How to Start a Podcast (Then vs Now) w/Alex Goldman

Welcome Alex Goldman

0:00People have little curiosities that they just sit with, and I'm sure this is with you too, and it's with me, where I'm just like, a good example is the town that I live in, they insist on not letting us put both paper recycling and bottle recycling on the same week. It's every other week. And it's like, now then I have like tons of bottles just hanging out in my house. And I'm like, this is so dumb. Why do they do this? And when I was pitching Hyperfixed, I was like, this is the problem I want to find out the answer to. Why are they doing this to me?

0:37All right. What is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast, a bonus episode. We're your hosts. I'm Marquez. I'm Andrew. And today we've got a very special guest, one you've probably heard of quite a few times if you're a long-time Waveform listener. In fact, I think we could make the argument Waveform doesn't exist without his work. Alex Goldman, thank you for joining us today. Thank you. And that's incredibly kind of you. I really appreciate it. It really is true. I think Marquez and I, one of the first podcasts that we both consistently listened to episodically was Reply All.

1:09And when we were thinking of making a podcast, like every YouTuber felt like they had to do at one point, we talked about Reply All all the time. So a long time ago, we'll get into that later, but you've been podcasting in the space for over a decade. What got you started and can you introduce yourself a little bit for those who don't know you? Yeah. So my name is Alex Goldman. I'm currently the host of a podcast called Hyperfixed and also a podcast about the Amityville movie series called Amityvilleville, which I don't recommend anybody actually listen to.

Early days of radio and Reply All

1:40Thank you. And I started in radio. I got a journalism degree and then didn't know what to do with my life. And I got really into like I got into IT for five years, installing RAM, fixing computers, troubleshooting error messages, making turning it on and off again. Yeah, exactly. Making sure everybody's McAfee virus scan was up to date in 2007 or whatever. Yeah. And then I always really loved radio, specifically like narrative radio. I mean, This American Life was a big deal for me. And then Radiolab came along and that was a big deal for me.

2:16And my co-host and I were working at WNYC. We got I got a job at WNYC in 2010, which is the flagship sort of NPR station in New York City. I was working for a media analysis show. And the way that we actually got started making our own podcast was the station put together a contest, which was like, hey, everybody in the building can submit their idea for a show. And if we like it, we'll give you a little bit of money to make it. All right. So we submitted our idea, which was very different from what Reply all ended up being, but it was nominally an internet podcast.

2:50Yeah. And they were like, yeah, we don't like this. Oh, really? We're not interested. But my boss was like, listen, if you can just do it in the sort of corners of time that you are not making on the media, the show that you're making, we'll let you make it. We'll give you the studio space and we'll let you make it. So we made sort of like a proto Reply All that was called TLDR. I think we did like 30 some episodes of it. And then while we were doing that, Alex Bloomberg, who was a producer for This American Life for two decades, was like, hey, I want to go start my own podcast.

3:25And when I go, when I go, would you guys want to do what you're doing now over there? And so we were like, well, absolutely. We would love because WNYC, great station. And I learned a lot working there. They were not, they're a nonprofit and they're very risk averse, you know? So they were not in the market to like fund the thing we were making. They were like, you guys are doing great. Keep up the good work. And we were like, yeah, well, we also make $44,000 a year.

3:56We're not really, this is New York City. We're not making up money to live off of. So from there, we just started, we started Reply All and it was kind of off to the races. What year was that? 2015? We started, I think the first episode came out in November of 2014. 14. We are YouTube people. Podcasting was around, but a bit newer back then, correct? And so what was it like to get into that space that wasn't quite as giant yet?

The podcast landscape in 2014

4:20We had like an incredible advantage for a couple of reasons. The first is our boss was at the same time we were making our show, making his own podcast about starting a podcast business. So there was this like, there was this built-in marketing for the company he was making and for the thing he was putting out. And since he had, you know, 20 years on This American Life, which was the, at the time, it's crazy to look at the iTunes top 100 now, because at the time, the top 20 were mostly public radio.

4:50It was like NPR, it was Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and Radiolab. And so when he goes off and does his own thing, it's big news. And the second thing is our show came out during the original, like nine episode run of Serial. Our first episode came out during that couple of months, which was incredibly lucky for us because the moment that ended, when people were like, hey, if you like that podcast, here are some other narrative podcasts. We ended up in all those articles. That's awesome. So we had like an incredible advantage.

5:23And I mean, also just the pool of podcasts in 2014 was vastly orders of magnitude smaller than it is now. I think you can relate to that. That's something I always, I do see a lot of parallels between our like journeys in creative production. One of them being like, yeah, the pool of stuff that's being made is way, way, way bigger now. So back then when there was way less stuff, it was, I guess, a bit easier to be discovered. But then also there is the issue of discovery and podcasts in general. I feel like that's a totally different world where and YouTube, it's a search engine.

5:56There's a built in recommendation algorithm. All this stuff just sort of pushes the content out there. It's why we do a lot of YouTube videos. But I'm so curious about what it was like in the early days of podcasts. Like, was it mostly word of mouth? That's how I found Reply All. But how did people find podcasts when there were less podcasts? It's funny because I find it so much harder now to get to like get the name of our show, my show out than I did in 2014.

6:24I think it was mostly word of mouth. But we also had a strategy of like, we're going to try and get our stories on as many different shows as we can. So we were pitching to This American Life. I think we got two stories on there. We got a story on Radiolab. And each time we did that, 50,000 new listeners, which is like such, such a huge number. So when you say on a story, you mean one of your episodes posted on their feeds? Because we weren't on the radio, we didn't have to adhere to any particular length. So we'd go to This American Life. We'd be like, hey, we've got this 20 minute story.

6:55Would you guys like it? And then we would sit there with them and they would, because they have their own sort of particular editorial standards. They would go through it and rewrite massive swaths of it with us. And then it would go on their show. But, you know, it was still the story, essentially, that we were we were working on. And then it would just bring so many people back to us. This feels like the early days of like collaborations on YouTube, where there were only a few huge YouTubers, but it was a big deal when one of them would collaborate and show up on the

7:27other's channel and they'd make a video together collaborating with their styles or whatever it was. Obviously, with podcasts, it's a similar thing where you had a story style and they were like, oh, this is really fun. I want more of that. I'm going to go listen to that show. That's kind of how early YouTube felt to me. Podcast or sorry, collaborations were a huge deal, unlike the way that it is now, where it's kind of just like a casual once in a while thing. And like the how we always say the benefit of collaboration, where it's it's how does this benefit both sides of it? So this American life can get a story that interests their people while also being able

7:58to be like, wow, I really enjoyed that. Where can I find more of this? And being able to come over to you. And I think another thing that that was an advantage to us is just like, I think we got in on the ground floor of treating the Internet like a place that people hang out as opposed to just sort of this separate thing upon which you can do stuff. I think people I think a lot of like mainstream reporting in 20 between like 2010 and 2014 is like, you won't believe this new Facebook that everybody's talking about. But we were like, OK, Facebook is everyone knows what Facebook is.

8:29Let's talk about what's happening on Facebook, the people who are interacting on there and like being able to tell those stories really hooked people. And now I think that's like the way everyone thinks about the Internet. We just assume that's what it is. Yeah. And like Reply All was the podcast about the Internet, which is this fun topic of everyone knows what the Internet is. Because it's like specific, but also vague, where you can kind of cover anything that is going on. So, I mean, Waveform is kind of like that. We have tech. Tech comes out all the time. But at this point, anything is considered tech.

9:01So we really can. It gives us the benefit of being able to talk about whatever we want while also being able to talk about maybe what's popular at the time.

Finding and choosing stories

9:08Right.

