Story vs Screen: Can Fiction Podcasts Survive | Lauren Shippen #652

Well, welcome to the New Media Show. This episode 652, and the topic tonight is this theme of story versus screen. And can fiction podcasts survive the video push and the video era that we are all experiencing right now? And audio fiction and serial storytelling has been a format that is currently, I think, being pressure tested by the podcast's new video push. And so today we're going to break down what fiction creators should build for audio and what they should package for video discovery if there is a pathway there, and what is simply unrealistic for most budgets. And we're going to try and figure out what is possible and what is not on that side. But the real question is not how do I force my story podcast into a video, but it's how we protect the storytelling power of audio while adding the right discovery and growth layers for today's platforms today as we're evolving and changing. And my name is Rob Greenlee. I'm a 22-year podcaster and Podcast Hall of Famer, and I've been around the podcasting space on the executive side for many years too, and help creators today. But I have a terrific guest with me who's gonna help me through that, and you probably saw that in the intro, but I'm, I'm joined by Lauren Shippen. Let me pull her up on the screen and we can start talking about this whole area that really you've spent most of your career in, Lauren, as a creative director at the Atypical Artists Company that you've been working there since January of 2019, I see. So, and you run the day-to-day operations for a podcast studio which includes marketing, budgeting, production, large-scale creative aspects of it, as well as the hiring. And so I think you probably sweep the floors too, Lauren, don't you? It's what it sounds like.

It's my studio and I do everything.

So yeah, it's great to have you here. And I think that this topic has been bubbling around the storytelling genre of podcasting, and of which fiction is one part of that. And I think that there's the true crime stuff too, and there's a bunch of other genres that are really kind of more based on the serialized aspect of podcasting that have been under increasing financial pressure because they are complex productions. And then you add this layer of video on top of it. And I'm just curious how you're dealing with all of the changes and what's your thoughts right now where we are around fictional podcasts and storytelling right now?

Yeah, I mean, I think the podcasting industry writ large is in a really interesting position where we may be experiencing a definitional shift around what exactly a podcast is. Is. And that, you know, that, that's definitely a little, a little nerve-wracking because I, I mean, podcasts have meant a lot of different things for a lot of different people. I may have lost you, Rob. Are you— I can't see you anymore, but I'm not sure if that's—

Yeah, I'm still here.

Okay, you are still here. Great. Okay, I wasn't sure if that was a StreamYard thing. Apologies.

Well, it is a StreamYard thing. I just went full screen with you.

Oh, gotcha. Okay, cool. Yeah, I think that, you know, when podcasts kind of first burst onto the scene with Serial in 2015, which is also when I started with my first show, The Bright Sessions, narrative storytelling really was something that people associated podcasts with, right? Because Serial, This American Life, Radiolab, these nonfiction shows that were still crafting a story for the listeners was, I think, what a lot of people associated with podcasts. And now we're experiencing a completely different kind of association where the first thing that people think of is two people sitting in front of microphones chatting. And I think actually even that visual is an important part of what podcasts are becoming definitionally. And I have a lot of opinions about, you know, what it means to have a video podcast that actually doesn't have an RSS feed, which is something that we're also beginning to see. But when it comes to fiction, that obviously is not even close to an option for us. If we wanted to do our podcasts with corresponding visuals, that would just be making television.

Yeah. And well, that's where the— that's really where the tension of this is, is because the medium is pushing more towards creating like television experiences. And because increasingly the consumers of podcasts are watching it on big screen TVs. So, you know, I can just feel that very raw tension that's in the medium right now of what it wants to be versus what it's been and, or what it, you know, and should it become that, or is there some kind of divide, you know, kind of split or divide that has to happen in order to make these different types of podcasts still viable?

Well, I think there's a piece of the video content experience from an audience side that I don't see talked about very often, which is specifically the discovery aspect of it. Like we're all being told that video is crucial for discovery. Spotify has put in not only the ability to upload videos, which of course Apple Podcasts has just introduced, like last week, I think this week. But also Spotify gives you the option to upload these shorter clips that they use sort of promotionally within their app. And I do— maybe not question, but I, I, I'm curious about how many people actually are watching podcasts in the way that you would watch a TV show. I don't know that somebody is like turning on a podcast and sitting down and watching it. They're using their YouTube Premium to press the YouTube video and then they're closing the app and they're doing something else, you know? And so then the video is really about discovery. And I think, I think one of the best sort of examples of that is the fact that there are entire other sectors of entertainment and content online that stage fake podcast recordings in order to promote their work.. And so you'll see something on TikTok of two people sitting in front of microphones talking, and it's actually a promotion for an influencer who doesn't have a podcast at all. And I think that that's, I think that's really interesting. And so I do, I do wonder, I mean, there was that big, I forget, I forget if it was Edison or who ran the poll, but something like 98% of people are still listening to their podcasts over watching them. So it's, I think that it is much more of a discovery thing than an actual experiential thing. But that's just my current opinion.

Well, I think that there's, there's some truth in that, and, but I do think that the industry oftentimes looks at these things from, uh, where we're going, right? More from a, you know, a, a trend line, right, of where things are shifting to. And, and I think that's, that's kind of what I try and do with this show too, is try and see what the trends are and figure out where those friction points are in the process of change. And certainly, I've been thinking a lot about the genre of more structured content, less chitchat-type content, which, you know, if you look at like platforms like Netflix, it's really funny actually to think about what's going on there in the context of what Netflix is known for, right? What Netflix is known for is storytelling type of formats, and, uh, but yet what they're putting up there is not. And so is it just the fact that they're looking for cheap content, um, or are, are they just trying to harvest, um, audience from the podcasting space over to Netflix? And, and once they're done with podcasts, they're just going to drop it like a you know, like a hot potato, right? So yeah, I don't know what you think about that.

I'm not sure what the, what the strategy is there because I actually, I had the good fortune to get to make a narrative fiction podcast with Netflix.

I got to make an official Stranger Things podcast as a video show, but an audio show?

No, as, as an audio show, just, uh, it was just a straight fiction podcast and it was so fun and the team there was so great. And, and so I'm really kind of curious what the, what the strategy is with their, their current sort of podcast acquisition and, and their podcast originals. And I think that it's I imagine it's somewhat similar to Spotify introducing all of these video features where everybody's just trying to compete with YouTube, right? YouTube is the biggest entertainment platform by like several miles.

Oh yeah. Yeah. I don't think they're ever going to catch up actually.

So yeah. And so it was just about having, you know, like Netflix now has games as well that you can play within, you know, their Netflix games apps and things like that. And so I think it's just another, tick in that column of like, well, what does YouTube have that people are using it for? You know, can we also do that?

Yeah, I liked your comment about Netflix just a couple of years ago was really into audio podcasts, which seemed like another disconnect from what they're known for. So I was just wondering how that went. Yes, you created an audio series with them. I know that they hired a former employee from Apple to, to run the audio podcast side for, for Netflix. Is that still operational?

