this is probably Actio says
Speaker 1: and you were talking about Sara Fisher. It's not just her,
Speaker 1: but they've also built sort of um it's built architecture
Speaker 1: around Jonathan Swan who's their political correspondent, and and Mike Allen,
Speaker 1: who's the founder a co founder of acxios where UM
Speaker 1: they go into the world that you can read them
Speaker 1: in the newsletter, you can see them on TV, you
Speaker 1: can see them on Twitter. They probably have like four
Speaker 1: or five different other touch points of how they're distributing
Speaker 1: the information that they know UM and you know, it's
Speaker 1: all sort of value being carried outwards into all these
Speaker 1: different directions. The questions sort of how do you sort
Speaker 1: of monetize all of those and and the question for
Speaker 1: me and a brother's sense, it's also how to you
Speaker 1: adapt this model to other kinds of UM media context
Speaker 1: and programming cells and genres, because I don't think it's
Speaker 1: a model that could fit for everyone, but it is
Speaker 1: there's something intriguing about the truth that there is trust
Speaker 1: in the individuals there. Nick. One of the things you
Speaker 1: and I were chatting about on that panel was around
Speaker 1: the idea of formats and the ability for people to
Speaker 1: get creative and not just thinking about it as talking
Speaker 1: heads or interviews or news style content, but some of
Speaker 1: the mechanisms that have been used by people like panically,
Speaker 1: where they've built been series around Empire and Blood, some
Speaker 1: of the relationships that are starting to happen with Hollywood
Speaker 1: that we see Gimlet moving toward. What are your thoughts
Speaker 1: around sort of non news, sort of the fictional storytelling
Speaker 1: and the ways people are really getting creative with format.
Speaker 1: And so we've seen like a bunch of historically seen
Speaker 1: like a bunch of really interesting innovations over the past
Speaker 1: couple of years, specifically of the podcasting. So in Para
Speaker 1: Blood dropped all their episodes at once, but so did
Speaker 1: as Town uh like I believe March of last year,
Speaker 1: where they dropped this entire novelistic story um down in
Speaker 1: I sell all seven chapters in one day and it
Speaker 1: ends up being this sort of really remarkable experience, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, in hindsight, what do you think about It's
Speaker 1: really hard to monetize. Also, it's hard to sort of
Speaker 1: evaluate the risk of whether you want to get an
Speaker 1: ad buy on that um. But we've also seen, like
Speaker 1: I think even something as early as a comedy Bang
Speaker 1: Bang like that's sort of a really popular comedy podcast,
Speaker 1: your Wolf Um. They really play with how long you
Speaker 1: can go, how deep you can go a different segments
Speaker 1: and and sort of blurring the line between something that's
Speaker 1: fictionals I think it's not fictional. There are all these
Speaker 1: sort of different elements that carry different amounts of risk
Speaker 1: to the podcast on the genre to format that they're using.
Speaker 1: UM think that for me, the prevailing question is sort
Speaker 1: of where where would the incentives for more innovations like
Speaker 1: this come from? Because there are increasing questions about UM
Speaker 1: the costs to really build a new experimental products of
Speaker 1: a high quality like this UM and for a lot
Speaker 1: of podcast publishers are not exactly rolling around in cash,
Speaker 1: so they're they're sort of a little worried about upfront advice.
Speaker 1: As a result, they're they're a little worried about where
Speaker 1: the principal state comes from. So I think we're gonna
Speaker 1: see a bit of the push and pull here. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of the innovation is going to come
Speaker 1: from independent makers who are usually are working at a
Speaker 1: smaller scale and hopefully they get to move up market
Speaker 1: over time to experiment at grander levels. But UM, but
Speaker 1: it's it's unclear to me, like where the next thing
Speaker 1: is going to come from, because it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: sort of plot out de jectories and things like this.
Speaker 1: Thinking about the roles that I think many of the
Speaker 1: platforms in the podcast space are starting to take on.
Speaker 1: I think in the beginning, everybody was trying to figure
Speaker 1: it out. Everybody was rushing to the market, creating content,
Speaker 1: trying to find their way. But cure is if you
Speaker 1: also feel that they're starting to become more defined swim
Speaker 1: lanes in the space. I think, you know, there are
Speaker 1: certain podcast production companies that are starting to develop a
Speaker 1: reputation for the content they're creating. There's technology players sort
Speaker 1: of emerging and solidifying theirselves in the space, and then
Speaker 1: I think there's sort of these best in class creators
Speaker 1: um that regardless of where they ended up, you know
Speaker 1: they would have a following. So this is my litmus test.