Finding and choosing stories

9:09Back then, how did you guys decide what topics you were going to to cover, like for a story? Because you went everywhere from feral hogs to like just everywhere. Spam callers. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were pitching stories all the time. And I feel like even when you pitch stories, you know, it was I would say we had like a one success out of 10 situation. We would we would like do a preliminary interview. We would investigate a little bit and just be like, this is a dead end.

9:39There was one of the 10 that we actually agreed was a story would end up actually becoming an episode.

9:46But the way that we we found them is always like we had a bit of like a couple criteria, which is like, is there a question we want to answer? Is there something we don't know here? Do I care? Like, what are the stakes? Fair. Yeah. And stakes can be really small. Some of the stakes we've we did an episode, which was like a woman whose website or her domain registration expired and it got taken by like a like a Japanese company. And I got a translator who would wake up like a couple of days a week with me at like 5

10:18a.m. And we would call Japan and try to try and get the website back. So, I mean, it's it's a very it's really about just kind of following our curiosity. If I'm not curious about a story and there are definitely stories I've had to phone in a little bit over the course of I'm sure that you guys are familiar with this. Yeah.

10:40What? No. What are you talking about? Well, there's varying levels. It's funny in tech, I always say that like most products, which is probably similar to most stories are just kind of mid and that's fine. But it's really exciting when there is a 10 out of 10 or a one out of 10. Yeah. So when a product is amazing or really, really great, that makes me excited to tell people about it, to share how great it is. And at the same time, when something is way worse than expected, I have the same energy of like I need people to know how bad this is just so we have that all like in one place. And I feel like that's kind of the same thing for the way you're describing like picking

11:13stories like most of them. OK, yeah, it's kind of a dead end here or there isn't much interest in this particular topic. But when you find the thing that you know is good, you want to chase it. And that ends up being the whole show. What you're describing is like my taste in movies. I like like really good movies. And then I like movies where I'm just like, I'm like, I can see the effort that went into this. But what a misfire. This is look away. Yeah. That's tough. That's really funny. If one out of every 10 were the ones that were actually sticking, you guys had a pretty large team, right? Because I for a YouTube channel, we're a fairly large team at 16.

11:47But I if we had to only pick every video out of 10, we'd release one video every four months, probably. So what was it like working on a larger team? And how large was it? It wasn't that large. There were nine of us. Oh, OK. At the sort of peak. I'd say that sort of for the most of our our existence, there were between six and seven. And I think the way that we dealt with that is if you look at the release schedule of the episodes over the course of the show, we went from, I think, 40 the first year, which was like, you know, you know, we were like a band putting out their first album.

12:20We'd been playing together forever. We had a bunch of we had a bunch of stuff in the chamber, all these dream stories we'd wanted to do that we got to do. And then as time went on, our output slowed to the point where like our last couple of years, I think we were doing 25 or 20 and 20 a year. Not that many.

12:39I mean, yes, I would say that stories would take anywhere between I would say the easiest one to do would be like four to six weeks would with researching, interviewing, assembling, finishing the episode up. That's like the the slowest or the fastest we can work. And the slowest we can work, there is no limit to how slow, there's truly no limit to how how long we can take. I think the longest episode probably took about 14 months. Oh, wow. Of work. That's a long time, I guess.

13:09And we're such a idea, write, shoot, edit, post, like almost all of the time we are. We are extremely efficient. And that probably comes with, you know, we're not doing investigative stuff. We don't need to talk to a lot of other people generally. So I guess, like, how are you handling all of the organization of multiple projects? How many projects would you say were going on at a singular time? Many. I would say like six or seven. I mean, that's still the case. And now I'm on a team with two other people.

13:41Like, it's much smaller. Um, but it's really like the problem with doing an investigative reporting podcast and doing narrative journalism is if you're doing a narrative, it can't not have a payoff. It can't just come to a dead end. Um, so we would get a lot of stories that were like halfway there and then we didn't quite land, land the plane. And then we would just be like, all right, put this one on ice. We'll get back to it. Right now. We got to, we got to figure out something for six weeks from now.

Furniture segments and Yes Yes No

14:14Another thing that was really, uh, impressive back there wasn't just the stories, but then like the episode formats you had. So you had like, yes, yes, no super tech support. You even did annual things like email depth forgiveness day. Were those just at first a way to tell a story and then became continuous segments or were those pitched as segments from the start? Those were pitched as what we called furniture, which meant that we could just like keep them in the room and move them around if we needed them. Um, the idea was to make things that weren't quite as intense of a project as sort of the

14:47standard story, but still had some kind of nourishment in them that people would like. And fortunately, like yes, yes, no, it's like such a blessing as a format for the list, for the viewer. See, I'm, I'm very much in the audio realm here for the viewer. Uh, yes, yes, no was our boss, Alex Bloomberg, who worked at this American life. He is, I think 10, maybe 15 years older than me and just was sort of not at all interested in the internet. And so we would, we would, he would, he would like go on Twitter every once in a while and

15:17send us a tweet and be like, this is absolutely inscrutable to me. It's like reading another language. What is this thing about? Like, what am I reading about? And so then we would have the opportunity to explain it to him. Yeah. One of my favorite ones is when you brought Jason Manzoukas on to explain Harry Potter. Oh yeah. That, I think that was still one of my favorite episodes. He, he's such a sweetheart too. Such a, such a nice dude, such a funny guy. Um, he was just on Taskmaster. That British show. I was just gonna say, it's what got us, me and my wife into Taskmaster is knowing he was on it, hearing Hank Green talk about it.

15:48And now we're going back and watching Taskmaster. And I, I texted him to be like, Hey, just so you know, you were so funny. And he was like, you won't believe this, but like so much of that was done over the course of like three hour days in like a week. And I was like, you did that entire series in a week. That's wild. The fact that you could continue to perform like that is crazy. Did you find those, uh, furniture episodes to be more or less popular? Cause I'm comparing them to kind of what we do is we have a weekly schedule and then once a month we do something called a bonus episode, which is just no rules, no regular, uh, like

16:21tech coverage. And it's just something we want to do that's fun, whether it's interviewing something, whether it's, um, explaining something that happened in sports and tech terms that almost feels kind of similar to that. Um, most of our audience hates those episodes, the sports ones, but I'm really interested because I think so fondly of email tech support and yes, yes, no. And I'm wondering if they were as popular as the regular investigative episodes. I think, I think in some ways, yes, in some ways they were actually more popular. They're definitely more sticky in people's brains.

16:51Cause it was a lot of us arguing, you know, it was like my boss being like, this is ridiculous. What is this world that you guys live in? And, you know, PJ, my cohost and I constantly bickering about, uh, about our perceptions on things. So like in that way, they were very sticky. Some of the moments that people, when people come up to me and are like, Hey, I remember that reply all episode. It's like, there's one where I talked about how I sit in the shower. People talk to me about that all the time. Yeah. That's a really good, I, I, I sometimes think about like, how do you measure success as a creative? And one of those things is when people come up to me in public and they'll, they'll say

17:23something like, Oh, I, I loved that one video that you did about that one thing. And I'll go, okay, yeah, that I can tell that's having an impact on people. So it's, there's obviously on YouTube view counts and comment sections and likes and dislikes and all that. But that's like one of my favorite metrics to being like, that was a really good thing that we did. What is that like in podcasting? Cause I, we have this podcast, but it's also a video podcast. Do you have other ways of measuring and being like, Oh, you know what? That was a really, we should try that again. That was a great episode. Uh, no, uh, the metrics at the way that you, that you measure podcasts actually are the

17:56sort of success or listener rate of podcasts has actually gotten worse over time. It is. It, it, I don't know if it's always been like this, but trying to figure out audio podcast numbers feels like the devil. Um, well there used to be, I think the company was called pixel. Don't quote me on this. There was a company that used to have a sort of tracking, the thing you could embed in your podcast. That was like a tracking thing that could give you an idea of like when people were listening, what they were skipping, when they drop out. And then I, it was bought by a big company. I can't remember if it was Apple or Spotify or whomever.

