Adam Curry: From Pirate Radio to Cofounding Podcasting

In this exciting episode, I had the incredible honor of sitting down with the legendary Adam Curry, a.k.a. the 'Podfather'. From his early days in pirate radio to then becoming an MTV VJ, and revolutionizing the way we consume media, Adam's journey has been nothing short of fascinating.

The interview begins with a glimpse into Adam's appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, where he shares some behind-the-scenes stories and insights. Then, we delve into his roots, discovering how he first learned the art of broadcasting audio and how it eventually led him to start a pirate radio station!

Adam takes us back to the moment he landed his first job in radio and the invaluable lessons he learned from operating a radio show. One thing that becomes clear throughout the interview is how essential feedback is, and how live recordings played a pivotal role in shaping his approach to content creation.

We explore the power of conversation in podcasting and how it creates an intimate connection with the audience, as well as how to find a good co-host. Then Adam shares some valuable advice on how to gauge your podcast's success and find fulfillment in your creative endeavors.

Adam also explains the value-4-value approach to podcast funding, which challenges traditional advertising models and fosters a deeper connection between creators and their audience. He also talks about how initiatives like Podcasting 2.0 and the Podcast index empower content creators and revolutionize the podcasting space.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everybody, today I'm interviewing Adam Curry, the Pod Father. Adam Curry was the co-founder of Podcasting along with Dave Weiner back in 2001. He was also one of MPV's first VJs on TV, setting up all those music videos. He's a radio broadcaster. He is a tech founder who made an exit in '98 right before the dot-com bubble. He's the co-creator of podcasting 2.0. He owned a helicopter company for a little bit. In about 30 seconds, you're going to see the irony of me doing this intro. I did not want to do an intro, especially after how we started the podcast. But Adams had this very interesting career, and our conversation kind of touched on a lot of different points. And so I want to just highlight a few of the things we talked about. And I'm going to put lots of chapter markers down below so that you can skip ahead to sections that you might find really interesting. In this episode, we talk about what it's like to be a guest on Joe Rogan's podcast. We talk about how Adam got into pirate radio when he was just a kid, uh, the importance of creating a feedback mechanism between you as a podcaster and your audience, how Adam found co-hosts for all four of his podcasts and the dynamic that he's built with each of them. Uh, we talk about why Adam thinks actually having two people on a podcast is one of the best formats for a show. Uh, we talk about how podcasting kind of challenged and then broke linear broadcasting, how to sustain your podcast, even from a financial perspective, but also emotional. And then we talk about the pitfalls of trying to be a popular podcast. We talk about value for value and podcasting 2.0. And then we wrap up with some of the similarities from what's happening right now in podcasting and what happened over 20 years ago when it first started out. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you do as well. I I like not doing a preview. There's some of these shows now that feel there's like this huge intro, and it kind of like it kills the magic sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Well, this is what reality television taught us is like people actually want although of course the reality of reality television is subjective, but um with the initial, you know, the initial idea, and I think podcasting in general is the the thought that anything can happen. You know, this is a just a people talking, you know, it's not necessarily that's that's uh Joe Rogan. I mean, even though he may start some sometimes he starts with an intro, a long one. Usually he just starts. You know, he's just starting, and then there you're talking, and before you know it, you've talked for three hours and uh and everyone listened in. It was great.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

One of my favorite intros he ever had was an episode with you where the first thing he did, he just looked across, he goes, Oh, flip phone, respect. Dude, you have a flip phone. I do. I do, I do, I do. Stepped out. OTG, brother. Yeah, you figured it out. And he just like enjoys you've got a flip phone. And do you think he plans it? Because then it's like this whole conversation about privacy and why you have a flip phone. No.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

I I've I've talked to him about this. I said, What do you do to prep? He says nothing. I say, Well, how about if someone has a book? Well, you know, he'll he'll listen. So has he ever listened to my podcast? Yeah, he's listened to maybe one while he was working out. Um someone comes in with a book, he'll listen to the audiobook while he's working out. Um, you know, I mean he likes watching he'll watch movies and stuff like that, but I think he's he's he's genuinely curious and he has you know some information as to why someone is there, obviously, because he does no one gets on the Joe Rogan show without Joe wanting them on the show. And this this is not he has a they call it a booking coordinator, but not someone who's really, you know, like well this guy oh I mean that's maybe that's not true, but you can be the hottest person on earth uh and if Joe doesn't want to talk to you, then you just won't be on the show, you know. It it's out of his own his own curiosity, as far as I know.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Yeah, I remember there's a period, I think, where Trump's team was trying to get on, and he was like, Look, if you don't want to come in the studio, you honestly I don't think it's gonna be a good interview because you know I'm gonna have to challenge you on a bunch of stuff. And the idea that somebody turned down Trump when he was like running Twit like use all over Twitter, he's the biggest news story every day. And he said, I'm not really interested in that interview. Um, you know, kudos to Joe for making that decision.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

And and I talked to him about that, and and I think he kind of used the the reason that the Trump team wanted to do it at the White House and not in the studio as an excuse. I just think he wasn't interested. I think he he would not get a genuine, genuine person who would really open up, and that's the kind of person that he's not interested in. And I think that's probably a good policy.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

So, what's it like for you to be on Joe Rogan? You've been on like five times, right? I'm always very nervous.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

You know, I don't like video, so F you for doing this on video. Uh that's why I got into podcasting, that's why I love radio. I did I did a lot of video, but I could control my Tourette's and everything for you know a couple minute segment on MTV. It's a lot harder. So I just kind of have to give in to it and all right, I'm just I am who I am. Um, but I think it distracts sometimes from from what I'm saying. So I I'm I'm just not a big fan of that. But once I'm sitting there, you know, I'm just in the zone and you know, I'm just talking to Joe. I mean, we we we text from time to time, you know, just a little back and forth, or an article or something, or how you doing, or happy father's day, you know, that's probably the extent of it. So for me, it's really it's a catch up. And like, what's going on? And here's what I'm seeing, and you know, and I hear about what he's been doing, or you know, I'm just as curious about how he is as he is about me.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

So I went back and I watched a bunch of interviews you did and listened to a bunch, and a few of them were Rogan. I noticed you go on in 2020, in the beginning of the year, and you're in LA, and you're like, you know, I've been in Austin like 11 years and I love it. Rogan's like, okay, Austin, Texas. Uh uh, I don't I don't really get it. By November of that year, he signed the Spotify deal. He's moved to Austin. You're the first interview in the new studio, and he's going, man, I love Austin.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Well, what happened? He called me after that interview, and I don't know if he does that. He said, Man, I really, really enjoyed our interview. I really want to thank you for coming in. I had a good time. And then he called me and he said, You know, man, I'm I'm thinking of moving to Texas, you know, Dallas or Houston. I said, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You need to come to Austin. That's where you need to be.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

A lot of people will know you as the Pod Father. Many people will know you as the co-creator of podcasting or one of the first VJs on MTV. But I kind of want to go back a little bit further to a young Adam Curry in Denmark who decides I want to get on pirate radio. What's the story there?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Uh, first of all, it was the Netherlands. So the Netherlands. It's easy to confuse Dutch with Denmark, et cetera, but it was Holland. So I was south of Amsterdam when I was, I guess around 12, 13, maybe 14, my parents gave me for Christmas 101 radio, uh 101 projects from Radio Shack, which I still have it. It's like a wooden box. It's open, uh, more like a serving tray. And in it, there's um all these components resistors, diodes, capacitors, relays, you know, all these different things, a photoelectric cell, and they're and they're mounted on on this, uh, on a you know, on a board inside the serving tray. And it had they had little springs next to each connector. And you also had a little battery package. So the idea was you had this this big book and you open it up and it'd show you this project. So but then there was the FM braid. It was a lot of wires, you had to connect a lot of things. I don't even think I looked at the schematic. Okay, I just want to I want I want to be able to let me see this work on the FM radio. And then you use the supplied crystal ear set, which you know normally put into here, and it kind of kind of that that brownish geriatric look to it, because literally hearing aids back in the day, you know, that's what even there were no iPods, they were ear pods, you know, these were um you know, just a little a crystal that reverberated in your ear.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

