Speaker 1: Oh g is folks, it should die.
Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater, they want clod sodas,
Speaker 3: pop popcorn and no monsters in the projection booth.
Speaker 1: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 4: Got it off.
Speaker 5: My name is Fred Arnison and I'm a comedian. Are
Speaker 5: you a big.
Speaker 1: Uh no looking podcasting?
Speaker 6: What a ship name that is?
Speaker 2: This story will change the way you think about podcasts.
Speaker 1: Morning, everybody. It's Adam Curry here.
Speaker 3: With you and Adam Curry from MTV.
Speaker 2: The technology of podcasting was invented in two thousand.
Speaker 5: It's really simple syndication. Before anyone was podcasting, before there
Speaker 5: was an iPod, I got a call from app.
Speaker 4: Here's an Adam Curry is one of the guys that
Speaker 4: invented podcasting.
Speaker 2: Steve wants to meet with you and he says, I
Speaker 2: want to put podcasting into iTunes.
Speaker 3: Is that okay?
Speaker 5: I'm like, yeah.
Speaker 2: Long before you know television, film, radio, the printed word,
Speaker 2: we've been communicating with each other in sound.
Speaker 6: When you make a radio documentary or you make a podcast,
Speaker 6: I feel like we're playing with fire.
Speaker 5: It's elemental to who we are.
Speaker 2: I'm a podcast host and this is a film about
Speaker 2: audio storytelling.
Speaker 1: I know that the world is waiting to find out how.
Speaker 6: Cool this is.
Speaker 2: Thirty eight percent of the US population twelve plus listen
Speaker 2: to a podcast in the last month.
Speaker 1: That ain't nothing right, that's bigger than Twitter.
Speaker 2: But there have been some growing pains.
Speaker 1: The podcast is moving to Spotify.
Speaker 7: When a company with money is interested in you, they're
Speaker 7: not interested in you, and they're not even interested in
Speaker 7: what you create. They're interested in your audience, and you
Speaker 7: can sell that audience exactly once.
Speaker 2: That's when things got complicated.
Speaker 8: Business has finally found what's going on with our little
Speaker 8: secret world.
Speaker 4: I hope that well the money floods the space that
Speaker 4: the integrity of the medium is able to stay.
Speaker 9: It's really hard to keep humanity at the center of
Speaker 9: everything when you scale.
Speaker 10: I feel like we've been in a bit of a
Speaker 10: wild podcast bubble.
Speaker 6: I think the bubble is hopping.
Speaker 11: Yeah, how companies fund shows are de risking.
Speaker 2: I think podcasting is the medium. It's sitting around a
Speaker 2: fire telling stories.
Speaker 1: It's what we've always done.
Speaker 2: And the thing that was magical to me is that
Speaker 2: with a voice and nothing else, you can create anything.
Speaker 2: For more information, go to aoamovie dot com podcasts. All right,
Speaker 2: welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host. Mike White
Speaker 2: joined me once again as mister Chris Tashue.
Speaker 1: You guys like to talk about movies.
Speaker 2: Also joining us all the way from the pod News
Speaker 2: daily newsletter is mister James Gridlin.
Speaker 5: Hey, thank you so much for asking.
Speaker 2: On this special episode of the Projection Booth. We are
Speaker 2: looking at the twenty twenty five documentary from director Jewn
Speaker 2: Michael Cologne Age of Audio. The film is narrated by
Speaker 2: and stars Ronald Big Ron Young Junior, the host of
Speaker 2: numerous award winning podcasts, who talks us through his story
Speaker 2: as well as the history up to now of the
Speaker 2: medium of podcasting. Quite a big task for an eighty
Speaker 2: two minute film. We will be spoiling this movie as
Speaker 2: much as we can, so if you don't want anything ruined,
Speaker 2: turn off the podcast and come back after you've seen
Speaker 2: the film and experience the entire history of podcasting. We
Speaker 2: will still be here. So, Chris, I want to start
Speaker 2: with a question about how you came to know about
Speaker 2: podcasts and how you decided to start making one.
Speaker 1: I'll keep that to the five minute answer.
Speaker 2: The Earth formed, then it cooled.
Speaker 1: Fish then crawled out of lakes.
Speaker 8: No, I can actually tell you the first podcast I
Speaker 8: remember listening to was in two thousand and probably six
Speaker 8: with Film.
Speaker 1: Spotting, and that was the first time I'd ever heard
Speaker 1: a podcast.
Speaker 8: And I mean, that's kind of I guess maybe not
Speaker 8: so much anymore. That used to be like the standard
Speaker 8: bearer for movie podcast. Now I would say it's the
Speaker 8: Projection Booth podcast with Mike White oof.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, wow, shameless self promotion everybody.
Speaker 8: But that was kind of the first movie podcast or
Speaker 8: first podcast I had ever ever heard. And I didn't
Speaker 8: get into podcasting proper until two thousand and fourteen. So
Speaker 8: about eight years later, I had started a movie review
Speaker 8: website on my own because I was just looking for
Speaker 8: something to do in the month of October, and a
Speaker 8: friend of mine reached out to me. It was like, hey,
Speaker 8: you should do a podcast, and that that is kind
Speaker 8: of what it feels like. I've had one, two, three
Speaker 8: different co hosts. The person who helped me start the
Speaker 8: show I haven't talked to in almost a decade, you know,
Speaker 8: And that's just you know, it's part of this, it's
Speaker 8: part of the journey of podcasting. Nothing is ever static,
Speaker 8: and if things are static for too long, you might
Speaker 8: becoming complacent, which is kind of a thing that I'm
Speaker 8: struggling with right now as somebod who's been podcasting for
Speaker 8: going on eleven years now.
Speaker 1: Yikes, that's horrifying. I mean, there's not much to it.
Speaker 8: I mean, the documentary makes it pretty clear, like if
Speaker 8: you want to do it in this day and age,
Speaker 8: you can just do it. So ain no pomp and
Speaker 8: circumstance here, you know, other than just liking movies and
Speaker 8: wanting to talk about movies with my friends.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what this ended up.
Speaker 2: Being, because there are no other types of podcasts other
Speaker 2: than movie podcasts.
Speaker 8: I mean, as far as anyone who listens to the
Speaker 8: things we make might be concerned, there would be nothing else.
Speaker 1: That's not true. I mean I've done other stuff.
Speaker 8: I did a paranormal podcast for a while that was
Speaker 8: pretty successful actually, But the movie podcast is kind of
Speaker 8: what I've gravitated back towards this whole, so can't get
Speaker 8: away from it.
Speaker 1: Movies are just too intrinsically linked to who I am.
Speaker 8: But yeah, they don't mention that at all in this documentary,
Speaker 8: so don't worry about it, folks, and James, howbout yourself.
Speaker 5: I first got involved with podcasting in two thousand and five,
Speaker 5: a long long time ago. I was working for a
Speaker 5: radio station and I saw that podcasting was the thing,
Speaker 5: and so I turned our breakfast show into a podcast,
Speaker 5: and it was doing I think at one point it
Speaker 5: was doing somewhere in the region of fifteen thousand downloads
Speaker 5: and episodes. It was doing really well. She is astonishing
Speaker 5: these days. I started writing pod News, which is a
Speaker 5: newsletter all about podcasting, in twenty seventeen, and have written
Speaker 5: it every day since. So, yeah, I should say two things. Firstly,
Speaker 5: I'm in this movie. I hope you noticed my excellent
Speaker 5: cameo for three seconds. But also, secondly, I do not
Speaker 5: watch movies. So I used to joke that the last
Speaker 5: movie that I ever saw was Superman three. That may
Speaker 5: not be entirely true, but it's nearly true. And so
Speaker 5: I was there and I was thinking, I should go
Speaker 5: and listen to an episode of this show to make
Speaker 5: sure that I understand how this show works. And so
Speaker 5: I went through your more than one thousand episodes desperately
Speaker 5: trying to find a movie that I had actually seen.
Speaker 5: I hit on Day of the Jackal, which is two
Speaker 5: and a half years ago. But nevertheless, it was a
Speaker 5: good show. So yeah, So if you're expecting movie critique
Speaker 5: from me, you are going to be sadly mistaken.
Speaker 8: I'm not sure there's any movie critique to be had
Speaker 8: with this movie, Like it's a documentary. I mean, I
Speaker 8: was under the impression this conversation was going to be
Speaker 8: more about podcasting. I don't know, like it's weird to
Speaker 8: watch a movie about podcasting. James, you mentioned you were
Speaker 8: in the movie. I was at that Amby's where he
Speaker 8: won all of his awards. I was sitting in that
Speaker 8: room because that was last year in Los Angeles. Tracy
Speaker 8: Mattel was there, so yeah, I was in that room.
Speaker 8: I remember him winning all of his awards and him
Speaker 8: coming back up like it was like four.
Speaker 1: Times, I think, something to that effect, to the point.
Speaker 8: I mean they show it in the documentary where he
Speaker 8: comes back up a couple times. But that was pretty
Speaker 8: crazy because I was like, oh my god, are they're
Speaker 8: going to be at the Abies in Los Angeles last year?
Speaker 1: Yes, And in fact they are like, Okay, did you
Speaker 1: watch this movie?
Speaker 5: No, yes, I do, of course I.
Speaker 1: Did before too, on a thing we've co hosted before.
Speaker 5: So I saw it on the big screen indeed, or
Speaker 5: the big screen in my front room. So yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2: Sean even says that you were supposed to be in
Speaker 2: this film at some point.
Speaker 8: I was.
Speaker 5: If you listened very carefully. Just before the Ambies sequence,
Speaker 5: they clips a bit of the pod News Daily podcast,
Speaker 5: which I also do, so yeah, so you get to
Speaker 5: hear my exciting English accent in the middle of that
Speaker 5: for about three minutes. I've noticed I'm not in the credits,
Speaker 5: and all the way through there's lots of clips of
Speaker 5: you know, this happened, and then there's a screenshot of
Speaker 5: the Hollywood Reporter, and then this happened, and there's a
Speaker 5: screenshot of Bloomberg, and I was there, going, there must
Speaker 5: be a screenshot of pod News, right, there must be
Speaker 5: a screenshot of Oh, there isn't a best Last movie.
Speaker 1: You would think there would be, but there is.
Speaker 5: In the entire podcast movie. But still there we are.
Speaker 5: So yeah, but it was. It was a great watch,
Speaker 5: and I mean, I know a number of the people there,
Speaker 5: I think, so I think the first thing that I
Speaker 5: noticed in the in the movie is that it is
Speaker 5: clearly a movie that was recorded at two totally different times.
Speaker 5: So quite a lot of people look weirdly six or
Speaker 5: seven years younger than they really are, you know, so
Speaker 5: very clearly this movie was filmed and shot in twenty
Speaker 5: nineteen and then again in twenty twenty three, twenty four,
Speaker 5: And so you've got this sort of a slightly odd
Speaker 5: juxtaposition of you know, Adam Curry, for example, and Dave
Speaker 5: Winer clearly interviewed a while ago, Tom Webster clearly interviewed
Speaker 5: a while ago. And I think you know that that's
Speaker 5: the sort of the thing that I guess I would
Speaker 5: only notice given that I'm in the industry, But it
Speaker 5: was it was an interesting watch.
Speaker 2: Well, you probably recognized a lot more people than I
Speaker 2: recognized that. Even when I was talking with Sean, he
Speaker 2: was really impressed with Roman Mars, and I was just like,
Speaker 2: I don't know who that is.
Speaker 5: You've never listened to one hundred percent one hundred percent invisible, No, no,
Speaker 5: I I can't believe it.
Speaker 2: I've never listened to an episode of Cereal either though
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 5: Also ways I know, and also and also by the way,
Speaker 5: it's ninety nine percent invisible. It's it's not one hundred
Speaker 5: percent invisible. So that just goes to show how often
Speaker 5: I listened to it as well. Now I was watching
Speaker 5: this and going, oh, look there's Julie, Oh look there's
Speaker 5: Adam and and all the people who I know well.
Speaker 5: And then there are a couple of people in there,
Speaker 5: and I was thinking, why have you been put in
Speaker 5: this movie? Which is always the way, But it was nice.
Speaker 5: I liked the Act one is all about the origin
Speaker 5: of podcasting.
Speaker 1: It's not.
Speaker 5: The history of podcasting is a bit of a contentious
Speaker 5: and this follows the relatively standard history, which is that
Speaker 5: Adam Curry and Dave Weiner invented it, and they may
Speaker 5: have invented the technology, but actually the first podcaster was
Speaker 5: Robin Williams, the comedian. He was doing podcasts. He was
Speaker 5: recording interviews with guests in his house and then putting
Speaker 5: them out on Audible onto the Audible player, which you
Speaker 5: could then download and have a listen to while you're
Speaker 5: walking the dog in the year two thousand. So actually
Speaker 5: it's a little bit more complicated, but it probably needs
Speaker 5: to be, you know, a relatively simple story for the film.
Speaker 5: But it was, you know, it was nice to see,
Speaker 5: nice to see Dave. Nice to see Adam the conversation,
Speaker 5: I think, you know, I rather liked the bit where
Speaker 5: Adam is telling a story of Steve Jobs and you
Speaker 5: see Steve Jobs. It's not but you see him miming
Speaker 5: to the words that Adam is saying. And I thought
Speaker 5: that that was a very clever I'm sure that's on
Speaker 5: all the time in movies these days, and I've not
Speaker 5: seen it, but I thought that that was a very
Speaker 5: clever tool to help tell a particular story.
Speaker 2: It's very drunk history in that way, the whole mouthing,
Speaker 2: the thing that the person is telling us the story.
Speaker 2: But they don't think that the person telling the story
Speaker 2: was drunk. In fact, I don't think anybody in this
Speaker 2: movie is drunk, even Joe Rogan.
Speaker 8: Yeah, where is Joe Rogan and all those They couldn't
Speaker 8: get old Joe to sit down for five minutes?
Speaker 2: Well, they use a lot of clips of them, that's
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 8: You're going to have to given the proliferation of Joe
Speaker 8: Rogan's podcast. How could you not It's impossible to not
Speaker 8: mention Joe Rogan, you know.
Speaker 5: Watching Leo there, Leo very famously doesn't get on with
Speaker 5: Adam curry at all, and it was very entertaining. First
Speaker 5: a few minutes of Leo Laporte saying, ah, you know
Speaker 5: the MTV guy. I was thinking, oh, wow, okay, here
Speaker 5: we go. No, but it was, it was. It was
Speaker 5: a nicely told history. It's a little bit heavy on
Speaker 5: the apple stuff. It's a little bit heavy on the
Speaker 5: Ben Hammersley stuff. Ben may have coined the word, but
Speaker 5: he didn't really get it into the public usage. As
Speaker 5: an overview of the history, I think it was quite
Speaker 5: a good yeah, quite a good watch.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's very interesting that they set this up as a
Speaker 2: podcast episode, and it didn't really click for me. The
Speaker 2: first time I watched this, I was a little overwhelmed
Speaker 2: just with all of the information coming at me. And
Speaker 2: there's a moment in the film where it feels like
Speaker 2: they just make this huge jump and I think it's
Speaker 2: kind of a like a sidebar or like a you know,
Speaker 2: a little bit of a tangent and then they come back.