18:27We've never heard that before, but it's no longer available and no one has come in to fill that spot. So the best you get is like Apple and Spotify to some degree will tell you how long people are listening. Um, but you're not like the data is not fantastic. It's awful. It's really pretty bad. Yeah. It's also tough to like, not that you always want to compare to other, uh, shows, but it's impossible to see how anyone else is doing. So, I mean, we, a lot of times we'll be like, oh, new iPhone comes out.

18:58This is how our video did compared to other ones. And while sometimes comparison is not the best thing, the only way you can tell how you're doing versus something is the charts, which change every hour. So we'll be like, oh, we're number 25 in tech podcasts for today on, just on Apple. And then you refresh the page and you're like, you're 30 now. And now Vergecast is above you. It, it feels like a mess. The other thing is that like, again, 10 years ago, 70 to 80% of the audience was going through Apple podcasts or what was iTunes at the time.

19:31And now it's like, I think we're like 40% of my current show is 40% Apple. And then it's like, there's a long tail of Spotify, Overcast, you know, all of those. So it's, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just so interesting.

Launching the new show Hyperfixed

19:47I, so you, Reply All was obviously an iconic show. You have the show now, Hyperfixed. What is the, I always like to give people like one episode that I share to them that gets them hooked on the podcast and then they can understand the rest of the pod from that. How do you describe Hyperfixed to people? And what's the episode that we should share with our listeners to get them hooked on it? How do I describe it? It's a show where listeners write in with problems and I solve them. And sometimes those problems are just like a question about the world. One that we're working on right now is why does every microwave have a popcorn button,

20:19but all the bags say, don't use the popcorn button. Damn. I'm already very excited. I'm in. That's a great question. I have a, I have a, an interview with a podcast or with a microwave manufacturer after we're done with this. Okay. Um, and, but, and then other real questions like, um, when I say real questions, I don't want to, I don't want to denigrate the popcorn. I want to know. That's an answer. I want to know. Um, you know, people who are having interpersonal problems or with, with, with family and don't know how to navigate it.

20:49So we, we, we talk to experts and ask, try and figure it out. Um, people, you know, stuff like there was a woman who, uh, used to buy a cake from a bakery every, yeah. That was such a good episode. Yeah. Every, thank you. Every holiday basically. And then the, um, bakery suddenly shut down and she was like, I thought I was going to lose this cake forever. So we employed, um, Claire Saffitz, who is also a YouTuber, uh, to help us recreate the cake based solely on their description of it and pictures of it.

21:22Wow. And great episode. I agree with him. See, I think something our audience would like not to answer for you, but the, um, the, a story about a mouse that's also about everything. Oh, right. And like the, someone's Logitech mouse just stopped working one day. Um, I think obviously we're a tech podcast. I think they would appreciate that and relate to it. We actually just learned that like a Logitech user created like a homebrew software that will keep the mouse from bricking if something goes wrong at Logitech. So we're going to get David back in the studio and be like, Hey man, we've got an actual solution

21:55for you. We've got something that could really help. I love that. We need random people to find ways to make sure the thing you bought doesn't brick because the company messed it up. Yeah. Um, what were some of the, so now you're two-ish years into Hyperfix? Are you over two years now? We started actually our first two episodes came out in September. Those are the pilots and then those you didn't launch till the following? November. Okay. Yeah. Um, what are some of the difficulties of launching after like a successful show like Reply All? Cause it was like a two-year gap in between as well.

22:27I think that the podcast industry is just totally different now. I mean, it's a situation where I got done with Reply All, which had, you know, a pretty successful run. We had about a million listeners at our peak and I was just like, well, I'm going to do whatever I want. Like, I'm going to make the weirdest possible thing I can. And I started going around and pitching stuff to people and they were all like, Oh, that sounds really cool. Can you do two episodes a week? Can you do? And I was like, I was like, do you know what we do? And I was like, yeah, if you give me like, if you give me like a staff of 15 or 20, I

22:59can. Um, and then, uh, I, I feel like I had all of these things that were really close to deals. Um, Barack Obama's podcast company, Higher Ground was like really interested for a while and then just vanished. I don't know what the deal is. He got busy with other stuff.

23:24Um, but, uh, the thing that made me really realize like, Oh, I am in a different world than the one that I, that I was in previously is I, uh, got pitched by a production company. They're like, we want to do a podcast about fandoms. And I was like, that sounds really similar to sort of where I live. And I would love, that sounds really interesting. So we did a couple of pilot episodes and they're like, we're going to shop this around. We'll get back to you. And then they got back to me and they were like, Hey, listen, we haven't had anybody pick it up. We're still believe in it. We want to produce it ourselves. We'll give you $250 an episode.

23:57And I was like, I was like, I need to, I need to, I have to live. I have to feed my kids. So eventually I was just like, well, I'm going to go into business for myself. And I mean, it's different in terms of there being more podcasts now, but it's also different in terms of like ad rates and the, just like the saturation of podcasts in the world, making it harder for us to get a foothold, you know? Yeah. I, I get asked a lot as a YouTuber of, I don't know, 12, 13 years or whatever it is.

24:31If you were starting over today in the current world of YouTube, how would you do it? And I've never been able to really have a very good answer because I know what it's like to start in 2009, very intimately. I know all about starting in 2009, but today it's all about like taking advantage of the position that we're in now. And I don't really have a good answer for that. Does it feel the same in podcasts? Like it's such a different landscape that it's almost a completely different problem starting today versus starting 10 years ago? Certainly.

Algorithm changes and video podcasting

25:00Because I went, I was like, okay, I'll just run the same playbook that I did 10 years ago. And I was like, I'll get on 99% Invisible with a story. And I did. And it didn't have the same, like I didn't get the same number of people over. I mean, you guys also have to deal with like, the thing that I don't have to deal with that you have to deal with, right? It's like algorithm changes. And like, how does that affect the way that you are, you're making content? We just went through a fun one of YouTube decided they're really scared of TikTok and Instagram and drastically changed.

25:32So now a view counts when one frame of your video is played. But that only counts to the public facing view, not the engaged views that we have, which are the things that mean someone actually watched it and how we make money off of it. So now it's just like that essentially broke the, we have this like rating system where every time you put out a video, it scales it against the last 10 videos you sent and rates it as a one, one out of 10, one to 10 out of 10. That whole thing just broke within the last week because they put it out a very important metric thing we use to tell how a video is doing compared to previous videos and viewflation.

26:07So, I mean, Hey, this, this bonus episode is going to look sick because it's going to have a bunch of views. Um, but that's just one thing. YouTube constantly is just, Hey, we changed this, but we really to their credit a little bit. They don't want to tell you exactly how the algorithm works because there are people out there who are going to game it as hard as possible. And that's going to lead to poor quality videos, people not staying on. We all know YouTube wants you to be on the site as long as possible. I feel like there's always sort of a, like a tide that rises and recedes of people who have

26:42like figured out how to game it and put out the worst quality content. It's kind of like whack-a-mole. Like there are always bad actors who are trying to, they'll call it optimize, but really they're trying to like spam the thing that gets them to the top and, and gets them the most views. And so as soon as that tide has receded, there's some change that YouTube makes and then they find what that new thing is and they spam that again. So it does very much feel like a whack-a-mole game. And we like to, we like to pay attention to the things that will obviously help get a new audience and like broaden our, but we'll never sacrifice quality over that.