You know, I, I'm not entirely sure what the structure is over there. The— some of the team that I, that I worked with, I think is still there. But this was back in 2021 that I made this show. Yeah. So, you know, there's been—

that was back in that time frame, right?

Yeah, exactly. So I I'm not entirely sure, yeah, what their interest is in fiction podcasts currently. I'm certainly interested, you know, if anybody from Netflix is watching this, hit me up. I loved working with you guys. But I think, you know, for them, I think for a lot of the big companies that do fiction podcasts tied into their IP, whether, you know, in Netflix's case it was Stranger Things, I also made a show with Marvel for the, 25th anniversary of the graphic novel Marvels. And, you know, DC is doing tons of stuff. I think that a lot of that is sort of understood as a bit of a loss leader, right? Because that's not, that's not what it's for. It's not to, it's not to bring in tons of money. And like, I'm not even sure that Netflix even ever monetized the Stranger Things show. I don't know that it had ads on it. But it's about—

That's an interesting point. If you contrast that timeframe to the timeframe of today, where Everybody's so focused on, well, you can't do it unless you can make money on it. You know, it's, it's, it's just such a different culture around. Just like what you said, uh, Netflix wasn't really concerned about making money. And then if you look at the early years of podcasting, that's exactly what was going on. People are like, oh, this is an experiment, we'll figure it out eventually. And, but, but it's like we've gotten to this era now where it's like, it's gotta, it's gotta convert or we're not doing it.

You know, right. And I think that, I think it's really short-sighted. Like, I think that, I mean, we all experienced pivot to video 10 years ago. It was a massive failure and ended up shuttering dozens and dozens of, you know, otherwise healthy media companies. And I'm not, I don't necessarily think that we're going to see that same thing happen on the same scale, but I do think that I mean, yeah, to sort of continue to use Netflix as an example, if you make, you know, like the Stranger Things show was a sort of promotional tool for a book that they were, a tie-in book that they were selling. And it's like thinking about what two billboards on Sunset Boulevard must cost for Netflix to, you know, promote the last season of Stranger Things for two months, you know, that those, that big real estate. I bet that that's not that far from the budget that we had to make that show. And so it— there's an understanding of like, this thing exists in order to get people excited about this property and to, and to give something to our fans that expands this universe and to engage, engage our fans and, and to build a loyal audience. And I think that that's something that a lot of companies are not focused on. They're focused on the, the immediate return, right? Because I think we're kind of seeing the chickens come home to roost around a lot of VC funding where it's like, okay, well, you've been a company for a certain number of years, you need to start showing a profit to investors. And ultimately the better thing to do, and the thing that, you know, I'm trying to do and that a lot of independent creators are trying to do in smaller studios is move to, you know, kind of what I consider like the dropout model. I don't know if you're familiar with the streaming platform dropout. It's an independent streaming show.

Yeah, I haven't heard that term before.

Improv shows, D&D. It's like kind of a very niche kind of internet streaming site, but it's doing quite well. And they, over many years, cultivated a really devoted fan base through content that was good and creating loyal fans. And now they have a self-sustaining business. Through a subscription service that people are paying for. And I think that increasingly that's going to be kind of the way forward because we all know, especially in podcasting, the ad market is not terribly reliable. No, you know, it's very fickle. It goes way up and down. And of course, when the economy is doing worse, it's harder for people to justify spending, you know, $5 a month on an entertainment subscription. But if you have enough fans, that kind of churn becomes livable versus, you know, advertisers just not buying anything for 14 months because of, you know, COVID or what have you. So I do think that it's sort of short-sighted to be focused on these trends when it should be more about what are you making that's actually providing value to your audience, which I think is something that not enough people are maybe asking themselves.

Yeah. Are you thinking that the, that the direction this might be going is, is this type of content more behind paywalls than as podcasts at some point? And, and kind of tangential to that, how do you see video playing in the future if, if it's what it appears to be that the video side is all about the discovery side? And you mentioned that earlier in the conversation that people are creating like maybe different content on the video side than from the actual content that's being produced in full-length form. I mean, how do you see this kind of playing out over the next year or so as we see, you know, what Apple's doing on the video side and things like that? Do you see more monetization? I mean, are we going to actually see like inserted ads into storytelling podcasts? I know that that was one of the big things that made it difficult was, is that, you know, the purist out there didn't wanna inject ads into the middle of their story, right? Because then it breaks up the story flow and that makes a lot of sense. So it's always, you know, sponsor at the beginning or the end or something like that. But how do you see, I mean, is necessity gonna drive this, do you think?

I mean, I can't speak for the entire audio drama community, of course, But I certainly have mid-roll ads in a lot of my shows.

Oh, you do?

Okay. Yeah, some of my shows don't allow for it because of the format. Like I have a couple of shows that are just—

That's really behind it, right?

Yeah, and so it's like you can't really drop something into a conversation that's just one continuous conversation. But, you know, for my most recent show, 2000 and Late, it's, you know, kind of a dark sitcom. It's kind of got that structure. And so we built in ad breaks in the way that you would in a, you know, TV show of days past when TV has had ad breaks. And I think that, you know, for the most part, like people are, especially if you build them into the structure of the story, if you create sound cues, you know, you have a little music stinger out and back in, people are very accustomed to that. And then of course we provide ad-free feeds for our Apple subscribers, for our Patreon subscribers. You can now buy most of our shows on Bandcamp, so you can just own the whole thing like an album. So I think that, um, I don't think that we're ever going to see— I mean, you know, never say never, but I think it's very, very hard to say all of my content is paywalled. I think there always needs to be something for free, right? Because you always need to be bringing people into, you know, into the fold in some way, whether that's if it's giving your listeners early access or only releasing the season for free once the whole season has come out, windowed access, things like that, if it's having bonus content, I think that there's a million different ways to create value and incentive for people to subscribe to a Patreon or an Apple Podcasts or what have you. I do think ad-free is the easiest lever to pull there. But I also wouldn't discount the people who want to just give money because they like a thing. And, you know, as somebody who started on Patreon back in 2016, very early on in both my career and Patreon's existence, and now is sort of, you know, I sort of left Patreon for one of their sister programs, Memberful, for a while because of some infrastructure things. And now Patrons become more robust and I'm back on Patreon again. And, you know, the number of people who have supported Atypical Artists through the years who don't want anything in return, they just, they don't necessarily even listen to the ad-free feeds, right? Like they just want to give you money because they enjoy your thing. Yeah, I think that there's more of that than we think. And obviously, again, it goes up and down depending on the economy, of course. But I think that having a mix of, yeah, free stuff and paywalled stuff is going to be very important. How video fits into that, I couldn't say because I still am having a hard time understanding the value add of video for most podcasts, I think, personally.