It's kind of like a it was like a brown plastic thing, and you'd kind of like slide it into your ear. Yeah, I remember that.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Nasty, and you'd have ear goop on it and stuff. It didn't even, you know, it's the same color as the outside. Um, so you use that as the microphone, and you know, with a little wire for the antenna, and it worked. You know, you could broadcast maybe you know 10 feet or maybe a little bit further than that. I'm like, wow. And this, of course, is where immediately my knowledge of antennas started, you know, and then I got into CB radios, uh, which were illegal in Holland, but I you know bought one on vacation, brought it back. It had an also, I was a real Radio Shack guy, everything realistic, tandy, that was my brand. And so I was using single sideband, snipping a diode inside of it so you can move up to a um to the 10-meter band, which is really the amateur radio band, but it was it was cleaner there. There was not enough, you know, not as many people on it. And then from with 12 watts from my bedroom with a half or like a five and a half meter antenna on the roof, which I had rigged with the pulley, so you know, so I could only when I was broadcasting what it would go up and then it would go down. And at that time, it was just when the uh the sun proper the sunspots were at high at the highest level, we're back into another solar cycle now. So your signal would skip across the ocean very easily. And so I learned a lot about radio. And you know, I also was a little bit into music. My dad was a big music head. He had um he had a real-to-reel recorder and he would record all his albums onto it, and so I learned how a real-to-reel recorder worked early on, you know, big real job. The difference between slow quality, between low slow recording and the length you'd get versus a fast recording and the less length you'd get. Um so I built a radio transmitter, had a uh repurposed a television antenna on the roof into an FM transmitter, uh, and just started broadcasting. And I had one turntable, so I just put on like ELO, which is one of my dad's records, or Elton John Blue Moves or something, you know, not really. I mean, interesting. Later I had the Beatles red double album and blue double album. I played those to death. I love those so much. And and then my mom, God bless her, would drive me around the block and her Volvo and see how far the signal went. And then when we got back to the house, there's some kids sitting there going, like, hey, you know, we heard your signal, man. We heard your station. Now, the reason why that was interesting is the Netherlands had almost no television or radio supply. It was all government controlled at the time. So on television you had two stations, Holland 1, Holland 2. They both and be it would be test pattern until 7 p.m. Then it would go on with bong, a big gong, and it'd be news, the same guy at the same time on both channels with the same news. And the radio was the same. They had four stations. There were, however, at the time some pirate stations in the North Sea on ships. This originated both from the Netherlands and from the UK, who also had this strict BBC non-commercial system. And so you had these these renegades, these pirate ships, and uh they were like Radio Caroline, Radio Mi Amigo, Radio Veronica, uh, those are the big ones. I mean, it and and they were playing stuff from the States, so they were playing uh early stones and you know, like kind of hippy-dippy, whatever in the 70s kind of music before disco. You could get them only on medium wave. Oh no, sorry, long wave. So you you had to have, you know, you just your regular AM radio wouldn't even receive it. And at the time, you know, you could get radios that had long wave and short wave. Uh, but you know, a lot of people were tuning into that, and they had commercials, and uh, I think at a certain point they even one of them even had Wolfman Jack at night, you know, so it was really a joy to listen to. For me to become a pirate, a land pirate, an FM pirate, as it was called, was quite normal actually. Um, you know, and it was kind of seen as funny and cute. You know, there was it wasn't like a huge I mean it there there were other people obviously doing this on a very small local level. Um and now I'm 15 and I'm and I'm kind of into this, and I have my little station from time to time. I flip it on. I've actually built my own mixer and got another turntable, got a microphone, and for months and months, if not years, I practiced under under my I had a loft bed, you know, I practiced getting my voice low and you know, talking like that. And uh and my voice never actually changed dramatically when I went through puberty. I'd already forced it there. And then there was uh an ad in the local paper, uh a closed circuit hospital radio station at the the Tulip hospital, about 20 minutes up the road. They were looking for um presenters and engineers, and he had to be 16, and my parents said, Go ahead and lie and go and see if uh see if you can, you know, if you can get some experience there. And they had a really professional studio, high-end stuff, you know, like a real radio studio. And I applied to be both uh a presenter, uh, which I failed the test, you know. Also, I had an accent, my Dutch wasn't all that great. I spoke fluent Dutch, but not I'm like an American. They just didn't think it was appropriate because it was still very MPR-ish, you know. Uh but I was hired as an engineer. They took a gamble on me, that was really cool. And and that's where I met you know a whole bunch of interesting people who were also kind of there for the same reason, but also like this one guy, Jeroen van Inkel. He was a little older than I was, but he was uh spinning records at a club in Amsterdam, and he was really he he took this volunteer gig to use the studio after hours to produce stuff for this radio show he was doing on uh on a big pirate station in Amsterdam called Radio Decibel. And Decibel was a bunch of I mean, there was just misfits and weirdos and but all cool uh and all just love music, and they were they were into I mean again, the the the top, you know, the the number three station, the the kind of the popular music station run by the government is still playing Lawrence Welk and crap like that. And uh and they're playing Chicago Warehouse, you know, it's like wow, and Blitz, um, and you know, early Funboy 3, uh early U2 even, like early, early Brian Eno stuff. And we're talking 79, 80. And uh Urun said, Hey man, you should you should come talk to these guys, maybe maybe do a do a show on uh Radio Decibel. I came in and they had, I mean, it was they barely had any money. They had one sponsor, some guy who sold uh uh kitchen tiles and cork floors, uh Ernst Baile, and uh uh and his two daughters were always hanging around the studio. It was kind of like they loved it, and so he just financed a bit so we could pay rent and you know and f and electricity and have you know like some drinks in the studio. No one was getting paid anything. Um and uh it was a Saturday night, and and you know, you had to have the secret code to get up to this attic, you know, apartment, and they're all these cool kids just hanging out on the couch, and they're sitting behind the DJ, uh, and the DJ had this you know nice setup. You know, it w it was rigged together because we didn't have like professional cart machines or everything. We had multiple cassette decks, you know, you'd you'd you'd hit play, and then the minute it hit the the beginning of the of the jingle, whatever you want to use, you hit paw, hit pause, hit stop, take it out, put a pencil in, turn, turn the um the sprocket back a quarter turn, put it back in, pause and play at the same time. So then when you hit pause, it would start right away. So that was how you started jingles. Um and they had this ingenious system for records, because it was just uh vinyl records. So they have a record player with a the old vinyl record on top, and then this oversized felt mat, which was bigger than the record itself, and a relay, which would close and hold the uh hold the mat so that the record underneath is still kind of turning, so there's some friction there. And the minute you open the fader, it would hit a micro switch, the relay opens, the felt you know grips the grips the tape, grips the record underneath, and you could cue up the record to like a quarter revolution, so you could open up that fader and boom, your record started right away. And I and yeah, it was cool stuff. They said, Why don't you do a show? Why don't you do between uh you know at midnight? Why don't you go uh spin for an hour? I'm like, there's all these people behind me and and and they're smoking weed and hanging out and drinking Bacardi Cokes, but they're cool. You know, they're they're it's not weird. It was just weird to like, I'm not really you know, what am I doing here? And I said, Why don't you do in English? Yeah, I could do that. But that and that I knew that would make me more comfortable. Uh and so on the spot, I became John Holden. That was my because you had to have uh an alias, and so I made this whole persona because they would call into the station. We published our phone number, and people would call in. Every hour we had we called the phone in, and it became a thing, and it was phenomenal. And and as this station just grew in popularity, we moved to our uh our own little canal house that we had. We had you know one floor in the basement, and we built a kick-ass studio, and then we had the transmitter up there, and I would always go up on the roof and with another guy, and we'd you know adjust the antenna because I had already been on roof so many times by then. So that and you know, thus begat my my pirate radio career. And the thing that I learned the most is put a musical program together, and because we selected our own records, of course, um, and just how to make a vibe and a flow and formatting a show. I learned a lot of you know sound and and how to create sound that I liked, which is highly compressed, and you know, it's like I like I love a real ballsy uh broadcast sound, which turns out is really good for podcasts and ear earbuds mainly, you know, where people listen in the different it's not the same as speakers at home or even in the car. You also want kind of a piercing, a little bit more higher, more high-end and some compression in there. So I just learned a lot about sound. I learned, you know, I'm very adept at you know, starting things, you know. If so, when I do no agenda with John, we play upwards of 40 clips in three hours, and these are short clips, and I just know pop, pop, pop, jingle, get this, you know. Oh, this I searched for something that we're talking about, play a little sound drop or whatever. I learned all of this throughout my entire career, 43 years now, including a lot from Scott Shannon at Z100 in New York. Uh, so I've just always been this radio guy, and I love kind of being the the wizard of Oz behind the knobs, you know, make it look easy, uh, but there's a lot going on, uh, and I and I love the idea of recording live direct, you know, no editing. Yes, I mean, yeah, if there's a technical problem for our podcast, I'll you know, I'll fix it. But I'll usually leave most of the of the of the mess up in there because people love that. When it goes wrong, that's what people love the most. I think it's hilarious, and you become human and all these things. Um, and it creates such a connection with the audience and that feedback loop, you know, that's the thing that I really missed on uh in my in the rest of my broadcast career, certainly at MTV, there was no feedback loop except you know, postcards and mail. Um, and then by the time we got the podcast, we have email, and now you know we have built into the app live chat rooms and people sending boostigrams and all kinds of stuff. Uh and in fact, right now with podcasting 2.0, we're seeing an entire resurgence of the concept of a live show where the you know now it's for no agenda. We have you know between two and twenty-five, two thousand twenty five hundred people on a show day who are listening in, and they become the studio audience and they have a voice, you know, like I have this little out of the corner of my eye, I see this this basically just a text chat scrolling, and I can see you know, people that give me one-liners sometimes, which are great. The work is you didn't write that. Who's who gave you that line? They'll say, you know, they'll piss me off with something, you know, antagonize me like a heckler. Uh and so it becomes, you know, it's like an extra level of sport, but I'm in tune. I'm in tune with the audience at that moment. That's really how I got to this point today to understand you know where I'm coming from is really from the basics of literally wiring up my first transmitter, understanding how it works to the engineering side. And throughout my career, I've always television was fascinating to me because you can't do it by yourself. You really need to do real proper tel. Now it's got a little easier today, but still, you know, you had camera operators, uh, cable pullers, audio um uh director, uh uh assistant director, producer, sound engineer, a switcher. I made sure that I knew how everybody's job worked. I could do everybody's job. Not as good as them, but I could do everybody's job. So if when I saw the final product, I'm like, you know, I go to the audio guy, hey man, when the band is performing on stage, open up, open up the audience mics. You know, it gives a little more live feel. You're cutting the mics, you know. This is not cool. I don't want to just hear the music, I want to hear the people in the audience who are pumped. Um, you know, but even the shots that were made and the and I mean camera guys have all and gals have always been my friends because they make me look good. You know, if if I have a Tourette's attack, they know I'm gonna just give I'm gonna offer a different shot to uh to the director so the director can't even cut to that. Um and they made me look good. You know, I at MCV I had uh curry cash, and you know, I I the camera would come up and I'd be like, holy mackerel, this is a great shot. Celeste, hold on a second. I put five bucks on top of her camera. That's some curry cash. You make me look good, girl. It just became a thing. So um I love working in that team, uh, you know, in a team environment. Uh but in general, I love doing audio, just radio stuff, and I'm I'm really good when I'm with someone else. I mean, I need someone to work with and bounce off of. That's it in a nutshell, Alban. End of interview. It was great knowing you.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

