OpenClaw Isn’t Magic

Let an AI agent loose on your computer and you may learn a lesson the hard way: “automation” isn’t the same thing as “safe.” We dig into OpenClaw and the sudden shift from AI that only chats to AI that can act, locally, with access to your files, your scripts, and whatever permissions you hand over. If that sounds like Zapier with a rocket booster, you’re not wrong and that’s exactly why we talk guardrails, sandboxing, approvals, and why you should never treat a beta tool like it’s magic.

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Transcript

Saturday Morning Kickoff

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Ask the Podcast Coach for April 4th, 2026. Let's get ready to podcast. There it is, it's that music that means it is Saturday morning. It's time for Ask the Podcast Coach, where you get your podcast questions answered live. I'm Dave Jackson from the School of Podcasting.com, and joining me right over there is the one and only Jim Cullison from theAverage Guy.tv. Jim, how's it going, buddy?

SPEAKER_03 0:46

Greetings, Dave. Happy Saturday morning to you. Happy Easter weekend. Uh, I don't miss the first Easter in maybe my whole life. We have no plans. You got any big plans? Big big Easter plans?

SPEAKER_02 0:56

That's the thing. I I have a backup plan. My backup plan is if we have nice weather and it's supposed to be nice but maybe rainy today here in Ohio, I'm gonna go ride my bike. I want to ride my bicycle.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

And I I just need to call my brother. Now I'm pretty sure. I'm like 90% sure that I'll end up at my brother's house eating ham or something like that. But it's weird that nobody has communicated, hey, what are we doing for Easter?

SPEAKER_03 1:21

I know.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

And so, yeah, no big plans. I did, hey, if you have old people in your life, I gotta tell you, go hang out with old people. I hung out with my aunt last night, who's 98. Oh, the story she can tell. It's so that's that's my if you have a chance to hang out with an old person on Easter, highly recommended.

SPEAKER_03 1:42

And I I qualify as an old person, so you can hang out with me if you need to.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Yeah, there you go. Ralph wants to know, Dave, is that a real dance, or do you just feel like you better do that out of obligation? Dude, how can you not dance to we need to when you just come on? There's a there's a reason for that.

SPEAKER_03 2:06

Yeah, so you have to do it. I saw the ad for the new we went and saw Hail Mary last night, which is by the way, a great movie.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

I'm here to tell you I saw, and now why did you go see it?

SPEAKER_03 2:19

Because everybody everybody said they should you like they're like, There you go, you gotta go see that movie.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Yeah, breach people, hallelujah! Yeah, I went and I had three people like oh, such a good movie. And I'm like, I'm not really a sci-fi guy. They're like, dude, it's it's it's in space, but it's such a good movie. And it's not about space.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

Yeah, it's not about space.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

And I'm just here to tell you if you want people to listen to your podcast, make it so good that people tell their friends about it. And I just was like, wait, is there any curse words in there?

SPEAKER_03 2:49

Did anybody did you ever do you remember a curse word or any, you know, any profanity? No, there was certainly no, I mean, there were no F-bombs, that's for sure. Yeah, definitely not. Like there was no sexual induendos, it was not driven that way. I mean, it it it I really well done. Like it's one of those movies that comes listen, and this when you think about your podcast, this is gonna be something that's different. That this is so different, it's such a different kind of genre. It's kind of back to some it's kind of back to some things that that that maybe we did in the past, or maybe not, maybe it's something completely new. But it's a chance they took a chance, and they're doing something different and new and exciting and creative. Like, for God's sakes, don't regurgitate the same things on your podcast. Do something new.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

Well like it for Yeah, it wasn't Scooby-Doo 7. Yeah, the uh right, right. The other thing I thought was cool is the there's you know, it's not really a spoiler alert if you watch the trailer. There's an alien. Oh, that's true. We have to be careful, we have to be careful. Yeah, but there's an alien, and God bless them. The alien wasn't CGI, it's a it's a puppet, basically, for most of it. If you that and here that's the weird thing, right? So I get home next day. I of course I tell my friends, hey, if you haven't seen it, you should go see it. And out loud I said the phrase Project Hail Mary. Next thing I know, I go to YouTube. What's on my YouTube? What a coinky dink. All the behind the scenes footage of Project Hail Mary. And it but I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about this a little bit on the school of podcasting, but one of the things it's classic storytelling. First things first, what are the stakes? Oh, they're they're not, you know. Don't give it away.

SPEAKER_03 4:36

Don't give it away.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Don't well no, this is this is the story. All right, if you watch the butt you know, if this guy doesn't do this, we all die. No, so you know, why do we care about this story? Well, I don't want everyone to die, you know. Yeah, and Chris says, You went to a theater and actually saw a real film.

SPEAKER_03 4:55

Yeah, a real I had popcorn and I did an AC too. An AC. Yeah, it was great. It was such a good experience.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

Well, what it was is at my church last weekend we had a revival, which on paper looked great, right? So it was Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night plus Sunday day. And I'm making up little five-minute talks for almost all of these. Plus my podcast, I was just making content. Like every time I sat down, I had to make something new. And I was like, I need a break of making content. I need to consume some content. And because a bunch of people had told me to go see this movie, I went and saw the movie. So yeah, I went, and that was what's cool, it's kind of good and bad. The one the closest theater to me closed down, and you've heard me complain about that place and how it was just a horrible experience. This one, you can actually order your popcorn online if you want to at your ticket, it'll be there waiting for you. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, and there were actual people in the theater, and that's the part that I missed was there were probably now again, it wasn't sold out because everybody was in their Mario hats getting ready to go see the Mario thing. But there were probably still 30 people in this theater, and it's fun when we all laugh together and you know, yeah, yeah, somebody says, Yeah, no popcorn for me. They wanted$26. That's where they make the money.

SPEAKER_03 6:19

That's true. 20. I pay 20 for popcorn and I see. Hey, speaking of paying, we we better pay the bills before we forget.

Sponsor: PodcastBranding.co

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Oh, yes. You know what goes good with popcorn? Yeah, a little oh there we go. Look, it doesn't, but coffee would be worthless.

unknown 6:33

Thank you.

Based On a True Story Podcast

SPEAKER_02 6:34

Yes, that coffee pour. Well, we got see, there's a little passion you get going, you totally forget to talk about your buddy Mark over at over at Mark. I hit the button. There we go. Mark over at podcastbranding.co. If uh you know you need artwork, if you need a website, if you need a PDF, if you need business cards, there is only one place to go, and that is podcastbranding.co. Uh Mark has been a an awesome well, first of all, he's a great friend. He's Canadian, he's polite. I always joke about that, but it's true. But he is a podcaster, so he's going to sit down and listen to what you're trying to do with your show and let him do the marketing part. You go do the content part, and he's gonna give you some great. I last night I was working with some AI stuff, trying to make some artwork, and I'm like, you know what? This is dumb because the stuff it was giving me I would never use. And the the the quote problem in giant air quotes you get with Mark is the fact that the things he gives you, like two or three options, you go, I want them all, they're all good. So uh he's been doing this again for over 30 years. He's an award-winning graphic artist. Check him out at podcastbranding.co.

SPEAKER_03 7:54

And of course, a big thanks to our good friend Dan Lefebvre. Based on a true story, based on true storypodcast.com. Coming all the way back around the Matt and Ham the Manhattan Project in Oppenheimer. If you haven't seen Oppenheimer, we're talking about movies here at the beginning of the show. Yeah, if you haven't seen that yet, that may be one to go back to lots of history in that one. How much was it based on a true story? Check it out today on his site, based on a true story, based on a true storypodcast.com. Dan, as always, thanks for being my friend and thanks for your sponsorship.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

Yeah, so and there's I mean, we could do the whole episode on that movie. Just things like how do you take some and and and this is the the weird thing of looking at everything through the eyes of a podcaster. So I'm watching this pile of rocks, and it takes you a while, and that little while pulls you in because you're like, wait, where's the face of this thing? Like, where are the eyes? I'm trying to connect with this pile of rocks. How hmm, huh? And then all of a sudden it dawns on you, oh, it doesn't have a face. And then you're like, wait, how do you make something? How does it have an expression if it it just it's a it's a great flick?

SPEAKER_03 9:08

I was it is it is, yeah. Don't it's it's an amazing i it and it it's actually got arc's not the quite quite the right word. Well, that's it, but it's got some pieces to it where it takes you up, brings you down, takes you up, brings you down. Tension and release.

SPEAKER_02 9:23

It really is great at that, where you're like, but wait, what happens if the way uh wait is he gonna uh oh okay, well then and all of a sudden it's like it's a roller coaster.