Well, and also I think there is another layer to this that's kind of underlying the whole Apple Podcasts announcement that really— I don't know that it's really dawned on people yet what the impacts of this are. And I agree with you that their play into HLS streaming and then using the audio from the HLS video stream as the audio experience in their interface is going to create a very complex issue because that means that an audio-first creator is probably going to have to have a second or just only one audio feed in the catalog that's just going to be like an MP3 file. So it's going to get possibly, unless the kind of storytelling show makes their show as a video, it's going to have to be not embracing that video model. It's going to have to be in the catalog as a separate RSS feed like it always has been. Right. And that, that may be where we wind up. And those shows that are doing video are in a very difficult position because the people that are watching the video have the option to flip over to just listen to the audio from the video, which becomes their audio experience. So those video creators have to decide if they want to have a second RSS feed in the catalog that is audio only, that has the audio only edits, right? Because a lot of people, you know, if you create a video show, you know, I mean, you obviously edit it to a certain degree, but you can do deeper edits. Obviously, if you look at storytelling podcasts and fiction podcasts, those are deeply edited productions. Those will never be word for word exactly like any kind of video production that you might do. So This is, this is where I'm seeing the tension building in the podcasting. So there's going to be almost like a parting of the sea of sorts between the audio creators and the video creators. And that's been somewhat the case in podcasts. I mean, this show is in the Apple Podcast Store as a video RSS feed, as an audio RSS feed. So you would be able to go in and search for New Media Show in the catalog today and pick your pick your choice, right? Do you want to watch or do you want to listen? So, and that's where I see things continuing, especially for the storytellers. And then those shows will be able to tap into programmatic advertising or dynamic ad insertion technologies to help monetize those programs. But I guess as you look to, you know, Another aspect of this is, do you see the, the fictional or just the regular storytelling podcast becoming truly serial versus seasonal?

As in sort of like, like being always on in the way that other— yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that is— yeah, I have been trying to crack the always on for a long time. It is obviously like expensive, right?

And they're all— and it's hard. It's hard to do.

I mean, it's very hard to do. Yeah, right. And you know, I technically have a couple of always-ons myself. I've got one that comes out twice a month and one that comes out once a year. You know, it's like they technically are always on, but just very far apart. But I do think that that is something that is needed in the audio fiction space a lot more is stuff that is always on. And I think that, you know, there's some great anthology series that are like that. There are certainly shows that are very consistent in their release. And when it comes to building an audience in audio drama and actually like building sustainable business, the volume of episodes that you have is incredibly important. And, you know, for sort of the gold rush period where a bunch of Hollywood studios were coming in and making fiction podcasts, everyone was kind of doing the streaming model of like, okay, we're gonna do 10 episodes and maybe there will be a second season, but like probably not. And that's just not a good way for TV or podcasts to like build an audience, right? And like, I think we see that now with people in streaming being, you know, kind of skeptical of watching a new show if it hasn't been announced that it's got a second season, because it's sort of like, well, everything gets canceled now after the first season. Like, why am I going to get invested if I don't know that there's more coming? And so I think that, yeah, having an always-on, having something that is extremely high volume is— especially, you know, assuming it's good and well-produced and all those things that audio fiction is— uh, I think would be, be huge for the medium. It's just it is obviously a lot more expensive than doing an always-on chat show. And that's not to say that always-on chat shows are not difficult, they are, especially to do well. But, you know, having a large cast, having sound design, having different music every episode, all of that kind of stuff, if that's the type of production you're doing, is just inherently more expensive.

Yeah, I mean, you have to build it obviously with a team because, you know, as a solo creator, you probably can't really function at a high level. And I think that's what's been really difficult for a lot of the storytellers out there is just being able to keep up with the production versus what the expectations of their audience is, which is insatiable, right? And I think the same thing happened with like Serial and some of the early storytelling podcasts. And my co-host on this show, Todd Cochran, said for years, it's like, you can have a, a season-based show, but just have your, your last episode of season 1 end, and then the next Monday have your season 2 start. Yeah, yeah. And then you'll be able to hold on to your audience that you have worked so hard to, to create and build. But I know that it's, it's a little more complicated than that, than a chat show like what we're doing here. It's, it's a little easier to pull together, and, and it's all kind of off-the-cuff conversation where The storytelling stuff is very scripted, pre-recorded segments, transitions, sound effects, specialized music. And how do you produce that? Are people going to be trying to do this, do you think, especially with AI?

I mean, that's a whole— yeah, that's a whole other kind of— yeah, right, right. Um, yeah, I mean, I, I— listen, I think that there's always going to be people making audio drama because people never really stopped. Like, even between sort of the, the golden age of radio drama and a new wave of fiction podcasts, like, people were still making stuff, right? Yeah.

So it's human nature too. It's, it's how— it's called lore is what they call it, right? It's exactly— it's how humans have shared story for centuries. Uh, it is the way that we communicate culture and, and society and relationships and all these things are— it's really core to our existence. And it was really difficult to see what happened to the storytelling folks where the economic side of it really kind of disrupted the whole purity of it.

Yeah, and I, you know, I do think that AI definitely is a concern just in terms of like creating more noise that we all have to cut through in order to get people to listen to our stuff or see our stuff or what, you know, read our stuff, whatever it might be. But I do think that, I think people, yeah, are going to continue to make audio fiction and make really great stuff. And I think people are going to continue to listen to it. And I also think that there's still like a huge untapped audience out there for audio fiction of people who love stories, who love TV, who love audiobooks, who love reading, who love movies, who love video games, right? People who really want like a narrative story told well. Who would love audio fiction and just like literally don't know that it exists. And that knowledge gap is something that, you know, I'm constantly talking with colleagues about how to close because, and again, that's where sort of the definitional shift of podcasting becomes a liability for audio fiction, right? Because if podcasting becomes exclusively a talk show that you're watching, then it's like, okay, well then who are we marketing to? To, and how do we market audio-only content? And so, you know, I'm sort of— my goal this year has sort of been like, okay, like, let's— what's going on in the audiobook world? Because like, that's never gonna go video, you know. Like, obviously there are audiobook, like, readers who, uh, you know, film themselves or, or livestream them narrating, things like that. But people who listen to audiobooks are not looking to watch somebody read an audiobook for the most part. Yeah. And so it's like, that to me is like the audience that probably would love audio fiction and just doesn't know that they exist yet.

Yeah. And it does kind of push the envelope of, um, and it does make me wonder a little bit of, of why, um, Amazon kind of decided to close up Wondery, um, and push that whole team into Audible. Is, is that whole— that, that reason right there is that maybe maybe what was being produced here really is best fit in the kind of world of audiobooks, um, you know, and maybe the economics of that works out better because people subscribe to it.

Yeah, and you know, once they have people in the ecosystem, again, just like creating that value, right? Because it's like, as an Audible subscriber, you get one audiobook a month, but then they have all of these originals, and so it's like you're gonna stick around and continue to listen and keep that subscription going if you know that it's not just one audiobook a month that you're getting. And I think that that's smart. There's a lot of really great Audible Originals out there. I mean, they've been making a lot of great audio fiction.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And that may be the direction that we go. And because this type of content and even audiobooks have been distributed in RSS for, for a couple of decades now. Yeah. So it's, there's a lot of crossover, but, but I think the economics of this is causing a, causing a change, um, especially shows that want to have that deep, um, production, right? That complex production that is expensive. Um, there may be, and are you seeing this too, where there's kind of like maybe a hybrid model here that is able to be more regular every, every week or every 2 weeks that people are starting to evolve into just because of the, of the financial pressures and, and the distribution opportunities and the monetization choices now?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know that I, I've seen like a big trend in that direction for audio fiction. I think, you know, I think that there are a lot of people, myself included, who are trying to make longer seasons and seasons that are closer together. Um, but the— yeah, the economics of that— I mean, like, we're all doing other stuff, right? So it's like we're all doing like bonus chats or live streams or, you know, different things kind of throughout to try and fill in, right?

Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, exactly. Crossovers with each other, things like that, um, you know, feed drops, cross-promos, etc., to kind of, yeah, keep that feed alive, to keep, to keep people engaged, um, because those things are a lot more cost-effective than like producing an episode every other week, um, which is still, yeah, just once again, the economics of that just are, are currently very cumbersome.

Yeah, I guess you could create a chat show in between your, your main episodes or something like that, right? You have to be beat me in video, right?

And I mean, that is something that, you know, every TV show has now. Yeah, right, the companion podcast where like the actors or the directors or whatever talk about the show. Um, and so, you know, I think that that's something that we maybe are going to see, see more of in, in the audio fiction space if people are interested. And, you know, we'll have to see how an audience responds to that kind of thing, but worth trying, I think.

Yeah, I mean, if you can produce a successful or a really great kind of serialized kind of storytelling series that may be a better candidate long term for a chat show on Netflix. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Because of the, of the tie-in. But I do wonder if at some point, especially with AI, and I I know you're probably not excited about this at all, but that it will be possible to fully produce a storytelling show in AI, in audio, and to create a video version of it potentially. I don't know, are you in the industry that you're in right now, are you guys contemplating that potential future?

I mean, yeah, I think the future is kind of inevitable in some respects and Again, I am concerned about the noise aspect of it, right? Of just like, of just stuff flooding. So much stuff. Yeah. And making it just a lot harder to find the human stuff. And I also, the other thing I'm concerned about as both like an author and a scriptwriter and actor and all that kind of stuff is people accusing artists of using AI. When they haven't. Because, you know, especially when it comes to AI writing, there is a cadence that AI has and punctuation that AI— I'm a huge fan of the em dash. You cannot take the em dash away from me. And AI, unfortunately—

Sorry, Lauren, you just can't use that em dash anymore, or else the community is going to come down hard on you.

I mean, people really, you know, they associate with AI, which is too bad, especially because What did AI train on? My books, my podcast, my art, my writing. So it's like, you know, that's what's, you know, so I think from a noise standpoint, from sort of an audience confusion standpoint, I have concerns. From a competition standpoint, I have no concerns. Like, yes, in a very short time, someone's going to be able to produce an entire, 30-minute piece of content that is a facsimile of an audio drama episode, right? It will have a script, it will have voices, it will have sound, and it will have music. And it will not be art, and it won't be a story, because it will be autocomplete at its most advanced. And there's just there's no way that that is ever going to compete with human art. And I really like firmly believe that. And, you know, maybe that's me kind of doing a Pollyanna, you know, blue sky prediction, but like I have yet to see anything out of AI that is not incredibly boring. And so I, you know, I'm not too concerned about it as a competition, frankly.

Yeah. Well, I think that I would agree with you right now that that is definitely the, the potential experience of an AI doing the type of work that you're doing. But I do have to ask the— or wonder that, um, 5 years from now, is that going to be the case? Um, listen, that's the—

that's— if we hit the singularity and we get actual sentience, then I think we're in a totally—

and like, I don't think that's a different world entirely.

Yeah, that's a different world entirely that has completely different considerations. I do not think that AI is capable of creation. Because it's not, because it's not sentient, right? And so it is only capable of generation. And, you know, and of course, there are going to be people who are going to be totally fine with watching procedurally generated stuff, you know. But I don't think anybody who like actually wants to engage with stories is going to find that satisfying. I, you know, even if it's even if it's sort of a perfect facsimile of like a Stephen King novel, it's not gonna be a Stephen King novel. You know, it's still gonna be, it's still gonna be an autocomplete version of a Stephen King novel, and that's just never gonna be as good.

Yeah, I had, uh, Janine Wright, uh, from the Inception Point AI company on the show like, uh, 2 episodes ago.

And fascinating.

And we talked extensively on this topic of AI-generated content and where it's going and and how she's using it and things like that. And a lot of the Hollywood stars have quietly, most of them quietly, have already digitized their entire essence and being already. And increasingly the studios are doing deals to license the likenesses and voices of all the big name performers that you and I know of. So that's already in the pipeline right now. And so it's kind of, you know, that's a very different type of world. But yeah, I think the big issue with all of that is the transition of audiences. And I think that's the key question, right? I mean, to a creator, it's just another tool in your toolbox, right? To some degree, that was kind of the consensus that we got, was it's like we've had, you know, paintbrushes and we've had iPads to create art and things like that, but humans were always behind it. What's really changing now is that we're trying to replicate humans, and, and that is the— that's where we run into this new area that we haven't been in before, to know how this is going to turn out. Increasingly, we're seeing AI consumption, um, you know, be, you know, in some of the content seems to be pretty strong already. Uh, it just depends on what it is, right? And humans are not going to be able to create the kind of content that AI is going to be able to create. And not, it's going to be a— right, yeah, right. There's going to be a divide. So there's going to be content that AI will be able to make that humans would never make. And then there's going to be content that humans make that is going to feel like it needs to compete with AI, but in a lot of ways it's not going to be able to compete with AI, and to expect that it would is probably unrealistic. Now, when I say compete, what I'm talking about is at the scale and at the complexity of the potential production that would be beyond anything that a a human would have the resources or the time to produce. And we're starting to see that happen to some degree. And I do wonder how that storytelling model is going to play into that new world.

Yeah, I mean, I think you're absolutely right in that, like, a human can't ever possibly compete with the output of an AI, right? And I also think it's really telling that most of how we refer to AI content is AI slop.

Right? Well, that's—

that is the term.

Yeah. Well, no, it is.

It is. That's what's used most frequently. And like, I'm not, I would say like an anti-AI crusader. Like I think that there's a little bit of the baby being thrown out with the bathwater in some of the conversation around AI, because when it comes to medical research and things like that, models that are specifically made for that, I think are like machine learning can be an incredibly powerful tool. I think generative AI and LLMs, you know, that's sort of, I think the conversation that most people are having when they are very anti-AI. Yeah. And, and yeah, and I sort of worry that we're going to then just like say like all AI is bad. And it's like, no, there's some stuff over here that's actually like doing good work and, you know, finding cancer in scans and things like that. Like, let's keep that stuff. But I think, I think it's interesting because one of the thought experiments that I've been having recently, I'm curious your thoughts on this, is like, what about sports? Right. And AI could perfectly generate the most exciting football game. That would be thrilling, or the most perfect ice skater, right? And I don't think that people would want to watch that over watching the Olympics. And it's because there's real human stakes in watching somebody take their physical body and perform these incredible acts of athleticism. And there's real stakes in watching your hometown team compete live and no one knows that's really happening. But an AI absolutely could generate a better athlete visually than any athlete that exists in real life. And so why haven't we had that conversation about AI being a threat to sports? And I think it's because we understand the inherent humanity of sports being the draw. And I think that people are really underestimating audiences when it comes to the inherent underlying humanity of art being the draw. I think it's the same thing, you know, you want to hear a real human voice, you want to hear— I mean, you know, AI, every piece of AI music I've heard just quality-wise sounds terrible in my head.