You know, I actually wrote some questions about co hosts because I noticed you've got at least four podcasts now. And all of them, you have this like very strong connection with your co host. You've got John C. Dvorak on No Agenda, Dave Jones. On podcasting 2.0, which I love. Tina on Curry and the Keeper. You've got Mo on Mofax. How do you find your co-host? Like, what are you looking for? I mean, some of these, uh obviously you married Tina, so that was easy to figure out who your co-host was gonna be. But like, how do you find someone and say, we're a good fit, let's do a podcast together?

SPEAKER_00 22:21

Oh, it's it's always been the same mechanism. We're a good fit, we're friends, we're talking. Hey, you know what? We should record this. That's how it's gone every single time. That's how it happened with Dvorak 16 years ago. Um, that's how it happened with uh with Mo. We literally were talking for weeks. He just called me up and we just talk about stuff and he'd give me feedback because he's a big no agenda listener. Um, with Dave Jones, this was very natural to me because I knew that if you're doing this like the first time in podcasting, the daily source code, that was really for the for the engineers building the product, building the the the podcast apps, the the app, the podcatchers and the and the RSS feed generators. So that was a natural feedback loop. Now, I mean Dave and I started this project together, you know, we don't really talk at all during the week. You know, yeah, we have some conversations, maybe a quick back and forth. It's not even podcasting 2.0 related. So when we are together in what we call the boardroom on Friday, that's really it's an update from both of us. We're updating each other, we're updating the group, we'll have someone on from, you know, like um uh you know, uh like yourself. You know, we have people who come on who are a part of the whole ecosystem and just create this imaginary boardroom, which is you know, obviously a huge thumb up to the whole concept of corporations and boardrooms because we're doing and we're running with scissors, and you know, and and I love I love coming up with these these little things that fit with our group, you know, like we're running with scissors, you know. Oops, you know, instead of man, my beta crash, you know, it sucks. I'm back to the drawing board, like running with scissors, yeah, you you poked your eye out, good work. Uh and then Tina, I always knew, and I always thought this this is something Howard Stern used to stay in. And I listened to him on K-Rock religiously driving into to New York City from Jersey in the in the MTV and later in my uh uh my company days, um, he would always have his wife Allison, in which he would call her, and he would say, just act normal like you are around me, just be normal. And she couldn't do it, she couldn't be herself. He said, Yeah, this would be so great if you could just be yourself. And and I always thought, yeah, that's right. You know, if we if you can have a husband and wife who are just exactly the way they are on the air, as they are off the air, as honest, it would be great. It would be it would be a super great product to listen to. And Tina is a communications expert. I mean, she's she um for nonprofits. So her last job was uh uh chief communications officer at Ronald McDonald's House charities in Central Texas. That's how we met uh through Ronald McDonald's House. Uh she was um they asked me to host their big fundraiser, and uh, she was you know in charge of it and was writing scripts and and I'm like, oh man, where were you when I was looking to hire a communications person in my company? It's very rare, it's very hard. It's a rare talent, it's hard to do. You you gotta understand a lot of moving parts, and she's so good at it. And I've heard her on radio, I've heard her do television interviews. She has a very I I love her voice and I love her laugh, and I knew that you know if we could just be honest with each other and whatever's going on in our life, and just even the the the dirty laundry to an extent, um, that it would be really compelling to listen to. And so I finally convinced her to do a podcast. Uh it was actually actually after Sir Gene had interviewed her uh for his podcast, Sir Genef Tuliev, a friend of ours, and she was really nervous, like, who cares about me? I got nothing to talk about. I said, You have no idea. You're someone you're so interesting. And and that was one of his most downloaded shows. I mean, and and people loved hearing her, and so she got a little bit of confidence and said, Let's just do it, let's just do a show. You know, every every two weeks, let's just sit down, just catch up, see how things are going. And uh, and as a communications professional, she understood that when the feedback we were getting, she knew that that we had had hit on something here. And so now I've convinced her uh for about a month, a little over what, two months now, we've been doing it weekly. So now it's an actual show. Uh, baby, time to come out of retirement. You know, we we got to do a newsletter, let's do this professionally, let's really let's let's deliver some great value to people. Um, but it all stems from hey, I just like talking to this person. I have an extra day in the week. You want to record it and just call it a podcast? That's literally how it's been every single time.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