Speaker 2: But when they make this one leap and I'm trying
Speaker 2: to remember exactly where that is, I'll have to look
Speaker 2: at my notes, I'm just like, whoa, what just happened?
Speaker 2: Like we just jumped like ten years, and I think
Speaker 2: it's that thing that you're talking about. As far as
Speaker 2: the marriage of the newer footage plus the older footage,
Speaker 2: some of it jives pretty well. Using big Ron as
Speaker 2: our narrator is pretty interesting and having him walk us
Speaker 2: through this whole history. But sometimes that marriage doesn't necessarily
Speaker 2: gel as much as I think it should. But I
Speaker 2: think overall it is a clever use of him as
Speaker 2: our host and walking us through this and really letting
Speaker 2: us have one person. I was calling him a narrator,
Speaker 2: whereas Sean is very much No, he's more of a
Speaker 2: podcast host. He's the host of this film. Even does
Speaker 2: an ad read, even does his Patreon drop all those
Speaker 2: kind of things. We even yeah, we have a live
Speaker 2: ad read in the middle of this film for Square Space,
Speaker 2: which you know. I was impressed by that, though I
Speaker 2: think that Casper Mattresses probably should have done better help
Speaker 2: dot com me on these That's another one.
Speaker 1: Jesus, they are and they are.
Speaker 8: They do not have a good repute either, which is
Speaker 8: not great. That's why I was square Space because Square
Speaker 8: Space is rather inoffensive as it.
Speaker 5: Were, surely manscaped, Surely that's under.
Speaker 1: Groom or whatever the hell Their product is called I
Speaker 1: think is what it's called.
Speaker 2: I mean, luckily I'm familiar with This American Life because
Speaker 2: this feels very much like and I think they even
Speaker 2: call act To a love letter to This American Life,
Speaker 2: because they really go into that. And I only knew
Speaker 2: of them as a radio show. I didn't even know
Speaker 2: that they had a podcast for a long time. You
Speaker 2: gotta love Ira Glass and what he's brought to the game.
Speaker 2: I think he really helped shepherd some of these other
Speaker 2: things like Cereal and my God, once Cereal took off.
Speaker 2: I know that true crime podcasts existed before that, but
Speaker 2: it just felt like true crime podcasts took over the
Speaker 2: industry for a long time after that.
Speaker 5: This American Life is interesting. This is definitely the US
Speaker 5: history of podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you also for mentioning met Chief.
Speaker 5: There's no European stuff in there. There's no Australian stuff
Speaker 5: in there or anything else. And This American Life is
Speaker 5: one of those shows that has clearly influenced an awful
Speaker 5: lot of people, and people have made, you know, relatively
Speaker 5: poor copies of it. You can tell how old the
Speaker 5: Ira Glass clips are because he is clean shaven. He
Speaker 5: isn't clean shaven anymore. You can very clearly see that,
Speaker 5: you know, this American life has that whole you know,
Speaker 5: focus on radio storytelling in the US. I mean, one
Speaker 5: of the points that was made in it, which I
Speaker 5: thought was really interesting, is that there is a different
Speaker 5: ethos if you're a public radio maker. There is a
Speaker 5: different ethos. You are there to make something, to make
Speaker 5: something of high quality, to do something great for your audience,
Speaker 5: whereas the majority of podcasters, the majority of other podcasters frankly,
Speaker 5: are there to make money. And there is a different
Speaker 5: sort of thing that you bring to podcasting if you
Speaker 5: come from the rather stayed you know, dull US podcast
Speaker 5: US public radio industry, you bring a different thing to
Speaker 5: podcasting than you do if you are a more commercial podcaster.
Speaker 5: And I thought that that was an interesting point that
Speaker 5: was amplified all the way through this particular thing, because
Speaker 5: you know, it just made that difference quite clear, I think.
Speaker 8: Well, and you can also tell the age of the
Speaker 8: documentary because China and India are like the biggest podcast
Speaker 8: markets now like for most like in terms of commercial
Speaker 8: like that's where a lot of the listeners are that
Speaker 8: doesn't even get mentioned in this at all, Like at
Speaker 8: all and I understand why. I mean, James to your point, like,
Speaker 8: is this being made for people that are podcasters? This
Speaker 8: being made for people that want to podcast? Is this
Speaker 8: being made for people that want to understand? I don't
Speaker 8: understandho it's being made for. And I think that's both
Speaker 8: a good thing and a bad thing, because at times
Speaker 8: I feel like the film is like grossly unfocused, because yes,
Speaker 8: I understand that there's a history of podcasting, but if
Speaker 8: a podcaster is watching this movie, I'm not sure I
Speaker 8: need to learn that I know the like James already
Speaker 8: mentioned the basic tenets of what I need to know,
Speaker 8: But at the same time, it leaves a lot of
Speaker 8: stuff out that feels important and focuses on things that
Speaker 8: it's not that it's not important, but those are like
Speaker 8: very I wouldn't say myopic, but kind of like laser
Speaker 8: focused specific things like this wasn't about podcasting holistically. This
Speaker 8: is more about like specific avenues in podcasting that I
Speaker 8: mean again, like you've heard of like you've heard of Cereal,
Speaker 8: like I think most people have heard of Cereal, like
Speaker 8: or you know this American life, Like those things are
Speaker 8: mainstream enough or definitely Joe Rogan at this point. But
Speaker 8: there there doesn't seem to be like a lot of
Speaker 8: information or intent beyond just kind of giving us like
Speaker 8: the most surface level maybe going a little bit rather
Speaker 8: than a Wikipedia article into the history of podcasting.
Speaker 5: What story is it trying to tell? I mean, clearly
Speaker 5: it's trying to tell Big Ron's story. But Big Ron's
Speaker 5: story ends with him winning lots of awards but not
Speaker 5: necessarily getting the money that he is expecting out of it.
Speaker 5: That doesn't appear to be an awful lot of story.
Speaker 5: Aren't there other than Big Ron winning a ton of
Speaker 5: awards and that's great. You know, it's an interesting thing.
Speaker 5: I think the conversation is supposed to be. Podcasting starts,
Speaker 5: it's very small, then all of a sudden public radio
Speaker 5: gets involved, then all of a sudden everybody makes their money,
Speaker 5: and then all of a sudden, everybody goes broke. And
Speaker 5: it's not it's not quite as simple as that.
Speaker 1: We're still podcasting right now.
Speaker 8: Like they mention a thing in there that I know
Speaker 8: we've all talked about privately or in you know, in
Speaker 8: our own private circles, but the celebrity of it all,
Speaker 8: like you'll notice, there's not a lot of that. In
Speaker 8: the movie, they talk about it, but they don't really
Speaker 8: tell about it. They're just kind of like, well, you know,
Speaker 8: celebrities got involved and that's where the money came from,
Speaker 8: and then the celebrity is fucked off and then the
Speaker 8: money left. It's like, that's not actually how it fucking happened.
Speaker 8: The celebrities are still here now, they have not left.
Speaker 8: They're not going to leave because that money is there,
Speaker 8: like they know that. At the end of the movie,
Speaker 8: I was like, are you trying to convince people to
Speaker 8: get into podcasting by saying that there's room in the space,
Speaker 8: because there's always been room in the space. I want
Speaker 8: to say that there's I don't know how many podcasts
Speaker 8: at this point, but it's in the multi millions. I
Speaker 8: would assume like that the money was never here, like
Speaker 8: Big Ron found that out, Like we all found that out,
Speaker 8: We got our own pod, we start our own podcast networks.
Speaker 8: Like the money just magically started flowing in, like.
Speaker 1: Give me, I'll give them out wigs.
Speaker 5: There is a ton of money in the industry, but
Speaker 5: the ton of money is concentrated on the big shows,
Speaker 5: and once you're out of the top fifty to one
Speaker 5: hundred shows, which is where all of the money goes to.
Speaker 5: I've been claiming a number with absolutely no thinking behind it,
Speaker 5: but I've been claiming a number that ninety five percent
Speaker 5: of all podcasts out there don't earn money. It's the
Speaker 5: five percent who does. Yeah, And most people say, yeah,
Speaker 5: that sounds about right. I've got no, you know, no
Speaker 5: research to back that up, but I think that that's
Speaker 5: probably fair. So, you know, and looking, you know, I mean,
Speaker 5: we're recording on a day where another part of the
Speaker 5: gold rush has just killed itself in terms of wondery.
Speaker 5: The big purchase from Amazon has just been announced that
Speaker 5: is closing. Amazon bought that for three hundred and something
Speaker 5: million dollars, and all of a sudden they've gone, yeah,
Speaker 5: you know what, Yeah, we're just going to close that now.
Speaker 5: But I think quite a lot of this is the
Speaker 5: reset of greedy time in podcasting, where all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: we had nothing to spend our money on during the
Speaker 5: pandemic apart from podcast equipment and podcast stuff, and then
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, now we're seeing the reset of
Speaker 5: that happening. Afterwards, we see a bit of the reset
Speaker 5: of that in this show, a bit of the reset
Speaker 5: happening in twenty three twenty four, and we're seeing a
Speaker 5: bit more of that reset now.
Speaker 2: It feels odd that there's no mention of the whole
Speaker 2: Megan Markele debacle, with all of that money that was
Speaker 2: changing hands, and I don't even know all the details
Speaker 2: of that. I mean pretty much, I was just following
Speaker 2: the story through pod news and just hearing of, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: here's all this money, and there's no shows that are
Speaker 2: showing up or very few, and what the heck's going
Speaker 2: on with this? It just felt almost like it was
Speaker 2: a little bit of a money laundering scheme for a
Speaker 2: better Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't know about that, but certainly when
Speaker 5: you look at Spotify, because that was originally a Spotify show,
Speaker 5: when you look at Spotify, basically, the TV people came
Speaker 5: in with their TV budgets and they assumed that they
Speaker 5: knew how to make great podcasts. And the secret that
Speaker 5: no has told the TV people is that podcasts don't
Speaker 5: run in seasons. Podcasts are always on. Podcasts need to
Speaker 5: be there every single week because a podcast is a habit.
Speaker 5: I have a particular podcast that I listen to when
Speaker 5: I'm walking the dog. I have a particular podcast so
Speaker 5: I listen to when I'm in the supermarket doing the shop.
Speaker 5: Those are all habitually driven and you don't all of
Speaker 5: a sudden, you know, get your way in if you
Speaker 5: just release eight shows as part of a new amazing series.
Speaker 5: It doesn't work that way. And I think that the
Speaker 5: TV people who came into podcasting didn't understand the difference
Speaker 5: between how we consume audio and how we consume a
Speaker 5: TV show. And we're seeing that again right now with
Speaker 5: a lot of people talking about making podcasting into video
Speaker 5: and all of this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So just why why like we can't have one, can't
Speaker 1: like it can't be enough?
Speaker 3: OK?
Speaker 1: What's like?
Speaker 8: I don't understand? And I think this, you know, and
Speaker 8: this is just my opinion, nobody else's opinion. It really
Speaker 8: bothered me that they tried to give credibility to the
Speaker 8: ambies because the ambis are, in my opinion, what is
Speaker 8: a problem here?
Speaker 1: Like when I was at the Aby's, I.
Speaker 8: Looked at how the awards were being given out, and
Speaker 8: the people that were nominated in every single one of
Speaker 8: those categories was populated with companies that did not need
Speaker 8: any of that publicity whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg, Forbes, and you know who the fuck ever.
Speaker 8: And it's like, look, if you want to pretend like
Speaker 8: this is a gorilla industry or an industry that's grassroots
Speaker 8: that like you said, James, people are doing this weekly.
Speaker 8: There are people that do this weekly, like yourself, people
Speaker 8: doing things daily for the industry. It's not these kinds
Speaker 8: of shows that people I mean, like, people will listen
Speaker 8: to this show maybe, but they're not listening to it
Speaker 8: every week. They're not listening to it every day because
Speaker 8: there's not enough of it and they know that because
Speaker 8: that's not the point. And it's so weird because there
Speaker 8: was like a I think big Ron actually wins it
Speaker 8: in the in the in the movie the Best Indie
Speaker 8: Podcast or award, Like what does that even mean?
Speaker 5: What does that even mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, what does that even mean?
Speaker 8: I just remember sitting in that room watching that award
Speaker 8: thing going I'm not nominated. Nobody I know is nominated.
Speaker 8: Nobody I know who knows anybody is nominated for any
Speaker 8: of these And we have a fairly expansive network of
Speaker 8: people that we know.
Speaker 1: How is that possible?
Speaker 8: And then when you see who's nominated, it's because, like
Speaker 8: you mentioned, James just money was just being dumped into
Speaker 8: this industry with wanton abandon.
Speaker 5: The idea behind the Ambies is very much supposed to be,
Speaker 5: you know, it's the Oscars, it's the big exciting thing.
Speaker 5: The idea is that you put that show on TV
Speaker 5: because it's full of people who you know, who are
Speaker 5: winning awards. That is a very difference. No, no, no,
Speaker 5: But it's a very different awards ceremony too. If you
Speaker 5: look at the Oscars and bear in mind my experience
Speaker 5: in movies, which I've already explained is not particularly exciting.
Speaker 5: But if you look at the Oscars, you've got the
Speaker 5: day before where they give all of the craft towards out,
Speaker 5: which never makes it to any any you know, TV
Speaker 5: or anything else. And then you've got the TV show
Speaker 5: with all of the you know, Conan and all of
Speaker 5: the fancy stars and everything else. And I think the
Speaker 5: Ambis has focused very much on the on those showbiz
Speaker 5: and on the glitz and on the glamour. Actually what
Speaker 5: we need is kind of we need the day before
Speaker 5: in the Oscars for podcasting as well, to actually recognize
Speaker 5: a lot of the people behind the microphone, a lot
Speaker 5: of the production work, a lot of the people that
Speaker 5: aren't Amy Poehler or the.
Speaker 8: Kelsey Brothers who want yell the podcast that's not the
Speaker 8: best sports podcast, Like it's a self governing body that
Speaker 8: gives me like goosebumps and it causes the hair on
Speaker 8: the back of my neck to raise, Like you're a
Speaker 8: self governing podcast award body. Okay, Like it's fine, like
Speaker 8: you said, it is the Oscars, And I feel the
Speaker 8: same way about the Oscars as I know a lot
Speaker 8: of people that watch movies do, Like, we don't think
Speaker 8: the oscars are the arbiter of any sort of taste
Speaker 8: at all. Like they're just, in a lot of ways
Speaker 8: the arbiter of Mike Waters. They the arbiter of mainstream
Speaker 8: movie culture.