SPEAKER_03 9:33

Yeah, this is over, and then no, it's not.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

No, it's not, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was a good flick. So, and that's the it was good. So, but shall we nerd out, Jim? Jim's been playing with a toy.

OpenClaw Explained Without The Hype

SPEAKER_04 9:47

I think so. And now oh, he's been waiting for this. It's time for Jim to get his nerd on.

SPEAKER_03 9:59

Over the last couple weeks, you guys have asked us a lot of questions in the chat room about OpenClaw. And uh, at first, I kind of let me just admit, when OpenClaw first came out, I just thought it was another one of those AI services like ChatGPT or whatever. I guess, uh, okay, great, another one. It's gotten a lot of traction in the last couple weeks. And and so I started after the show, I don't know, two weeks ago, I started really looking into it, watched a bunch of videos on it. Even did a podcast over at the average guy.tv. And it kind of as I started really looking into it and its capabilities, what it could do, my very first instinct on this thing was holy, this thing is dangerous. Because you're basically running AI at the local level, right? Premise of OpenClaw is you gotta do an install, you install it on a on a on your computer, right? And it's so it's local to you. It has access to a lot of the things that are on your computer, right? So we recommended a lot of folks recommend don't install open claw just on the PCU use it all the time. I would recommend you sandbox it and know what you're doing before you go down that path. And then I was like, I think I'm gonna leave it alone. I don't think I'm gonna mess with this. It's it's in super beta. I mean, there couldn't be any more of a beta than this. There they've already had about I don't know, 18 or 19 releases in the last three weeks. So it's uh in a serious beta form. Uh I still recommend you kind of know what you're doing before you get into this because it can do, and there's stories of it doing some serious, crazy things to do. That being said, Dave, so I couldn't help myself. So I got a laptop. It's good. I was like, I have to do this. So I got a laptop, took it off network, put Lennox on it. There's nothing, uh, the only sign-in is mine. I completely changed the sign-ins, doesn't match anything I'm doing. I'm just I was just a little paranoid of the thing. Just like, okay. So on setup, I told it you get some options to set some things up. By the way, not an average guy setup, it takes a little bit of work. So if you're not that technically savvy, you may struggle a little bit. Although once you get it installed, you can ask it to do a lot of stuff for you. It has control of that machine. Allegedly, it has control of the machine, right? And so got it set up, been working with it. So the last two things I've had it do, I had it update my web when my WordPress site. So I was like, oh hey, maybe we could optimize a post. And I gave it, I probably mistakenly gave it the API so it could go in there and not have to view the page, but it could actually see all the data on the page. Since making that update post, theavage guy.tv hasn't been up. So oops. Yeah, it keeps going up and down. I had said I had to send Christian a note. Like, sorry, I think I I think I might have done something to it. And then even just this morning, it's since it's on a laptop, I don't to save power, I don't necessarily want the laptop open. I've got it, I've got it, I can get access to it through my other computer, through the browser. So I basically want to treat the laptop like a headless server. And I went in, I said, Hey, I want to be able to close the lid and you stay on. Can you do that? Oh, sure. No problem. I'll set these settings. Okay, it's good to go. Close the lid, turns off. Then I open it up. Hey, I told you the lid closed. Oh no, I let me look at it again. So it looks at it again. Oh, well, actually, I need to do something else to do that. Here, let me do that, and then I'll do it. Okay. So just just a minute ago, I said, okay, let's I close the lid. Guess what? It's off now. And so listen, I I I know we we've had we've had a lot of folks like say it's magical and it's wonderful and it does some amazing things. But just remember the first time you saw AI and you put some you put some queries in and you were like, oh, this is magical, and then it hallucinated on you the first time. Remember those, remember that? That was like a month ago or whatever, maybe a year ago. Friends, like yes, the hype is real on this open claw thing, but it's not magic. It's still just code, and you still have to pay attention to what it's doing, right? So please, please, please, please, please be careful. It's I still my my advice on this is very, very clear. Go in eyes wide open, make sure you're taking some safeguards, make sure you're I put safeguards in place and said you can't do anything without my permission. So make sure now it's a little annoying because every time I ask it to do something, are you sure? Could are you type approve? Is kind of its thing now. Like type approve, so I know don't want to get in trouble. Please, eyes wide open, like be careful on this. I'm not trying to sit spell doom and gloom, but this thing is powerful, it's not as good as it thinks it is, and it can do more damage than you think it can. So just be very, very careful.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

Yeah, Jeff says, I bought a new Mac Mini this week to run open claw. Yeah, it is pretty amazing. Yeah.

Sandboxing And Permission Guardrails

SPEAKER_03 15:04

That's Jeff, and that's a great actually. Mac minis sold out for a while because so many people were buying Mac minis for this purpose. That's a great idea. Just don't give it your don't give it your Apple ID. Make a new one on that. Don't log into that thing with anything that's yours or can get to anything. I asked I kind of isolated my laptop off the network so it didn't have uh access to any of my of any of my storage or computers or any other, you know, some of those kinds of things. So it's a great way, Jeff. That's a great way. And a lot of folks are doing it that way.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

And he says, uh, between this and Claude Co-work and Whisperflow, it changed my whole workflow. Yeah, I bought Whisperflow a while ago. He says, I have Whisperflow, which is a translation tool, as far as I know, on my main computer since I can use it with every app.

SPEAKER_03 15:57

Listen, it's magic until it's not. So like these, you know, it can do some real, like I said, it can do some real damage. It doesn't like yeah, I went in last night and did some podcast workflow stuff, and it built a workflow for me, and allegedly now I can give it the files it needs, and it'll make this thing in a standard format. But you gotta still test that stuff. Like I said, I did that and it took down my website.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

So yeah, like well, is that something you can show on a screen? Because Ralph is like, what is this whole open clause? Is it actually just a way for the people in power to get all of our personal data and infiltrate all of our machines so they can change them? To me, it's like it sounds like Zapier on meth. Like just crazy. You can get it to do whatever you want, kind of thing. You know what's funny? If you shared your screen, I don't know that I could, I don't know that I have a scene where you share your screen.

SPEAKER_03 16:56

That's true. You guys would all check out. Let me just say this opencloud.ai, right? It's all the rage. There's already a couple of different versions of it. We're gonna see about because it's so popular, you're gonna see about 25 new versions of this come out in the next like two months. So get ready for the the onslaught of the the the open claw, but go to openclaw.ai, go to YouTube and and and put in open claw and watch a video that's been made in the last week on it because it's changing so it's changing so fast, right? But think about this. Think about an AI client, right? For the most part. And and by the way, you have to have it, it does, it's not AI. A lot of people are like, oh, it's it's AI. No, no, it's using an AI service. So you install it locally on your computer, right? So it's running locally for you. You give it access to one of your AI. I use OpenAI. I have a subscription over to OpenAI, so I gave it access to the to the AI over there. And then it has a chat window. And you run it on your computer, the local computer, you can you can do it. I've got it on the laptop, so I've got a little chat screen on there. I can chat with it that way. I've got a browser that just points to that IP address for it, if you want to be nerdy about it, right here. So I've got it in an open window right here. Here's the difference when you're chatting with OpenAI or Claude or whatever, it has no access to anything locally where you're where in you for your computers. Can't see your computer, can't make any changes on your computer, can't do anything. You've when you install OpenClaw, you're giving it access to your entire local network. Now, by default, it doesn't have access. So the first time you install it, it just sits there and acts, oh whatever, hey. But as Jeff was talking about, we want to give it access to some of our things. Like I gave it access to my WordPress instance through an open API. It's an API, an API key that I control. I could revoke it at any time. But the power in this is you give it some authority at the local level. You say, hey, I want you running this agent, and at this time of the day, which is really just a cron job, but at this time of the day, I want you to do this, make these kinds of things happen, you know. Do it it it can act like you because it's on your computer, right? And so it can do some things like you could. That's dangerous. Now it's magical in some cases.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

When it works, yeah.

unknown 19:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

Jeff Yeah, Jeff says I had Claude Cowork go in the API to Kid, so that's his email list. Read all of my emails, come up with a sounds like Jeff document I can use for all the AIs now. So these are things that Jeff, the actual human, wrote. And so he's told, you know, Claude Cowork, go study this because this is what I sound like. And he said, so they use that in all their AI. So hopefully everything it writes sounds like Jeff because it was trained on Jeff, plus analysis of all my emails and sequences. So very interesting stuff.