Yeah, right, right.

But I feel like, you know, you kind of like— I think that the framework of sort of the sellout is like an interesting sort of comparison point because I think that there's like a lot of problems around sort of calling an artist a sellout because it's like artists still have to make money, they still have to like, you know, do things for rent. But I do think that you can tell when an artist makes something that they do not care about. And I think, you know, those performers who are getting their likenesses digitized and licensing them to studios, it's like those are people who don't like performing. Like you don't like the thing that you've dedicated your life to if you're doing that. And I think people can kind of—

I think they like the income from it, actually.

They like— right. And it's like, so that's fine. Like, that's, you know, and— but, but that is— but that is what you like. You are not— you're not a performer anymore. You are— you are a commodity, right? Um, and that's, that's fine. If that's what you want to be, then that's what you want to be. But I think that, that for people who actually want to have a story told to them or want to connect to a great Oscar-winning performance. They want that person to care about what they're making. And you can tell when somebody doesn't care. And an AI cannot care. And so I, yeah, again, I am worried about the output. I'm worried about the volume. I'm worried about the noise. But when it comes to audiences, I think that people who are, you know, sort of gaga over, you know, the cool fight sequence that AI is able to create and, you know, the new What is it? DeepMind, or one of the video generators.

There's a whole bunch of them. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of them.

Right. I think those people are underestimating audiences. I think audiences are more discerning than that.

Yeah, I think that the only analogy that I can, you know, your, your comment about sports, which is an interesting one. And as I think about, yeah, I used to work for Xbox. So for, for many years at Microsoft and And as we all, as we both know, that's a video game platform. And one of the things that the platform really prided itself on was the visual realism of what they were creating there. And if you think about AI in the context of a, of a high-resolution video game, that's almost, you know, photorealistic, you can kind of see maybe a little bit of what the future might look like on that. From the standpoint of having that, that content be interactive, right? And having the audience be able to engage in outcomes in that experience, which is another example of what I was saying before is that it's, it's typically content experiences that humans would not create in human life, right? So, you know, it's going to be different types of content that's going to start bubbling up, and gaming is certainly one part of it that I have not heard a lot of people talking about AI getting involved in creating games, right, or creating content that is interactive content that then the audience can have input on the output of the story.

Yeah, well, and that's, that's actually another thing that I think about a lot with, you know, there's this New York Times article a couple of weeks ago about a romance author who was, you know, uh, generating 200 books a year with AI. And it's like, sure, that, that's, that's working as an economic model for you now.

Yeah, that's a totally different thing. They're, they're just cranking them out like they're, you know, like a printing press of sorts, right?

Yeah. Right. And I think my question with that is like, what makes you think that in a year somebody who's willing to read that isn't just going to be generating that themselves? I mean, that's the thing with the AI tools being in everybody's hands is that like, you know, big movie studio making a, you know, big action movie with a bunch of AI-generated stuff. Why is somebody going to pay for that if they could just do that on their own computer? And so then the value becomes comes, I'm watching, you know, Tom Cruise actually jump out of a plane, right?

Yeah, right.

That's exciting about Mission: Impossible movies, right? It's like watching Tom Cruise do the most obscene, crazy things.

Um, and so yeah, I think that's— yeah, let's say, um, Tom Cruise gets 10 years older and he's not able to do those stunts anymore, so he can employ his digital avatar to jump out of airplanes.

But somebody could also just go to their, you know, OpenAI, you know, Sora and do that themselves. Yeah. Why are they paying $17 for a movie ticket? You know? Right. So I think that that's the other piece of it too, is that's like, no, it is.

Yeah.

If these are really tools for everybody, then you using it completely undercuts its value because a consumer can just do that for themselves.

Yeah. I think you talk to any of the major Hollywood directors and they're going to tell you, oh yeah, AI is never going to be able to make a movie as good as Steven Spielberg, you know. And, and, you know, that's probably a, a very accurate statement right now. Yeah. Um, but I just wonder in 5 to 10 years if that's really going to be the case anymore. Um, yeah, I mean, and then what's the world look like when that starts to happen, you know? Is that's what we don't know yet. Yeah.

Well, and I think too, all of this is, you know, I'm in my very narrow kind of storytelling fiction lane. And so much of this also has to do with the internet, right? And the internet as a communication and consumption ecosystem. And I think that we are, you know, Web 2 is dead. Web 3 is not what anybody thought it was going to be. And so like, and nobody's really made a declaration around what Web4 is.

Yeah.

Right. And so I think that like, I truly have no predictions for what the internet is going to look like in 5 years. And that includes the entire social media ecosystem. Yeah. And so I think that a lot of this also depends on what social media looks like, what entertainment platforms online look like. I think YouTube will kind of, you know, look pretty much the same in 5 years. Probably will have a lot more AI content. Yeah.

I think it will too. Yeah.

But everything else, I mean, yeah, I think sort of the entire way that people spend time online is so unpredictable that I think that that's going to really affect how AI moves through the world, right? Because you can go to the bookstore and pick up a book and you can go to the theater and see something and you can engage with a lot of art without being on the internet, but you cannot engage with AI without being on the internet. And so I think that like however the internet moves, you know, for good or for ill, in either direction, I think is going to have a huge effect on like how consumers accept or don't accept AI.

Yeah, I didn't, um, I didn't intend for this conversation we were going to have tonight to, to dwell so much on AI, but, um, it just came up in my thread of thoughts. I have this whole outline talking details about fiction and audio podcasting, all that stuff like that. And I just kept thinking to myself, you know, you know, what, what does the future look like? And that's what I was trying to think about was, you know, one of the big things that I really like about what you're doing is that it's so fundamental to human experience, right? The, this whole story part, you know, and every podcast, you know, we talked about this a lot in the early years of this, this new media show as Every podcast is really a storytelling podcast. The only difference is the, the length of the stories. And, and a true storytelling podcast is a, is an extended story that has a beginning and an end, where like our conversation here is they're all, it's a bunch of little stories, right? So like I'm telling you a little story right now, but it's not a a, um, it's more based in a human perception of reality than it is a fictional interpretation of reality, right? Which is a very different type of way of thinking, right? Because it's much more creative to some degree and intentional to create a fictional story than it is to create a natural flow story that just comes out of human experience. On the cuff, right? Just like what I'm doing right now. I'm not reading anything, I'm not— I'm just talking to you about how I feel about something that creates somewhat of a short story. And, and so I don't know, how do you feel about that tension in human story?