27:16We'll never sacrifice what we feel like our videos are helping people with. I'm so obstinate about that. Like I, like, you know, I work with Radiotopia who distributes my show. They sell my ads, but that's basically sort of our relationship is like, they sell my ads, they help me with promotion, they distribute the show. Yeah. And, um, they're always like, well, you should really be, you know, following stuff in the news. And I'm like, actually, I don't want to do that. I want to do whatever I wanted. And I'm like, there's stuff in the news that interests the hell out of me that I would love to do stories about on, but I'm so stubborn that I'm just like, I want to do it the way

27:49that I want to do it with no one else's. Uh, so I'm probably shooting myself in the foot a little bit, maybe a little, but I mean, that means you're also getting these extremely unique stories like the microwave popcorn bag. Um, but we, uh, we work with Vox and similar to you, we, they basically just sell our ads. They have nothing to do with any of the, in fact, most of the time they're like, Hey, we have some other people who are working on stuff. Can we get some advice for you on the YouTube side? Cause we have no nothing about it. So we're lucky enough that Vox doesn't ask us to really do anything.

28:21They help us promote. They'll get us a live event every once in a while. Um, but at the same time, they're constantly, they're more like, what are you guys doing over there that might be able to help? Have you ever heard of this? We're like, yeah, we do that. Do you want to do this? And we're like, no, we have zero interest. I feel bad. They pitch us ads all the time and we're just like, no. Oh, why not? I don't like that. Yeah. And they seem kind of surprised sometimes. I give them credit. I have to say no to, I mean, I'm, I'm just like, I'm not going to take any gambling ads. I'm not strict.

28:52Yeah. There are certain companies that I just feel like I don't like what this company does or their reputation. I don't want to work with them. Um, stamps.com is a non-starter for me. Oh, really? Good to know. Uh, mostly just because, um, I didn't like working with them at Reply All. Oh, okay. That's valid. We used to do stuff at Reply All. And like the only, the only thing that makes ads worth it for me is like trying to make them as much my personality and to that end, kind of like, it's kind of like, I got to put my

29:23finger in the eye of the sponsor a little bit. Yeah.

29:35I do have a, maybe a little more controversial question. Okay. But it is along kind of the same lines of like the pressure of the, the algorithm and then the formats of the day today versus the past video is, is a huge format and there are video podcasts. And I think it was, it was maybe last year where YouTube was going around telling everyone that YouTube is the number one platform for podcasts in the world. Now. I got that. I got a bunch of those emails. And I'm curious about the decision to continue with an audio only podcast, knowing all that you know about the challenges of that.

30:06And then the huge wide world that is, you know, the recommendation algorithm and the explore page that is a video podcast. I'm so curious. I mean, part of it is just, I'm a bit of a dinosaur. Like I'm, I'm not, I don't have any video editing skills and I don't have anybody on staff who's really very good at it. I can, I can't edit a video. It just takes me probably four times as long as anybody who has any competence in it.

30:33It's more the fact that we do this show that we write, we write a narrative, we do these interviews and the way I actually record it is like, we're still writing while we're recording. We'll be sitting there writing and I'll read a sentence and be like, that doesn't sound right. We'll stop. I'll write something new. I'll read the sentence again. Um, I also just like, I, I'm like a very halting speaker in reality when I'm not reading from a script. So it's really hard to actually adjust to this new landscape and it would require so much

31:05more work from us. And like, even the way that we edit audio, it's like, we try and make a show that's like extremely concise. It's so the guest get, the guest's point gets across a lot very easily. So there's a lot of cutting out of ums. There's a like, we'll cut half in midway through a sentence in order to get sort of the meat of the conversation there. Yeah. It doesn't translate well to video. And, and so we, we talk about, we still talk, we talk about it all the time.

31:36There's been a lot of discussion of how to make the show more visually oriented. My, uh, my, my editor, when I was, when I was coming over here was like, ask them what, what cameras they use. And I was like, we're the worst. Well, that's a funny question because I do think, so we get asked all the time about the equipment that we use. And I almost always say that like, that does not matter. Like you can use a half of the camera that we use and it'll be fine. But I guess my hot take is I, I watch a lot of YouTube channels and I use the word watch

32:07lightly because they'll make like 45 minute, 60 minute videos that feel to me like an adaptation of the old podcast format, where you can see that there's a lot of B roll over a lot of cutting up of sentences to form like just the perfect thing. And obviously it is a lot more work, but I, I see those do really, really well. There's also a lot more chatter about how maybe they won't be doing so well in the future, but it is a, it is a curious thing. I do see a lot of those on YouTube have a lot of success. So the temptation is always there and we're like constantly fighting the temptation to,

32:40to like try make a big push to video because again, it's just like podcasts are really neutral. The platforms may have some kind of agenda that brings stuff to the front, but like really like podcasts are not that much different than they were 25 years ago. It's like you just search for the thing you want and you subscribe to it and you get it whenever they put it out. It's not, there's not an algorithm. There's not anybody pushing it. Yeah. Yeah. And YouTube, every time I talk to them about this, cause I get mad whenever they take a

33:12little of that away from us, YouTube felt like it used to be a lot like that. You would subscribe to a channel and then you'd go to your subscription box and watch the new videos from the people you subscribe to. And it was that simple. And the more they change it, the more they'll go, okay, yeah, everyone's looking at algorithmically based recommendations now. So we're going to switch it to the homepage and you'll probably see who you're subscribed to on your homepage, but also maybe not. Yeah. And then it just, yeah, it's more and more, uh, it's going further and further away from that. So I totally feel you. Are you familiar with the concept of in-s***-ification?

33:43Of course. And it probably gets mentioned like four times an episode. So yeah, I mean, that's what's happening. They're like, just their goal is not to serve you what you want. Their goal is to like, make you stay on the page for as long as possible. Yeah. Which is why I feel like Instagram is basically useless now. I get like one, one out of every 10 things in my feed is a person that I know. I do feel like to an extent, a lot of it has been an overreaction to TikTok and maybe I'm just spewing my thoughts now, but I think TikTok came along and they were so unique in

34:14that they just recommend you stuff and you could follow whatever, but you're really just here for the feed of like whatever we recommend you and YouTube, you know, their, their numbers will probably say that they're doing better now, but I feel like they overreacted and tried to overcorrect and compete with TikTok. And so now they're shorts and now there's a ton of recommended content and Reels does the same thing. And so they all kind of, the other word we've used is like carcinization, which is this super old theory that the crab essentially, is it the crab?

34:46I think it's true. It's the crab. The crab is like the perfect form of a man, of a, of an animal under the sea. Of a crustacean. Of a crustacean. And that all evolution of crustaceans goes in the direction of turning into a crab. And so TikTok is the crab and people like TikTok. And so now all the social media is turning into TikTok and that's a bummer. Yeah. We, I think in the terms of one of the reasons we ask about video podcasting and it's just, like you said, podcasting hasn't changed much.

35:17Discoverability for podcasting is awful. And, and always has been and has not changed either. Exactly. Except for there's 400 times as many podcasts to sift through now. So, so we obviously were video people. When we started the podcast, it was just Marquez and I, and we said, we're used to showing people stuff. We need to learn how to talk to people in audio. So we did our first 60 episodes audio only just to, we always knew we were going to go to video. We just wanted to get the feel for it and try and learn from it. And we eventually went to, to video.

35:49It was interesting because I think our audio downloads were way higher for a while. Then video started taking off a little more hitting recommendations. It, it became discoverable. So that's why we usually ask people who do podcasts, why no video or have you seen success in video? Just because YouTube's the second largest search engine at this point. I mean, I record everything. I mean, most of our 90% of our interviews are 99% of our interviews are on Riverside. I don't know if you've, that's what we use. And so we do have a video component.

36:20And so we do occasionally put those up on Instagram and stuff. And they, we've had a couple, two or three pop off like big, but that does not translate to increased listens to the show. Totally true. I think that the new meta of the internet is you need to be monetizing your reels and, and shorts and tick tocks because that those people are not going to make their way back to your show. Yeah.