SPEAKER_03 20:07

I shall and then there's a there's a myth going on out there that someone gave it the access to its email, like Jeff's talking about, and said, Hey, go clean my stuff up and read through my email and create some things that sounds like me. And then it gave it the ability to answer some things back. And based on the email it read, it figured out the person didn't really like their job, and so it crafted an email to the guy's boss and resigned, right? So now that's I don't know if that's real. But let's just say it's not, it could be like that. Is when you give that kind of power, when you give that kind of authority, right? That's the real key, is authority. When you give the that kind of authority, just friends, buyer beware on this thing. It you you gotta be very careful. I was very, you know, I gave mine very strict instructions in the very beginning. Don't do anything. I want hyper permissions on this thing. Yeah, and it was it's been it's been good so far. It's it's asked me a lot of the it's not an average guy tool. I'm the average guy, it's not it's a little above my head at times, too. Yeah, right. It's giving me code, like it's giving me Python code or or it's given me code for the you know, Linux code, whatever that is. Yeah, I'm I'm struggling with the name. It's like copy and paste this in and and and do you know gives you the pseudo code, so you're doing it as the administrator. Like, do I know how to read that code? No, no, but like am I should I be pasting in as sudo? Probably not.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

Yeah, you know, so magic, yes, disaster, maybe. Yeah, well, Daphne says the human internet is being devastated by these artificial agents. And what's interesting is if I share there's a website base 44. I've seen their commercials, and it's like turn your ideas into apps. Base 44 lets you build fully functional apps in minutes with just your words, no coding necessary. And then you scroll down the website, you know, consider yourself limitless. And it goes through and look, I'm sure it does all sorts of fun stuff. But what I'm wondering is Is we were talking about this uh every Friday we get together at the School of Podcast and we do lunch with Dave. And look, I love Captivate, but this is one thing when you go, wait a minute, it shows me here, we're looking at my stats for your podcast consultant. And on March 27th, I had 11 unique visitors and I had 237 downloads. And when you look at where they came from, the top one is unknown. And so that's stuff where I go, well, maybe somebody spoke into base 44 where I'm limitless and can make things just with my thoughts. And they made some sort of podcast app that's pinging my feed every 10 seconds or whatever. I'm like, it's just one of those things where if we all, you know, there's a reason that we pay software people to build software, and that's because they know what they're doing. And so it's like you said, you put code in there and you're like, I don't know. And so you you put it in, you're like, hey, it's working, but but it might not be the most efficient way of doing it, or you know, so it's let me as I'm as I'm working through, you know, starting to work through.

SPEAKER_03 23:28

I want to close the lid on this laptop and I want it to stay on. Okay, that's all I really wanted to do. A human would go in and set some unsuspends in the in the both screw, you know, in in two two spaces, but I'm now in you know, multiple chats, and it, you know, again, I shut the lid, it went off, I opened the lid, came back, and said, Hey, did it again? I was like, okay, let me inspect it. And it was like, oh, you're you're on the cinnamon version, not not the GNOME version of Lennox. I that's a different place. So let me go here and do that and do this. And so, like, some of that's magic, but some of it is like, you knew I told you already what version I was on. Like, you have all this information. I told you when we first started up what versions of things we were on and stuff. So a little bit of magic, a little bit of I mean, it's the code trying to do some things that this is it's always funny when we try to get machines to do things that humans do very well. It it's it's almost always way worse than than it should be. There's some things that machines are really good at, you know, doing data analysis and large data sets and reading through things very, very fast. For right now, that's still that stuff is dynamite. For some of the more intuitive things, uh I'm still the verdict is still out. So smart, yes, trickery, probably.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

Yeah, Chris said I had a spike in downloads on the third on three different shows, and that's where you're like, and that's where you know Ralph says, Anybody want to buy some snake oil?

Useful AI Wins For Podcasters

SPEAKER_03 25:06

I have some snake oil to sell. I wouldn't I wouldn't go that far. I wouldn't go that far. It's a really good we just it's early days, and you need to be careful. This is the whole point. The whole point don't is not run away from this, like, but no, there's so much hype around it. This is the future. Like, this is definitely the future. The in the future in Windows, you're not gonna you're gonna not make your system configurations by going trying to find a dialogue box. You're gonna go to co-pilot and say, Hey, can you turn on night mode and it'll just turn it on for you? Hey, can you, you know, whatever you want to do, and it will just do it for you. Well, there'll be a day we don't think that's magic anymore, and it's not magic, but it's we're still in the early days of it doing these kinds of things. I just want you to be careful.

SPEAKER_02 25:55

Well, an example might be I did a Zoom call with a member of the school of podcasting. At the end, he said something that was really cool, and I even said, Hey, can I pull that for a commercial? And he goes, Oh, absolutely. So what I did, because now it's three weeks later, and I'm like, I can't even remember what meeting it was, so I find it, and I I threw it into otter and had it transcribe it. And then I said, and so now I'm in otter, and once Otter transcribes something, I think they're back in is some sort of chat GPT, some sort of thing. And I said, Hey, find the phrases that Rob said that might be used in a commercial, and it jumped right to the 42-minute mark. Oh, he said this here, and you even said, Can I use this in a commercial? And so that saved me 42 minutes of having to listen to a file going, where did Rob say this? Where did Rob say this? So that was kind of cool. And I just see this kind of open claw stuff as something where I could say, Hey, go look in, like, here's a file, transcribe it, and like I could just give it that command and without having to log into Otter, without having to do this, without having to type in the qu I could just type the question there and go do go do it. And it sounds like these tools would, if they had been given permission, you know, could do that.

SPEAKER_03 27:14

So well, treat it like a five-year-old. Yeah, like this is this is it's it's got it can talk, it can do some things, it can even put whole sentences together. It's really I mean, it'd be a really smart five-year-old, but just make sure you're checking. You can't you have to check, check, and recheck. You can't just assume all the time it's doing the exact thing you told it to do.

SPEAKER_02 27:36

Yeah, Jeff has uh he shares my opinion. I'm not a doom and gloom guy, but I think the tidal wave is coming. We at least need to be educated on what's possible with AI. So I'm not I I will eventually do some sort of open claw thing. I'm just gonna let you all like ruin your hard drives first. And when it seems a little more stable, I'll jump in. I'm like, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_03 28:00

I'll be I'll be your test guy, Dave. I'll be your test guy. I listen, with these kinds of things last night, as it was taking my website down, I was like, maybe this isn't a great idea. Yeah, you know, and then I'm like, maybe, and then this morning I got up and I'm like, well, okay, maybe I could work on it a little bit and see what happens. I'll have to figure out with Christian what's going on. I I tweaked something somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Yeah. Rich Graham says, if I could hook it up to my lawnmower, I I'd be all set. That would be doing the real that's true.

SPEAKER_03 28:27

If I could get AI to do the dishes, they've got them, Rich. Like the the the robot lawnmower thing is done. That's that's that that feat that ship is sailed, friend. That's out there.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

Yeah. Ray from around the layout. For the sake of my full-time job, I hope AI continues to boom. We're involved with the liquid cooling side of it. And the boom is unreal beyond the boom that fracking caused in the 2010s. Transcription from Chris says transcription tools hate 4K video. Just get the audio from it and use that. I have found that.

SPEAKER_03 29:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

You know, and then Uncle Marv asks, isn't Whisperflow just an upgraded dragon? Yeah, it is. That there's different between the one whisper is a transcription service. Whisperflow, so I'm sure is just using some sort of whisper thing on the back end, is the thing where you just talk and it types it for you. And I got to tell you, doing newsletters with Whisper Flow is it saves, and I can type, but it's just cool to think out loud and have it spit it on a page, and then you go, oh, I'm not gonna say that. Hold on, and you're you're done. Because the spell checking in most everything now is pretty good. I it's been a long time since I've had a really cringe-worthy newsletter where I look back and go, oh man, there's three types of shit.

SPEAKER_03 29:46

You shouldn't anymore, shouldn't anymore. And you can take some of that, like speak it into otter, then grab that, what it took, yeah, and drop it into ChatGPT and say, What do you think? And then take that, drop it into Claude and say, Hey, what do you think? And then take that and drop it into Gemini and say, What do you think? It will be so far from the AI original, because you now you have a digital copy of a copy of a copy of it. Yeah, and they all have their own opinion. And then the funny thing is, while I'm doing that, because I've done this, I've taken stuff and moved them across all three to tell me what I think. Grammarly, of course, is on my computer the whole time trying to change what the AIs came back with. So it's like, oh no, no, it shouldn't be that way, it should be this way. Like, and you should do it this. So listen, you can spend a lot of time between those, depending what services you have and what you're using. You spend a lot of time it giving you different, and then the other thing, this is this is this is the crazy part of this. So even with one service like ChatGPT, you I say, hey, I've got this show, you've got the transcripts, I've given you the MP3, make some stuff for me, and then it makes it, and then you're like, make it better, and it changes some things that makes it better. And then you paste it in, you're like, Well, can you do more for SEO? And then it changes it that way. It'll never stop, by the way. It'll never be like, no, this is perfect. It'll always keep changing it for you because that's its job, right? Its job is to be an instant, you know, to be a maximizer, to always be changing things. So it's what's enough, Dave? This is the real question, you know. We're in the past, listen, you and I both are typo masters. We can create a typo, like we speak in typos, but the the the the the amount of correction and change, and you know, you can tell the I want the best thing ever, it'll change it for you. And then a week later you go back and they'll be that was garbage. This is better. Yeah, and you're like, well, you know, you said it was the best thing ever last week. So you have to be careful there.