I mean, I think you're absolutely right. I think, I think one of the things that's so special— I mean, one of the things that we can talking about in podcasting forever is how intimate it is, right? And how you're in somebody's ear and how it feels like you have a relationship to the person that you're listening to. I think that's true for chat podcasts. I think that's true for fiction podcasts. I think that's true for narrative nonfiction journalist podcasts. And yeah, I do just think that that's fundamental. And I think that it can take so many different forms. And I think even in fiction, you know, there's always— we're always having conversations around like, what term should we use? Fiction podcast, audio fiction, audio drama? You know, it's like they're all kind of these interchangeable things. Some people have strong opinions, I'm sort of like, whatever. And something, a very popular genre in podcasting is actual play podcasts. So people playing D&D or TTRPGs, right? Like people playing a game together and, and building a story spontaneously together, which is what Dungeons and Dragons is. And to me, it's like that sort of fits into the fiction mold because your DM, you know, the person in charge of the game, is, is building a world, building a story. Um, everybody's playing a character. It has— it's not real, you know, but it also isn't scripted. And there's also some fiction podcasts out there that are entirely improvised. And so I think that, you know, there's— or actually, one interesting example too is, I don't know if you've listened to Wisecrack, um, the—

oh, it just won, uh, one, one last podcast, but podcast of the year at the Ambies Awards last night.

Yeah. And it's really interesting because it's, it's a stand-up routine and also a true crime podcast. Yeah, and it really blurs those lines between fact and fiction in a fascinating way. And I— yeah, so I think that all of these lines are muddier than we think they are, and all these blending together of sorts, right? Yeah, so I think, I think that that's like one of the fun things about human storytelling, right, is like finding those slips into fiction that slips into to truth, and that's, you know, kind of riding that, that wave back and forth.

Yeah, it definitely— the more I think about that, um, I think about music artists too, which is, um, have always reflected culture, right? It's always been a reflection of people seeing trends in the culture and trying to tap into that. And I do wonder if, if what we're seeing is adaptation of sorts. Between these two genres of content and podcasting. And I think what we saw at the Ambies last night with Wisecrack was an example of a hybrid model around storytelling that is more cost-effective to produce because it's a little closer to a chat show, but yet isn't as extensive on the production side as what, you know, a highly, highly produced story would be. And oftentimes that's what a TV show is. Um, and, and, you know, where is that? Is there a middle ground, right, that we can actually do? And I think that that may be an example of that. And I wanted to bring up also on the screen here your, your Atypical Artists, uh, website too, so, so we could talk about some of the, the shows that you have that you're working with. On the Atypical Artists platform. So I don't know if you wanted to talk a little bit about some of the things that we're seeing on the screen. Yeah, some of the shows and what their, you know, composition is and what they're doing.

Yeah, I mean, like, I'm really proud of our slate because I think it represents kind of like a great range of what audio fiction is. You know, The Bright Sessions was my first show. It's about people with supernatural abilities and therapy. And so it starts just as, as two people in a room talking. It was, you know, recorded in my West Hollywood one-bedroom apartment. And then by the last two seasons, we had full six-figure budgets and were, you know, doing full score, full sound design, huge casts. Yeah, these like very sweeping, sweeping stories. And so that's like a, you know, I think a great example of like an indie podcast that, you know, kind of made it big. And then I've also produced a couple of podcasts from different creators. So like a lot of these shows are mine, but Life with Leo is a wonderful rom-com. In Strange Woods is a musical podcast. Both Look Up and Greenhouse are small-scale two-person romances. Maxine Miles actually is a, is a a choose-your-own-ending mystery that I did with iHeart. And when they didn't renew it for a second season, I made a playable epilogue in the form of an HTML game. And so you can actually like play through this little video game with audio scenes to kind of conclude the story of season 1. So yeah, I really like experimenting with the medium. You know, there's Breaker Whiskey is a cast of one person. Person. That's me all the way through. It is a show that I did every weekday for a year and recorded entirely on a 1970s CB radio. So it's like, I really like experimenting with form. I really like stretching what, you know, a podcast can be. And then of course we've got Rebel Robin, which is the Netflix show and was an Atypical Artist production, you know. So everything from the most indie one-person show to like big corporate projects tied into, you know, the biggest TV show in the world at the time. Um, yeah, so it's a good variety of stuff.

Yeah, and I saw that the— what, the 2000, uh, and, and Late Show got, got an Emmy-nominated, uh, appearance last night.

Yeah, yeah, we were nominated for Best Fiction Podcast, which I'm really, really proud of. Um, this is the— yeah, the sort of dark sitcom that talking about. It's about a woman who gets possessed by a demon and tries to unionize her workplace. Um, it is far and away the most political thing I've ever written that takes place in the summer of 2025 and very much is, you know, with all of the problems that come with that. Um, and yeah, I'm working on season 2 right now. It's, it's been received really wonderfully, and, uh, yeah, I'm really proud of it.

How many episodes are usually in a season?

So for the first season, we just did 10 episodes, um, and, uh, you know, second season I'm still kind of outlining, figuring out exactly what that could look like, figuring out what budget looks like, um, because again, like, the thing with all of this is always like finding a way to make these things work economically. And sometimes you are able to get big budgets from outside, you know, sources. Sometimes you're not. Um, both Breaker Whiskey and New Year's Day are podcasts made for no money at all. And yeah, you know, just kind of doing it for the, for the love of the game and to again create that value for audiences by making sure that like I always have a story to tell them.

So what do you think the goal of just creating this, this series, the Breaker Whiskey series? What I mean, if it wasn't a monetization focus, was it just a passion project or what?

Yeah, I mean, it was a creative experiment. I wanted to see if I could make a daily show.

Oh, is that what it was? Okay.

Yeah, the episodes are between 1 and 5 minutes, so, you know, it's very, it's very short. But I did do it. I did 260 episodes in the course of a year. So I didn't do weekends, but I did every weekday for a year.

And that's some serious dedication on that.

Yeah, it was a really, like, wonderful practice to get into. And I also kind of wanted to like prove a point about volume and how, how having longer seasons, having more episodes, is a better way to build audiences. And while that show never had a, had a very large audience, um, it had incredible retention. You know, the people who found it wanted to stick with it and were listening every day. And that was like a really special thing to experience with those people, um, because I also had some idea of where the story was going, but I was accepting listener messages throughout, um, that, uh, were then, you know, translated into Morse code and that the character was receiving on her radio. And that also changed the course of the story here and there. And so that was really fun too because it was that interactive thing you were talking about, right? Like inviting the audience to participate in, in the story with me, which was a blast.

Yeah, so you're playing with a lot of different kind of approaches and models and stuff, and it's a little bit like, like throwing darts. You, you know, sometimes you hit the bullseye and sometimes you don't, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And it's a lot like— I mean, I think if you think about it contextually from the creative, um, kind of industry, even television or movies, not every series or movie makes it big, right? So I mean, you're really in the content business, right? So you're playing to trends and you're playing to popularity and you're playing to what people could have an interest in, and that's, that's going to have hits and misses. And there's no question. Yeah, if you could tell me about the, the Life with Leo series here too, I'll, I'll pull that up on the screen too.