Speaker 1: If it's still possible that a person working or a
Speaker 1: team working with relatively few resources to develop something that
Speaker 1: can comparably compete with you know, something like this American
Speaker 1: Life or you know, anything that comes up from the
Speaker 1: Slate network, if an unknown person can stills take that
Speaker 1: attention and to pomp, then you still have a situation
Speaker 1: which the swim lanes, no matter how defined anydia are,
Speaker 1: can always be challenged. And I think we still exist
Speaker 1: in the space where that can happen, That the next
Speaker 1: best thing class creator, that the next team of people
Speaker 1: who will build sort of the next big package company.
Speaker 1: It's still very much open and possible. There there are
Speaker 1: no sort of structural limitations that prevents that from happening.
Speaker 1: We might be c have seen the formation of different
Speaker 1: companies and an industry structure that reduces the probability of
Speaker 1: that happening. Um, But the possibility that is still very
Speaker 1: much alive and and to me, I think that's that's
Speaker 1: still an interesting promise of the space. That's what keeps
Speaker 1: us coming back, right. So, Nick, what is the hot
Speaker 1: pod of the day? What are you loving listening to? Um?
Speaker 1: I'm actually working on a review for Vulture right now
Speaker 1: on this new fiction podcast from the CBC the Canadian
Speaker 1: Broadcasting Corporation is written directed at stars Caitlin Press who
Speaker 1: um famously produced The Heart, which was a Radiotopia show
Speaker 1: about the sort of intimacy and emotion. UM and it's
Speaker 1: a really interesting audio fiction series. Um. UM sort of
Speaker 1: fascinated think through it and write about it. And that's
Speaker 1: all I've been thinking about the name of brain. What
Speaker 1: is the thing you want to see made yesterday. M hm,
Speaker 1: great questions. You know, part of the cop out answer
Speaker 1: here is that I'm always looking for something that I
Speaker 1: didn't think about, like something that surprises me and something
Speaker 1: that like, you know, one of the things I always
Speaker 1: fear whenever I go to the bookstore or look at
Speaker 1: that fall TV lineup is that I'm going to look
Speaker 1: at a wall of things that I've heard of before,
Speaker 1: that this thing doesn't feel particularly surprising, that that's a
Speaker 1: copy of that or invitation of that. So Nick, we're
Speaker 1: gonna end the show with our favorite game. What would
Speaker 1: you kill? What would you buy? What would you do yourself?
Speaker 1: I would kill a video like social video. This is
Speaker 1: really stressing me out all the time every time I
Speaker 1: see it. Um, I would buy a public radio station
Speaker 1: in nowhere America because I still think those are really
Speaker 1: beautiful gems. Um, in this country, I would d I
Speaker 1: y a TV station that will be fun well, Nick,
Speaker 1: qua hot pod read it. If people want to reach you,
Speaker 1: subscribe to the newsletter. How do they do that? Um?
Speaker 1: You can find me on hot pot news dot com
Speaker 1: or you can find me on Twitter. At end of
Speaker 1: qua Quah, Nick leave our listeners with three must listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts going into the weekend. UM, I would listen
Speaker 1: to to re Watchables if you don't already listen to that. UM,
Speaker 1: I would listen to the New Cereal season, which continues
Speaker 1: to be super interesting. UM and I will listen to
Speaker 1: UM this really interesting episode from a podcast called Beautiful
Speaker 1: Stories from another Those People by the communing Chris get Third.
Speaker 1: UM and the most recent episode, he spoke to a
Speaker 1: person who survive the last Vegas shooting exactly a year ago.
Speaker 1: This week, UM and it's it's the Court dis Conversation,
Speaker 1: nick La. Thank you so much, Thank you, Nick, thank
Speaker 1: you so big. Thanks to Nick Kwa. Make sure you
Speaker 1: check out the hot Pot newsletter. It's where we're getting
Speaker 1: all of our information on the podcast industry on the regular.
Speaker 1: I've been a reader of hot pod for years now
Speaker 1: and he's been kind of this voice and this perspective
Speaker 1: on the industry and as it's grown, kind of made
Speaker 1: me think about audio, not just podcasting in a different way.
Speaker 1: So thank you again, Nick Koa, all of our friends
Speaker 1: and family at Panoply, our producer Dana. We'll be back
Speaker 1: in two weeks see Atlantia. Mm hmm. Full disclosure, our
Speaker 1: opinions are our own