OpenAI Buys A Podcast Network

SPEAKER_02 31:45

Well, Jeff is using Whisper Flow. He says, My unlock with Whisper was just speak a word vomit in Claude Cowork, then ask it to create the perfect prompt and then run. And he goes, I'm getting really good results. So there you go. Yeah, the my only worry about I talk it into this and then put it into Chat GPT. From there, I put it into Claude, and from there I put it into this. By the end of it, does it sound like you anymore? That's my only worry about that. But speaking of AI, this this happened this week. Open AI, the makers of ChatGPT, bought the TBPN, which stands for Technology Business Programming Network. Originally it was the Tech Bros. It's a daily live show hosted by John Coogan and Geordie Hayes that covers business and tech news for about three hours a day. Shees, five days a week. Think SportsCenter, but for Silicon Valley, it's not been publicly display disclosed, but Pod News said it was somewhere around a hundred million plus. And the interesting thing is what everybody's kind of saying is the reason OpenAI did this, because we thought the stupid money was over. Like that. But if you think about open AI, from what I hear a little bit, and I I have maybe two toes in the AI space, is that a lot of people are like, hey, there was this whole thing where all these companies said we're not gonna let the government use our stuff because they want to tie it to potentially deadly, you know, weapons. And open AI said, no, we're not gonna do it, until they did. And everybody's like, well, we we shouldn't be supporting open AI because they're gonna blow up the world and blah, blah, blah. So there's a little bit of backlash against open AI. And so I wonder if they bought this really popular tech show because, you know, Jeff Bezos didn't, he he said, Oh, I'm not gonna have any input on the you know, information in the Wall Street or Washington Post, I think is the one he bought. No, no, they're gonna keep doing what they're doing until I fire a third of my staff and then tell them what to write. So it's one of those where I'm like, okay, I'll I'll believe that when I see it. But if you can control the narrative of how people are talking about your product, that's valuable. I don't know if it's worth 100 million, but I was just like, well, that's that's an interesting because I thought buying podcasts, I thought that was done. But that was some some interesting news, shall we say?

SPEAKER_03 34:13

No, it's just another form of media. You know, you you and I talked about this a little bit in the pre-show. You know, podcasting's mainstream for the most part, I think now. That doesn't mean everybody's mainstreamers, right? There's you could still do your own independence. The talked about this a couple weeks ago. This is the beauty of podcasting, is you can still get in. You can't write your own newspaper, you can't create your own TV station. You kind of could do your own radio station, but that's pretty local, right? Right. With podcasting, you can still have uh huge media, global media influence, and it's not that's not restricted yet. So that that's there, but that being said, boy, mainstream has embraced the podcast movement. Like it quietly, they've all become podcasters. You know, they you look at you look at these TV shows now, and they're all wearing the the lapel, right? They're all wearing the rogue lapel or whatever, and they're all or they're all in a studio with one of these with a microphone, right? And they're they're sitting at a desk and they, you know, they they've got their own studio kind of thing that they're doing. It's it's they've they've embraced it. It's mainstream. I'm gonna call it it's mainstream.

SPEAKER_02 35:18

It it's interesting because you know, we've talked about what should I have in my background, you know, and everybody, and I mean everybody who has a video show, sometime in their you know, travels will obsess over their their background. And so I had heard so much about Theo Vaughn, right? It's always Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn. I'm like, you know what? I I know who Theo Vaughn is, he's a comedian. I've never seen Theo Vaughn. So I went over and I forget who he's talking to, and his he has this desk, he has a two-camera shot, and his background literally, he just took the Joe Rogan idea. He put a really thick, kind of velvety-looking curtain behind him. He's got a bush on the left-hand side, and then there's a table with a bunch of crap all over it. It's like it's it would be like if I took my lovely horse radio network mug with all my pens and just dumped it on my desk. I was like, and but it also turns out that a lot of those are cans of things to drink that probably just happen to be sponsors. And he was talking to Theo, not Theo, it was so was Theo Vaughn talking to oh man, the guy from Wedding Crashers, Vince Vaughn. And there was just stuff all over every shot. There was just trinkets and skeletor dolls. I was like, it looks like a mess. I'm like, I'm never going to worry about my background again because that guy had the president on his show. And I was like, oh.

SPEAKER_03 36:46

I was watching ESPN or something, and this guy had a table of just sports tchotchkis, just literally like somebody had vomited it in front of him. And I was like, oh, okay. Well, that's that that's what but that's what they're doing.

SPEAKER_02 37:01

Yeah. Dan Lefebvre from Based on a True Story Podcast said, I I saw rumors of open AI ended Sora because it was burning$15 million a day. They have stupid money still, and they were giving it away for free.

SPEAKER_03 37:15

Yeah, listen, the free days are over, friends. I don't know if you've if it like if you have if you still have free AI stuff, use it as much as you can. Because to Dan's point, this Sora it did it got canceled because it was burning a lot of money, but it also got canceled because they want to bring it back as a paid feature. This it's because that that it was super popular, right? So they're like, hey, we're canceling this because we want to focus on, and they said future AI offerings, which is we need to make more money, like and they do, they're burning cash at like ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02 37:49

I forget what I was which one I was using. It might have been Chat GPT or Perplexity, but right above the results, I saw my first ad, and I'm like, oh, here we go. Starting to look just there's I smell a little little Google strategy in there. Like, let's just put an ad at the top of this.

SPEAKER_03 38:07

I'm like now, yeah, for sure. This is gonna be the Truman show, right? Where we're gonna have all these ads just magically sprinkled in the you should have some oval teen.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

It's not round, it's oval. Yeah. Chris from castahead.net quoting the immortal, Cindy Lopper, money changes everything.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

Yeah, it does.

SPEAKER_02 38:30

If you want to if you want a good time, search Money Changes Everything Live by Cindy Lopper. And there's a there's one where she's just she's amazing. Chris wants to know has anybody watched a Netflix podcast? I tried and then I got bored and watched a movie instead. I remember because I know when you log into Netflix, it's like, oh, here's a bunch of podcasts, and I was like, never heard of it, never heard of it, don't care. It looked like a lot of sports and bro stuff.

SPEAKER_03 38:58

Yeah, but that's true, that's true in any country. That's true. They're just trying things, right? Right, that's it. They are throwing it at the wall. Trying things to see what sticks. They've got some folks that you know that the the their chances of being successful may be a little bit higher than the average person's because they have a bunch of money. So and they have a platform. So you you you do a bunch of additions, you get some folks, you try some stuff. Hey, if one in fifty sticks, you've got you, you've got your you you've got your payback on that. So they're just running a game. Netflix is just running the game of get as many people out there as you possibly can. Listen, this is what cable TV did, right? Just get as much content out there as it's what's going on in the content space around movies. We talked we started with Hail Mary, right? That's a that who made that oh Amazon.

SPEAKER_02 39:54

I was surprised when that came up. Oh, and did you speaking of that, did you have any commercials at the beginning of that? That type of thing. Yes. Yeah. I had oh yeah. I had one and I that made uh that total, I totally missed it at the very beginning, and I was like, well, that's interesting because I all it almost worked. They're like, hey, at the end of this movie, if you want to go deeper into this story, this story was based on a book, and the book is available as an audiobook on Audible, which of course makes sense because it's an Amazon movie. And at the end of the movie, there was a part of me that went, man, that was a really good flick. And I pulled up my phone and almost went to Audible and bought the audiobook. And I was like, I don't know about you. I love audiobooks, but when I listen to an audiobook, if it's a good one, I will binge it and then I look up and I've got 37 podcasts to get caught up on because I've spent the last two days listening to an audiobook. But Chris says the Netflix has not yet marketed themselves properly as a podcast destination. They're also just treating them like every other piece of content. Yeah, it's like, do you want to play a game? Do you want to watch a movie? Do you want to watch a documentary? Oh, and here's a podcast. It's just, you know, Jeff says, I'm really impressed that Dave knows Skeletor. That's because I saw a preview for the what was the name of that guy?