36:51We're, yeah, it's, that is a very, I like to say the, um, you get the big funnel of short, short form vertical content and it's all pouring into there. You get so much, but then at the bottom of that funnel is another funnel upside down and then just spewing it everywhere. Like it does not connect with 1 million views on a tick tock is like five views. It feels like sometimes, and we, what a benefit of us actually is we do do, we do shorts every once in a while, but we're lucky enough that people will just create short content out of

37:24our stuff themselves, we let people do that as long as we've asked to not, uh, injetify it as much as possible. Cause people love to just put AI slop all over it and their own watermarks and stuff. We asked them not to do that, but that is our really throw it out there. And maybe we're hoping a little tiny bit, I guess it's less of does a direct link come back to the podcast or did you see my stupid face in your feed enough times that when my face comes up or Marquez's face comes up on YouTube, you're like, I've seen that guy so many times before, maybe I should click this.

37:55And there's no direct way to, to tell if that's actually, yeah, that's, that's kind of our thought upon that. And obviously, you know, we're talking to you about video podcasts. We obviously don't know your full workflow and everything. I know it's, it's tough. We try and cut out ums as such a lot. I say it all the time, but when you have two different angles, it's a lot of you to just different angle, different angle, hide all of those cuts, um, versus you're doing almost everything remote. So, yeah, I, yeah, I mean, my, so I've got three producers, two full-time, one part-time and an engineer, and that's basically our entire team.

38:28And my engineer's in Seattle. Two of my producers are in LA and one of them's in Tucson. So like, we're never together. Oh, wow. Okay. Not even the same coast. Yeah. I have, I have a producer who I've never met in person. Oh, wow. We're just fully remote. And, and like, you know, we're doing a live show next week. So the producers are coming out. This will be the like second time I've seen them in person in the two years we've been making the show. Um, and in some ways that's really great, but in other ways it like makes the idea of

38:59coordinating again, a video podcast, especially the fact that I have like an eight foot by eight foot room in my basement where I record everything. It much more difficult.

Subscriptions and community building

39:09So, yeah, totally. Uh, if I could go back to hyperfix a little bit along with growing one thing, because you are now independent with Radiotopia is you're, you have a premium subscriber base and you're working on growing that. Um, I've been one from the start, not to brag, but, um, uh, there's a lot of fun thing. We don't do a lot of premium stuff here or like content behind paywall. We're obviously lucky and fortunate enough to have a fairly self-supporting, uh, audience and what has been the struggles or funness or about growing premium subscribers and like

39:45what you're offering in terms of extra content or. Yeah. So we're offering, I mean, our, our offer is like you get a two bonus episodes a month, uh, discounts on merch, discounts on live shows, so on and so forth. Um, the discord server also, the discord server, which I, to me is the most fun part. Um, I, I'm not the biggest participant, like I show up, but, but I just think that it's like a really nice community of people are great there. Um, my, the mods there are really sweet.

40:17They're all coming out to the show, um, which is really cool. And I feel very fortunate for that. Um, that stuff has been really fun. Just getting to meet those people and like, just, you know, the ease of interaction, be people being able to ask questions about the show that I can easily answer. And, you know, I feel like my listener base is around a hundred thousand plus an episode. Um, we are lucky enough that, you know, if someone has a problem and they're a premium member, they can just send me a message on discord and I can be like, Oh, let me figure

40:50it out. Um, it's pretty painless. Um, the struggle is in order to do that, you have to be relentless and shameless about your self-promotion. And I have a lot of shame in my life.

41:07It's really hard. It's so hard to just be over and over again, just be like, yeah, you know, you guys really got to sign up for this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, so I don't love that part of it, but, um, and also just like, if you're not constantly on message, you don't grow. Um, you know, I did a thing, I did a thing in, I think, May where I was like, Hey, we're really trying to get 250 new subscribers this month. And I was really relentless for that month and I pulled it off.

41:40And then since then, so June, July, August, it's now September. So in the past three months, I've gotten 150 new subscribers. So it's like really, really vanishingly small and it's just constant, constant messaging. We even have a hard time asking people to subscribe at the start of every episode. Adam is relentless about, he puts it into our document and we still managed to skip it. It mysteriously gets ignored every week. I mean, we definitely didn't say it this, this episode. But now's your chance. Are you going to do it?

42:10Please subscribe, yeah. Hey, get subscribed. To us and to Alex. It's, um, uh, one of my favorite things I just, on Discord for years, I don't get to get into it as much as I want, but there was a bonus episode about a woman who played this game when she was in like preschool or kindergarten. Um, and you released the bonus episode as unfinished, kind of as a, uh, help, like a cry for help of if anyone has ever seen this game, this is how far we are. And I immediately was like, I know they're talking about this on Discord.

42:40And I was searching, searching, searching. And I was like, I bet I'm too late already. And the thread was like 300 comments long. And of course they found it. Yeah, absolutely. That's the kind of stuff. I don't know where we would do that on our side, but stuff like that is like, uh, people like criminal podcasts because they like feeling like they're solving a mystery with it. And that felt like a term there where I was actually talking with people who were solving it. And then you got to release the episode. There are a lot of people on our Discord who are especially experts in like IT and open

43:13source intelligence and stuff like that, who like when we have a problem, my impulse is to go to them. Um, I was working on a story about, um, a hacker in Germany who took over like a white supremacist dating website and she gave a talk at a hacker conference in, um, in Germany and it was in German and the English subtitles were not hitting.

43:43They were not doing great for me. Um, they were okay, but there were somewhere like I didn't really understand them. So I just had this, I just had a guy who was on the, who was on the server on the Discord and I was just like, Hey man, can you help me a little bit with this? And so I had like a German translator. That's awesome. He is thanked in the credits. That's really perfect. How many, uh, problem submissions are you getting? Uh, if you want to do a total or if you think how many a month? I think we've got about 3000 right now from, for the two years that we've been doing

44:14and, you know, you have to keep in mind some of those are people just being like, uh, you know, I don't know how to log into your website or, um, I thought your episode was dumb or whatever. But I mean, there's a significant number. Um, people have little curiosities that they just sit with. And I'm sure this is with you too. And it's with me where I'm just like, good example is the town that I live in, they insist on not letting us put both paper recycling and bottle recycling in the same, in the, on

44:49the same week. It's every other week. And it's like, I now, then I have like tons of bottles just hanging out in my house. And I'm like, this is so dumb. Why do they do this? And when I was pitching Hyperfixed, I was like, this is the problem. I want to find out the answer to why are they doing this to me? Yeah. Yeah.

A YouTube chapters problem

45:05You can say no to this, but we pretend I've been thinking since you launched the podcast, we need to have a team problem here that you can fix. Oh, I would. And I've had such a hard time thinking of it until recently. I realized the problem that we have every single week. Yeah. So I'm going to pitch this to you. You can say no. You can look into it if you'd like, or you can even just go through the process of how you decide if this is a good problem or not and tell us no right now. But do you know how chapters work on YouTube or do you know what chapters are? On Waveform, our chapters break every single week without fail.