Speaker 2: But it's a popularity contest mostly.
Speaker 1: Right, And the Ambies felt the exact same way.
Speaker 8: It's like the Kelsey Brothers, Well, wasn't Taylor Swift in
Speaker 8: the news for like the entire year she was, so
Speaker 8: you know one of them was involved. I don't know,
Speaker 8: Like it's it's very cynical, but that's gotta be kind
Speaker 8: of hard not to be cynical in this, in this industry,
Speaker 8: in any creative field, really.
Speaker 1: I just be honest to be honest here, like it's
Speaker 1: hard not to be.
Speaker 8: I think anything about podcasting is a positive though in
Speaker 8: the long run, Like more people are going to see
Speaker 8: this and hopefully get engaged with podcasting in a substantive way,
Speaker 8: and that's not a bad thing. That's actually a very
Speaker 8: positive thing for the industry as a whole, I think
Speaker 8: in the long term.
Speaker 5: To a degree. But I think what you get out
Speaker 5: of this is you get out of it that podcasting
Speaker 5: is a big industry. It's got lots of loads of
Speaker 5: people working for it, you know. I Mean the first
Speaker 5: thing that big Ron starts talking about is finding a
Speaker 5: sound editor, finding you know, you know, a producer for
Speaker 5: his shows and everything else. That is not how the
Speaker 5: majority of podcasts are put together. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 5: I know, I know that I can see on the video.
Speaker 1: You're talking to the editor and producer, right well, yeah, yees,
Speaker 1: all of us.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like the same thing with James. I mean, I hear
Speaker 2: James when he's recording stuff in a freaking airport, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's like you are recording stuff on this.
Speaker 1: Isn't it nice?
Speaker 8: It must be nice to have a sound editor, like
Speaker 8: a you know, storyboard person a story editor, like whatever.
Speaker 5: If you think that that's what podcasting is all about,
Speaker 5: then fine, but that's not what the majority of shows
Speaker 5: are about. And so I think from a point of
Speaker 5: view of you know, I mean, yes, there are some
Speaker 5: of these big showbiz things. I think I last calculated.
Speaker 5: If you look at fresh Air, which is a podcast
Speaker 5: and a radio show from NPR, and they interview somebody
Speaker 5: new every day, every weekday, a bit like Joe Rogan,
Speaker 5: they have seventeen members of staff that get a credit
Speaker 5: at the end of the podcast. Seventeen members of staff,
Speaker 5: And I'm there thinking, what do these people all do?
Speaker 5: What do they all do?
Speaker 1: Send them our.
Speaker 2: Way thanks to our web editor and our social media manager,
Speaker 2: and yeah.
Speaker 9: This season is edited and mixed by Evan Viola, our
Speaker 9: social media research and production assistant is Brandon Whalen, and
Speaker 9: our logo was designed by Teddy Blinks.
Speaker 5: You compare that to, you know, Joe Rogan. I don't
Speaker 5: think we know how many staff he's got, but I'm
Speaker 5: guessing it's going to be less than seventeen. The only
Speaker 5: people that get the credit is Joe and two producers,
Speaker 5: and that's it. I'm guessing there are a few more,
Speaker 5: but not that many. And for most people a podcast
Speaker 5: you have to be skilled in researching, in interviewing, in
Speaker 5: audio editing, in you know, social media, in all of
Speaker 5: this stuff because because frankly, podcasting doesn't work financially if
Speaker 5: you start adding sound editors and producers and a social
Speaker 5: media manager and all of that. And that, I think
Speaker 5: is the difficulty that you see over and over again
Speaker 5: in this movie, is that you see people coming to
Speaker 5: this with a TV or public radio viewpoint of you know,
Speaker 5: this needs fifteen people in order to make it work,
Speaker 5: whereas actually, financially, you know, much of podcasting only works
Speaker 5: if you've got two or three people or maybe even
Speaker 5: one person doing that particular show.
Speaker 8: That still blows my mind when people ask me like
Speaker 8: who edits your audio?
Speaker 1: Like what do you mean? Who?
Speaker 2: At least you edit?
Speaker 5: I like the emails that come in and they say, hey,
Speaker 5: James and the pod news team.
Speaker 1: Look around, man, you're looking at.
Speaker 5: I do enjoy occasionally turning around to somebody that's sent
Speaker 5: me some miserable email and saying and saying, I have
Speaker 5: fired the person responsible.
Speaker 8: They were given short shrift with something like what they
Speaker 8: were doing. I understand why they would need a story editor,
Speaker 8: I guess. But I think James, you know you probably
Speaker 8: as much as you said you don't watch movies, like
Speaker 8: what you do podcasting wise is more in line with
Speaker 8: what Mike and I do than what Big Ron and
Speaker 8: the friends of the kind of group, the friend group
Speaker 8: of these people in this thing that can they keep
Speaker 8: kind of like showing up or these kind of working
Speaker 8: friend group, Like they're doing something a lot more like
Speaker 8: specific and narrow focused and like narratively driven. Like that's
Speaker 8: not what I'm not saying, that's not what Mike and
Speaker 8: I aren't doing. We're not trying to craft a narrative
Speaker 8: or you but like it's a little bit more free
Speaker 8: form because it has to be because we don't have
Speaker 8: that much time. Like if we're not releasing stuff every week,
Speaker 8: like we are going to lose our audience. That is
Speaker 8: what is going to happen. We have to feed the
Speaker 8: machine like we have to. We don't have a choice.
Speaker 5: You can't have seasons, you can't have four months between shows.
Speaker 5: There are a few shows that do that, but most
Speaker 5: of the time that that doesn't really work. The thing
Speaker 5: that I loved in this movie was that brief digression
Speaker 5: about editing. It was in the middle of act two,
Speaker 5: this American life thing. I think it was an introduction
Speaker 5: to their editor and just this beautiful piece of work
Speaker 5: that looked a bit like library clips explaining what editing is,
Speaker 5: explaining how editing works. It's only a couple of minutes long.
Speaker 5: That to me was awesome. I mean, that was a
Speaker 5: that was a great piece of video that I really enjoyed.
Speaker 5: And I think, you know this, this movie has little
Speaker 5: bits of you know, genius like that that I really enjoyed.
Speaker 2: Not to try to rewrite the movie of the cuff,
Speaker 2: but I kind of would have liked to have seen
Speaker 2: an episode come together. Like it's nice seeing Big Ron's
Speaker 2: journey and hearing more about him and seeing you know,
Speaker 2: clip of the clips of his TED talk and his
Speaker 2: TRL live or whatever he was trying to go for
Speaker 2: with his audition tape, all these kind of things. I'm like,
Speaker 2: that's kind of cool, but I would like to see
Speaker 2: how does one episode of one of your shows come together.
Speaker 2: Here's a little brief thing about like a friend asked
Speaker 2: me if I did a movie review podcast, and so
Speaker 2: I went to the theater and I saw this, and
Speaker 2: I came up with this thing, and I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 2: how many shows do you have? You know, it's kind
Speaker 2: of wild, but it's like I would like to see,
Speaker 2: like how do you come up with the subject? You know,
Speaker 2: like they make a mention of the NPR zine when
Speaker 2: it comes to how I think Ira helps write that
Speaker 2: and you know how he does his stuff, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's fascinating to me. How do you actually come up
Speaker 2: with this stuff? How do you do your research? How
Speaker 2: do you do the technical part of it? But again,
Speaker 2: that's not what this documentary is. This is so much
Speaker 2: like if sometimes it feels like Big Ron's kind of
Speaker 2: on the outside and the rest of it is, you know,
Speaker 2: here's Paul Tompkins, Here's Mark Meron, here's you know, all
Speaker 2: of these very well known people and very well known
Speaker 2: to me and I think to a lot of other
Speaker 2: people too. It's not just some host of a NPR
Speaker 2: News I mean Chad ab ab and Rod and love
Speaker 2: him because I'm a huge Radio lab fan. I don't
Speaker 2: know if my mom would know who he is. My
Speaker 2: mom would probably know who Joe Rogan or Mark Maron are.
Speaker 8: I think the ultimate disappointment for me with the documentary
Speaker 8: is that it doesn't touch on the thing that doesn't
Speaker 8: get talked about enough, which is if you're doing podcasting,
Speaker 8: and like James you mentioned, if you're doing it the
Speaker 8: way that we've done it, which is the way that
Speaker 8: most people are doing it, it is very lonely. It
Speaker 8: is not something that it's like, it's so lonely, like
Speaker 8: we're like, yes, we're sitting right now talking to each
Speaker 8: other on Zoom, but I'm ostensibly sitting in an office
Speaker 8: by myself, talking to a computer screen. Like anyone looking
Speaker 8: at this would be like what in God's name am
Speaker 8: I looking at? And this is expected to be recorded
Speaker 8: and then edited, and it's like a lot of especially
Speaker 8: if you're doing it by yourself and you're editing and
Speaker 8: doing social media, like that's done by yourself with no
Speaker 8: one else in the room. Editing is not a group task,
Speaker 8: like promoting is not a group task, like doing a
Speaker 8: lot of the other extraneous things that one has to
Speaker 8: do to get things out for, you know, whatever platform
Speaker 8: they're posting their podcast on, Like, it's a lot of work,
Speaker 8: and it's done mostly by yourself, and when you turn
Speaker 8: the recording off, like most of the time you're just
Speaker 8: left in a room by yourself, unless you're recording with
Speaker 8: people in person, which I.
Speaker 1: Have not done a lot of.
Speaker 8: Most of my recording has been digitally. Like Mike and
Speaker 8: I have known each other for damn near eleven years
Speaker 8: and I've met him once. We have recorded in person
Speaker 8: zero times, but we have recorded digitally one hundred percent
Speaker 8: of the time, and that's hundreds of hours of time.
Speaker 8: But at the end of the day, like I've never
Speaker 8: gotten to hang out with Mike in person and like
Speaker 8: be friends, we're like working friends.
Speaker 1: It's like a different thing. And that's that's something that they.
Speaker 8: Just don't really touch on, is like podcasting is very
Speaker 8: much a community thing, but it's also a very lonely thing,
Speaker 8: and it's not again unless you've got somebody editing your
Speaker 8: audio for you, like you're sitting and doing all this yourself,
Speaker 8: Like it's it's a lot.
Speaker 5: And he's there, you know, constantly on the move talking
Speaker 5: to people, meeting other people and everything else. That's not
Speaker 5: really what podcasting is like most of the time. And
Speaker 5: I think you are absolutely right there. The one thing
Speaker 5: that the podcast industry has conspicuously failed on for the
Speaker 5: last twenty one years is to complete the feedback loop
Speaker 5: between the podcast creator and the audience. The only thing
Speaker 5: that we have as a podcast creator to see whether
Speaker 5: or not we're doing a good job or not in
Speaker 5: the absence of any feedback from the audience, which we
Speaker 5: don't normally get because it's not built into anything, is
Speaker 5: by you know, logging onto our podcast host and looking
Speaker 5: at some numbers, and that's about as far as we go,
Speaker 5: and so everybody frets about the you know, how many
Speaker 5: how many hundred downloads have I got for this particular episode,
Speaker 5: and we don't focus a little bit more on what
Speaker 5: the audience actually thinks because all of that isn't built
Speaker 5: in to the podcast apps that we use, or if
Speaker 5: it is, it's built in in about fifty separate pubs,
Speaker 5: and we have to go into each pub to check
Speaker 5: whether anybody is talking about us. That simply doesn't work.
Speaker 5: So it would be lovely if there was a way
Speaker 5: of fixing that, in a way of making sure that
Speaker 5: we get feedback from the audience that we have, which
Speaker 5: you know, and feedback is always good to hear from
Speaker 5: our audience, but feedback in a way that actually comes
Speaker 5: into one place, so you know whether you're doing a
Speaker 5: good job or not, But we don't really you know,
Speaker 5: but we don't really have that. So we are in
Speaker 5: this sort of very lonely experience quite a lot of
Speaker 5: the time where yeah, you know, I mean, I do
Speaker 5: a weekly show with a man called Sam who I
Speaker 5: have met three times, and we've done it. We've just
Speaker 5: done episode two hundred and fifty.
Speaker 1: It's fucking insane.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. And I think what this
Speaker 5: the movie is because quite a lot of it is
Speaker 5: filmed at places like Podcast Movement and the Ambis and
Speaker 5: the on AirFest in Brooklyn and you know, various other
Speaker 5: of these big podcast events. I think you get the
Speaker 5: feeling that podcasting is a very social industry and we
Speaker 5: all know each other and we all talk to each
Speaker 5: other all the time, and really it is a social industry,
Speaker 5: but don't we don't have in real life meetings almost ever.
Speaker 8: The first time I had ever gone to anything like
Speaker 8: Podcast Movement was last year, and I've been podcasting for
Speaker 8: a decade at that point. Like there, you know, like
Speaker 8: that that was like kind of a mind blowing experience
Speaker 8: for me, and James. I wanted to speak to something else,
Speaker 8: you said, so you said ninety five percent of the
Speaker 8: podcast don't make money, Mike isn't there. I for forget
Speaker 8: what The website is where you can punch your podcast
Speaker 8: name in and it shows you, like what percentile you're
Speaker 8: in based on listens.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Mike's show is in the top less than one percent.
Speaker 5: Everybody's showing.
Speaker 1: That's the Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you go to the buzz Sprout website,
Speaker 5: so buzzprow is the number three podcast host, and you
Speaker 5: go to the buzz spro Out website buzz sproout dot
Speaker 5: com slack slash stats. Right at the bottom of that
Speaker 5: page is something that says episode downloads, and it's for
Speaker 5: the entire buzz spro Out catalog, all of the shows
Speaker 5: which are in there, and there are hundreds of thousands
Speaker 5: of episodes in there, and it shows you what a
Speaker 5: typical podcast gets. And for the first seven days, a
Speaker 5: typical show on buz spro out fifty they you know,
Speaker 5: if you look at the big list, then you can
Speaker 5: see that twenty seven downloads is what the typical medium
Speaker 5: podcast gets. After seven days, twenty seven downloads. So as
Speaker 5: soon as you start talking about one thousand downloads for
Speaker 5: an episode. After after seven days, you're in the top
Speaker 5: five percent, and you're in the top one percent if
Speaker 5: you're doing more than four thousand. We forget. I think
Speaker 5: that there are a lot of shows with not very
Speaker 5: many downloads.
Speaker 8: Oh no, we have a lot of shows that don't
Speaker 8: have a lot of downloads. Saying we know there's a
Speaker 8: lot of shows with not a lot of downloads.
Speaker 1: We work, we're making them all the time.