SPEAKER_03 41:15

Yeah, for the He-Man, the He-Man movie.

SPEAKER_02 41:17

Yeah, the He-Man movie.

SPEAKER_03 41:18

Yeah. What did he say? Do you know? Do you remember what?

SPEAKER_02 41:20

Didn't He-Man have a I have the power something.

SPEAKER_03 41:24

Power of Grayskull?

SPEAKER_02 41:25

Yes, by the power of Grayskull.

SPEAKER_03 41:29

Yeah. So that's a long time ago, friend. That is a long time ago. Yeah. Which, which is, which speaks to the fact that we're still recycling content, right? I mean, He-Man, right? It's just recycle content. Where hey, Mary, are it completely original? Yes. You know, now let me predict this with Amazon. They've had this giant hit. Oh, yeah. They're gonna they're gonna produce now over the next year or two. They're gonna they're gonna try and catch that lightning in a bottle again. And they're gonna do some things to try to create, and they're gonna create a bunch of movies. And needless to say, none of them are gonna be very good. Like this never the you just can't, it's so hard to catch lightning in a bottle twice. And so we're gonna see them try this again. They're gonna throw a ton of money at it. They're gonna, you know, really try to say, Oh, we we know how to make great movies. Well, you got a little lucky on this, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:26

Like, you know, these you got you got smart and listening. You got smart and listen to Ryan Gosling, who said, Hey, I've got the rights to this book. I want to make it a movie. Yes, Uncle Marcy. Amazing acting in that movie, amazing acting. Yeah, yeah. By the power of Grace go, I have the power. Yeah, Jeff says Operation Hail Mary was an amazing book, worth the read. Same author who wrote the Martian. There you go.

SPEAKER_03 42:51

Oh, yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 42:52

So that's what they're gonna do. They're gonna go, hey, hey, dude, like, and any other books you got. I know you did the Martian. Do you got anything else you're working on? Because he's gonna be what was the guy that did all the spy stuff?

SPEAKER_03 43:03

You know, Jason Bourne?

Voicemail Features And Listener Messages

SPEAKER_02 43:06

No, yeah, no, but it was the guy. Oh man, Harrison Ford was the president in the plane. Oh, Tom Clancy, yeah, was another guy. So yeah, Rich says Hail Mary plus Kindle. Harry Mary Harry, yes, Harry Mary. That's a whole different movie. Yeah, Harry Carrie. Cobs win! Cobbs win! Hail Mary Kindle plus Audible was a fantastic, way more science-y, yeah, but loads of fun. The narrator is fantastic. I got through it in about four days. Yeah, if I went four days without listening to a podcast, I would have lots of shows you could catch up on. You could do it. I need to because I have like Audible keeps going, would you please buy a book? You have six credits. And I'm like, oh, okay. And then I would I almost canceled my Audible because of Spotify, because Spotify, you can listen to audiobooks on there, but in true Spotify fashion, they did the least the minimal viable product. You cannot make bookmarks. Like if I hear when I'm reading a book, I'm looking for content most of the time. And I want to be able to make a bookmark so I can go back to that. And I think it rem I hopefully it remembers where you left off. I think I will. Give them that. But as a book listening tool, it's it's like, oh, you didn't, you just like everybody else, you tacked it on. Ralph says, I have an actual podcast question. I see Buzz Sprout now has voicemail feature. Do you think other hosts will offer that? How does that compare to Podpage's voicemail feature? Is anyone getting messages? Well, you have to ask for them. It's also now, depending on how you look at it, Buzz Sprout's is one minute long. And the good news of that is you're not going to have people going, hey Jim, longtime listener, first time caller. I thought I would ask you a question, you know, because five years ago I did this thing and blah, blah, blah, and backstory, backstory, backstory. Oops, I'm out of time. And then they like in theory, they should get to the point where Podpage gives you two minutes. You've you've got to, and anytime you want feedback, and I I think I've finally come up with a question that will deliver zero results for the my question of the month. But the question of the month is a very specific question. I tell you where to go. So if you want to answer the question of the month, this month's question is where do you think podcasting is going? Are you more optimistic or are you more pessimistic? Go to schoolofpodcasting.com slash question. So I've given you a specific question. I've given you a specific location to go. And I needed your answer by April 24th, 2026. While you're there, so that's a deadline. And then while you're there, be sure to tell us a little bit about your show, key on the word little bit about your show, and don't forget your URL. So I'm giving you, in theory, an incentive called free publicity to answer the question. And I don't even want to do the percentage because it would be embarrassing the amount of people that reply to that. It's also an interesting way, because there are people that used to contribute every single month to that, and they don't anymore. And I'm like, oh, so I've lost Scott Johnson as a listener. I love Scott Johnson. He's a great guy. What was that like? But maybe he's not getting anything out of the school of podcasting anymore. So that for me, the only way I've ever gotten any kind of consistent feedback is by doing that. Giving, don't say what do you think? Because people go, it's good. Like, okay. And if you don't give them a dead, that's that's the only way I've been able to consistently get feedback is when telling them what to answer, when to answer it, how to answer it, and then that. Jim, have you ever done? I mean, you're you're with a polling company. Any insights on how to get how to get people to you know participate?

SPEAKER_03 47:04

Yeah, the this listen, uh 35 and younger doesn't they're not gonna call and leave messages. That's kind of an old yeah. I I have trouble getting my tech guys to do, you know, call and leave a message kind of thing. They they really want to just they just really want to type it in, right? Or speak it and and you know, that that kind of and then change it to text. Just I don't know what I don't know why that changed so much. We spent all this time, you know, in the 80s, all we did was talk on the phone. Like 80s and 90s, like everybody's uh and then we get when we finally got the technology to do it globally, nobody wants to talk on the phone anymore. Now that's not totally true. These I go these places all the time and people are just yapping about it. And uh there's there's one guy I watch on YouTube, and his phone is ringing like every five minutes. So that's probably not not not totally true. I think this is one of those areas you gotta meet your audience where you think they are, and once you find out the way to do it, you gotta promote it and you gotta stick with it, and you can't miss it. Like I I promoted voicemail messaging for a while, and I had a guy or two send me a voicemail and I missed him. I didn't get to him for a month or two. And what does that do? Teaches your audience you don't care. Yeah, that's that's too strong. That you're just you you gotta, you know, it's just like, oh, I missed it. And they're like, Well, I'm not gonna leave a message if he's not gonna pull it up for a month. So you gotta make sure you stand on top of it.