So you've never like gone out and tried to find someone, thought, oh, I really want to have somebody to talk about what's happening in podcasting. Oh, I found a Dave Jones. This has been, they've all been organic. You're talking anyway, and you go, this is good. The only difference is let's hit record.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Yes, correct. That's that's every single time that's how it's been.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

There have been a few shows that I know that I want to do, and they the thing that stopped me is I know I'm like, there's not a person that I'm naturally talking to about this. And if you go online, like there's always groups where people are like, I want to start a show about this, does anyone want to be my co-host? It always surprises me because I'm like, you have no idea what the energy is gonna be like if there's chemistry between the two of you, if you're even going to enjoy the person, and the idea that you're gonna jump all the way to the final stage and it's gonna work, is I I would be really surprised to see if any of those work.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Yeah, you know, uh there's there's people in my life who I I think I would be able to do a very interesting podcast with. Uh it's kind of interesting because at the beginning day, in the early days of podcasting, it was, you know, we didn't even have the name podcasting, and we didn't quite know what to call it show. At one point it was Bundle of Joy. Um, it was uh you know, we had all kinds of things, but it really the one that stuck in my not as a name, but we would talk about it, in fact, I think even the New York Times describe it as podcast or you know, um uh audio blogging, where uh people do these odd soliloquies, and it really did come from from blogging. And blogging is usually not a team sport, you know, so you're blogging about whatever and it's one person, and uh the audio blogging formats came from that. In fact, we use the same you know RSS technology, just with an addition of an enclosure. So even daily source code was me in a soliloquy just speaking myself for for 15, 20 minutes, half an hour. Um and it wasn't until I heard the Don and Drew show, uh, who were the two wacky kids in a farmhouse in Wisconsin, uh, that I was like, oh wow, this is really cool. You know, it would they were married, very young, you know, husband and wife. Like, this is really interesting to listen to. That I'm listening to their life. That's really been I I think the best format for podcasting is you know, more than one person where you're in a way listening in on, or in some cases a participant to a conversation. Um and you know, that's what Rogan is, um, that's what this is. You know, it can be a guest, it can be a rotating guest, or it can be a fixed person. And I think typically it's just two people that works best. It can be more. Um, but that seems to be what people really associate with uh a fun podcast is more than one person, uh, a conversation, regardless of what it's about.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

It's it's really wonderful because there's something, especially the audio only. I know for anyone who's watching this on YouTube, I'd actually recommend go listen to this in a podcast app because there's something about the audio, especially when you're doing something else. Like podcasting is this one medium that doesn't need all your attention. Like TikTok wants all your attention, video wants all your attention, everything needs you locked in. And podcasting is like, hey, we've got a cool conversation for you. You can relax and you can go and do the dishes and you can go for a walk or you can go work out or something, but we know you've got something else going on.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

We had a standard, we had a standard in in radio. Sorry to interrupt before I forget. If someone let me know that they were listening to my radio show and they said, Man, I was listening in the car, I got home, I sat in the driveway for five minutes just to hear you finish that bit, that was good radio. And so, you know, the idea that you can capture someone to such a degree that they will not even want to leave their vehicle while they've been driving and doing all this stuff while listening to you, that just shows you how compelling it really is. It can be.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

I think that is such a great compliment. I know I've done that with podcasts. Um, Ariel Nissenblatt, uh, one of my friends in podcasting, she says, as soon as I find a good show and I start binging it, that's when my house gets the cleanest. Because when it's good, you just keep cleaning and you keep doing stuff and you get you can do all the dishes and then you go, shoot, I guess I'll go for a run. And then you get back and you're like, oh, I'll do something else because there's something good happening in audio and it's not some some of the other stuff can almost feel like it's preying on you. Like if I'm on TikTok and two hours go by, you're like, that's totally unhealthy. But if podcasting, if you find something really good and it's like, oh, I cleaned too much of my house and I made a great dinner for the family, that's not two hours that disappeared. That's two hours that became more productive. And you gotta, you know, you got to listen in on a cool conversation as well.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Yeah, I I have the same, obviously. I mean, I usually do the emptying of the dishwasher and put stuff away. Uh, you know, when when Tina's out early and she's like, hey, can you make a bit? I'm always like, yay. I mean, that means I get to just listen to extra podcasts. I listen to the podcast where I take a shower, I put it down with a speaker on loud so I can hear it, but it the sound uh reverberates through a little bounce that I've made right into the shower cell, you know, so I can hear it. And it actually creates a good sound. It kind of envelops me. Um uh, you know, there's all these different moments in the day. And when I uh drive to Austin, which I try not to do too much uh for you know a meeting or whatever, or even today I'm gonna see my periodontist, I'll go to Bernie, which is you know, he he wanted me to come yesterday to Kerrville, which is a 25-minute drive. And he said, Oh man, do you mind if we move it tomorrow to the office in Bernie is 45 minutes? I'm like, oh yeah, cool. I can listen to the new media show. You know, it's like and uh and and I'm kind of happy about it. So we're driving to Austin, an hour and a half, like I can get uh you know a good podcast in. Uh I could probably start start a second one, and then getting back in the car, what no matter what I've done, oh okay, now I can just continue to listen to the podcast. So that that magic is there, that'll never go away. Uh I don't care how much you know videos are being pushed to like this is where podcasting has to be. By the way, been there, done that, went through that whole cycle. It's not true. It's just not true. Um, you know, it bec for that very reason. You know, it captures you. Um you need to you need to watch. You have to stick into the watching part. I think most of Rogan's audience doesn't watch, they listen. Um, there's a large commenting audience that likes to you know watch something on 15 minutes on YouTube and comment on it. That's just because he doesn't have a feedback mechanism to speak of. Um but I I will always believe in the power of audio. Always, always, always. That's it is a very powerful medium, and that's the one I'm good at. Uh, and I and I love that. And I think that's where um it's also where storytelling is great. You know, this is what the revival of podcasting, even though it was growing at you know, three, four, five percent a year, it was kind of completely snowed under by the arrival of YouTube and Facebook and Twitter. Um, when uh when Serial happened, boom, you know, people like, oh my God. And this was at a this beautiful moment when everybody was binging, uh breaking bad, you know, like, oh we can we can watch the whole series in one weekend, people come to work like this, all bleary-eyed. Uh, and then there was this this compelling story that you could not binge, you had to wait until the next episode, next week, like, ah, oh man, and it became water cooler talk. And but you could listen to it on your commute into work, on your way to the water cooler, and it was a story and it was and it was compelling. And I think for that reason, by itself, true crime is the the top category in podcasting because of the stories, because it's typically audio only, uh, and you know, and people can consume a lot of it, and and it's open to interpretation, and they love discussing it with each other.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

Yeah, I think there's recently this article that was trying to, it wasn't really the 20th anniversary of podcasting, but they it kind of was written like, hey, it's the 20th anniversary of podcasting. Um I don't think I that date's right, but they talked about different podcasts that kind of set um have like really impacted culture, and they talked about the Ricky Gervais show and how it's changed comedy. They talked about uh true crime, obviously from serial, and it was just interesting to see the ways that podcasting has not just grown and been its own thing, but impacted uh they talk about Song Exploder changing the way that a lot of musicians interact with their audience, and now it's much more of an interactive element and they're sharing the creative process rather than hiding it. It's really cool just to see podcasting isn't just on its own over here in this little corner tucked away. It's impacting a lot of different areas, and maybe not always like front and center, like you know, TikTok or video, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