45:38It's gotten to the point where as a meme, our whole audience has to comment chapters are working within the first hour just to make sure we don't go crazy because then they will break and then they will come back magically. And they will break in a slightly different way almost every time. Two weeks ago, they went away and then they came back. All the correct timestamps, except all of the chapter titles were from the previous week's episode. Oh my God. Makes no sense. There was like a story about the new Samsung leak and it was titled like Quince Sponsored

46:11because it was like the ad spot from the previous week. Um, we've talked to, both of us have emailed people at YouTube. The problem is, is we kind of fix it fast enough that by the, cause we're not going to wait around. We want the chapters to work. Yeah. They make sense in podcasts. I've spoken directly to engineers who work for YouTube at a YouTube event frustrated about the, first of all, the way that you input chapters on YouTube in the first place is kind of silly. You have to put the timestamps in the description and write it all out manually. And then it hopefully auto detects and populates at the bottom of the video that I think is

46:42silly, but I talked to them about it. I was like, it doesn't break on the MKBHD channel. It doesn't break when we add it on other channels, but it does break on the podcast for some reason after some amount of time. So that's been weighing on us. Our problem is one, why do they break every week? Yeah. And two, why does a company as large as YouTube think the best way to input different chapters is to just in the description, write the word chapters and then put in like

47:14zero, zero, colon, zero, zero, start of podcast. It doesn't make any sense. That's how you do a chapter. So, uh, throwing it out there. So here's what I'll say about this. Uh, tech companies are the least likely to ever respond to our emails. Um, we actually had two active Google related investigations and I know somebody who works at Google in their press office and I was like, I got an in, it's cool.

47:44And this is in the last six months. This isn't like over the course of, this is recently. Um, we have contacted them about both. One of them, they actually fixed, but they won't talk to us. They refuse to talk to us. I worked on a tech show for a decade. I worked on reply all for a decade. We got YouTube on the record once Google, never on the record. And our company was bought by Spotify in like 2020 and Spotify wouldn't even come on our show.

48:15And it was really embarrassing to be at a, to be on a show that was owned by Spotify and have to say more than once, yeah, they declined to comment for that. That's wild. Um, so I would, this is to me is super interesting because I feel like the technical answer would be fascinating to me, but the likelihood is zero. I will, I will send the email or even if it's a, if someone does respond to you and it's not enough for a story, we will just be like chapters work now because of Alex Goldman.

48:47That would be, that would be wonderful. You're going to have to do that. There's going to have to be like a sponsored Alex Goldman segment. We'll put one in. Yeah. Um, I just want a UI to add them. I feel like that's not hard. They have a fantastic UI for wherever you want to put mid roles in any video. I feel like it's the same thing. It seems like it should be really easy. Yeah. Just right underneath there.

49:15All right. So I have, we have a little segment that I'm, I'm very excited about. I just want to show you some interesting tech products and get your reaction. That we've either covered or have talked about. Yeah. Maybe you haven't seen yet. Okay. Uh, they're all, they all have appeared on this channel in some form and, and for some different reason. And just for a little background, I, you're talking about like one out of every 10 stories actually makes sense. Uh, I did a video where I decided to say yes to every email requesting a product review

49:48for an entire month because most of the stuff that I get asked to review, I just, I read the email and I go, Hmm, a small camera robot on wheels. I'm not going to do that. And then another random thing. I'm not going to do that. But then one out of every hundred, like, yeah, okay, I'll review that. And then I did this thing for the month and I got a whole bunch of stuff that was predictably dumb, but then a bunch of stuff that was actually kind of interesting. And I'm glad I said yes to. So we get exposure to things that are unexpectedly cool and interesting sometimes. And some that are really dumb.

50:18And some that are also really dumb.

Reacting to weird tech products

50:19First item I'm going to show to you in person instead of on the screen and it is this, and I'm just going to tell you that this is called the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold. It's a tri-fold smartphone. Okay. I mean, why not just get a tablet? Well, the thing about tablets is you can't fit them in your pocket. That's true. But you do have one device that is a phone sometimes. And then you also have a tablet sometimes. I have wonder, I've never held one of these folding, folding smartphones before. The first one's the big dog of it.

50:50The one that's already been discontinued. It's been discontinued already. Why was it discontinued? Want to guess the price? Yeah. Oh, I'm wondering. Now it's buzzing. Because, so you're folding it the wrong way. Oh! Which it won't break. It just will be. It'll just buzz. I'm glad that happened. My guess for the price, $8.99. So a normal slab phone is roughly $8.99. And so what you'll notice is a lot of these folds will be roughly two times the price of a regular phone.

51:20Two times? But this one folds twice. So is it three times the price? So it's three times the price. So it's like a $2,400 phone? It's about $2,900. Oh, okay. That's bad. I can see why it was discontinued. You can't fit a tablet in your pocket any other way. That's a good point. I have two arms for like, and backpacks, and all kinds of stuff that will allow me to take the thing. And this is smaller than a tablet, and a tablet's like $3.99. So I feel like I'm good on this. Like I understand the impulse, but unless they can get it for cheaper than that, I don't understand how it makes economic sense.

51:55And obviously it didn't because they discontinued it. It's going to be so interesting because you may or may not know next week is Apple's big iPhone event as of when we record this. And we all expect them to release their first foldable iPhone ever. And Apple has a habit of like introducing the rest of the world to form factors that have already existed. But a lot of people are going to say the same thing. Well, I'll just get a phone and an iPad. But this folding iPhone is going to be a phone and an iPad and the cost of both. But you can fit it in your pocket. And I think it's going to be really interesting to see the public reaction to it.

52:26Yeah, that is going to be interesting because they are kind of trailing these days. Yeah, in a lot of stuff. This is one that's been like eight years of folding phones. This is the first triple. Like Samsung has a Z Fold 8 already. They're well into it. I feel like the first couple came out and people were like, the screens break too easily. We broke it. We broke the first one. That is, it's really funny you said that because that was a whole, like I love hearing how these stories get distilled by like the headlines or whatever.

52:56It was happening at the time. The first ever Galaxy Z Fold comes out. They send review units to people. And I open my review unit and it looks like it's crazy. It's, you know, folding screen. That's really interesting. It looks like it has a screen protector on it. So just after I finished recording my unboxing video, I went to peel off, which lots of phones have screen protectors on them. I peeled it off and halfway through the peel, the screen goes black. And I go, oh, that was not as convenient. That turned into a 15 million view unboxing video followed by a 15 million view.

53:29We just broke the state of the art folding phone. Yeah, Samsung immediately recalled it. And several other reviewers had also broken theirs the same way. They recalled all of them. And they took several months to re-engineer the phone to then put it out later and hopefully not break. And I love that that gets distilled to like, I heard those broke a lot. It's like, yes, they definitely did. But, you know, now eight years later, they're thinner, lighter. You know, they're really, really competent, but they are still expensive. There's certainly like stuff that I like technology that I like where I'm like very particular about it.

54:02Usually like musical equipment and stuff. But when it comes to like cars and phones, I'm just like whatever is truly the cheapest and most convenient for me. I promise you none of these five are any of those things. It's going to be great. All right. Well, I'm going to love all of them. All right. All right. Product number two. This is called the Benny Robot. The Benny Robot is a small camera robot. His face, as you can see, has a camera on it. It's controlled by an app, but it's also got smart tracking.

54:33It has a 4K 30 FPS sensor on its nose. And for some reason, it's also super agile and can jump and do flips and land and keep going. And I was shocked at how good it is. Okay. Except for that one time where it flipped its battery out its back. But it jumps into things, bounces off of them, recovers really quickly. The gyroscopes, the balance ability is shockingly good. And it can go up to 18 miles an hour. It seems really cool.

55:04I am struggling to figure out the use case for this. Every single comment in the video. This was a different say yes to everything. But it's like everything about that is cool. 500 bucks is not a wild price for that, I don't think. It was, I mean, it would just slam into things and just get right back up and keep running. And again, there's not a single person other than like, I like to have the like low skateboard angle of like 90s Thrasher videos. It's like following you at ankle height.

55:36I mean, you could, you could do that with a drone. And you could also get much more majestic, majestic shots with a drone. I can't, I like truly can't figure out what I would use it for. Aside from like entertaining my kids because they would love it. A hundred percent also pet footage, small niche, but your pet's only this tall and the robot's only this tall. And now it's eye level. Now it's great footage. It was when we first got it, we got it early enough because it's a Kickstarter right now that there's no information on how to turn it on.