Speaker 5: But that's all that we've got to go on because
Speaker 5: we don't have because we don't have the feedback.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: I mean when I used to be on the radio,
Speaker 5: people would send me things through the post because there
Speaker 5: was no such thing as email, because I am that old,
Speaker 5: and people would send me things through the post and
Speaker 5: I would get postcards and things, and I would get
Speaker 5: cards and it would be amazing, And of course we
Speaker 5: don't get any of that now. So literally, the only
Speaker 5: thing that we are doing is sitting there going, oh,
Speaker 5: have I broken the top ten percent yet with four
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty downloads. You know, that's literally all all
Speaker 5: that we're doing. And I think that's a real that's
Speaker 5: a real shame. But the technical term is cross app comments,
Speaker 5: and we are so far away from cross app comments, sadly.
Speaker 2: I just would love a comment. I mean, that's why
Speaker 2: I'm begging people for ratings and reviews on iTunes. It's like,
Speaker 2: please just give me any sort of feedback here, because
Speaker 2: I put stuff out and I just never hear anything.
Speaker 2: But I guess that's just the way it is. I
Speaker 2: love that meme of the kid eating cereal in front
Speaker 2: of a picture of these three laughing girls, and it
Speaker 2: says what it feels like to listen to podcasts where
Speaker 2: it's like I'm there with these people, but they're just
Speaker 2: a poster and I'm the one eating the serious.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's a strange thing, but you know, again, there
Speaker 5: is that sort of parasocial relationship that you have with
Speaker 5: the podcasts that you really enjoy, and you you know,
Speaker 5: it's very strange. There are some podcasters out there who
Speaker 5: I genuinely think are my friends, even though I've never
Speaker 5: met them. True, And yeah, it's just the way that
Speaker 5: this stuff works. And I think, you know, quite a
Speaker 5: lot of the quite a lot of the movie talked
Speaker 5: a lot about making a podcast, but there weren't any listeners.
Speaker 5: There weren't any people talking about some of the stuff
Speaker 5: that they had heard, and I think again, you know
Speaker 5: that that's a bit of a shame. We heard a
Speaker 5: lot from creators, but just it might have been it
Speaker 5: might have been fun. I'm I'm not a film director,
Speaker 5: I don't watch films, but it might have been fun
Speaker 5: to have occasionally cut to just people listening to podcasts,
Speaker 5: doing the doing the dishes, walking out the door, you know, driving.
Speaker 2: Well, they've got some stock footage people vacuuming, and.
Speaker 1: There's a woman running at one point with some headphones on.
Speaker 1: Like why would they? Why would we?
Speaker 8: You think again, like James, no one listens to anything
Speaker 8: we do. So who's who's they? Who they're gonna interview?
Speaker 1: Who is there interview?
Speaker 8: It is weird again, unrepresented sides of the equation here,
Speaker 8: Like I don't understand who the documentary is for in
Speaker 8: a way because like it doesn't it doesn't cover one
Speaker 8: half of what I think is the half of the
Speaker 8: big equation here, which is the audience, an audience engagement
Speaker 8: and getting the audience to engage, like begging, I know
Speaker 8: people listen to my show. Why is it too hard
Speaker 8: for anybody to write a review? Like why am I
Speaker 8: begging you to write a review for my show, like again.
Speaker 8: And it's weird because we don't see the audience in
Speaker 8: this movie. We just see a bunch of podcasters, which
Speaker 8: is fine, makes sense for a podcast documentary.
Speaker 2: All right, we're going to take a break and we'll
Speaker 2: be right back with an interview with the director of
Speaker 2: Age of Audio, Shawn Michael Cologne, right after these brief messages.
Speaker 12: Hello, everyone, this is Malcolm McDowell. I just want to
Speaker 12: say that this is a request to listeners of the
Speaker 12: Projection Booth podcast to become patrons of the show via
Speaker 12: Patreon dot com p A T eo n dot com
Speaker 12: slash Projection Booth. That's pretty simple.
Speaker 5: I think you can do that.
Speaker 12: It's a great show and my he provides hours of
Speaker 12: great entertainment. So now it's time to give back my
Speaker 12: little drovies. Settle down and take a listen and have
Speaker 12: a sip of the old Malacco, and then you'll be
Speaker 12: ready for a little of.
Speaker 5: The old in Out in Out real horror show.
Speaker 6: Bye bye.
Speaker 2: How did you get interested in filmmaking?
Speaker 6: Agent Body is my second feature.
Speaker 4: The first documentary we did was called a Fat Wreck,
Speaker 4: and it's about this punk rock record label. And before
Speaker 4: I had started that, I was a marketing director for
Speaker 4: like a talent development school. There's a lot of kids
Speaker 4: that were trying to be pop stars and they needed
Speaker 4: music videos, and the music videos were going outside of
Speaker 4: the business. So as part of a package that created
Speaker 4: a social media package that included the music video so
Speaker 4: we'd keep the quality control inside the house and basically
Speaker 4: started doing the music video stuff, and through that I
Speaker 4: I started doing some editing Rich Kids, by the way,
Speaker 4: I should mention that. And the third music video I
Speaker 4: produced was like a twenty thousand dollars music video where
Speaker 4: we hired a production company, read cameras, location, the whole thing,
Speaker 4: and I produced it. I didn't direct it. I just
Speaker 4: was making sure everything happened. And the day of the
Speaker 4: production there wasn't much to do, so me and my
Speaker 4: buddy who's also the cinematographer that I've worked with for
Speaker 4: a long time, Jewell her Era, I was like, Hey,
Speaker 4: why don't we grab some cameras and just interview everybody
Speaker 4: and do like a little behind the scenes documentary. And
Speaker 4: at that point I had not really I've done a
Speaker 4: little live performance editing, but hadn't really edited together anything
Speaker 4: with a narrative or that kind of thing, and so.
Speaker 6: We did that.
Speaker 4: We shot it and we put some jokes in it,
Speaker 4: and you know, really thought about it. And the family
Speaker 4: was premiering the music video in a little theater, so
Speaker 4: he'd rent out of theater and we showed the miss
Speaker 4: thing because it was just an extra thing. It was
Speaker 4: just a fun little thing we did. They liked it there,
Speaker 4: so like, hey, can we show this at the screening
Speaker 4: of the video.
Speaker 6: We're like, well, yeah, sure. And the audio wasn't too great.
Speaker 6: I don't know how well is edited, but people seem
Speaker 6: to like it and laughed when they were supposed to laugh,
Speaker 6: and I was like, ooh, I like this feeling. It's cool.
Speaker 4: I had played in bands for a long time and
Speaker 4: one of the things about playing a band is that
Speaker 4: you never can experience yourself live because you're playing. But
Speaker 4: with film, it was like this thing that I made
Speaker 4: and then I got to experience it with the audience.
Speaker 4: So it's kind of this dual feeling of performing but
Speaker 4: also watching.
Speaker 6: So it was really interesting.
Speaker 4: And when people laughed at the parts you want him
Speaker 4: to laugh at, that was like a really cool feeling.
Speaker 4: And so after that happened my cinematographer Joelle. He was
Speaker 4: also played drums and bands with me, and we were
Speaker 4: a band practice and I was like, why don't we
Speaker 4: do something that we were more interested in, like something
Speaker 4: that we have a deep passion about. And this is
Speaker 4: a record label called Fat Records. We're like, hey, no
Speaker 4: one's ever done a documentary about Fat Records. And this
Speaker 4: is around the time Netflix was showing a bunch of
Speaker 4: punk rock documentaries. I was like, no one ever talks
Speaker 4: about the mid nineties punk rock that we grew up with,
Speaker 4: you know, so why don't we do something talk to
Speaker 4: our friends and so basically he had started doing some
Speaker 4: cinematography stuff and he was like, here, rent this camera,
Speaker 4: rent this, and I just went out and started shooting
Speaker 4: stuff without really knowing much about what I was doing.
Speaker 4: That eventually led to a crowdfunding thing that we did
Speaker 4: that was wildly successful. Hit four hundred percent of our goal.
Speaker 4: We were asking for like seven grand, and basically.
Speaker 6: In the first day we hit our goal.
Speaker 4: And I had never really edited anything bigger than this
Speaker 4: fifteen minute little thing, and yeah, so we kind of
Speaker 4: spiraled and I ended up doing a trailer and people
Speaker 4: liked it. The guy from the label ended up agreeing
Speaker 4: to be interviewed and fat Mic from his band No Effects.
Speaker 4: If any of your friends punk rock fans, they might
Speaker 4: know who No Effects is. And it just kept going
Speaker 4: and we ended up doing a documentary called a Fat Wreck.
Speaker 4: People seem to like it, and when it was done,
Speaker 4: it did a bunch of film festivals, it got picked up,
Speaker 4: it was on you know, we sold itubes as well,
Speaker 4: but then it eventually got picked up and was on
Speaker 4: Amazon prop for a few years. We had distribution in Japan,
Speaker 4: and really it was kind of like the first really
Speaker 4: I'm doing my second film. I realized that maybe I
Speaker 4: had success too early, if that makes sense, like cause
Speaker 4: it's really challenging, Like it's that's not how it works.
Speaker 4: It usually doesn't go that quickly and that fast and
Speaker 4: raise that money that fast and for it to be
Speaker 4: I think we did like twelve film festivals at the time.
Speaker 4: So it was just like this experience that was really
Speaker 4: too big for our breitches. Maybe, you know, doing that
Speaker 4: was like, oh, it was really hard. It was way
Speaker 4: more work than I expected. It was one of the
Speaker 4: hardest things I've ever done creatively, physically, emotionally and financially,
Speaker 4: and I was like, oh, let's do another.
Speaker 6: And so that's how it kind of got started.
Speaker 4: I think I did a couple of music videos prior
Speaker 4: to that, like basic, some basic things, and it really
Speaker 4: kind of went to the deep end really quickly, and
Speaker 4: with very lucky in a lot of ways to have
Speaker 4: something that had a lot of success right away, and
Speaker 4: I ended up with a sales agent and someone who
Speaker 4: connected within that space. And the film right now a
Speaker 4: fat wreck. If anybody's listening, if they want to watch it,
Speaker 4: it's on Documentary Plus streaming for free right now, So
Speaker 4: if you want to watch it, it's available. And then
Speaker 4: to follow that up, there's a couple of other projects.
Speaker 4: Whenever you finish a documentary, everyone's like, oh, I have
Speaker 4: an idea for a documentary.
Speaker 6: I was like, well, that's great me, it's a good
Speaker 6: chunk of my life.
Speaker 4: That first one took five years, and this one came
Speaker 4: about we were working on a different documentary that dealt
Speaker 4: with this band called The Wilhelm Scream and I ended
Speaker 4: up interviewing Dallas Taylor.
Speaker 6: He does a podcast called twenty thousand Hurts. If you haven't.
Speaker 4: Listened to it, it's amazing it's all about sound and
Speaker 4: sound design and just really about the things we hear.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like this American life for nine nine
Speaker 4: percent invisible for sound and things that surround that. And
Speaker 4: we were interviewing him about the sound of Wilhelm scream.
Speaker 4: Someone's not familiar, they should go look up at Willem scream.
Speaker 4: It's this famous sound that shows up in like Star
Speaker 4: Wars and Indiana Jones and like, I think it's like
Speaker 4: three hundred movies or something crazy like that. I should
Speaker 4: preface by saying during that filming, I as far as
Speaker 4: punk rock band. And we ended up filming in Brooklyn,
Speaker 4: and that night that we were filming, this band that
Speaker 4: I really like called Propaganda was playing and a friend
Speaker 4: of ours was opening up for them and knew we
Speaker 4: were filming, so asked us to come film their first set.
Speaker 4: And I want to see Propagandi, so of course I agreed,
Speaker 4: and on our way to go to that show, my
Speaker 4: friend basically was like, Hey, my uncle's going to be
Speaker 4: at the show. I was like, oh, great, I'll get
Speaker 4: to meet your uncle. And he's like, my uncle's Ira Glass,
Speaker 4: And so I ended up hanging out with Ira Glass
Speaker 4: at this punk rock show in Brooklyn really a kind
Speaker 4: of weird world's combining. I was a big fan of
Speaker 4: this American life and Radio Lab and all those things
Speaker 4: and thought of that as like NPR and that kind
Speaker 4: of world and kind of saw it separate from the
Speaker 4: punk rock world. And to just have those two things
Speaker 4: in the same space was really I was like, we
Speaker 4: earn some kind of weird timeline.
Speaker 6: I don't I don't know what's going on here.
Speaker 4: Ended up hanging out with Ira, and it was more
Speaker 4: it wasn't just like I met him. It was like
Speaker 4: we ended up hanging out like where I chattered with
Speaker 4: him for a few hours. He was asking us about
Speaker 4: the movie working on. He came to the show of
Speaker 4: the band we were filming as well, and so it
Speaker 4: was like this whole evening and so I got this
Speaker 4: really interesting experience and fast forward to me interviewing Dallas.
Speaker 4: He knew that I knew Roman Mars as well, because
Speaker 4: Roman Mars had actually done the pull quotes for our
Speaker 4: first movie on the back of the Blu Ray. Because
Speaker 4: I had shown him the movie, I figured out he
Speaker 4: was a punk rock fan and sent him the movie
Speaker 4: on Twitter, and he sent some nice things back about
Speaker 4: I was like, hey, can.
Speaker 6: I use some of this for the back of the
Speaker 6: Blu ray?
Speaker 4: And so after I had interviewed Dallas, Dallas was like, hey, man,
Speaker 4: you know I Ara Glass now and you know Roman Mars,
Speaker 4: why don't you make a podcast documentary? And I was like,
Speaker 4: you're a jerk man. Why did you just say that
Speaker 4: to me out loud? I clearly have to do that.
Speaker 4: I want to say sometime like January or February of
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen, and I reached out to Roman. I was like, hey,
Speaker 4: I'm thinking about doing this podcast documentary. If I did,
Speaker 4: would you be interested in being interviewed? He said sure,
Speaker 4: of course, you know, I'm down. I think a month
Speaker 4: or two later if that's In March, I go to
Speaker 4: south By Southwest. I run into my sales agent who's
Speaker 4: also my friend, Jeff Clark, and he's.
Speaker 6: Like, what are you working on.
Speaker 4: He's like, oh, I'm working on this project with this
Speaker 4: band and about you know, support systems and all these things.
Speaker 6: He's like yeah. It was like that's cool, Like do
Speaker 6: you have anything else that you're thinking about.
Speaker 4: It's like, well, I have this idea for this podcast documentary,
Speaker 4: and I you know, I met Ira Glass and Roman
Speaker 4: Mars said he would do it.
Speaker 6: He's like, dude, I could get some money for that.
Speaker 6: I was like, WHOA.