In my mind, podcasting, the internet in general, but podcasting broke all the models, broke all the ideas, broke all the whole concept of linear broadcasting is broken. Um and you know, we're still we're still seeing the the final um struggling, you know, throws of broadcast media, even cable. Um but it it so the way I see the world, it's no longer and we see okay, let's put let's start with with magazines and newspapers. Um people still pay a premium for a paper product, they love it. I I have one or two um that I like holding, and it's a it's a great medium. You can you can take it on vacation like a book, a physical book, you know, it's great on vacation. It's not like a a Kindle where you know if if you spill some suntan lotion on it, it's okay. That's business because I remember I read that on vacation, um, a little bit of pina colada, you know, uh drip on it. But in general, online magazines, newspapers, and information has been completely usurped. And you and then yes, the New York Times may still have a reputation, depends on what you think of it, what that reputation is, but it's no longer the number one. The idea of being the biggest, the most subscribers, the most readers is completely irrelevant. This is the be this is what podcasting has shown us, where you can um, regardless of topic, now a lot of scenes, oh, general information, general entertainment, comedy, et cetera, but really uh any topic can be extremely successful for its own community, for what it is doing. It could be just about your town, just about your weird hobby, your weird sub hobby of the hobby. All these things can be very successful and fulfilling to both the creator and uh and the recipients. And if I believe if you do it correctly, it's a loop. So the the people on the other end of the microphone feedback and they have something that contributes and it can it's a continuous loop. So it does not matter. The whole idea of discoverability and all this is horseshit. All you need is word of mouth, hey, you're into this type of thing, and you might want to check this podcast out. And uh, and so that's happening with television, it's happening, it'll happen with movies, it will happen with everything, and the money does the the money, um, the uh economics are broken of big entertainment, big television, big Hollywood, big movies. Because the people just they're not shoehorned into I can only watch this at 8 p.m. on a Friday night, and I have you know three other competing programs. Now it's everything all the time, whatever you want. We can't all consume it. So you you will gravitate towards what you really like. Now there will be some topics that'll be more popular than the others, but that's usually the the personalities behind them uh or or the personalities that are that show up on them. Like Rogan, you know, it's not just Joe, it's his guests, obviously, it's how he treats them, it's is what what he's able to get out of them. Uh people find that engaging. Um he and he's not even a podcaster, he doesn't even have an RSS feed. So, you know, the uh and and they tried to replicate that with you know at Spotify with we've really been more captured than we ever realized by by our media overlords. And to have this complete freedom and you know, we're seeing it with music. Once people figure out that Spotify, well they have Spotify's not the answer. You know, Spotify's not going to help you sustain. What helps you sustain is if you have a small group of people supporting your band or your music, if you're you know, if your town supports it, if people come out to see your gigs, if they wear, you know, buy your t-shirts, you know, that that's the only way these things work. And that also means that not everybody's appropriate. We have four million podcasts. I'm glad that everybody's having a good time and creating podcasts, and I hope it's sustaining for you. But if you're thinking I'm gonna be Rogan, no, stop, you're not gonna be. You're gonna be your own little thing in your own little community, and that'll be fine. And if it's not fine, then you should stop doing it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:13

I I love this theme that I'm kind of seeing from Pirate Radio that you're doing, you know, when there's only two news stations and media and entertainment and music, it doesn't have to just be a monolith where everyone listens to one band or is watching one TV show or one thing. And it went from the only way to really get your message out there because there really wasn't much opportunity, was to rig up an antenna on your roof as a 15-year-old and start broadcasting. And now we have decentralized to the point that anybody can go and they can start a podcast. You can host it yourself, you can host it on BuzzBro, you can do it on your phone, however, you want to get it out there, and you can share it. The red flag, like you're saying, is when you jump three levels ahead and you go, and the only way this makes sense for me to do it is if I can be massive and make tons of money, and it's all gonna be based on ads, and I know how I'm gonna do it. Well, when you start doing all that, uh you kind of have to almost go back to that monolith again. Like we it has to be millions of people listening or tens of thousands at least for you to start making the right amount of money. When you think, oh, I would really am doing this for a community and connection and the way it makes me feel and it's important, or we should talk about this value for value and getting value back from your audience. When you start looking at it that way, um, it almost feels like it's difficult to not be successful. Instead of saying I have to get to this massive number to maybe convince some company to give me some money to sell attention away. Instead, you go, Oh, I'm just building something for a community, it makes the transaction much easier.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

Yeah. Well, we and also the podcasting uh community, I'll call it that, it was already underway after, you know, because once serial hit, it's like, oh, wow, you know, Spotify's buying companies for hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, which we now know is a failed strategy. You know, let's just let's just admit it. They spent this money and it just didn't pan out. But with that came something new, which was the podcast industrial complex. And this podcast industrial complex, they're all about money. It's all about numbers and position and ad numbers and CPMs and how many downloads you need before you can be considered for programmatic advertising, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the people, as you said, like people jumped ahead of themselves. So now, now that all of that's not working, I mean, yeah, of course, there's some successes, but it's not a strategy for people to podcast, like, oh, I need to, I need to get these levels and then I'll get there, and then Spotify will buy me. Well, the Spotify part's already gone. The advertising part uh has slumped. Um, but now, and I I saw this happen in 2008. Now it's like it has to be video. If it's not video, it's not working, it's not, you're not gonna be successful. And and then with that came something that I that I that I have a problem with. I don't have a problem with any of that, but I have a problem with people calling what I do open podcasting. It's podcasting. Everything else is closed podcasting. So the capitulation is in the words. So change your words, change your world. We're podcasting, and podcasting is decentralized, is with RSS, um, and you know, and thank God for the, and I mean that sincerely, for the decentralized nature of hosting companies. You know, we have a lot, and it's pretty evenly distributed, you know. Yeah, some are bigger than others, but um, you know, from Buzzsprout to Blueberry, from RSS.com to captivate, you know, this is you You can sh you can choose your host, you can choose your features, you can move around, whatever you feel like, but there's choice, there's lots and lots of choice, and I think that's really good. And uh and and to be able to get your right price, you know, there is a price involved, whether you're doing it at home yourself or using a hosting company, um, it's relatively inexpensive to do. And and if you're not finding joy and fun out of doing it from day one, if you're striving for something that may come, I mean, good luck. That's gonna that's gonna be a tough journey, then you're probably not even doing it right. You know, you I mean, I know it sounds weird, but if you're trying to be the next fill-in-blank, that's not gonna happen. Be you. Every person is great and it as an individual, and you have friends. And if you're that's like when I started my my my little uh uh pyro radio station, my FM station home, my audience was the kids in the neighborhood, and they are my friends, and they would tell me what they thought, and then bring over their records and play this. That's what it's about. It's not it wasn't for me about you know, oh, and then one day I'll be, you know, I'll be the biggest radio DJ in the world. No, no, in fact, I never achieved that, and never, and and I never will. I'm just the guy who has you know 900,000 people listening on no agenda and 9,000 to Curry and the Keeper. And I get equal amount of joy out of both of them for different reasons. That's that's what it's about.

SPEAKER_01 45:29

Yeah, I listening to all these interviews of you over the last few days, I kept getting this feeling of like joy. You're just really enjoying what you're doing. It beats working, it it does beat working. And if it can accidentally turn into your work, then that's your joy is doubled. Uh when if you go into it with like, well, what's the most popular? This is the question I get a lot. What's the most popular type of podcast? I want to make it big. And I'm like, dude, you just don't. Don't do it. That is such a bad idea. Because if you're going in saying, the way that I'll enjoy this is when I monetize. And now I'm rolling the dice and doing all this work for the hope of monetizing, for the hope that makes me happy. I'm like, that's a lot of work for a really small chance at a payoff. But if you go into it, your measure of success is I'm really hoping to create something so good that somebody says, I stayed in my car five minutes after I got home. If you're trying to make that, that probably will happen then. And you're gonna feel incredible when it happens. So I actually ask podcasters a lot now, what's the thing that you got from podcasting that is not money? Because as soon as you take money off the table, people start telling you really important things. They start telling you, like, oh, I got to finally interview one of my heroes. Um, somebody started a comic book podcast, and all of a sudden he was interviewing people he'd read their comics as a kid, and now he's doing the interviews, and he's like, I can't believe like I'm getting to do this. Yeah, I only have a few thousand subscribers, so I don't make money from it, but it's awesome. I get to connect to my heroes. Uh people who said they became close friends with interviews they did. Uh somebody said she reconnected with her brother through her podcast. Like, these are really cool things. And if we can get that, if we're just going in and saying, hey, let's have fun and let's enjoy it and connect, well, it changes your approach and it makes it much more likely that you'll succeed versus going in on the front end saying, I'm gonna try true crime. I don't really care about true crime, but I've heard a lot of people listen to it. So maybe I can make that work. And all you're doing is you're inventing a new job for yourself. You're like, you already have a job, and now what are you doing? You're doing all this work to invent a new job?