Why Listeners Hesitate To Reach Out

SPEAKER_02 48:29

Yeah, and then you know, again, Chris says, I mean to contribute. Sorry, I just forget, Dave. No, that's fine. And then Dan, Dan says, Look, I'm in locations where I I can where it's hard for him to quietly leave a voice feedback. So he goes, Don't take it negatively if listeners don't prefer to do that. Sure. And what Buzz Sprout has done, and this is one thing that only BuzzSprout has right now. I am I just did a video uh about podcast hosting, and I compared Captivate BuzzSprout, RSS.com, and Red Circle. And the one BuzzSprout, one of their things that only they do, because for the record, they all kind of do like when they say, Oh, we will syndicate you to Apple and Spotify, they all do that. Oh, we give you a website, they all do that. Well, we we protect your copyright. Somebody put that. I'm like, come on, seriously, they all do that when you, you know, so we we do tips and premium content. Yeah, guess what? You don't need a podcast to do that. It's called PayPal. But one thing they do do that is unique to them is they have this tool. If you are listening to the show later on your app, go to the top and you'll see where it says send us a message. And what they've done is that's a text message. They've added the ability to where now I can reply to you in the Buzz Sprout app, but it's also a button there to leave a voicemail message. And so it's right there in the show notes. You could do this if you're on pod page and just do it manually, or if you're using something like Captivate, you can make it a block and just say, click here to leave a message and have it go to your like in our case, it would be ask the podcastcoach.com slash voicemail. So whatever whatever your website is, if you're on pod page, add a slash voicemail and they can do that. So and then Ralph says, so when will Podpage add the ability to send and reply to text messages? I will add that to the feature request. It's one of the things I'm sure when when Brendan saw that if you it just came out, if you go to podcast website tips.com or if you go to podpage.com slash YouTube and go to the live part. We just had a town hall, and there is a ton of stuff that is coming down where one of them was, and the the tricky part is because it's AI again, and that is you want to get some human eyes on this before it happens. But one of them is like we, you know, you have a guest intake form, which is okay, but that relies on the guest to write their bio. And sometimes there's a lot more to that story. So AI could go out, grab their bio, and then do a search on this person, match it, and write a much longer page, which would then get more traffic. So that was one thing. Text transcripts, if you don't have a transcript, is now live in pod page. There was another thing that went out on Friday. Let me see if I can. Oh, time zones. So if you're, you know, right now, whatever your media host is, when it by the time it gets to pod page, it's in PST time zone. You can go in and say, I'm on Eastern Standard Time because you know, nobody will listen to your podcast on your website if it shows a two-hour difference. That's the one that always got me. People would obsess over this, but that's fine. If you want that now, you can have time your time zone shown on your website. So that was that was another thing that came out over the weekend. But yeah, there's a ton of stuff coming down the line from Pod page, and there's tons of stuff happening at the School of Podcasting. Like I said, I just did a a video on how to tell, because there is no best. This is the best media host. It's like, what are you doing? Like if you're if you're an entrepreneur and you got more than one show, captivate. If you got a single show, like if you're a person that's like today, I'm making a video. Ask the podcast coach this week. The show notes will be done completely by Buzz Sprout. They were very nice to give me, uh they put a little money in my account so I could use their all their AI tools. And I said, good, I'll make a video on that. And they're like, yep, that's exactly kind of why we did that. And so the show notes, you know, the chapters, all that stuff will be done by their co-host feature. But if you if you use the co-host feature and the magic mastering and you do your hosting, you're paying over 40 bucks for your media host, but you get your time back. So that's gonna be the big thing will be like, well, is this something I would actually use? Daphne says, why do listeners fear sending an email to their favorite podcaster? I don't know that they fear it. I think they're too busy, or they think we're too we're too busy. Like, I don't want to bug you, Jim. I know you're a busy guy, and Jim's like, what are you talking about? I'm sitting here watching Netflix. I think there's part of that, and it's the weird thing where you know that I know that you know that I know that I'm just a dude in a spare bedroom with some lights in the ceiling, but to them, you're the host. It's like, oh, it's Jim Cook, it's Jim Collison. I think that's Jim. Is that really Jim? I think it's Jim. You know, and it's weird because if you know, I've had people that are now my friends that said, Oh, yeah, the first time I met you, we were on an elevator, and I I was too nervous to say anything. And I'm like, how is this intimidating? Like, look at me. I'm like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 54:00

Yeah, but there's still a fear of being rejected. Like, that's the fear, I think. The number one fear is I get rejected by my star. So, you know, you'll go. We've we've all heard of these, you know, you you you run into a Ryan Gosling on the street and you're like, Ryan, and he's like, get away from me. Like you're great, right? And not that he's that way. I don't know if he's that way or not, but we know we've kind of been trained through our meeting cycle that if you're famous, you're kind of you know, you're hard to and listen, for those folks, if if they walked on the street, they never get anywhere. You know, imagine Taylor Swift showing up at our local grocery store, right? You know, it's just it just doesn't work. So they have to protect themselves in some way. We're just afraid of being rejected by them. And that that hurts. Like regardless of, you know, I don't have time for you, or no, I can't sign another autograph, or I don't want to have a conversation with you. You know, when you're that level of famous, you could literally just talk to people all day. And you know, you need to live a life. Yeah. So I think it's the fear of rejection. So people don't want to, they don't want to, or they don't want to send something in and have us comment on it and it'd be make them look bad. So I'm afraid if I leave a voicemail or if I freight I send a text, Dave's gonna show that thing, and then I could potentially now that's totally different in YouTube comments. For some reason, in YouTube comments, people don't care what gets you, you know, but but I think that's the reason why, Daphne, and that I think people we it's still an old school rejection.

SPEAKER_02 55:35

Chris says, I'm thinking of switching to captivate. Well, simply go to supportthishow.com slash captivate, and that is Dave's affiliate link, or go to supportthishow.com slash buzzsprout. Either one of those are my affiliate links. And yeah, it's it's kind of interesting. I just watched a YouTube video because the band Rush has gone back out on the road after their their drummer died a while ago, and he was this phenomenal guy. Uh, it's take your pick, Neil Peart or Neil Pertz. Yeah. And they they got smart. They hired a much younger, phenomenally talented female drummer to kind of, I think, help not have everybody go, oh, she's not Neil. You know, it's like, no, she's not, obviously. But Getty Lee was talking about how it was on one of their bigger tours, it was the last night. They were kind of in that, like, oh, I can't wait to go home. And he said, we went outside and there was a car with a bunch of people in it. And he goes, I just was like, I I I'm not, you know, I want to go home. I really want to go home. They're gonna go on vacation in two days. And he goes, and I left, and he goes, I got about a hundred yards and thought, I don't want to be that guy. He goes, those people, you know, might have spent a lot of money, drove a lot of miles. And he said, I actually tried to find the car, but they had already taken off. And he goes, I just decided at that point I'm not gonna be that guy. He goes, because the guitar player will stand there for days and sign autographs. The drummer, when he was around, was super reclusive and never went. And that was just his thing, and that was okay. That wasn't he wasn't comfortable with that. And he said, I just decided I'm gonna be the happy medium. I will stand there. He goes, I'm not gonna stand there for a week and sign autographs. But if there's a a group of 20 people, I will happily sign autographs and take pictures and things like that. Because the it's it's a double-edged sword. If if you let them take pictures, then they're gonna share those on social, which helps promote you and whatever the heck you're doing. And if you don't take a picture with them, they're gonna say, Oh man, I met Getty Lee who's a total jerk, you know. So it's it's you know, it is what it is. It's that's where I'm glad I'm not famous. Because the the fun part of the fun part of fame is you can't turn it off.

SPEAKER_03 57:52

You can't well you can turn it off by being a jerk. A jerk audience.

SPEAKER_02 57:55

Oh, chapel chapel roan is this uh young female singer, and I get it, especially being female, you are scrutinized, like ridiculous. And she's just started yelling at the paparazzi and and yelling, but these people don't understand boundaries and kind of being a jerk about it, but I get it. Like, hey, I'm just trying to eat my sandwich, and now that's like her thing. She's known for, and it's gonna eventually people are gonna go, fine. You don't want any exposure. Guess what? You don't have any exposure. Have fun selling your next you know song. So it'll be interesting to see. Let's see. Ralph says, I love captivate, and they're going to be doing the new Apple Video meeting on April 14th. Yep, I heard about that. I'm still missing the boat on why we're excited about Apple Video, but I'm like, okay. Let's see. I need to ask them to start a podcast. Nope. Yeah, Billy Bob Thornton is like that, super accommodating to fans. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:56

Yeah, they they you got to do a good job managing it, you know. And the same thing with your podcast, right? I've talked about this before, but I'll say it again. I mean, the same thing with your podcast that you need to manage your audience expectations and when they when they try to talk to you or they want to talk to you, be careful about how you talk back. And I you know, I had a situation when I first started podcasting, I had a situation, actually two, with hosts. You know, home gadget geeks has these kind of regular hosts that I have on all the time. And I had two hosts at different times that got where one was a little out of line, and I probably should have had a conversation, not a firing. He just fired him. I was like, You're done. And the other one I was having a conversation with, and I said something written. This wasn't a spoken conversation, which was a mistake. Should have done, I should have called the person and had that and had that conversation. But it was via text, and text was taken the wrong way. And you know, I got the I got the peace out symbol when we were done with the conversation from the other side, right? Like, well, if you're gonna be such a jerk about this, I wasn't trying to be a jerk. I was just trying to be like, hey, we need to be careful about these kinds of things. So, you know, you're you're the way you handle your audience is in in I've said this before, the way you talk about them privately, if if that's a way to say it, you have to be careful because sometimes those private conversations sneak their way into it, right? And so you you you know, be careful if you you know, yeah, listen, dealing with the public's difficult. You're gonna get some difficult people. You might be one of those difficult people. Right? So just yeah, have some self-awareness in that in that area.