Yeah, so Life with Leo Um, was a show by an incredible creator, Octavia Bray. Um, she was a writer, uh, on the 6th season of The Bright Sessions, so my first original show, and, and a writer that I really admired who loved audio drama. We kind of bonded over our love of, of, uh, British comedy and, and, and sitcoms and things like that. And she had this idea for a rom-com, and she pitched it to me, and I, I loved it, and I, I love her and believe in her as a writer and creator. And so with Life with Leo, with a couple of other Atypical's projects, my role was essentially being the executive producer where I would, you know, cut the checks and make sure things were organized and make sure that we were hiring all the right people. But then I really believe in giving a creator their creative freedom. They own all of their IP. Atypical doesn't own any of it, um, and just enabling them to have something made. And just because I wanted to listen to it, right? Like, that was a story that I wanted to hear. I love romantic comedies. It's a really clever one about a lawyer who gets given an illegal android that's been programmed to love her. And it's a story about sort of like consent and humanity and what those things mean. And I was, yeah, very proud to just get to usher that into the world. World and let Octavia do her thing.

Yeah. Well, it sounds like you're, you're involved in a lot of very interesting projects and, and trying to, you know, keep this, the storytelling genre alive and thriving and trying to come up with new ideas and new ways to present content. And it sounds like you're getting attention from those things, you know, by, by getting, you know, a nomination in the Emmys and things like that, which I was on the founding board of the Ambies. So we kind of created that awards ceremony like 6 years ago with a passion of doing exactly, you know, what it's doing today, which is trying to recognize those producers that are creating shows that are at the cutting edge of podcasting. And that's what that event is really all about. I run the Podcast Hall of Fame myself now. So trying to take those, those creative, um, professionals and trying to recognize them towards probably the latter parts of their careers. And, and say that these, these creators— and I, it's an interesting journey that I'm seeing happen at the leading edge with the Ambies around the creative community kind of coalescing into what I'm increasingly seeing is more an example of what we saw in Hollywood in that kind of creative, you know, their studios. There's, you know, you're basically an executive producer and a host probably for some of these shows. Yeah. And so there's a lot of commonalities. You know, like I used to work for Microsoft on the Zune and things like that, so I worked with a lot of the big studios in Hollywood getting TV shows into the Xbox platform. And so working, you know, I'm seeing a lot of similarities between what's happening in the podcast medium and what has been historically created around, you know, studios and production companies and talent and all that kind of stuff getting involved. And not every show is foundationally created by the host now, right? They're projects that are greenlighted and then talent's brought in and editors and creative people to create them. And so what's your typical workflow process on this? Are you only working with creators that, that have that passion for creating that more from an indie orientation, or are you kind of doing both? You kind of work with projects that come out of like maybe in a new script or something like that that didn't get greenlighted in Hollywood and, but, but get greenlighted in a podcast?

Yeah. I mean, for stuff that's under the Atypical Artists banner, I'm incredibly choosy. Um, and so that, yeah, that tends to be like a, an audio-first, fully baked idea. Yeah. But I wanna be in on the ground floor, right? So I, I, I wanna be in before the thing is made. Like I wanna be involved in, you know, giving any notes on scripts. Again, I want a very light touch. I don't like to, you know, uh, run roughshod over a creative's vision. But just, you know, ensuring that everything's going to work in audio and all of that. And then for other things, you know, because also like I have Atypical, but I also do a ton of other work with other people for other things. And so, yeah, I do a lot of adaptation work, whether that's, you know, books to audio, plays to audio, unused TV scripts to audio. Yeah, I do a lot of that stuff. A lot of stuff where it's, you know, they're building this particular franchise over in this medium, and at the same time they kind of want to be making something in audio. A lot of script consulting for people who are— who have an audio-first idea but need to make sure that it's actually going to work in audio, because maybe they come from theater, maybe they come from television. Yeah, I just I just really love working with anybody who is excited to tell a story this way because I think that there's obviously there's limitations, but I think that those limitations are so fun and I, I think it's such a wonderful medium in which to express a story. And so whether it's directing, writing, consulting, producing, acting, um, I, I, yeah, it's just about the people who are, who are passionate about the medium and who have a story that they really want to tell.

So how did you get pulled into this, this type of a creative medium? I mean, did you used to work in Hollywood with, with studios at all in your earlier years, or you come at this fresh?

I mean, a little bit of, a little bit of both. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, after I After college, I moved to LA and, uh, worked at, you know, one of the big talent agencies for about 3 months before I was like, I don't want to do this, and I'm just gonna, you know, I'm young and I'm just gonna try to be an actor because that was the thing I always loved.

Oh, okay, okay. So you come at it from that perspective.

Okay, I get it. So I, I, you know, did all the things that you do when you're starting out. You know, you do student films and short films and extra work on network television and all all that kind of stuff. And I am a control freak and was getting really frustrated with the fact that as an actor you have like no control over your career.

No, you don't, right?

At all, especially when you're starting out. And I had discovered this wonderful show, Welcome to Night Vale, which was kind of like the grandfather in many ways of the modern audio fiction movement. And I thought, wow, this is a really cool way to tell a story. And like, you know, Welcome to Night Vale is only one person initially, and eventually more people come into it. But I, you know, had an idea and I thought maybe I could do it in audio. I just needed a couple of actors, so I asked a couple of actors from my acting class and I said, I can't pay you. I don't know what this is going to turn into. You know, like all you have to do, you don't have to sit in hair and makeup, you don't have to memorize your lines. Like all you have to do is show up in my apartment and like read the script off an iPad. And That was the Bright Sessions. And, you know, we made a first season of 9 episodes, just 4 of us. I did everything other than the other, you know, the other roles. Um, I play one of the roles and 3 actors, and then I did the sound design, but, you know, everything. Um, which is why the first season doesn't sound great because that's not my expertise. And pretty much like pretty early on, like, we, we were having fun with it, and so we were just like, let's keep making a season 2. And By midway through season 2, people were listening, you know, we had people engaged. And by the end of season 2, we, we got a big banner feature on Apple Podcasts, and then it was kind of like off to the races. And that show ran for 7 seasons. I did 3 published novels, uh, related to that series. Um, like I mentioned, the last 2 seasons were commissioned by Luminary, and so we had like significant budgets for it. It's been optioned for TV a couple times. So it really like that like launched my exp— both— it was both my first experience with making audio drama and also the thing that then like opened all these doors for me. And so, you know, I didn't really have any lead up to that. Like, I really, you know, was very fortunate to have my first thing take off and then get to kind of learn everything else as I went along.