SPEAKER_00 48:00

So no agenda did not start as a job. No agenda started as Dvorak and Adam on a Skype call. I was in London, he was in San Francisco once a week. We'd just go through the papers and say, uh, here's what the Financial Times is saying, or the Daily Mirror, or whatever. He'd be like, Oh, that's interesting. Here's what, here's what I'm reading over here, and um, and we'd compare. And it was, you know, we talked for maybe 20, 25 minutes. And so at a certain point, we literally said, you know, I think he said, you know, I want to just record this and we'll just turn it into a podcast. We work at a podcast company. So, yeah, that's a good idea. Well, we're gonna call it, oh, we have no agenda. Good, we'll call it no agenda. But then what happened was because of the feedback we were getting from people, it turned into like a lot of time. Uh and that's when we said, you know, if you really want us to do this, we can do lots of things with our time. So you need to provide some value back. And that's when we started, you know, taking, well, it started initially as like, hey, give us uh $5 a month. And we got the predictable results. You know, we got like a couple of $5 a month uh donations, which did not compensate for our time. And then we said, you know, do whatever you want to do, whatever this is worth to you, um, whatever value you're getting out of it, send that back to us. We we don't know how much you can afford. We don't can't look at your wallet. Five dollars may actually be a lot of money to you a month. So if that's what it is, thank you. We appreciate it. And within within a few days, you know, we got a lot of actually more $5. We got a remarkable amount of $50 and several $500. I'm like, whoa, I don't know what value this is. I don't know what valuable it is to someone. That's only the person on the other end who can determine that. And then we expanded that to time, talent, and treasure, which means you can help us out tremendously if you build a website for us. We're not we're not gonna go out and hire, and by we can't afford to hire somebody to build a website and maintain it from the amount of money we're getting. We just can't. So it would be great if you could do that. We've had more websites than any podcast, I think. We have new album art for every single episode. We have infrastructure that has really cost us consistently, despite the amount of traffic, you know, $500 a month in in fees, which has been run by you know one of our producers, uh VoiceZero, uh Mark up in the northern part of the Netherlands for 13, 14 years. I mean, the chat room is the the troll room, as we call it, it still is. It's irc.zero uh zero net dot zero node.net. It still has chat room, you know, and it's been running for over a decade. Um and you know, sure, some stuff falls by the wayside, someone else pops up and takes over and does it. So this whole idea of value for value um was really good. Um, but above all, in every single instance, it's about the community, it's about the people who are on the other end who are feeding stuff back. So I know so and podcasting 2.0. You could not, even if you had the money, hire all the brain power and the experience that works on podcasting 2.0. You could not ever, you can't they would never be able to get along together. You couldn't even put them in an official meeting. It would not work. I know I've built big companies, no way. So the people that kind of surround themselves around the podcast portion of it is beautiful. It's one of the most successful business ventures I've ever put together. And I don't get paid. But I have I get joy out of it as a business professional, as a process professional, uh, someone who likes building podcasting and expanding it and turning it into even better than than it was initially, you know, with new features and and now putting in you know the value for value payment system. Um and part of that is because we literally built in to the flow of the value, everybody gets to participate, not just the podcaster who gets some money from a corporate sponsor. No, it's the listener who gets to send value, and they're sending value all the way down the chain with little splits going to the app they're using, uh, you know, to whoever the the podcaster wants to you know to cut in cut in on the deal. To even now, as we as you know, we're experimenting with music. So that you know, when we play a song on podcasting 2.0, the wallet switches, it all goes to them to the musician. This is mind-blowing stuff. We're gonna we're going to uh upend the entire music industry that's been in place since you know the early 20s, really, and expanded with you know with all these different organizations and performing rights organizations and publishing and all this stuff, and we're going to completely change it to um to something for the people, literally by the people, for the people, and all the same people benefit all the way down the line. This is this is the legacy, man. This this is this this is stuff I'm really excited about.

SPEAKER_01 52:54

You know, the first few times I heard people talk about value for value or uh lightning network connecting to podcasting, I I caught myself like rolling my eyes at it. I was like, okay, I I think Bitcoin is gonna be really big, but I don't get why we have to build it into podcast apps. I don't get it. And then in prepping for you and I did an interview back like six months ago, and then prepping for this one, I went back and I listened to you talk to Howard Stern in 2010, and I went back and found old clips of you and you talking on podcasts, and I found over and over you're on the radio when no one's on the radio. Then you get on MTV when MTV is big, and then you tell MTV, hey, we gotta get on Usenet and start talking to people and figuring out what they like in '87. And then in '93, you're like, hey, we got to get on this internet, the world wide web. This is important. And someone at MTV yells at you, and you go, fine, I'll just register MTV.com myself. Actually, I'm going to quit and go start a tech company and then sell right at the most important time. Like over and over, I'm like, oh, Adam kind of is seeing a little bit ahead and going, this is actually gonna change a lot. And there's multiple times people are like, ah, nothing's gonna change. It's gonna be the same way. It happened multiple times, and now when I look at I think what you're the decentralized nature of podcasting and value for value, because it's not this iron grip on I have value and I will only exchange it for a comp what I deem an appropriate amount. When you let that go, so many cool things can happen. Like, and you wouldn't be able to get multiple new websites spinning up. You would never with podcasting 2.0, you're right. Like you could not wrangle all of the people who are investing and putting time and effort into it. There's multiple times I see somebody who's working in podcasting 2.0, and I go, dang, they're putting a lot of work into this. That's really cool what they're working on. And then you realize this is somebody who's making well into six figures and is putting a good amount of time into something for free. So if you were to try to capture that value and like, oh, I'll pay you to do the work, this would be wildly expensive. And probably these are people you couldn't really hire anyway. And so there's just something beautiful about once you say, hey, I'm not trying to extract value from you, I'm trying to connect. And I'm just interested if you find what we're doing valuable, let's get you onto the team. Then some really cool things start to happen.