Speaker 4: And I think the next day was the PRX meetup
Speaker 4: Radiotopia PRX. They were doing a meetup and there was
Speaker 4: Chris Bannon from at the time Stitcher. There's some people
Speaker 4: there from Stuff you Should Know Network. Julie Shapiro from
Speaker 4: Ridotopia was there and basically I pitched everyone and I
Speaker 4: was like, Hey, I think I can get the money.
Speaker 4: Roman said yes, I met Ira Glass and thinking about
Speaker 4: doing this podcast documentary, and everyone gave me their contact information.
Speaker 4: We're really excited about it, and I think by May
Speaker 4: we were filming some of the first things for the documentary,
Speaker 4: so it was kind of within a matter of months
Speaker 4: we were filming and that's how Age of Audio started.
Speaker 4: So it's kind of like this kind of thing now.
Speaker 4: Age of Audi took seven years. That bath start.
Speaker 6: Very challenging to get it over the finish line.
Speaker 2: You had a global pandemic in there too, so I
Speaker 2: can catch you a little slack.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that definitely puts some speed bumps in there of
Speaker 4: what we could film it.
Speaker 6: We were able to edit a little bit of what
Speaker 6: we had filmed.
Speaker 4: We actually started filming in Earnest in twenty nineteen, the
Speaker 4: day we landed to start filming in New York with
Speaker 4: Ira Glass because I reached out to him he said, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'll do it. It was the day that Gimlet sold to
Speaker 4: Spotify for two hundred and fifty million dollars, And although
Speaker 4: there had been a few other big acquisitions, that was
Speaker 4: like three to four times larger than anything else and
Speaker 4: really was kind of like the starting gun of this
Speaker 4: kind of like lash of money that started swelling into podcasting.
Speaker 4: So we were, in some ways at the right place,
Speaker 4: at the right time, with the right project, and we're
Speaker 4: able to kind of capture some of that moment and
Speaker 4: talk to those people. I think we did almost like
Speaker 4: thirty interviews that year, including Kevin Smith and Roman Mars
Speaker 4: and Jesse Thorn and host of other people that year.
Speaker 4: So a lot of the movie was shot in twenty
Speaker 4: nineteen before the pandemic. Just before the pandemic, I think
Speaker 4: we were finished. We were going to do another round
Speaker 4: of interviews as we were heading into twenty twenty, and
Speaker 4: as we all know, things changed dramatically and couldn't really
Speaker 4: do a whole lot of in person interviews at that point.
Speaker 2: So how did you go from working with Fat Mike
Speaker 2: to Big.
Speaker 4: Ron Ronald came in the last about year and a
Speaker 4: half through filming the documentary. We had a few other
Speaker 4: subjects that we had focused on that were independent, but
Speaker 4: I really wanted there to be a aspect of an
Speaker 4: independent person working on there. Originally, my idea was to
Speaker 4: follow an independent podcaster and also follow along one of
Speaker 4: the lower producers in our freshman producers at Radio Lab
Speaker 4: and parallel those two pitch Radio Lab on it, but
Speaker 4: they declined.
Speaker 6: I had another subject that I worked with.
Speaker 4: Over the course of seven years, things change and ideas change,
Speaker 4: and where people are changed. I had a couple subjects
Speaker 4: drop out, and in twenty twenty three the film was
Speaker 4: kind of floundering. It didn't feel like it was going anywhere,
Speaker 4: and momentum had gone. I was really worried that we
Speaker 4: would be in a situation where the film would fall apart.
Speaker 4: At that point, we applied for some grants, got some
Speaker 4: more stuff edited, and I was really gearing up do
Speaker 4: a crowdfunding thing because I was like, would keep things moving.
Speaker 4: Lo and behold, we submitted I think it was in April,
Speaker 4: and then in August I found out that we had
Speaker 4: gotten the Awesoin Film Society grant.
Speaker 6: It's about ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: It wasn't enough to complete the film by any means,
Speaker 4: but breathe a lot of new life into the project.
Speaker 4: And when that happened, I reached out to the subjects
Speaker 4: that they'd been working with for about two years and
Speaker 4: the film had kind of gone dormant for about six months.
Speaker 4: I reached out and they're like, Hey, we're in a
Speaker 4: different place and we're not really interested, which is incredibly disheartening. However,
Speaker 4: it was actually probably the best thing that could have
Speaker 4: possibly happened, because what happens is I get the grant,
Speaker 4: I use it to actually buy a computer I can
Speaker 4: edit on. My other computer was almost ten years old,
Speaker 4: I could barely edit on it. I was able to
Speaker 4: get something I could really start editing on. And then
Speaker 4: I used a little bit of it to go to
Speaker 4: a podcast conference called Resonate, which was I think doing
Speaker 4: their second year, and I reached out to Chiochi from
Speaker 4: Resonate and was basically like, Hey, I'm working on this documentary,
Speaker 4: I would love to come to the festival. I she
Speaker 4: really can't afford the passes. I would love to be.
Speaker 4: You know, they had like a scholarship program, so I
Speaker 4: asked to be part of the scholarship. And my thinking
Speaker 4: was if I got the scholarship, I would definitely go
Speaker 4: and I could use a little bit of that grant
Speaker 4: money to pay for the hotel and the flights.
Speaker 6: And so I end up going to Resonate.
Speaker 4: So my idea was I want to get some allies
Speaker 4: or some momentum going about the crowdfunding thing I'm about
Speaker 4: to do. So I really go there and talk about
Speaker 4: the movie and see if I can get people interested
Speaker 4: in what I was working on and the film that
Speaker 4: had kind of been around for a time, so some
Speaker 4: people knew about it and kind of knew about the
Speaker 4: production that were there. And I ended up running into
Speaker 4: Ellen Horn, who was actually on the team that helped
Speaker 4: create Radio Lab and is also an NYU professor and
Speaker 4: she handles the podcast studies and audio storytelling, And it
Speaker 4: was on the last night of Resonate.
Speaker 6: She was like, Hey, I heard about your project.
Speaker 4: How can I help and really wanted to participate in
Speaker 4: a high level. So we had a really great time
Speaker 4: chatting and she really came up on board on the
Speaker 4: project at that point as a producer and a story editor.
Speaker 6: But a little bit prior to that, I had started
Speaker 6: hearing about Ronald Young Junior. There had been some people
Speaker 6: in the film that had worked with him. I had
Speaker 6: seen him pop.
Speaker 4: Up, and when we were shifting to a new subject
Speaker 4: on our website, I had put basically like, hey, if
Speaker 4: you're an independent podcaster, please reach out. We're looking for
Speaker 4: someone to work with that be a part of the film.
Speaker 4: And very honored to have a lot of people submit
Speaker 4: their story and their podcasts and things about being independent creators.
Speaker 4: But one of the names that when I was looking
Speaker 4: at the list was wrong Junior really struck out to me.
Speaker 4: It's like, hey, this guy's having you know, I've heard
Speaker 4: a lot about this guy lately, and he's wanting he's
Speaker 4: would be willing to participate in the film. So I
Speaker 4: reached out to Ronald, and Ronald's really cool guy, like
Speaker 4: really like. We jibed right away and I was like, Hey,
Speaker 4: I'm interested in chatting with you.
Speaker 6: I'm going to you know, albe at Resonate. Were you
Speaker 6: going to be there? He's like, dude, I live.
Speaker 4: There basically where I live like he's you know, that's
Speaker 4: the college he goes went to, Like he's part of that.
Speaker 6: So he's like, I'm going to be there. So I
Speaker 6: was like, okay, that's a good sign.
Speaker 4: So basically, you know, he wanted to be a part
Speaker 4: of it, and we met, and then I think with
Speaker 4: the addition of Ellen coming aboard, that really really is what.
Speaker 6: Got the movie to over the finish line.
Speaker 4: From that point, I think that December of twenty three
Speaker 4: leading in at twenty four, we actually I had gotten
Speaker 4: a little bit of money from the crowdfunding.
Speaker 6: It wasn't overly successful.
Speaker 4: But due to all the outboring of marketing that I
Speaker 4: did for the crowdfunding, a production company reached out.
Speaker 6: I got connected with I.
Speaker 4: Should say they're now called Substance, and they were like, hey,
Speaker 4: we're interested. What do you need. You know, we have
Speaker 4: production facilities. It's like, dude, I really need money. I
Speaker 4: need money so I can edit the movie. And I
Speaker 4: had Amy grumbling, who actually did I should mention did
Speaker 4: the grant writing that and helped with the grant writing.
Speaker 4: We collaborated, but she's the one who really kind of
Speaker 4: put down the first things for the and help really
Speaker 4: was a big part of that grant side. Basically I
Speaker 4: had been paying her out of pocket, but at a
Speaker 4: certain point it self funding reached a limit. But basically
Speaker 4: they were like, hey, so, yeah, how much do you need?
Speaker 4: And I was like, I told the number. They were
Speaker 4: willing to come pretty close to it and also offer
Speaker 4: services and also their filmmakers as well. They do a
Speaker 4: lot of commercial work, but they came on to be
Speaker 4: a co production partner where they're not just giving me money,
Speaker 4: but they're actually invested in the film in a lot
Speaker 4: of different ways and the success of the film, and
Speaker 4: really from that point in twenty four is when we
Speaker 4: went and filmed with Mark Marin.
Speaker 6: That's when we went to the Ambi's.
Speaker 4: We went out on AirFest and followed Ronald and got
Speaker 4: a lot of the cinema their tay stuff. Prior to that,
Speaker 4: a lot of the stuff was really just talking head
Speaker 4: and I really wanted it to be a mix of
Speaker 4: the two, and we were able to really kind of
Speaker 4: catch Ronald as he was kind of on this big upswing,
Speaker 4: you know, in December and of December, after he agreed
Speaker 4: to be part of the film. He had been on
Speaker 4: the list for the New York Times best podcast I
Speaker 4: think a few other lists that're getting right now think
Speaker 4: culture as well, and was top independent podcaster to watch
Speaker 4: and had been nominated for the Amby's, So we really
Speaker 4: had this opportunity to capt him in this moment where
Speaker 4: a lot of things were happening.
Speaker 6: That we could capture.
Speaker 4: So it's really lucky that those other subjects dropped out
Speaker 4: because the stuff we had captured with them, it was
Speaker 4: really kind of them at their house, maybe them doing
Speaker 4: some production meetings, but really wasn't as dynamic, I think
Speaker 4: as what we were able to capture with Ronald, including
Speaker 4: being at the Ambyes when he swept spoiler alert when
Speaker 4: sweeps the Ambes, and we're there to capture those.
Speaker 6: Moments, and you've seen the film.
Speaker 4: The film is not about him necessary, it's not about
Speaker 4: winning the Ambies.
Speaker 6: The film is really about what does it take.
Speaker 4: To be an independent creator and the struggles that entails,
Speaker 4: and the commitment and the juxtaposition between claim and financial wellbeing,
Speaker 4: as I think most independent artists can probably sympathize with.
Speaker 4: But as well as like a history lesson on where
Speaker 4: podcasting came from, we try to highlight some of it.
Speaker 4: I think we can't highlight everything that's important that's happened
Speaker 4: in podcasting, but I think we were able to highlight
Speaker 4: some of the really big moments that kind of broke
Speaker 4: through into the mainstream that most people may have heard about.
Speaker 4: The film is really one of the goals is to
Speaker 4: show podcasting as an art form and as something to
Speaker 4: be respected in the same way as film or novels
Speaker 4: or television or any kind of art form that people
Speaker 4: put time into and love and have a passion for,
Speaker 4: as you probably know.
Speaker 2: Mike, Yeah, No, it's a really fascinating mix of those stories.
Speaker 2: And then to have Ron be your narrator for so
Speaker 2: much of it that really injects him into the story
Speaker 2: a lot earlier. There you go.
Speaker 6: I even pushed back on that terminology. Consider him to
Speaker 6: be the host of now.
Speaker 4: The first documentary we did about Fat Records, it's fast,
Speaker 4: it's grungy, it's got a lot of energy to it.
Speaker 4: And because it was really the production, a lot of
Speaker 4: it had to do with Spig Scrappy and building on
Speaker 4: different cameras and all this kind of stuff. But we
Speaker 4: leaned into that and made it where it kind of
Speaker 4: represented what you kind of get the feel of a
Speaker 4: punk rock album is Short has that kind of frantic energy.
Speaker 4: It's especially that kind of punk rock that we were
Speaker 4: trying to give a feeling of. And with this film,
Speaker 4: one of the great things about having Ellen come on
Speaker 4: was she's a storyteller and worked with narrative production storytelling,
Speaker 4: and we really wanted to introduce those elements into the film.
Speaker 6: So it's not the structure and a.
Speaker 4: Lot of the production, the sound design and even some
Speaker 4: of the choices we made, we're more in line is like,
Speaker 4: we wanted it to feel like it could be an
Speaker 4: episode of this American life, or at least sections of it,
Speaker 4: or it would feel like a narrative podcast because there's
Speaker 4: a lot of what we're the story kind of storytelling
Speaker 4: we're talking about, so that if we did our jobs right,
Speaker 4: and I hope we did, it should feel different than
Speaker 4: a regular documentary. It should feel a little bit like
Speaker 4: if someone is a fan of narrative podcasting, you're getting
Speaker 4: that self aware host that's not just a narrator, but
Speaker 4: they're commenting on the things happening in the film, but
Speaker 4: also they're guiding you in a lot of the same
Speaker 4: way as a host would guide you in an audio
Speaker 4: only narrative podcast. So it was really built as a
Speaker 4: hybrid between those two kind of philosophies. There's a lot
Speaker 4: of things that you wouldn't necessarily do in a traditional
Speaker 4: documentary that we did and hopefully an attempt to create
Speaker 4: something that felt a little different and kind of honored
Speaker 4: a little bit of the kind of production that we
Speaker 4: were trying to represent.
Speaker 2: Well, not only does the movie sound like a million bucks,
Speaker 2: but it looks like a million bucks just the cinematography
Speaker 2: and the quality of the images. It looks fantastic.
Speaker 6: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: I think it's one of those things when you work
Speaker 4: on something so closely like it's hard to have perspective
Speaker 4: on her anymore.
Speaker 6: So I'm really glad to hear you say that.
Speaker 4: That was one of our goals, is we wanted to
Speaker 4: bring cinematic qualities to the production, And yeah, I have
Speaker 4: something that was high quality, you know. And I'm so glad.
Speaker 2: She you use the technique too, which I found interesting.
Speaker 2: There were certain shots that felt a little like stock
Speaker 2: shot stuff you buy. But then as I'm watching it,
Speaker 2: I'm like, no, I think they've shot these for the film,
Speaker 2: because those kind of comment on what's going on in
Speaker 2: the movie as well.
Speaker 6: There's definitely a mix.
Speaker 4: There's stuff that we shot, definitely, but there were just
Speaker 4: things that might have been impossible to shoot, so we
Speaker 4: tried to find things that kind of felt like that.