Yeah, it's, um, podcasting takes people on very, uh, very, I guess, curvy pathways. Yeah, it really has been the case with me too. I've, I've been involved in the podcast medium since 2004, so, so it's, um, it's, it's been a journey from the period of time when nobody even knew what a podcast was or even cared to where we are today, where it's structurally at the very fabric of media right now. And that's what's remarkable on one hand, but in some ways has changed the purity of it. Now it's gotten all professional and serious, and people are worried about money. And back in the early days of podcasts, people weren't as worried about money, so it wasn't a big driver. It was more of a real creative expression way to, you know, break the hold of the man, right? Yeah, of the gatekeepers at the big, big media companies, right? It's, you know, everybody gets a voice. And totally, and to some degree, that's, that's where we still are. Um, it's just now expectations have increased a lot around, um, expectations for that because people, you know, the cost of living is not getting cheaper. Um, so people there's increasing pressure on you. So as you look to the next 6 months, the next year or whatever, how do you see the projects that you're working on, you know, kind of shaping or evolving? Is there anything, any trends that you're trying to go after that stand out to you right now that have a higher chance of working?

I, yeah, I don't, I don't really think so much about like trends, you know, like, yeah, in fiction writing we talk about how like the moment that you're writing for what you think the audience wants, you've lost it. Like whatever it is, like you need to step back 'cause you've lost it. So I really just, you know, tell the stories that I'm interested in telling. And part of that is like discovering, like, you know, new ways to kind of break the medium. So the project I'm working on now, which we successfully crowdfunded for in the fall, is a show called Phantom Pulse, which is, a show about a rock band in the '90s that can exorcise ghosts with their music. So each episode has, you know, them playing a song live, but it's also them cleansing a haunted place. So there's all these ghost sounds and crazy action sequences and things like that. And so we'll be making a full earnest album, um, sort of as the, as the rock band, and then also this podcast. And so like, that's another way that I'm kind of, you know, messaging with the medium. And obviously there are some things within that that I think about trends where it's like music is huge on social media, like having music sort of tied to everything is huge. Nostalgia is really big, right? It's the '90s, you know, I can do a lot of stuff, um, kind of, uh, you know, analog, um, and also immersive worlds. So like for the crowdfund, I created some kayfabe around it where I pretended that I'd found this haunted tape with this recording of this forgotten band on it, you know, and kind of got on social media to talk about, you know, does anybody know the songs? Anybody ever heard of this band? Like, I can't find very much on them because they don't exist. I made them up. Um, people like that, right? And it's like, I'm not trying to trick anyone. I'm not trying to, you know, spread misinformation, but like, people kind of— they like playing along, right? They like interacting. And that is something I think, I guess, that I do like follow or lean into when it comes to my audience is that kind of more interactive, immersive thing. But that's because I really love doing that. Like, I think, I think it's fun to kind of pretend that these things are real and, and get to all like play this game together and tell the story together.

Yeah, I think that's a smart direction to go. As I think about what the— what I perceive the future looking like is that it is going to increasingly be more interactive, and I think the technology is going to unlock that ability for audiences to, you know, be involved more. Now, I don't think it's 100% clear where that's going to evolve to, but it does seem like increasingly it's going to be more something that audiences are going to want too, you know, not too much like what we saw with the video games, with Xbox, right, is that the user or the consumer of the content will have some sort of influence over it. Now granted that, that I guess in the context of what I was thinking with that when we originally talked about it was more around AI, but I think what you're really talking about is just the audience being able to engage with ideas around stories and what characters are doing and character development and all that kind of stuff like that. I would imagine imagine if you have characters, right? So, you know, and the whole, you know, Night Vale thing was a phenomenon, definitely. And that was like another inflection point for podcasting beyond Serial, which Serial kind of, that model that Serial had, why don't you talk about that a little bit? Do you see that model being something that anybody's going to do in the future?

I mean, that, that's a sort of area of podcasting that I don't feel I can speak on with any degree of expertise. Yeah. I mean, you know, the journalism side of things is such a different— I love listening to those podcasts, but yeah, as a writer.

Yeah. I guess it's kind of similar only from the standpoint of format, I guess. And the actual production side of it.

Of it, right? Yeah. And people are, you know, there have been a lot of great fiction podcasts that take that, that same kind of format. Yeah. And fictionalize it. And like, I love that stuff. And so I think that there's always going to be that kind of thing. But I think as that version of, of nonfiction podcast disappears, I think that we're going to see that because it, I mean, it is disappearing, right? People are not paying for limited series journalistic podcasts anymore, which is—

Yeah, right. Um, Yeah, but I fear that that's being kind of lumped in with the fictional stuff now.

Um, yeah, it's too expensive, it's too short, it's— and it's, you know, again, it's, it's, it's all of these very short-sighted moves of like, well, let's just make the thing that's cheapest and fastest right now. And it's like, well, what are we losing by, by doing that? We've already lost like almost every local paper in this country. We cannot lose use every bit of investigative journalism.

But that's, that's a leading question too, from the standpoint of, um, you know, we, we just looked at your, at your site, the Atypical Artists website, and there's some terrific, um, series that you produce there. Do you just see that there's, there's less of it being produced now than what you saw maybe 3 or 4 years ago, or, or is it just it's going through an evolution and it's change in a different direction now?

I think it's just going through an evolution. Like, I think, I think, I think how and where and funded by whom is, is shifting, but I think there's as, as many, if not more, fiction podcasts being made every year, you know, yeah, than the, than the year previous.

Okay, well, that's, that's good. I'm happy to hear that. You know, it's, it's always good to have a good diversity in the podcasting space around different formats, and experimentation has really always been the lifeblood of this medium. Trying new formats, trying new ways of doing things, creating, you know, hybrid models, all that stuff. And that's what music artists have always done. So in a lot of ways, we're kind of mirroring what the more conventional thinking is around the creative expression side. Of podcasting. And, you know, I know I'm kind of a tech geek type of a podcaster myself, so I don't think of myself in the same, you know, bucket as a storytelling podcaster. But I like to dig into the stories that are kind of behind the scenes, right, of what drives people to create the things that they're creating in podcasting. And you're a terrific example of that. So Lauren, it was great to have you on the show tonight.

Thank you so much for having me. This was such a wonderful conversation.

Yeah, well, thank you for taking time out of your busy day because I know it's, it's 3 hours earlier for you than it is for me.

So no, I'm actually on the East because I was here for the—

oh, you were here for the Ambies? Oh, I didn't realize that. Okay, okay. So well, that was helpful then. So yeah, so yeah, I didn't make it down there because I'm I was snowed in.

Yeah, get out of here. Yeah, it's been, it's been a crazy chaotic week because everything's shuffled around, but you know, stay warm out there.

All right, well, well, thank you, Lauren, and have a safe trip back to LA, and, and I hope you're able to get out soon. I— it's probably fairly cleared out now, I would imagine.

Yeah, I think I'll be all right. Okay, thank you so much.

All right, Lauren.

All right, have a good one.

Good night. And it really Thank you for being here with me tonight. And I'll be— actually, I'm going to be releasing a new episode of the New Media Show coming up on, on Monday. So it's my goal as I dig a little deeper into the whole video side of what's happening with the podcasting space. Apple is really kind of throwing a monkey wrench into the podcasting space right now. And I want to keep digging into that to find out what the truth is.

Okay, all right, good night. Good night.