SPEAKER_00 55:49

There's a lot of analogies here. And let me start first with yes, I I'm 10 years too early with everything. And I've I have I always just kind of gave up and went like, okay, so you know, I'm 10 years early. Um, I I come up with ideas, I pave the way, I motivate people, and then eventually 10 years later, someone makes a billion dollars off of it, and it's never me. And uh that's just my role in life. I understand now much better if I look at the things that I've been creating that this is, I believe, a godly thing. And I and I this is part, this is my role to play. And so my reward, I get it along the way, but I know where my ultimate reward is. Uh, and I'm just being used uh in a good way, uh, and it's very humbling, actually. Um, but what's cool about it is when you understand that everyone just wants to kind of be a part of it. Like, who are you? I'm with the band. Oh, okay. What do you do? Well, I lug the cables around, but I'm with the band, you know. Uh, you know, there's an old joke where the guy says, you know, the two friends meet after several years in a bar. He says, What do you do? I'm in finance, uh, finance. Uh what do you do? Well, um, I work at the circus. What do you do? Well, what here, I'll give you some tickets. Why don't you come by the circus and uh and you'll see? And his buddy goes to the circus and you know, he's he sees the whole show, the the the Ringlam Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. He doesn't see his buddy until after the show, he he's walking outside the tent. He sees his buddy shoveling elephant crap. He's like, dude, I I thought you were with the circus. He said, Yeah, yeah, but but you're shoveling elephant crap. Why don't you leave and and do something else? He says, and leave show business. You know, so that's it. Literally is, I'm going to determine how much someone has to pay for it. That's not even true. Silicon Valley makes that determination for you. You don't really determine how much someone's going to pay for something. You put in artificial levels that have kind of been predetermined and have been sold to us as you know, a song is 99 cents, or you know, a higher quality version is 299, or any of this stuff. Um, or virtually free if you look at Spotify. So there's a model that is determining value in a very unfair way. So when someone builds a website or does a piece of art, the value is well, the art is a good example. Um, because on every show we discussed the previous episode's art and we discuss why we chose this piece, but we also, more importantly, critique and tell people why we didn't choose theirs, which is real, you don't get that in real life. You just don't get a phone call. No one says, hey man, you blew it here, here, and here. And don't has time to tell you why you weren't chosen. You just don't get chosen. And you put and it's disappointing. You know, it's like actors, you know, that's a horrible profession because they never tell you why you didn't make it. Um, so when it's interesting because it's very right now there's a uh a discussion on the GitHub about value for value, which is uh is very entertaining to me, and and it's also in a way very sweet, where now um a group is trying to figure out how to make value for value work with PayPal, with dollars, with fiat money, and and they're missing all of the beautiful points of what Bitcoin and the Lightning Network delivers, which is the total self-sovereignty. Not that you know, a lot of people have Albi wallets and you know, this centralized, but you don't have to. So the idea that you control your value, you send it uh when you feel like it and how much you want it to be, and no one has to determine that you'll get a payout when you hit $5 or anything like that. The whole point is is that decentralized nature of micropayments and it being completely in control, and they also didn't really talk about the splits in there, which is the most beautiful thing about it. But it I mean, when Dave and I saw this, we saw the Lightning Network and we were talking about it, it just made so much sense. For the first, we've always been promised micro micropayments. No one ever did it because it wasn't possible because of the fee structures and and the regulations around it and you know and the centralized nature of banking. Um, so you know, it was such a natural for us already having decided to go value for value with the entire project, which is like, hey, if you guys are getting value out of it, send it back to us. By the way, thank you to the entire Buzz Sprout team who have been one of our big supporters every single month. There's hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars coming in from the Buzz Sprout team, which is you know, and and I get it because you guys get value out of it, and I know why, and it's understood, and we appreciate it. And I think you appreciate what we do. That's clear. We have a value exchange. And if you didn't send us anything for a month, that'd be cool too. You know, it's fine. No one, no one's gonna get mad. Um, because you know, if we can't pay for stuff, then we'll just do less, you know, whatever. So it it works out. The market forces are perfect there. But when you have the ability to give everybody a piece of the action from you know, I use um I use sovereign fees to because you know we have all these new features which just wouldn't be possible on any uh standalone host at the moment. Um, Steven, Stephen Bell, who is an electrical engineer by trade during the day, he does that. I I give him 10% of every every value every value split I have because he that's it's valuable to me. Um you know that doesn't mean that he can quit his job, but he's on a on an hourly but minute by minute basis, he's seeing value being returned, and it makes you feel good. It's it's the same as being getting credit for you know making an end-of-show mix or or sending you know sending in an article. Hey, I got this from so-and-so. Thank you for this article. That makes people feel good. It's in our human nature. So when you can split that, and that's the beauty of the Lightning Network and the system that we've devised, when you can split that technically, well, I would say theoretically, uh, into infinite amounts. Technically, it does run into some scaling issues at a certain point, and we we have 12 people we're splitting money up with it, still works. Who knows why? It still works. That is, I mean, you are everyone's participating, and it doesn't matter how much it's just a number, it's a satoshi. You know, a satoshi is worth 0.0003 cents today. It could be $3 tomorrow. I don't know. It doesn't matter. You know, no one's living off of this thing. But when you see that value come in, and we know, Dave and I know, hey, we can pay the the server bills this month. That's joy right there. That's super joy. When anyone else, you know, who's who's just doing something to contribute has the possibility of seeing a value in real time come back from the people you ultimately created for. So hypercatcher, I give them a split, and that's for the for the chapters. Greb Scott does the chapters. So when someone is listening to one of my podcasts and they they see the chapters, the people who literally were responsible for the execution and the technical part of that are getting a little piece of that action that you send to them. This is uh a supernatural, supranatural thing that is taking place here. It is it is really value for value is something totally awesome. And I mean that. I don't say use that word often. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:16

I'm noticing now value for value is very also related to this feedback mechanism you've built into a lot of different things. You built it into your podcast, but it was important to you on the radio, it was important to you during the MTV days, trying to get audience participation so that the creation of the podcast is not just two guys who sit on top and they tell it, they say it to everybody, it's not just you and your co-host, or it's an audience participation. So, what are you doing to like build that audience participation into all these shows?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:56

As simple as you know, reading an email that comes in, that you know, that whenever it's all aspirational. So when you read an email, people think, oh, if I send an email, Adam might use it if it's if it's you know if it's interesting enough. Um with value for value and what we have in the in the apps, there's you know the same thing, a boostigram will will get read. Um, but what I like, for instance, what Fountain is doing, what I think Pod Friend is going to do as well, is you can send a Boostigram and it shows up under that episode as a Boostigram, and that you're communicating two things. One, you're communicating a message, and the other one is you're communicating a value you assigned to posting that message or whatever you're commenting about, and people see it. So 10,000 stats. Wow, you must really feel strongly about what he's saying. You know, 7777. All these things that that people are creating within the show. Running with scissors, I don't remember who I don't think we came up with it, you know. Um, then we get running with scissors jingles, we get all kinds of weird stuff. You know, this is a creative process that people are doing. It it's not just one person, it's multiple people. Uh uh, if my God-given talent is probably picking up on these things and and and reusing them, the re you know, trying to see if they catch on. I guess that's kind of how I build community, you know, with phrases, words, slogans, ideas, comments, people, you know, just using that.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:24

So do you think it's it almost reminds me a little bit of like improv what you're doing? You're allowing everybody to say something, and you're almost always saying yes and it's not just the person you affirm because you read their email, it's all the other listeners who are going, Oh, if I engage, I will get something back. Because the thing we're all really afraid of is I listen to your podcast and oh wow, nine hundred thousand people listen every week. Yikes. I guarantee I know if I write him, he's gonna be so full of himself. He'll never Never respond, he'll never care about me. You know, she'll think it's weird that I reached out about her podcast, like she'll never want to talk. And then they see, oh wow, Adam's reading this stuff online. He's actually reading the emails. He's he's checking out the boostigrams. This show actually cares that I'm a listener. Well, cool. Now I don't feel scared. Instead, I feel a little bit like, yeah, maybe I will go throw up a goofy website that I think makes sense and I'll share with the host. I bet they're gonna love it. And boom, every time that you affirm it, you just get more and more freedom for the whole audience to engage with the show in a deeper and more meaningful way.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:40

You're exactly right. And and that's the whole secret. In fact, um, if you really ask me what is my job, um I used to watch a lot of C SPAN to get clips and stuff that just wasn't available. Um we've talked about it so much, and we and uh it's so apparent the things we're interested in. Now I go through probably about a hundred and thirty emails a day, and it's really email is the main uh the main in it is the inbox for me, uh, although I look at uh multiple sources that people use as inboxes, and that's after filtering out you know the hundreds of stuff that I don't need to look at, I can look at later. Some people even have their own special mailbox, they send me so much that uh, you know, I look at I say, I have 250 emails, but you know, 70 of them are from this one guy. So he gets his own email box, and I go look at him after I've gone through the inbox because there'll be a lot of redundancy. I also always say, if you're thinking, I'm not gonna send this to Adam, he already knows this, wrong. That's exactly the one I've not seen yet. It's weird how that works. So never, never be afraid to send me something you think I've already seen. Um also, if I don't answer, it's not because I don't love you. Uh it's not because I didn't see it, it's because I just don't have the time to answer everybody. And a lot of people, when you answer, then they say, hey, you're welcome, and that you and they want to email thread. I can't do that either. So I have to be efficient and I'm very transparent about it. Um, but yeah, I read everything. Everything, it's always gonna be that one, even the guy that sends 70 a day, there's gonna be one thing in there that's gonna blow my mind. It's gonna be exactly the right thing. So that's what I spend all my time on.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:22