Speaker 4: So I don't know if I'm telling too much, but yeah,
Speaker 4: we used some stock footage in there, but we also
Speaker 4: did things where we shot stuff ourselves to mix in
Speaker 4: so it felt blended and it gave that appearance that
Speaker 4: we hopefully couldn't tell the stuff that we shot versus
Speaker 4: what we did, because we did use some city shots
Speaker 4: and people running and things like that.
Speaker 6: But we try to be thoughtful about what.
Speaker 4: We're using, how it looked, and did it match the
Speaker 4: vibe of all the other things we were trying to do.
Speaker 4: One other thing that we did, and I was a
Speaker 4: little nervous about this, we did our premiere at the
Speaker 4: Oak Cliff Film Festival, and that was really the first
Speaker 4: time I got to see it on a real big screen.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that we did, which is
Speaker 4: kind of breaking a little bit of a rule and
Speaker 4: really a film, is.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of close ups.
Speaker 4: It's a close and like an extreme close up rather
Speaker 4: than what would be in film terminology like a mid
Speaker 4: shot and a close up. I didn't want to do
Speaker 4: the thing where you saw the person sitting in the
Speaker 4: chair and it's nice background and very netflixy kind of thing,
Speaker 4: which is gorgeous. I'm not putting that down by any means,
Speaker 4: but early on with my cinematographer, I was like, I
Speaker 4: think we should do something close and closer so we
Speaker 4: can visually represent the intimacy of podcasting. They're in your ear,
Speaker 4: and I really wanted it to be kind of mouth
Speaker 4: and ear. That's where a lot of the close ups
Speaker 4: are their mouth and ear. The thought being we're trying
Speaker 4: to visually give a sense of closeness with the subjects.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: I got a little pushback for my service because, like
Speaker 4: I said, we're breaking a rule which could make people uncomfortable.
Speaker 4: It's one of the dangers of doing something that close
Speaker 4: for that period of time. But I also felt like
Speaker 4: what we would do is eventually make it so you're
Speaker 4: not that close all the time.
Speaker 6: Even with Ronald we do a lot or really close
Speaker 6: stuff with.
Speaker 4: Like super close, where it's like really just his mouth
Speaker 4: and the microphone, then maybe the side of his face,
Speaker 4: but you're not really seeing his eyes as much.
Speaker 6: You're really just seeing his.
Speaker 4: Mouth talking, and that was also a you know, a
Speaker 4: little bit of a risk. But the feedback that I've
Speaker 4: gotten so far as people like it and they felt
Speaker 4: like it was a cool choice and it creates some
Speaker 4: visual language for the film that I hope translates well.
Speaker 4: Like I said, when you're deep in the thick of
Speaker 4: it for seven years, I just get used to seeing it.
Speaker 4: So I don't know how it feels to someone new,
Speaker 4: but it seemed to work, I think, for what we're doing,
Speaker 4: and also hopefully make something that doesn't feel like something
Speaker 4: you've seen over and over again. Nothing wrong with that,
Speaker 4: but I wanted to have that little differentiation.
Speaker 6: It's a risk. Everything's a risk, you know. I mean,
Speaker 6: hopefully it works.
Speaker 2: You get so sick of just seeing white guys in
Speaker 2: suits looking off into the middle distance talking to somebody
Speaker 2: that you don't even know who they are because the
Speaker 2: camera man's over here and they're looking over there, and
Speaker 2: you're just like, can you look at me? So that
Speaker 2: you lose that intimacy. But yeah, getting those nice shots
Speaker 2: of Ron's mouth, I'm just like, oh, yeah, that's really nice.
Speaker 2: And then even when it comes to some of the
Speaker 2: other close ups, that you're doing. It feels like I
Speaker 2: was talking to me, feels like these people are talking
Speaker 2: to me rather than just the director.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's And then we have a few moments where
Speaker 4: could we do a little bit of the off center thing,
Speaker 4: but we all have a few moments where people will
Speaker 4: look into the camera right down the barrel and it's
Speaker 4: used for comedic effect, and there's I hope it's funny.
Speaker 4: That's I mean, that's one of the goals we want
Speaker 4: to Especially early on in the film, we're kind of
Speaker 4: set up how this technology came to be, and the
Speaker 4: important part isn't necessarily technology. The important part is the
Speaker 4: fact that this technology allowed anyone to do it. We
Speaker 4: felt like it was important to have an understanding, at
Speaker 4: least at some cursory level, for people to understand like, oh,
Speaker 4: this kind of code that these people did allowed for
Speaker 4: anyone to make this that no one controls it now.
Speaker 4: You know, nowadays there's a lot more money into it.
Speaker 4: But right now, anyone can start a podcast. And this
Speaker 4: was before YouTube, but anyone can do a YouTube now,
Speaker 4: and n can do a TikTok now, and I think
Speaker 4: that's a wonderful thing. I think that that's a really
Speaker 4: cool thing. But podcasting was kind of one of that
Speaker 4: first thing that you could make and distribute all over
Speaker 4: the Internet and didn't have to pay anyone. There was
Speaker 4: no advertising, you weren't enriching another platform.
Speaker 6: At the time. It was platformless.
Speaker 4: You just had to have people subscribe to this little
Speaker 4: bit of code.
Speaker 6: And we had it much longer in the film at
Speaker 6: one point.
Speaker 4: But if he were like, it's too much technical, but
Speaker 4: I really pushed back when we were trying to do
Speaker 4: we need to even talk about RSS?
Speaker 6: It's like I think we do.
Speaker 4: I think people even if we need, it's just a
Speaker 4: basic level without being too boring, how can we make
Speaker 4: this fun? And it also explained like this little piece
Speaker 4: of code really allowed for anyone's voice to be heard
Speaker 4: over the Internet, and I think that allows for independent
Speaker 4: creators to exist because a platform doesn't own RSS. And
Speaker 4: even though I would say RSS hams limitations and there's
Speaker 4: podcasting two point zero and there's these technologies that they're
Speaker 4: not as widespread, RSS still is what.
Speaker 6: The backbone of what's going on.
Speaker 4: And even though YouTube is the number one place people
Speaker 4: listen to podcasts, what did they do? They ended up
Speaker 4: integrating RSS into their thing eventually, and I think there's
Speaker 4: something to be said about that open nature. Someone doesn't
Speaker 4: want to go on Spotify, if someone doesn't want to
Speaker 4: go on YouTube, if someone doesn't want to give money
Speaker 4: to TikTok for whatever reason, and I'm not suggesting they do.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying, if they want to, you can still
Speaker 4: put out a podcast via RSS and have it distributed
Speaker 4: all over.
Speaker 6: So I think that's the thing.
Speaker 4: Like I said, we don't try to in the film
Speaker 4: try to make it just about that. We want there
Speaker 4: to be the technical, but also the emotional And what
Speaker 4: did that allow? What's the point of talking about RSS?
Speaker 4: And I think hopefully by going through Ronald's journey you
Speaker 4: can see what that allowed for someone to just say, hey,
Speaker 4: I want to do this and just start doing it.
Speaker 6: Man. I was very rewarding, you know.
Speaker 4: It's also to get to that point was extremely intense.
Speaker 4: As you are heading towards a world premiere, you know,
Speaker 4: there's so much work that has to happen, and it
Speaker 4: was really hard to enjoy it fully because it was
Speaker 4: so intense getting to that point, like a couple months
Speaker 4: of just thousands of hours of work and really just
Speaker 4: being so close to it. I was able to enjoy it,
Speaker 4: but I'm hoping as I get to see it with
Speaker 4: other audiences, now that pressure of the first one is gone,
Speaker 4: that I can enjoy it without having that tension, you know,
Speaker 4: and worrying about like, oh, there's going to be a
Speaker 4: black frame, or there is there going.
Speaker 6: To be an audio cutout, or what did I miss?
Speaker 4: Because leading up to that screen it was to get
Speaker 4: it over the finish line.
Speaker 6: We were just really working on it up until the
Speaker 6: last minute, which tends to be how I operate.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, having that deadline really pushes you to really lock in.
Speaker 4: But now subsequent screenings, we're hoping to do some screenings
Speaker 4: here coming up. It's looking like we're going to have
Speaker 4: a big one at some of the podcast conferences coming up.
Speaker 4: I don't want to say too much until I know
Speaker 4: one hundred percent, but things are in processed for some
Speaker 4: of the bigger podcast conferences.
Speaker 6: I'm being vague on purpose.
Speaker 4: But I think the next screening we get to do,
Speaker 4: I'll get to really enjoy it because I think it'll
Speaker 4: be to our core audience, which are I think it's
Speaker 4: a love letter to podcasters, to be honest with you,
Speaker 4: I've had some feedback from some people that are podcasters,
Speaker 4: specifically Dalve Taylor and some other people that I've heard from,
Speaker 4: saying that they felt really seen by the documentary that
Speaker 4: they like, oh, this is the struggle of doing this
Speaker 4: and showing not just the front end of the podcast,
Speaker 4: showing a little bit of what it takes to make
Speaker 4: it happen, and the kind of dedication and the kind
Speaker 4: of commitment to doing that kind of work, which I
Speaker 4: have a tremendous respect for podcasters.
Speaker 6: I mean after doing this.
Speaker 4: Because at least when I was making the movie, I'm
Speaker 4: doing it behind the scenes. It took seven years, but
Speaker 4: I'm not presenting what I'm doing every day or every
Speaker 4: week or every other day or depending on your cadence
Speaker 4: of your podcast.
Speaker 6: And I can stop. I could stop for a.
Speaker 4: Couple months at a time to try and raise money
Speaker 4: or do whatever I needed to do, but I wasn't
Speaker 4: committed to publishing something every week every day.
Speaker 6: That's a huge commitment.
Speaker 4: That's why I have a lot of respect for YouTubers
Speaker 4: as well, and anyone who's showing up every week every day.
Speaker 6: That is a different kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Because I get to as a documentary and I've worked
Speaker 4: on my thing till I felt it was ready, and
Speaker 4: that's just not the case. If you're a podcaster, it
Speaker 4: has to go out that next week. You have a deadline,
Speaker 4: and if you miss that deadline, no one's gonna punish you,
Speaker 4: but you're going to have a drop off an audience,
Speaker 4: because if you're doing something every week or once a
Speaker 4: month or whatever, that cadence is your audience that you've
Speaker 4: built up. They're expecting that, and if you've done a
Speaker 4: good job, it's become part of their life. And if
Speaker 4: you don't show up that first week, that second week,
Speaker 4: it's very easy for someone to go to something else,
Speaker 4: not because they're mad at you, just because they're going
Speaker 4: to fill that space with something and you have to
Speaker 4: show up over and over again.
Speaker 6: And I have a big respect for that.
Speaker 2: It's kind of nice you not only can show stuff
Speaker 2: at podcast festivals, but then also film festivals as well,
Speaker 2: which is great to have two forums there for you.
Speaker 4: My thinking and I think podcasting is really you know,
Speaker 4: we started podcasting with becoming mainstream for sure, but I
Speaker 4: think now isn't necessarily convincing someone why they should listen
Speaker 4: to a podcast. I think the film should show why
Speaker 4: you should respect the people that are doing this and
Speaker 4: like the joke that everyone has a podcast, I mean, hahaha, funny, funny, yeah,
Speaker 4: but the people who really do it and take it seriously.
Speaker 4: It's an art form to be respected. It's something that
Speaker 4: people shouldn't take for granted. If they their favorite podcaster,
Speaker 4: they can see what it takes to do this, maybe
Speaker 4: they're like, hey, maybe I should contribute to that Patreon.
Speaker 2: From your mouth to their ears.
Speaker 4: I mean, I like it, and the film, like as you,
Speaker 4: I don't want to spoil too much, but we have
Speaker 4: the host drop his Patreon in the film. And when
Speaker 4: we were recording Ronald's parts and he was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: drop your Patreon. We're talking about Patreon. You should drop
Speaker 4: your Patreon. Because that's what a podcaster would do. If
Speaker 4: they're talking about Patreon, they would mention that they have
Speaker 4: a Patreon. It's like, and we should show that, like,
Speaker 4: we should show that kind of thing.
Speaker 6: You know. One of the other things we do in
Speaker 6: the film is we have.
Speaker 4: A host read ad where the host turns to camera
Speaker 4: and basically stock what he's doing and does an ad basically,
Speaker 4: which we wanted to include that because we wanted to
Speaker 4: have that kind of feeling like, oh, okay, yeah, this
Speaker 4: is like a host.
Speaker 6: That's what I say. He's not a narrator as much
Speaker 6: as a host. He's active within the film.
Speaker 2: So, Sean, where's the best place for people to keep
Speaker 2: up with the movie and where it's showing?
Speaker 4: Aoa movie dot Com is our website, which, to be
Speaker 4: honest with you, just really takes you to our Instagram
Speaker 4: for now. I have a website that'll be going up
Speaker 4: here in the next week or so that'll have some
Speaker 4: of the press that we've gotten in links to all
Speaker 4: those kind of things in the trailer. But if you
Speaker 4: go to our Instagram, there are the links to the
Speaker 4: trailer and you'll be able to see what's going on.
Speaker 6: We've been a.
Speaker 4: Little dormant since the screening as there's kind of things happening.
Speaker 4: There's people we're talking to, but I think through August
Speaker 4: and going.
Speaker 6: Forward to Price see a lot more stuff that is
Speaker 6: going to be happening. Also, to be.
Speaker 4: Honest with you, leading up to the premiere, it was
Speaker 4: so intense that I needed a chance to step back
Speaker 4: a little bit. And we have a new poster that's
Speaker 4: going to be coming out. We have a really really
Speaker 4: great poster that we worked with an amazing artist with
Speaker 4: that really kind of leans into Our current poster is
Speaker 4: our art poster, which is very metaphorical and artsy, but
Speaker 4: this other one really kind of leads into the podcast
Speaker 4: side of it all and has a more familiar thing
Speaker 4: that people might recognize. It really kind of speaks to
Speaker 4: some of the content of the film as far as.
Speaker 6: A little you'll see it.
Speaker 4: It has an iPod in it, and it really leans
Speaker 4: into that kind of side of it and excited people
Speaker 4: see that, Yeah, a AOA movie. If that's our Instagram,
Speaker 4: that's our TikTok, that's our sessh. Twitter not super active
Speaker 4: on there, but we still have a count there and if.
Speaker 6: You go to AOA Movie.
Speaker 4: For now, it'll go to Instagram, but eventually in the
Speaker 4: next couple of weeks it'll probably lead to a website
Speaker 4: that has more content on it.
Speaker 6: You can follow them where the film is going.
Speaker 4: We will be announcing some of the podcast conferences that
Speaker 4: we're going to be at.
Speaker 6: We're trying to be at the place where podcasters are.
Speaker 4: Film festivals are great, and really want to be as
Speaker 4: many film festival as possible, But I think our core audience.