56:09I don't know why they didn't send that part to us. And there's no manual and we got it to turn on, but apparently not in the correct configuration. So it's one leg didn't set up properly and just was dragging behind it, but it still wanted to go full. It goes 18 miles an hour, full speed forward. And it kind of just around the office feels like, you know, when you introduce a cat to like a new house and they kind of skirt across the outsides of the wall really fast. It was just doing that around the office and we couldn't figure out how to stop it. It was like the best 45 minutes of this year, I think, watching that thing.

56:42Yeah. Shout out to the Benny robot. I just want to say, Andrew had a child this year and he still said that. Best moment of the year, Benny robot.

56:52Confirmed. All right. Yikes. Next. Sorry, Owen. Next item is a collab product by Nike and Hyperice. Hyperice is our sports recovery company. So everything they make is geared towards recovery. They collabed to make a wearable pair of heated and massaging shoes. And they claim that these are shoes with compression that can help you warm up and recover while standing, walking, sitting or traveling. So they are expecting you to potentially wear these out in public so that you can massage and compress your tendinitis or whatever as you're going outside.

57:29I'm trying to figure out what to say about these. I thought that they were going to have power laces like the Back to the Future 2 shoes. They kind of look like they should. If they did, I'm on board. You're in. Nike did make those, by the way. They made them the prop for the movie? Nike did. They started with the prop for the movie and made them self-lacing and then shrunk them down into like a regular looking pair of shoes called the Hyperadapt. And they have the Back to the Future ones for sale at one point, extremely limited quality quantity.

58:00I think you got to try them. Yeah, and they'd look like moon boots like this, but they had like a button and a battery and like wires through the top and you'd press it and they'd and it's kind of like the movie. One of my great regrets is that I did not know. I would say it was probably eight years ago now. Reebok issued what they called bug stompers, which were the shoes that Ripley wears in Aliens. And they looked so good, but now they're all like five hundred dollars and I'm not about to go do that. Those like they have the form of those Astro Boy boots that everybody's wearing.

58:34So like I feel like I couldn't in good conscience wear them. I feel like I am not stylish enough to do that. I couldn't pull it off. I don't know if I do this for these. Yeah. I don't. I feel like. Yeah, I think you're right. I feel like I would be super self-conscious wearing shoes that kind of look like air conditioners, like they're a little crazy. Also, I maybe it's just because I don't have particular foot problems, but I just can't imagine wanting to have my feet massaged while I'm walking around. That's the I think it's a noble. People have feet problems and like sitting on your couch and having something for that.

59:07I just don't know why you need to travel with them. I'm just going through TSA with these. I'll play devil's advocate for a second. As an athlete, I use this product by Hyperice a lot. That is just like a full leg length compression boot. Right. So you put them on and they're the length of both your legs and they like sort of move the blood up and down your leg after you've done a workout for recovery. But you can't go anywhere while you're wearing them because you're wearing balloons on your legs. Right. And so I might want like a glass of water or something from across the room or the TV remote is eight feet away and I'm just I'm immobile.

59:41I literally can't go over there. And so when I saw this come out, my first thought was legitimately like I think I might prefer this because I can at least walk across the room. I'm not going to go somewhere wearing them, but I can walk across the room. I think that there's a thing like we've invented. We've invented a lot of amazing, incredible things that have made life easier. But now there's this idea that we need to combine them so you can do them on the go, like, you know, a self-heating mug and stuff like that. And I understand that to a point.

1:00:12And I think this crosses my threshold for practicality. This is the line. Yeah. Yeah. That's totally valid. The next one, I know you're an audio fan, so I think you will particularly like these. Do you want to? These are the Dyson headphones. I think they're called the Zones. So you can see the headphone part, but they have this attachable. What? Air. Look like Master Chief. Yeah. Air purifier. So it attaches inside the ears of the headphones. There are fans and air filters that is intaking air and then blowing cold air across your nose and mouth so that you can breathe clean air while it's dirty outside.

1:00:48And they do look quite odd. These were very clearly developed in the COVID era, but got released far after. And the more we used them, the more we realized it probably would actually spread germs more than protect you from germs because it literally, the front of that mask has a vent on the top and bottom, which is just blowing air. So if you were to sneeze, now your sneeze gets an extra little boost from said fan out into the ether. Just fast moving air, yeah.

1:01:18Yeah. I don't quite get it. To me, it feels like, you know, there are things that I'm sure that normal headphones look bizarre when people first started wearing them and everybody got used to them. So, like, it's not about how it looks so much, but, like, what, again, what's the use case? The only thing I can think of is the two days out of the year in New Jersey where we're getting fires from Canada. True. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, and you can't, and you can't go outside.

1:01:49You're not supposed to, yeah. Um, which we've had, you know, this year and a couple years ago as well. Unfortunately, it feels like it's becoming, this to me feels like a, a dystopia device. Like, like if we were living in Blade Runner times, I would buy the out of that. If you want to know how well they're doing, their second set did not have the mask up. Yeah. They just came out originally for a thousand dollars and then they were discontinued as well. Um, they were, the tagline did say world's first wearable air purifier, which if you're a Dyson employee is maybe intriguing, but then that was the product they made.

1:02:23So, yeah, not the best thing they've ever done. Um, this last one, I don't know if we should read the description and then show you the video or show you the video and then the description. This is not something we've got to use. This came out recently. Um, but it's the hardest I've laughed, I think, on the podcast in forever. I can't wait. Do you want to read the description? Do you want me to just play? Um, let me read the entire description and then we'll hit play. This is the Tau cleaning robot. So you've probably seen these humanoid robots that are starting to creep up a little bit on your feed and they have various purposes.

1:02:54This one is a cleaning robot. Um, and it is actually a remote operated fleet of them in San Francisco. They'll get out of a van and go into your house and clean your house through a remote operated, uh, somebody with a controller. And so this is what we'll be going. The point of it is to collect data so maybe in the future they can actually clean your house completely autonomously. But this is, um, what he looks like.

1:03:23There he is. Oh, his little tiny head. We're trying to describe his head. He also has claws, but it's kind of like a router. His head looks exactly, it looks like the router I had in 2006. Um, but, and giving him a face, like I understand why they would do that. But I can't understand why they wouldn't give him a more attractive face. And also, why are you dressing your robot? In like XL clothes. That one I never understood. He, um, this next clip is my favorite where he's using like a Windex spray bottle on and

1:03:56his claws just cannot figure out. I feel like I, I, I truly in the past 18 months have started to feel like, well, I'm old now. Like I'm too old. I don't understand the world anymore. It's passing me by. Um, this definitely feels like, why would you put shoes on a robot? Why would you put big, big saggy pants on a robot? We put shoes on a horse. Okay. That's fair. That's fair. But, um, yeah.

1:04:26Would you pay, how much was it? How much? Oh, I don't know. It was like 50 an hour or something like that. Yeah, something. And also, you now have a person remote operating.

1:04:34Yeah. Who, I mean, who, who's operating it? Like, are we going to get in a situation where the person is just screwed? Like, you know, if they could easily break stuff in your house. Yes. And not only that, it looks like the actual process of spraying a spray bottle is very difficult for the Tau robot. I forgot to put it in, but for some reason, there's a video of him washing his hands, which makes no sense. Or claws, I should say. Um, if you go to their website, the, uh, terms of service section is the longest part of the website because of all those, uh, what if it breaks something?

1:05:06What if, yeah, it's. I mean, if, if I'm not there, like the operator could just have the robot do whatever. Whatever, yeah. Uh, we're going to wrap up with some rapid fire questions.

Rapid fire tech and audio questions

1:05:15A couple here. Preferred podcast playback speed? Uh, um, normal speed. Okay. I, I have a, I have some really, uh, strong emotions about people listening to my show at like 1.25 speed. Thank you. Do you want to do a 30 second pitch of your emotions on? Because our other host who is not here today is a 2X. I think he's asked for more. He's up to 3X. It's, it's diabolical. I mean, the whole point of the show that we're making is like, are, the pacing is deliberate. The scoring is deliberate.