When The Agent Finds Your Password

SPEAKER_02 1:00:48

Yeah, I had a situation this week at at Podpage where a customer had asked a you know, pretty good question, and the way I replied, and then I hit reply, and I actually it's weird because I just typed it, but then I actually just saw the answer and I went, Oh, if she doesn't know my mindset, that almost looks like I'm complaining that she asked the question. Like, oh, well, you know, and I was so I immediately sent an answer. I'm like, hey, looking at that reply, it looks like I'm mad. I'm not, I'm sorry. Uh oh, I think I said I needed more information. And so I need more information, could be like, hey, you know, thanks for writing in. I I need some more details to help that, or it could be I need more information. And I was like, man, that really that phrase needs more tone of voice. So I'm like, hey, that I'm just I'm trying to help. I need this information kind of thing. So you have to be careful. My my biggest worry anytime I'm ever lucky enough to meet somebody in person who listens to my show is I will be sitting there looking at them, and my stupid ADHD insert other letters brain will will look behind them to see if anybody else is walking by. And I'm like, you idiot, you have have an actual listener in front of you. Would you please just focus for 60 seconds on the person in front of you and forget? And it's just, and I will I will catch myself doing it, and I'm like, done, and I'm like, okay, brain, focus. Would you do that? Because I'm like, how rude to be talking to somebody and you see them kind of looking over your shoulder, and I'm like, don't do that.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:22

So hey, let me give you a second to prep for our awesome supporters, but let me let me come back around to an update as we were thinking about open claw. Can I do that as you're just putting your prep in there? So I was it's just as Dave, as you were talking, I was chatting a little bit with OpenClaw, and I had said, Hey, the average guy.tv is down at the moment, and I thought I had API access in one of our chats to get into this. Can you can you verify that? And it was like, no, I can't currently use all those. But let me see if I can find them. And so it starts investigating the PC. It goes, hey, I found your I found your workflow. I found some scripts that were written behind the scenes to get into that API. And then I interrogated your system and I found this file that I didn't name like API password. I named it something kind of obscure. And it was like, it looks like your um password authentic your authentication password is in that file. Do you want me to connect to that? Like, do you want me to put all those pieces together? And and I like all this information was separate. And I all I said was, Do you think you can do it? And it investigated my site, and it's like, yeah, I think I can. Like, I think I found enough to can. Now it said, I won't do it unless you say proof test authenticate the fetch. That's the words it wants me to use.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:44

Well, that's not gonna happen by accident, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:46

No, no, no. But it found them, found all those things. Like, like it put the pieces together. Imagine if this was something that was a little nefarious, like ransomware is you know, like so, anyways, uh I'm I'm you know, at least I've got it set up for a little bit of control, but uh imagine if it wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:08

Yeah, Jeff wants to know what messenger service is.

Become a Supporter

SPEAKER_03 1:04:11

I'm using the UI. I'm not, Jeff. I would not attach it to it. Wanted to attach to Messenger or Discord, and I was not gonna put it in public. So the 4.2 version of it has the ability, it's got its own UI chat window. Just go to the go to the local, and there's a port number that you can put in, and there's a local chat right there. So that's what I'm using to connect to it right now.

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AI Pricing Shift And Local Models

SPEAKER_02 1:04:33

Very cool. Well, as as you mentioned, it's time for our awesome supporters. Of course, you can be an awesome supporter, and it's super simple. Just go over to Asthepodcastcoach.com slash awesome, and you could be like any of these lovely people. We've got lionden.com, we got financially confident Christian, Home Gadget Geeks, I've heard of that guy.com, uh AI Goes to College, Bourbon Barrel Podcasting.com. Again, all you have to do is go to Asthepodcastcoach.com slash awesome. And we need to remind you that today's show is brought to you by the schoolofpodcasting.com, where you get courses, coaching, and community. So when I talked about that that updated version of the media host course, that's what I'm talking about. And of course, that comes with a 30-day money back guarantee. And if you need some feedback on your show, simply go over to podcasthotseat.com. Soon to be rebranded, fix my podcast. So you can say, I remember when he called it podcast hot seat, but uh you get honest constructive feedback. It's all there at podcasthotseat.com. And uh we'd mentioned podpage with the new free transcripts and the time zones, lots of fun things coming over to Podpage. If you want to see a demo of Podpage, just go to podpage.com slash demo and schedule one, and you'll get little old me showing it off. Uh, if you just want to try it, check out tripodpage.com. And there we go. If you need more Jim Cullison, and hey, who doesn't need more Jim Cullison? Then simply go over to theaverage guy.tv and you check out his show, Home Gadget Geeks. And it's time for the wheel. O names. So, who will it be? Will it be Glenn from the Horse Radio Network? Or Jody from Audio Branding? The ladies from Keep the Flame Alive or Chris from Castahead.net? Ralph at the Content Creators Accountant. John Moons. We're going to go all the way around. Ed from Sonic Cupcake. Max from Aviation News Talk. Ralph again from the Financially Confident Christian or Craig from AI Goes to College. Or Greg from Indie Dop drop in. We spin the wheel. And it says it's looking like either Glenn or Jody. And it is the one and only Glenn the Geek from the Horse Radio Network. If you like horsies, you should go check it out. Horseradio Network.com. And of course, if you're working on a podcast, Glenn has some great advice for you. And that is Don't be boring. Here we go. Don't be boring. And if you found this show, you know, that we saved you some time, we saved you some money. Maybe we saved you some headaches, we kept you educated, maybe we even made you laugh, or maybe we made you want to go watch the movie Project Hail Mary. Well, then go over to Asthepodcastcoach.com/slash awesome and become an awesome supporter today. Thanks to everyone for that. We deeply appreciate that. Uh the Daniel J. Lewis, what LLM are you using with OpenClaw?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:44

Yeah, ChatGPT and just their standard Olaf. So or Olaf, the uh that that works, that's on the$20 plan, and that's currently working. I think ChatGPT is gonna change this. I think with the advent of OpenClaw and some of these services where you're calling into them, you know, typically people interact with a ch with a uh AI service with their front-end chat, you know, they just go to the web and they use a chat one. Most of the besides chat GPT, most of them have gone to a token-based system. So, like Claude, if you're gonna do that kind of stuff, you're gonna need to buy tokens. So you're gonna pay for their services. This is a big change that's coming in AI, by the way. This is when the bubble bursts, these flat rate plans will get downgraded to be almost useless. And then everything else will come in through an API, you know, some access into it. And you'll get you'll have to pay by usage. And that's gonna, of course, that'll that'll jump the prices up. Get get ready for all this, friends. It's coming. Like if so, you use all the AI you can. This was Dave, this was one of the the reasons I've been experimenting with this, is because through uh Olama or through LM Studio, a llama. You yeah, you can the llama, the llamas in the in the all right.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:05

Will you receive total consciousness on your deathbed?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:11

All right, sorry.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:12

It's a great call out. You have the ability to run some of these models locally, right? And so I'm I'm I'm also thinking through like, hey, when when we have the AI apocalypse, does again doesn't mean it's gonna go away. I just think some of the great deals that we have now that make this affordable are gonna go away. And we're gonna see for a while, it's gonna get more expensive before it gets cheaper again. So I've been experimenting a little bit of running an AI locally. This is to, you know, Jeff in the beginning of the show said he bought a Mac Mini. Mac Mini is perfect to run your own local AI. So yeah, so the ChatGPT for now, I think eventually they're gonna cut off my access to that. So I'm gonna have to come in through an API hook and have an account with them, and I'll probably have to pay for the the individual usage that way, which would which would be a lot more. We're paying for it at work right now that way, and it's it's not cheap, friends. Like you're you are definitely right now with AI, if you have a$20 plan, you are getting what you pay for. Like, this is the best deal in AI right now. If you haven't, if you've been like$20 too expensive, friends, this is the last, this is the last chance you have to get AI at this price. This is this is all gonna change here in the next year, maybe or so. So use it up, use it a lot. You're you can throw now they do have some safeguards on it, but you can you can throw pretty much as much as you want at it right now, and you're it's 20 bucks. That's that that service is gonna end in some form or fashion, or you'll be severely throttled, right? You'll be severely limited here in the future, or they'll be like, oh no, you only get an hour. Back to our Sora conversation, right? This Sora worked out really, really well. They didn't have a way to monetize it, so they killed it so they can bring it back as part of a paid you pay more service. They're not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing this to make money. So use it up, friends. Use it up.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:10

It's gonna be interesting to see where all this goes. Ralph has a question. What is the update on the pitch a podcast show? Well, while Jim was talking, I think you guys, let me know if you can hear this. Nope. All right. No, yeah, you can't hear it? Okay. This will be the intro music. So on today's show, Jim Cullison Podcast, and Ralph E Step Jr. Podcast is where bad pitches get called out and better ones get made. Real examples, real feedback, and smarter ways to get booked. I'm Dave Jackson. How to pitch a podcast. There we go. So the the intro music is done. I gotta go talk to Mark. I I had AI make some artwork, and here's the thing: it's not bad, but that's not my goal. My goal is to stop the scroll, and I just was like, you know, I I keep talking about Mark and how great Mark is, because you know, he is, and I was like, why am I sitting here wasting the better part of an hour having AI try to make something that you know Mark could make in about, I don't know, 20 minutes, if that. Let me see if I can find. I'm looking for podcast. This is the problem. If if all of your shows have the word podcast at the middle of them, it makes it really hard to sort by name. And I have here we go. And now I will share my screen. So for anyone listening to this, you're like, Dave, I can't, I can't see it, and I still can't see it. Nope, that's not the one that that was one AI. So this is a shield with a bunch of emails shooting out of it because we're trying to shield ourselves from uh spam, but I was like, no. And then we came up with another image. It's just another version of the shield, and I can't find the one I did last night that I was like, well, tell AI not to quit its day job. Yeah, I was like, oh, here's one. Girl at desk, because you guessed it, it's a girl at a desk, and she's got a sure SM7B and an Apple laptop, and then in giant letters, how to pitch a podcast, and then with uh uh SOP logo in the upper right-hand corner. And I was like, well, that's usable kind of ish, but it it doesn't scream. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:38