Speaker 4: The people who I think are really going to be
Speaker 4: the first people to really appreciate the film are going
Speaker 4: to be podcasters, and so you want them to have
Speaker 4: a chance to see it. So we'll probably be at
Speaker 4: some pretty big podcast conferences coming up.
Speaker 6: I hesitant to announce anything.
Speaker 4: Everything's fully locked in, but I would say with a
Speaker 4: lot of confidence that will be at some of the
Speaker 4: ones that you would imagine we would be at. And
Speaker 4: also I'll say, you know, reach out if anyone's listening,
Speaker 4: reach out if you want to set up a screening.
Speaker 6: We are open to that.
Speaker 4: We're trying to take that into account because we really
Speaker 4: want to reach out to our casters and people interested
Speaker 4: in the space and have them be able to see
Speaker 4: the film and talk about it. Because I think that podcasters, specifically,
Speaker 4: if we did our job right, will feel like they're
Speaker 4: being honored, They're being seen that this is a film
Speaker 4: that is for them, but done in a way that
Speaker 4: can bring everyone in to see what they do.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 2: Shawn, thank you so much for your time, and thank
Speaker 2: you so much for the honor being able to watch.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Hey, Mike, I really appreciate you giving me the time
Speaker 4: to talk about the movie and also appreciate the kind
Speaker 4: of things you said about how it looks. You know,
Speaker 4: as a filmmaker, I'm hoping that it translates the thing
Speaker 4: that I wanted to and I hope the quality comes across.
Speaker 4: But as a filmmaker, you see all the flaws. So
Speaker 4: it's great to hear from a perspective that you enjoyed
Speaker 4: the film but also felt like it's a high enough
Speaker 4: quality that we are shooting for.
Speaker 2: Oh definitely. Well, I hope we can talk again and
Speaker 2: hopefully maybe less than like seven years or so.
Speaker 4: What we're hoping to do is if the film really
Speaker 4: connects with people. We have a lot of stuff that
Speaker 4: isn't in the film. We did an hour and twenty
Speaker 4: two minute movie. It's really short. We try to make
Speaker 4: it really digestible, and that's with credits, So there's so
Speaker 4: much content of people we talked with that is not
Speaker 4: in the film. I would hope that we might be
Speaker 4: able to tell the stories of some other podcasters as well,
Speaker 4: so it's not just limited to the film. Hopefully it
Speaker 4: may become a thing that we expand beyond just a film,
Speaker 4: maybe a podcast, maybe an age of audio podcast sounds
Speaker 4: cool or something on YouTube that shows a little bit
Speaker 4: more and we can bring in people. So yeah, I'm
Speaker 4: hoping that if it really connects with people, we can
Speaker 4: expand it into something that's a little bit more than
Speaker 4: just a film and really just kind of a movement
Speaker 4: that is centered around the celebration of what makes us
Speaker 4: medium great.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, sir, This was such a pleasure
Speaker 2: talking with you.
Speaker 6: All right, Mike, appreciate you. Man.
Speaker 2: All right, we were back and we were talking about
Speaker 2: age of Audio and one guy who gets a lot
Speaker 2: of spotlight in this is Kevin Smith. And Kevin Smith
Speaker 2: really took to podcasting so much so that he what
Speaker 2: was it, Chrisky was kind of riffing? Was it with
Speaker 2: Scott Moser or people on this show?
Speaker 8: Is that discussion that that podcast had effectively the first
Speaker 8: movie based on a podcast because Tusk came out of
Speaker 8: that podcast episode where they were talking about that listing
Speaker 8: for the guy who wanted a roommate but you know,
Speaker 8: dress up like a Walris and then you know Walris, yes, Walris?
Speaker 1: No, Like where was that? Like that's I mean again,
Speaker 1: like because movie podcasts don't exist, That's that's.
Speaker 2: Why, Well, Kevin Smith exists, doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: But it's not a movie podcast.
Speaker 8: I guess like this podcast, I think is just like
Speaker 8: a broadly like a pop culture discussion podcast with Kevin Smith.
Speaker 2: I've never listened to an episode. I've heard enough Kevin
Speaker 2: Smith that I don't need to listen to much more
Speaker 2: of him. I mean, it just feels like it would
Speaker 2: be a brocast to me, where it's like, yeah, let's
Speaker 2: talk about smoking weed and how much I love my
Speaker 2: wife's taint, like those kind of things. I don't really
Speaker 2: need that. So Yeah, and when Tess came out, I
Speaker 2: was just like, what the fuck.
Speaker 12: Is this.
Speaker 1: Movie based on a podcast?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's interesting to talk about how well they
Speaker 2: talk about how podcasts are reflected via Saturday Night Live,
Speaker 2: but they didn't really go into like, for me, I'm
Speaker 2: not that familiar with Cereal, but I'm familiar with Cereal
Speaker 2: insofar as the parodies of Cereal, not that SNL skit.
Speaker 2: But I remember there being like a I don't even
Speaker 2: remember if it was a YouTube thing or what it was,
Speaker 2: but it was basically like living the life of Sarahcanig
Speaker 2: and this whole thing of like different pronunciations of male
Speaker 2: chimp and that whole male kimp thing that they were doing.
Speaker 3: What.
Speaker 2: I never understood that shit, But it is fascinating for
Speaker 2: me because I'm always interested in how things are reflected
Speaker 2: back through pop culture. So yeah, things like Tusk was
Speaker 2: fascinating insofar as it was about a podcaster only murders
Speaker 2: in the building. I don't know if you guys are
Speaker 2: familiar with the Godzilla series like King of Them, Oh,
Speaker 2: I know you're not James, but King of the Monsters
Speaker 2: and Godzilla X Kong, there is a character in there
Speaker 2: who is a conspiracy theorist podcaster.
Speaker 3: Hello, loyal listeners, Welcome to TTP Titan Truth Podcast, Episode
Speaker 3: number two forty five. Today's today maybe the last podcast
Speaker 3: I ever record. And look, I know I said that
Speaker 3: last week, and yeah, maybe maybe the week before and
Speaker 3: if we were the Toms. But look, this is the point,
Speaker 3: after five years of deep cover at Apex Cybernetics, I'm
Speaker 3: finally taking my shot. Something bad is going on here.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it is, but I'm about to
Speaker 3: walk in and download hard evidence and expose a vast
Speaker 3: corporate conspiracy. Yeah you could call me a whistle blower,
Speaker 3: but I ain't just whistling. I mean, this is more
Speaker 3: than a leak. It's a flood. And believe me, this
Speaker 3: flood it's going to wash away all apexes lies. You
Speaker 3: can believe that.
Speaker 2: It used to be funny for me, but then watching
Speaker 2: it now and in the age of you know, QAnon
Speaker 2: and all these things not very funny. Even if he's
Speaker 2: right that there are giant monsters, but there are things
Speaker 2: in the one with oh Russell from uh Dead Deadpool,
Speaker 2: that one where he showed up where they're talking about
Speaker 2: like using bleach to clean yourself and all this stuff,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, I was telling.
Speaker 1: Me about one or two gallons won't cut itage. I
Speaker 1: need my bleach in bulk because by just as real
Speaker 1: people and it come on on thing.
Speaker 5: That's how we find him.
Speaker 1: The bleach bleach.
Speaker 3: He consumes a ton of bleach, drinks bleach, showers with it.
Speaker 1: Oh show you I shower bleach. You know what prevention
Speaker 1: against organic tracking technology?
Speaker 2: You see that podcast is filling your head with garbage
Speaker 2: and it just makes podcasters look awful. It makes us
Speaker 2: look like we're absolute nutcases, which a lot of us are.
Speaker 8: The beginning of the Halloween reboot, the David Gordon Green movie,
Speaker 8: they're like true crime podcasters that go, you know, to
Speaker 8: bother Michael Myers and then bother Jamie Lee Curtis, and
Speaker 8: then they get fucking murdered because they're because again, like
Speaker 8: they're being portrayed as obnoxious and look, like Mike said,
Speaker 8: I know plenty of obnoxious podcasters.
Speaker 5: I remember when Only Murders in the Building came out,
Speaker 5: and I was I was very snoozy about it because
Speaker 5: it's not a great portrayal of either podcasters or podcast
Speaker 5: fans in that show. I have watched a few. It's
Speaker 5: almost as if the skits that we see in SNL,
Speaker 5: the skits that we see and Only Murders in the
Speaker 5: Building and other things about podcasting and of course you know,
Speaker 5: Joe Rogan and all that kind of stuff, don't paint
Speaker 5: podcasting in the best light that you that we possibly could.
Speaker 5: And that seems to be a bit of a shame,
Speaker 5: you know. I Mean what I found interesting is in
Speaker 5: September last year, Only Murders in the Building came back
Speaker 5: for a fourth season, and so the and so the
Speaker 5: Wirecutter site actually went through all of the audio equipment
Speaker 5: that they used to make their podcast, and guess what,
Speaker 5: it's all chosen for looks. There is no, there is
Speaker 5: no You do not want to buy any of the
Speaker 5: stuff that you see them using, of course, because it's
Speaker 5: a it's a TV, it's a pestich, it's a comedy show,
Speaker 5: and that's kind of you know, how it should be.
Speaker 5: But it doesn't necessarily paint us in a particularly good light,
Speaker 5: and particularly when you then have a look at I mean,
Speaker 5: what what is the main sort of view that most
Speaker 5: that most humans have of podcasters? It's either true crime weirdos,
Speaker 5: or it's people like Joe Rogan, which is not a
Speaker 5: good a good view either, or Bill Simmons or whoever
Speaker 5: that might be.
Speaker 1: What did Bill Simmons doing? Anybody?
Speaker 6: James?
Speaker 5: And then you've got people like Ira Glass or Guy
Speaker 5: Raz you know, people that will be comfortable wearing a
Speaker 5: bow tie. And you've got those three sets of people,
Speaker 5: and I don't think, being fair, either of those people
Speaker 5: necessarily paint podcasting in the light that we would like
Speaker 5: it to be painted in, which, you know, it all
Speaker 5: looks a little bit weird from my point of view.
Speaker 8: I mean, the joke that I always make about podcasting
Speaker 8: is it's just three white dudes in a room bitching
Speaker 8: all the time, and we're fuck, we're here with the
Speaker 8: equation here we.
Speaker 2: Are spoken into existence.
Speaker 8: And I actually appreciate that the movie doesn't focus on
Speaker 8: like a white content creator, Like I appreciate that, like
Speaker 8: you know, yeah, like you know it it it's a
Speaker 8: lot of POC, a lot of women as well, Like
Speaker 8: I like that, Yes, there are plenty white dudes in
Speaker 8: the podcasting sphere, like if not most of these hyper
Speaker 8: successful podcasters are just white men or women, Like we've
Speaker 8: mentioned Joe Rogan, we mentioned Katrina Longworth, like the last
Speaker 8: podcast on the Left, guys Bill Simmons, like they all
Speaker 8: have one thing in common again nothing I mean again,
Speaker 8: like they can't help that.
Speaker 1: It is what it is.
Speaker 8: But like it is kind of a deserved stereotype, but
Speaker 8: an unfair one because I think a lot of people,
Speaker 8: I would say, probably the three of us, bristle at
Speaker 8: that being the case because it makes me uncomfortable because
Speaker 8: I would never want anyone to think like I'm an
Speaker 8: exclusionary content creator. I'm involved in an industry that's exclusionary
Speaker 8: because if anything, what like with weirding Way, like we
Speaker 8: try to be inclusionary, if not go out of our
Speaker 8: way to make sure that people are included, because, like
Speaker 8: we've already mentioned, this industry can't get by on the
Speaker 8: five percent alone. It just can't or whatever. The number
Speaker 8: is probably even smaller than that.
Speaker 2: Frankly, I was appreciative that there were, you know, like
Speaker 2: you said, people of color. I very much make a
Speaker 2: point when it comes to like setting up the schedule
Speaker 2: for next to your shows and those kind of things.
Speaker 2: It's like, Okay, let's get some different voices on here.
Speaker 2: Can't just be white guys all the time. I mean,
Speaker 2: especially when it comes to like movies. Everybody loves movie
Speaker 2: except for James. Everybody loves movies, so it's like, let's
Speaker 2: get all these different points of view. Movies are made
Speaker 2: for so many different people, and watching them you can
Speaker 2: come to things with different perspectives. So I thought that
Speaker 2: was good that there were a lot of different well
Speaker 2: not a lot of different, but some different perspectives in
Speaker 2: this spy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, are there are some. I would say, if you
Speaker 5: watch the trailer, you will get the wrong impression because
Speaker 5: the trailer is almost all white blokes. But as long
Speaker 5: as you actually watch the movie, I think it's very
Speaker 5: clear you know that there are a lot of great
Speaker 5: women have been involved in podcasting all the way through.
Speaker 5: It's a history that's not reflected in the trailer, and
Speaker 5: I think that that's a bit of a mistake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would like to have heard from Brook Gladstone
Speaker 2: as much as Ira Glass. You know, I think that
Speaker 2: she brings a lot to the table. You know, I
Speaker 2: mentioned Katrina Longsworth like she is as far as I know,
Speaker 2: the most popular movie podcast are out there again, amazing
Speaker 2: production values, stuff that I'll never be able to attain,
Speaker 2: that's for sure. But yeah, I mean she's knocking it
Speaker 2: out of the park. Well, she's also seasonal, so I
Speaker 2: know because people will come to me when a new
Speaker 2: season starts and say, oh, have you heard the new season? Yeah,
Speaker 2: have you listened to my show?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 8: I listen to other people's podcasts. It's a weird question
Speaker 8: to ask me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I do try. I do try, But yeah,
Speaker 2: people always recommending shows and I'm just like, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: I can't. I'm too busy doing my own thing. Not
Speaker 2: only are podcasters portrayed in different media, but then also
Speaker 2: you've got the idea of TV shows or movies being
Speaker 2: based well kind of like Tusk, but being based off
Speaker 2: of podcasts, which is also an interesting thing for me
Speaker 2: where it's like, how do you adapt a podcast to
Speaker 2: a movie or TV show? But they're doing it well.
Speaker 8: If you do something like Loare, it's very easy. I mean,
Speaker 8: when I think of podcasts being adapted into things, I
Speaker 8: think of low other than Tusk and like Lore. I mean,
Speaker 8: I think they did a great job with Lore, but
Speaker 8: it was one of those things where I was like, wow, are.
Speaker 1: You going to do that?
Speaker 8: But again with the format of his show, it made
Speaker 8: perfect sense, like almost again, like people are probably like,
Speaker 8: why isn't this a YouTube video? Like, well, because it's
Speaker 8: an Amazon Prime thing instead. You know, now there's a
Speaker 8: point anymore, like just do it on YouTube.
Speaker 5: The most successful company for taking podcasts into movies and
Speaker 5: into TV is wondering what one but they have done.