1:05:46And if you are playing it at three times speed, you know, it's like, would you watch, would you watch the Odyssey at three times speed? That's a, exactly. It is. David. I'm not saying that my, I'm not saying that every episode of my podcast is Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. I want to be very clear about that. We won't. That is the title of this episode. Do you have a podcast player of choice? Uh, I use Overcast. It just feels like the most unobtrusive and easy to use. Fair. Uh, is there a piece of tech from your past that you miss?

1:06:16Um, I used to have an Casio SK-1 keyboard. It was one of the first sampling keyboards. Okay. You could press a button on it and talk into a little tiny microphone on it and it would give you like three seconds of sample time. And then you could play that sample all the way up and down the keyboard. It would get faster the higher you got and slower the lower you got. Um, they are still around, but you know, I got it for $29.99 when it came out. They're now like $150, $200. I keep waiting to find one at a garage sale or something. Those, I know what you're talking about.

1:06:47And like, they sound so good because the anti-alias filter on them is so good and they only sample at like $10K and they're way too expensive on eBay. Yeah, they're so expensive. The premium you get for that low sample rate is insane. I, uh, I listened to an interview with LP, the guy from Run the Jewels, and he was like, yeah, the way I got started making beats was I had a Casio SK-1 and I would just sample things I liked and I would just play them at the right speed and then, uh, use another tape deck to put drums on it. And then like, and then tape the SK-1 samples over the drums on the thing.

1:07:22And I was like, yeah, I wasn't smart enough to do that. But I mean, on the same topic of audio gear, uh, you're being into audio and music making. Is there an, uh, audio equipment grail you have? Uh, I mean, you know, there's the, um, there is a Yamaha keyboard that they use to make Blade Runner. That's the one I want. I, Alex, Alex, boy, do I have a story for you. Because last year, a fan of the show reached out to me and said, hi, I'm a composer on staff, uh, with Hans Zimmer.

1:07:55Oh my God. Who, uh, if I remember correctly, scored, uh, the modern Blade Runner. I really hope you're getting that right. Please look that up. Uh, the modern Blade Runner. And when I went to Hans' studio, they had, it's the YS-60, right? That's what you're talking about? Or the Y, also look that up. I think it's the C-78. It's the C-78. I saw that exact one. Because Hans has it from the original Vangelis score of Blade Runner 1. That is so cool. I have physically touched the exact instrument you are describing.

1:08:28I'm so jealous. You know what's crazy, too, is that that was not only used to make the beautiful score to the original Blade Runner. It was also used to make the worst song ever made, Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney. The worst song ever made. I'm gonna write that down. In Reply All episode 116, you learned about the phrase, trust the process. With that knowledge, how excited are you for LeBron joining the 76ers?

1:08:50This, what you're, this is, it's like you're speaking Polish to me right now. I, I don't know. I mean, I'm either super excited or very upset. Whichever is the right answer. Ellis is a huge 76ers fan. I, I saw the connection. I had to, it's the big news in the NBA is LeBron. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My, my son during the World Cup kept talking about Ronaldo and Messi. And I thought I was just one guy named Ronaldo Messi. I had no idea it was two dudes. Yeah, just kidding. That'd be a good player. Yeah.

1:09:21And then, so we have one question left for you.

Typing the alphabet on the leaderboard

1:09:23You've been very gracious with your time, but how fast do you think you can type the alphabet? Oh, that's a great question. Well, we're here to find out that question. I think I can do it in 15 seconds. 15 seconds. So on our podcast, we have a leaderboard of every guest that's ever been here. Um, and there's a website to how fast you can type the alphabet and we would love to do it with you right now. We give everyone three chances to do it. And then we, if you've ever seen Top Gear, they have the, like the guests do the test track. This is our version of that for waveform.

1:09:53I feel like just judging by the way that Ellis looks covered, it seems pretty rough, covered his mouth when I said that. But the way this works is you're typing A through Z and it only advances once you hit the next letter. Yep, it's screen recording. So basically if you hit B and then miss C and then hit D through Z, it won't advance until you hit C. Got it. So it has to go all the way through Z and then do not hit enter at the end. Would you prefer a different keyboard or are you good with that? No, I'm good with this. Okay, perfect. Perfect. So when you're ready. We give every guest three tries, so no pressure. Whenever you're ready, just give it your... I don't know how you could say no pressure.

1:10:25You don't have to play by play. No pressure, but there's a leaderboard. We will attempt to play by play over here and, um, all focus. Okay, all right, I just got to clear my head and get ready for this. And here we go.

1:10:39That sounds good.

1:10:45Okay, okay. Seven seconds? I think that's a really solid start. Much faster than you thought. Half. Yeah, give it two more. I feel like that was already really good. I think if you reset or press space, it'll go again. Yeah, or enter. Cool. Okay. Okay.

1:11:02Oh, it started over. Just start again. Okay. Yeah.

1:11:11I'm interested. People either get way better or immediately realize their first try was the best. Well, okay. This time I got 9.5 because I misread the thing. So, okay. One more try. I have a selection of stressful music I could play. Oh, yeah, please. Do you have, like, Flight of the Bumblebee or something? Not exactly, but I have some stuff. Don't worry. Yeah, hit me. Okay. Oh, this is perfect. I feel like I'm on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or The Weakest Link. All right, here we go.

1:11:43Six seconds. Six point two. Okay. That's really nice. Where would that fall? Who's he in between on the leaderboard? Yeah, how do you think? So, we've had a bunch of guests on the show. Everybody goes through and types the alphabet. How do you think you did? Six point two seconds is pretty nice. I think that I'm, like, solidly in the middle. Like, I think that I'm median. I think you're right after Dr. Mike, if you know who he is. So, slightly slower than Dr. Mike? Slightly slower than Dr. Mike. And then underneath, you probably don't know them. They're called So Crispy Media. They do a lot of YouTube CGI effects and stuff like that.

1:12:16Who is the record holder? Who's number one? Tom Scott. And how fast? 3.5. Holy moly. He went into his backpack and pulled out his gigantic Dell laptop that looks like he's had for 10 years because he's like, I'm the most comfortable on this keyboard. I have to work. Yeah. And went really into it. We told him the rules, and he was like, wait, wait, one second. Be right back. Then Cleo Abram, Quinn of Snazzy Labs. He's another tech reviewer. And then Marquez is at fourth because Marquez is annoyingly good at everything that he tries. I've done it faster.

1:12:47I just, I'm going to leave that time. Yeah, pretty fast. I'm so cool. I think I could do three. I just haven't. You are well within the top half, though, out of maybe 25-ish people. I'm honored. But, you know, I feel like I haven't played Typing of the Dead in a decade. Okay. But I was really like, I love that game. The fact that you ever have is huge. That is a really big advantage. You never type the alphabet, though. Who types the whole alphabet? Exactly, which is why you think you're going to do it in 20 seconds, and then you just kill it. Flow, yeah. Amazing.

1:13:18Alex, thank you so much for your time. Oh, my God, guys. This has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, if people want to find you anywhere or find HyperFixed, where should they go? We are HyperFixedPod everywhere on the internet. So you can find us on all social media sites and HyperFixedPod.com and just HyperFixed on any RSS player. And, you know, one day, HyperFixedPod on YouTube. I'm hoping for it. I'm hoping for it. Seriously, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. This was awesome, yeah.

1:13:52The difficulties are that the industry is completely different than it was when I started. When I started, like, again, long-form narrative podcast. Sorry, can you take it from industry is so different? Oh, my God. Never mind. Leave that part. I think I'm just going to bail, if that's okay.

1:14:19Um...