Yeah, I was like, it's you can do you can do better.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:41

Yeah, I was like, I just need to go give Mark some money. Um so that will be the because I mean it's one of those things where it's not the cheapest thing, because you know, again, it's gonna be good, fast, or cheap. You can only pick two. And so that's very close to coming, as is rebranding podcast hot seat to fix my podcast, which I have another jingle already set up for that. It's just a matter of of doing it. And as soon as Easter is over, I will have some time on my hands. That's the plan, at least. When you're involved in your church, like Christmas is like the Super Bowl. There was something else I wanted to click on that Dan had said that was really good. Oh, we're talking about voicemail and text and you know, communication, and Dan had said that's all true. Although voice has other issues, all forms of communications have pros and cons, yeah, and there is no one size fits all. Yeah, because there is even even if it's voice, there are still times when we're like, Well, you said that sarcastically, and I'm like, No, I didn't. So yeah. There you go. My m my goal is to stop the scroll. I hear a song in that. Well, it is kind of it's yeah, remarkable is the goal. That's one of the questions again, if you go to school of podcasting.com slash question, that is the question of the month for April and why I'm asking where do you think it's going, because it used to be you had to make a good podcast if you really wanted it to grow. And in theory, now this this next episode I'm taking my own insights and then some other insights. I have like probably nine clips that I'm playing in this show. I always call these podcast stew, because it's just pieces parts together. But if somebody said, Well, if I go to Perplexity and ask how to start a podcast, a lot of what it's gonna come up with is not wrong. It's not great, but it's not wrong. I don't think they're gonna steer you into SoundCloud, you know, and things like that. So I think we're gonna have to up our game a bit because I could listen to a 30-minute podcast or I could just go ask some AI tool, and it will get me closer than where I am now. Now, I have I've seen even in the last month, I've seen things kind of hallucinate, and I go, that's not entirely accurate. I mean, it's close, you know, especially if you're asking how do I do this in this software? And it goes, go to settings and go to such and such, and you go, There is no such and such. I'm in settings. I I don't know what version you're looking at, but you know, thanks, but no thanks. So, you know, I'll be interested to see where we're going. But I I think but I also, and this is where I I can always give you both sides of a story. On one hand, there are people that say, Yeah, podcasting's a little saturated, and Tom Webster came out with a stat. There are like four million books published every year. And and yet nobody's going, hey, have we reached peak book?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:46

You know, listen, I I work in a profession that every every coach in the world, right? I I a community manner for a coach is a gallop. Every coach in the world is what writing a book. Like they to them, that is the minimum level of entry into their professional world. Yeah. If they're gonna be a coach, then the next thing is I gotta write a book. Now, does the book have to be any good? Doesn't matter. They're gonna pimp that book, they're gonna sell it because that's the entry to be a keynote. Like if you're gonna be a keynote speaker, allegedly, I don't know if this is true, but you gotta have a book. And so, you know, you know, so they're every they're all writing books. Are any of them gonna sell more than a hundred copies? By the way, that's the average. Our publisher, I've talked to him, he says the average person sells less than a hundred books. Yeah, yeah, you know, and that you think about all the time, there's no ROI in that for sure, right? You know, you know that, Dave.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:39

I always hear it's typically around 25 by books, yeah. And then, but I will say I got a really nice lucrative speaking gig because of that red thing behind me. Yeah, and they're like, oh, well, we saw your book. You wrote a book. I did.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:52

Did you write a book?

Wrap Up And Ways To Connect

SPEAKER_02 1:17:56

Profit from your podcast.com slash book. Nice, yeah. And thank you, Rich Graham, because I was trying to come up. I even asked AI last night. I'm like, I'm doing this show called How to Pitch a Podcast. I need a cool sign off. And AI had no idea what I was talking about. And I'm like, well, who had a sign-off? And the only one I know, and I'm so happy I get to say this, it was before my time. I don't get to say that a lot. I'm like, Walter Cronkott used to say, and that's the way it is. I remember Dan Rather for a while was doing courage. He would get done and just look at the camera and go, courage. And I'm like, yeah, I don't want anything that weird. And AI failed me on that, but I might end now with like, you've been pitch slapped, you know, and then maybe have a psh sign or something like that. But I recorded the first episode last night, and I'm I'm gonna, oh, this is it. This is you know how Dave likes to experiment. So here's something I've never done that I was like, I'm going to try this. Is that on your screen or on mine? I'm sitting here. The weird, oh, it's a book. It's something in your bookcase.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:58

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:59

Right above your right above your right shoulder. But anyway, I'm I've never done this before. Now that I have content coming in, I was on my screen. I'm going to do seven episodes straight, and then do take a week off, which I normally would say, don't do that. But the thought being during that week, I will then assemble, like the Power Rangers, the next season of How to Pitch a Podcast, which by the way, if you want to pitch your story, go to pitchapodcast.com slash story and and then I'll do another seven weeks and we'll take a week off to assemble the next season and off you go. So I've never never done seasons. I'll be interested to see just how much giant quotation marks, how much damage I do by taking a week off. But in theory, I will be saying I will see you in two weeks. It's not like I'm leaving and not coming back. So we shall see. Hey, it's future Dave. At this point, we troubleshot a video issue with this weird little dash showing up on the camera, and that was really boring to listen to, so I cut it out. Let's continue, shall we? Well, I would start a new question, but we have three minutes left.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:18

So let's hey for Easter, let's let's let everybody go a few minutes early so they can see their Easter planning plans.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:25

Go go, you know, easy on the candy. That's not good for you. They did a thing. I have to go see this clip. But from a helicopter in Akron, Ohio, they dropped a bunch of eggs on children. That was the headline. Jim's got a new wrinkle on his forehead. And I'm I'm dying to see all I saw was the clip of the eggs coming out of the helicopter.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:51

At least it wasn't turkeys. Like, at least it wasn't turkeys.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:56

I thought they could fly. I thought they could fly.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:00

And I'm dying to see how that ended because I'm like, wait, they're dropping because first there's like, well, not real eggs, that would be bad. And then like, even if it was plastic eggs, I'm like, falling from a helicopter, unless there's a little parachute on those, I don't, it didn't look like one. But at any rate, Jim, what is coming up on uh home gadget geeks this week?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:20

Uh took I took two weeks off for Easter and for some open claw work. I've got a whole bunch of stuff to do, and then it's chores weekend. So um the op the uh uh where I talked about open claw that we did two weeks ago, if you want to go out and catch that, the average guy.tv will have the most recent episode with Gavin Campbell last year.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:37

And Daniel date Jay Lewis over at the Audacity to Podcast has an episode on Open Claw. He also talks about how you gotta put some guardrails on that thing for sure. On the school of podcasting, as I mentioned, um, I have I found a lot of clips and I was just like, oh, I should tell my audience about that. Some of them are about video, some of them about Netflix, um, some about guesting. So there's a ton of just podcasting-related stuff. And I was like, but none of this is a whole episode, so I'm going to put them together and um, you know, glue them together with my thoughts. So that'll be coming up on the school of podcasting.com. We talked a lot about voicemail today. If you want to leave a voicemail for the show, if you are listening later and like, oh, I can't show up at 10 30 because I'm in Ireland and it's four in the morning or something, uh, just go to Asthepodcastcoach.com slash voicemail. And honest, I will actually check that. I get notified thanks to Podpage when a new voicemail comes in. And uh we'll play it right here on the show. If you a person if you're a churchy person, uh go to uh church tomorrow because it's Easter. If you're a creaster, you know, one of those Christmas and Easter people, you know, set your set your alarm. And and just for the record, you can actually go on additional days. They are open every Sunday if you want to go to church, if that's the problem. I know. They're open other Sundays, other Sundays, not just Christmas and Easter. So thanks everybody. We will see you next week with another episode of Ask the Podcast Coach.