But one thing I would I would like to ask, I've noticed right now, it seems like it reminds me a little bit of podcasting when it started. With podcasting 2.0, there's some of the same things kind of happening. You have started, you've got a co-founder with you, you're working you win, you had uh Dave Weiner helping start uh podcasting, then you did daily source code, you had a show, you had your own directory that you eventually gave to Apple when they wanted to actually put a directory into iTunes in 2006. I that story blew my mind. And but then we're doing it again now. You started a directory, you've got a co-founder in Dave Jones, and you're doing a show, podcasting 2.0, telling everybody about uh what's happening in podcasting. So I do have you noticed this like resonance that this is happening again?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:16

That was by design. Um so the only thing I knew well it it literally started from there when Apple started taking podcasts out of their index, when they started tinkering a bit with the API, I think it was the Apple News Podcast, which would you could get it from the from the iTunes database, but you couldn't get the original uh feed source or the original file source. Whoa, okay, so they're not delivering on they're not really doing something that's beneficial to everybody. Um I figured it was time, and that's when I called Dave. And actually I heard about this um above tech podcast of Marco, who was very dependent upon the iTunes database with overcast, he was talking about, was pointed out to me by uh Sir Vunderhelm in Finland, you know. So uh all these people kind of said, hey, hey, hey, something's going on here. And uh and I've been you know friends with Dave for now uh almost 14 years, but at you know, 12 years at that point, and we built all kinds of stuff together and they usually go like, Man, I got a great idea. What if we do this? And it was all around RSS, feed aggregation, you know, um OPML, which is outline or process, outline process markup language, um, decentralized social media, all these things we've just been trying, nothing really hit. We usually go, Yeah, cool idea, let's build it. And that means he would build it. And you know, I would break it. Our our series, our cycle is uh idea, Dave builds, Adam breaks, uh rinse and repeat. And and and so we both like it. You know, if he doesn't he doesn't build anything he doesn't want to build, you know, if he's like, I don't feel like building that, okay, oh I'll talk to you in a few weeks or whatever. It was just it was a great friendship. And then, but he had a lot of, he had certainly Dave had a lot of experience in feed aggregation, and so it was very natural to say, dude, why don't we just build our own index and this time instead of giving it away to someone like Apple, let's give it away to everybody. Let's make it free and available for everybody. Let's have an API that is kick-ass that we can build and build and build whatever developers want, and let's let's bring developers in and let's see if we can build some cooler apps and uh and you know, we'll we'll stand for something like you're you're in here, we're not gonna take you out unless it's for a very legitimate legal reason, and uh and just see where it goes. And then we'll add in this incentive model with this new thing called the Lightning Network. And of course, Dave went, okay, you know, and then so he started building it, and it took several months, and probably like every other initiative in the podcasting space, you know, we we set up 11 tiny servers that very slowly sucked everything out of Apple. You know, we literally just like slowly, slowly, until we didn't want to, you know, look, you know, spam them or anything or DDoS them, so we just wanted to look like users. So it took months, it took months to slowly get everything out of Apple's database. But by then, I'd set up podcastindex.social because Mastodon Activity Pub was now a thing, and this was a great meeting place, which was purposeful, but I didn't realize how good it would be. Uh, because typically these projects are on a GitHub, and you have discussions and issues and posts and arguments and flame wars, and putting it into social media timeline type idea where you can, you know, subscribe, uh easily mute or block or whatever, just made sense. And and people started showing up, cool people, like the Swedish trickler, Christopher Izim. Uh, you can again the nickname. And uh, and he he his specialty for his own reasons, he likes collecting RSS feeds. And so he would just say, Oh, I got like another 10,000 RSS feeds from French radio stations that's not even in the Apple Index. And then, you know, Marco from Overcast, he said, crap, you know, this is great. Um uh I'm still gonna use iTunes, but there's all kinds of things that the index would be great for. And so we started exchanging data, and he would help us out with iTunes IDs if he found something we didn't have. That's all automated now. Um, he doesn't use much of the index, but he does. And by the way, he also supports the index with with the with money. Um, and then all these cool dudes started, and dudettes, we have some women out there who started showing up and started building stuff and started building different kinds of podcast apps. And so from day one, the only thing I really replicated for sure purposefully was the podcast. I said, We we we need to have a podcast about what we're doing, and we'll talk about the people who were doing it. So that's all we did from day one is talked about the people who were building all this stuff and the discussions we were having. We went the uh the developers, there was a couple of weeks there in the beginning. Let's have a dev meeting on Saturday, and uh we'll all get on Jitsi and we'll talk about stuff. Predictable results. It faded after a couple of weeks. You know, it just doesn't work that way anymore. People have their own timelines, their own agendas, but we all have this let's make it all work together. And we have people that we don't get along with. You know, the people don't get along with me, people really don't like me. Um, but they're still in the project because they have just as much um right uh to influence and and move this this um this whole project forward however they want. Um and you know, and and by the way, anyone could fork off the whole thing. You you want to start your own index? Here's the database. Go ahead. Take, you know, we publish that. So we're completely open source, completely transparent. All the money that comes in goes to um paying for the servers and for our infrastructure. We've even helped some other people with their infrastructure just to make sure it was up and running so that you know we didn't lose something. We use it for that. And then all the Bitcoin that comes in, it stays on the node. We provide people with millions of satoshis of liquidity channels, opening them, closing them. And this is the as I said, is the best job I've ever had. And we don't take a pen. We pay taxes over the money comes in. The only thing we do is we take a little money out to pay the you know for the tax amount we have to pay. That's all. That's the only so you know it's completely above board, legit. Um all the learning that went into the early days, including giving credit, because the one thing that um in my enthusiasm I didn't do well is I didn't credit Dave Weiner properly. Uh and that pissed him off to such a degree that and he he's also kind of a guy who thinks he doesn't get credit for a lot of things, and he has to look at his own attitude and lifestyle, how you know, for the why those reasons are. Uh, but I I repent for that. I I it was like, hey, I created podcasting. Well, no, I didn't. And in fact, it wasn't just Adam and Dave, it was a whole bunch of people. Same thing here. It's not just Adam and Dave Jones. It's yes, we started it, we got it going, but all the I mean, namespace ideas, we didn't think of all that ourselves. We didn't come up with a lightning network, you know, we just cobbled some stuff together, and all these people are a part of it. Podcasting 2.0, we we are in the boardroom, we're running with scissors, we're we're a bunch of crazy people, and uh, and we're we're pirates. We are literally pirates, and we're putting stuff out there, and people are grabbing it, and what sticks sticks and what doesn't falls away magically. And you know, it's clear that this is here to stay. It's clear that the index has now become more important than ever because there is deplatforming going on. There's also demonetizing going on. So this is the place where you won't get deplatformed, you won't get demonetized. You'll meet a whole bunch of friends and fun people who can help you move your idea, your product, your podcast forward. Everybody's a part of it. Listeners, developers, producers, musicians, you name it, it's all in there. No one's better than the other. Um, and we have this common value flow that you can be a part of, which seems to be the thing that always keeps people engaged. I'm never I never feel left out because I get a satoshi a minute from the system.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:23

I love it. I love it, Adam. I love that it we tie it's come back to pirate radio. It's just we're all out there, everyone's jumping in, they're doing the stuff they want to do. You're not no one's being coerced to work on this project, no one's being tricked to do it by being paid. They're doing it because they see some value there, they see something that's important, and what's very cool is it brings together a lot of people who don't agree, may not even like each other. Don't, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:51

There are people who don't that they're people I don't like, people don't like me. For sure. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:58

And and we're all working together to build a cool podcast, you know, future for podcasting. And um, I love it. Thank you so much for spending so much time with me. I know we ran over. I honestly could do another three hours. I have so many things that I would ask you. So I really appreciate it. My pleasure, brother, and uh thanks for this little chat.