Speaker 5: They have done a really good job of taking some
Speaker 5: of their shows, both translating them into other languages and
Speaker 5: doing that properly, but also turning you know, I mean,
Speaker 5: Doctor Death was you know, made into a great TV show.
Speaker 5: Lots of other of their shows have been made in
Speaker 5: integrate TV shows as well, and I think, you know,
Speaker 5: there was thankfully not much talk about podcasting going into
Speaker 5: video on this on this movie, and I'm pleased about that.
Speaker 5: That's one of the things that concerns me an awful
Speaker 5: lot about where this industry is a going. But very
Speaker 5: clearly you could see that serial being made into a
Speaker 5: TV show that's called a documentary, and we have those,
Speaker 5: whereas Joe Rogan is just it's just two people talking
Speaker 5: and it's very easy and cheap to put cameras in there,
Speaker 5: and hey, presto, you've made some video out of it.
Speaker 8: If I was a video content creator, I'd be more
Speaker 8: upset the video podcasts are cutting into what I do
Speaker 8: than the other way around.
Speaker 2: I love hearing James on his show when he's talking
Speaker 2: about what is a podcast? You know that's still a debate.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of videos that I watch or
Speaker 2: video shows that I watch where I guess it would
Speaker 2: be reclassified as a podcast.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The comic Tropes, I love comic Tropes a lot. It's
Speaker 2: a guy talking about comics, and occasionally he cuts a
Speaker 2: way to pandles and shows things that way, but the
Speaker 2: majority of it is kind of like I'm looking at
Speaker 2: you guys right now, dude in front of a microphone, Well,
Speaker 2: I guess you would call it a podcast. I remember
Speaker 2: the Red Letter media guys going frickin' ape shit a
Speaker 2: few years ago when William Shatner's people reached out and
Speaker 2: said that he will not do your podcast, and they're like,
Speaker 2: we're not a podcast by and I'm like, well, kind
Speaker 2: of like these days, I bet you that's what YouTube
Speaker 2: would put you in as well.
Speaker 5: I'm looking forward to go into puncast movement in a
Speaker 5: few weeks. I've got some stickers, and the stickers that
Speaker 5: I've got are all very fancy, and they say something
Speaker 5: for your ears when your eyes are busy. That's what
Speaker 5: a podcast is. It's something for your ears when your
Speaker 5: eyes are busy. It might have some video attached to it,
Speaker 5: that's absolutely fine, go gamebusters on that. But if it
Speaker 5: doesn't work in audio form, it is not a podcast.
Speaker 5: And the thing that is concerning me an awful lot
Speaker 5: is listening to shows where you suddenly realize, oh, this
Speaker 5: is just audio from a TV show, really, isn't it,
Speaker 5: And they keep on saying, have a look at this,
Speaker 5: isn't this amazing? Well I can't have a look at
Speaker 5: it because I'm just listening to the podcast. And I
Speaker 5: now feel like a second class citizen because you know,
Speaker 5: you've you've foisted me off on something that doesn't work
Speaker 5: as a piece of audio. So I think we just
Speaker 5: have to be very careful, you know, in terms of
Speaker 5: that as we move forward. Thankfully they didn't dive too
Speaker 5: deeply into that in this particular movie, which was probably
Speaker 5: a good thing.
Speaker 8: It's a very positive movie. Like it doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 8: talk about like I don't know, like not the dirty
Speaker 8: side of podcasting. But there's a little bit of like
Speaker 8: a less exciting part of this to talk about, like
Speaker 8: the stuff that we've dealt with, like the things that
Speaker 8: you deal with with hosting sites and not your people,
Speaker 8: not being upright and honest with things, or just you know,
Speaker 8: running into creative differences with people, like all kinds of things,
Speaker 8: Like none of that's mentioned. Like this seems like a
Speaker 8: very fun and upbeat thing. Like look, I think they
Speaker 8: said it best in the in the documentary podcasting right
Speaker 8: now is like the last frontier the of like ultimate
Speaker 8: democratization of media is podcasting, like literally anybody can do it,
Speaker 8: like and as long as that continues to be.
Speaker 1: The case, that is a positive.
Speaker 8: But to your point, James, like the idea that like
Speaker 8: somehow now we all have to have video. Like when
Speaker 8: I came back from Podcast Movement last year, Mike and
Speaker 8: I had a conversation and one of the things I
Speaker 8: talked about was like, this is all video now. They
Speaker 8: all want video and they wouldn't shut the fuck up
Speaker 8: about video all the time.
Speaker 1: I did a video podcast for a while. It was fine,
Speaker 1: but I would rather just do this.
Speaker 8: This is what I signed up for, this is what
Speaker 8: I want to do, and this will always have a place.
Speaker 8: It's just figuring out a way to make this more accessible.
Speaker 8: And I think as something like this documentary would show.
Speaker 8: My hope is that something like that makes this more accessible,
Speaker 8: And something like Podcast Movement, which I am also going
Speaker 8: to in like a week and a half, goes a
Speaker 8: long way to that, I think in getting people engaged
Speaker 8: and directly engaged. But it's whether or not those people
Speaker 8: leave that box that they're in, because it's not about,
Speaker 8: like you said, the echo chamber that we're all in.
Speaker 1: Like podcasting is great, and I.
Speaker 8: Love podcasting, Like, yeah, if you fucking listen to podcasts,
Speaker 8: Like how do I get the person that isn't already
Speaker 8: on that train onto the train with me? For as
Speaker 8: little cost as possible, and we as a collective industry
Speaker 8: still haven't figured that out. We haven't and I don't
Speaker 8: know what that looks like or what that takes. Because
Speaker 8: if I did, trust me, i'd be doing it right now,
Speaker 8: and I'd be sharing it with the people I work
Speaker 8: with directly, so we could all be successful. Like I
Speaker 8: wouldn't keep it from people either, because that's how the
Speaker 8: other industries became the way that they are as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, correct, And it's one of the reasons why I
Speaker 5: am much less interested in seeing. You know, fifty three
Speaker 5: percent of the US pop listeners to podcasts every month.
Speaker 5: That to me is not an exciting number anymore. The
Speaker 5: exciting number for me is seven hundred and seventy three
Speaker 5: million hours in the US is spent with podcasts every week.
Speaker 5: Seven hundred and seventy three million hours. Now, if we
Speaker 5: double that, theoretically we double the amount of money coming
Speaker 5: in into the industry. It's not that easy, but theoretically,
Speaker 5: at least, this is a number which is tied into
Speaker 5: the revenue that we can earn. And it's that number,
Speaker 5: seven hundred and seventy three million that we should be
Speaker 5: having a look at every single year. It should go
Speaker 5: up every single year, you would hope, but certainly seeing
Speaker 5: that going up as our bell weather. And one of
Speaker 5: the ways that we can increase that is to cross
Speaker 5: promote other podcasts, to make sure that people find new
Speaker 5: shows that they're interested in, but also listen longer to
Speaker 5: the shows that they really enjoy and do all of
Speaker 5: that stuff. I mean, it's it's it's the usual way
Speaker 5: commercial radio works. But we don't seem to have focused
Speaker 5: on time spent listening in the podcast industry at all.
Speaker 5: The only thing that we've been chasing is how many people.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, there's the useless stat how many
Speaker 5: people have ever listened to a podcast. I mean, I
Speaker 5: don't know about you, Mike. I have stood using with
Speaker 5: bare feet. I have stood on a lego brick and
Speaker 5: that really hurts, and I'm not going to do it again.
Speaker 5: But I'm still in that list of people who have
Speaker 5: stood on a lego brick with their bare feet. That's
Speaker 5: not a particularly useful stat. But seven hundred and seventy
Speaker 5: three million hours spent with podcasts every week in the
Speaker 5: US alone is an amazing stat. And as long as
Speaker 5: we focus on that and continue to grow that number
Speaker 5: I think we're in for a great future in terms
Speaker 5: of where the industry's going.
Speaker 2: Some of my episodes are so long that I think
Speaker 2: I'm at least one percent of that number.
Speaker 8: Well, that's the other thing that's nice about podcasting is
Speaker 8: it sticks around forever.
Speaker 1: You know. We are the arbiters of that.
Speaker 8: You know, we have all of our own files, we
Speaker 8: have everything, we can move our stuff. You know, they
Speaker 8: don't talk about it. In the documentary of like the
Speaker 8: Hosting Debacle, and you know, Kevin Smith talks about like,
Speaker 8: well I had to pay for podcasting, Like, no shit, dude,
Speaker 8: We've been having to pay for it this whole time.
Speaker 8: Like it's nice that you thought it was free, though,
Speaker 8: my friend, like, how about of that dozen bananas, thirteen dollars?
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, just give me the thirteen dollars.
Speaker 8: I love that that is part of this, that we
Speaker 8: are the arbiters of our own fate in a way,
Speaker 8: like and that's kind of on us, like as not
Speaker 8: figuring out how to do this.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, like I'm kind of okay.
Speaker 8: With that because I think as an industry, I would
Speaker 8: rather be in a group of people feeling like we
Speaker 8: can still do better. And there's still room to grow.
Speaker 8: Then there is no room for anyone like us we're
Speaker 8: trying to like dig out and carve out our spot
Speaker 8: here as opposed to like there's plenty of room for everybody.
Speaker 8: And podcasting still feels that way, like I've only been
Speaker 8: doing it for a decade. It's been around for twice
Speaker 8: as long as I've been doing it, and there's still plenty,
Speaker 8: like there's still so much room to cover. And I
Speaker 8: think that the documentary does get at that a little bit,
Speaker 8: but I think that's another like huge thing that needs
Speaker 8: to kind of just be like yelled at the mountaintop,
Speaker 8: is like there is actually room for everybody in this
Speaker 8: and you can be successful.
Speaker 5: There is room. And I think Chris, you were saying
Speaker 5: earlier how many podcasts there are. There are four point
Speaker 5: seven million podcasts, and that sounds, oh my goodness, unattainable.
Speaker 5: But you look at two things. You look at the
Speaker 5: amount of books that are published every single year, way
Speaker 5: more than four point seven million. But you also look
Speaker 5: at the amount of active podcasts podcasts that are being
Speaker 5: made right now, and that number is as low as
Speaker 5: three hundred thousand. That's the number that you're really competing
Speaker 5: with if you're competing with an always on show, and
Speaker 5: I think from that point of view, there's plenty of
Speaker 5: room and the benefit of podcasting it's called podcasting for
Speaker 5: a reason and not broadcasting, because the benefit is you
Speaker 5: can really talk to people with a common interest. You
Speaker 5: don't have to be broad you don't have to reach
Speaker 5: millions of people. You can focus on you know, the
Speaker 5: ten people in the world who like blue Trains and
Speaker 5: make a Blue Trains podcast. You can do that and
Speaker 5: you can have one hundred percent reach in the people
Speaker 5: who love blue Trains. I mean, that's what podcasting can do.
Speaker 5: And that podcast can sit on the same platform next
Speaker 5: to Joe Rogan, next to Amy Poehler, next to This
Speaker 5: American Life, and that's really exciting. And that's something that
Speaker 5: you can't do in terms of Netflix. You can't really
Speaker 5: do in terms of YouTube because of the way the
Speaker 5: algorithms and all of that work and the cost of
Speaker 5: doing video in the first place. But you can do
Speaker 5: that in terms of podcasting. And that's what I still
Speaker 5: think that podcasting is one of the most exciting media
Speaker 5: because you know, at the end of the day, you
Speaker 5: can do that and you can earn money by simply
Speaker 5: asking your audience. If you like this, if you get
Speaker 5: value from what I'm doing here, then please think about
Speaker 5: giving us value back, either value with your time of
Speaker 5: listening to it, value with your talents. Maybe you might
Speaker 5: want to help promote the show or value with your
Speaker 5: treasure money and you can send it over here. And
Speaker 5: there are podcasters out there who are earning a living
Speaker 5: from literally doing that, from asking their audiences. If you
Speaker 5: like what we do, here's where you can help support
Speaker 5: that particular show. And you know, I think that's a
Speaker 5: very exciting place to be well.
Speaker 2: To that end, I think I'm going to ask you
Speaker 2: guys to say where people can hear you and where
Speaker 2: they can give you money at I want to thank
Speaker 2: my co host James and Chris for joining me. James,
Speaker 2: what is the latest with you?
Speaker 6: Sir?
Speaker 5: Podnws dot net is where you should go and get
Speaker 5: the daily newsletter that I write all about podcasting. If
Speaker 5: any of this has sounded interesting to you, it's completely
Speaker 5: freepodnews dot net. That's very good. If you want to
Speaker 5: hear new podcasts, then try new podcasts dot net. New
Speaker 5: Podcasts dot net is a ton of interesting trainers for you.
Speaker 5: Shows every single day, and it's a place where you
Speaker 5: can push yours as well, and if you want to
Speaker 5: learn more about me personally, I've got no idea why,
Speaker 5: but anyway, James dot Critlin dot net is my little
Speaker 5: home on the internet.
Speaker 2: And Chris, let's lad this with you, sir.
Speaker 8: Still taking that little bit of a personal sabbatical from
Speaker 8: my main show, just for personal reasons, as one might say,
Speaker 8: but I'm kind of getting back into the swing of
Speaker 8: things with it, and so expect back to weekly content
Speaker 8: with my show. The Culture Cast over in weirding Way Media,
Speaker 8: where you and I do all the things that we
Speaker 8: do other than the one thing that is a bonus,
Speaker 8: and that's on my Patreon or your patreon, patreon dot com,
Speaker 8: slash Culture Cast or Projection Booth where we talk about
Speaker 8: James Bond once a month with our dear friend Richard HadAM.
Speaker 8: And it's a small donation on your part to get
Speaker 8: some extra content in your life. If you're hard up
Speaker 8: for not having a thousand episodes of Mike's show or
Speaker 8: six hundred and ninety one episodes my show, and you
Speaker 8: need more, that's where you would go to find it.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you again, guys for being on the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear
Speaker 2: more of me shooting off my mouth, like Chris said,
Speaker 2: check out the other shows that I work on. They're
Speaker 2: all available at wirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to the
Speaker 2: Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit
Speaker 2: patreon dot com slash Projection Booth or go on over
Speaker 2: to patreon dot com slash culture Cast. You can get
Speaker 2: some good stuff there as well. Every donation we get
Speaker 2: helps the projection Booth take over the world.
Speaker 10: Screw cute, I got nothing to say. Quit bugging me.
Speaker 10: Go away.
Speaker 5: That time.
Speaker 10: I didn't come in to scial last.
Speaker 13: I'm sick, sick good, and I love the value.
Speaker 6: Human sycrifice.
Speaker 10: I like staring at two glass eyes, keep them stuffed
Speaker 10: museum style, got alarm set all around.
Speaker 13: And kiss them around.
Speaker 11: I'm sick, sycai aerical, and I value
Speaker 6: Human sycrifice.