a16z Podcast - a16z Podcast: A Podcast about Podcasts

Episode Date: October 4, 2015

Podcasts and podcasting have been around a while, but seem to be going through a renaissance of sorts -- partly enabled by connected cars and other technologies. But how do we discover podcasts; is the ideal atomic unit the show, or an individual episode/topic? What makes a good podcast? And given their intimacy, how can brands and communities engage with podcasts? We discuss this and more in this oh-so-meta episode of the a16z Podcast-about-podcasts. And to help us do that, we invited longtime podcaster and radio host Roman Mars -- of the highly regarded design show 99% Invisible -- as well as fans (and now curators of) podcasts, Ryan Hoover and Erik Torenberg of Product Hunt. [Along with, of course, your a16z Podcast producers and hosts Sonal Chokshi and Michael Copeland.] The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments and certain publicly traded cryptocurrencies/ digital assets for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/. Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.

The content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. For more details, please see A16Z.com slash disclosures. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the A6 and Z podcast. Today we have three special guests. Roman Mars of 99% Invisible, an extremely popular podcast about architecture and design. And we also have Ryan Hoover and Eric Torrenberg of Product Hunt. Roman, Ryan, Eric, welcome to the A16Z podcast. Thanks for having me. Hey, how's it going? Thanks for having us. We're going to do a podcast about podcasts, which is a little bit meta.

I know. Roman, you were at Public Radio here in the Bay Area, and they made this shift. And did the shift kind of, was it conscious, did it happen to you or did you happen to it? I would say mostly it happened to me. 99% Invisible started as a little four and a half minute drop-in that KLW in San Francisco would put in their morning edition. And I did about four or five episodes. I had a Tumblr page, which just had a, you know, like where you could stream them and listen to them. And I would send them to my friends and say, you should listen to my new little show.

It's four minutes long. You'll like it. And they were like, I'm not going to listen to your fucking Tumblr. And they're like, you should put it as a podcast. And so I did. You know, I did it that way. It's just a distribution tool. And it really found an audience in the design and architecture world pretty quickly. I mean, I knew that it could occupy that space well because no one was doing the types of stories I liked. You know, I had this notion, I guess, that it would be out in the world, the larger than just being on KALW. And this was, you know, I just celebrated our fifth anniversary. So this was, you know, before the recent sort of ground swell of support for podcasting. Barack Obama just went on Mark Marin's podcast the other month. He went to his garage and recorded a podcast. That's amazing.

I mean, that's a really, that is a big deal. There's a few of these benchmarks. Like with, you know, with cereal and with Mark Marion, I mean, I think they do represent something really big, you know, people know podcasts more than they ever have before. But there really has been a steady growth for about 10 years. It's been slowly climbing. And I think it just hit that weird threshold effect where enough people know it that it feels like everyone knows it. Is it enough people know it in combination with enough people have the technology to do it and also to listen to it?

Yeah, I think it's all those things. I think technology is a huge factor. The major milestones technologically as I would place them, the sort of inflection points are iTunes ads podcast support. That happened in 2005. That was a big deal. At first, there were all these sort of open source written by fans, little applications to make podcasts happen. And when iTunes jumped in, it was a big deal. And that was in 2005.

Then the iPhone, which made it so that you had these things all the time. They weren't something you synced to your iPod. It was something that was like always on your phone. And I think the recent one is I just got a newish car. And for the first time ever, I have like Bluetooth syncing to my car. Now, when I walk into my car and turn it on, it automatically starts playing my phone. Right. I devoted my life to public radio.

I'm, you know, like, I listen to public radio all the time. I barely turn on the radio anymore. I know, it's crazy. I had a similar experience where I had a Volvo with 300,000 miles on, and I recently got a new car. I have just been, like, I had been hiding in a basement for the last 20 years, and, you know, and the world has opened up. It's crazy. And then also, you know, I think there's a notion that, and this is sort of a, I think, a, a side thing, which is I think people are used to curating their lives a little bit more with DVR and

Netflix. They're used to like programming their own entertainment. And podcasting doesn't seem like that big of a deal anymore. Like technologically a little too onerous in my opinion. But the mental leap to like, okay, I'm going to select my shows and download them and stuff. That is something that is part of your normal entertainment life now. And more people are starting to accept that. And so I think that's, I think that's one of the factors in there. People are more excited and willing, and now they have access to choose what they want to listen to or watch. I mean, back when network TV was around in the very, very early days, there were a couple of channels that you had access to. And then as I was growing up, I had still limited channels to watch on my TV, but now it's on demand.

It's YouTube. It's the video and the TV space and even the movie space as well is there's an explosion of creation happening there. And the same is absolutely true for podcasts. There's a little conflation happening here, though, because there's curation, and then there's sort of unbundling how the channels of podcasts are presented. Because the problem that I have is I am more interested in topics than I am in shows. So, I mean, actually, Romans, in all honesty, yours is the exception. I love your show. But I want to listen today to something like cereal. The next day I want to listen to something more fun. It's just sort of changing it around all the time. And so that problem hasn't been solved. Like how to find that stuff. Because I don't think people are really custom curating these perfect lists for themselves. I think only tech early adopters are doing that sort of thing. For some people podcasts, and right now discovery of podcasts for this use case or this type of person isn't great. But for some people, it's kind of like a blog post or a news article.

Podcasts episodes themselves are consumed in that way. And then over time, you might build an affiliation or a love of 99% invisible or some other show and then subscribe. But for others, kind of consuming some sort of topic, whatever mood they're in, that's the way that they want to consume podcasts, I believe at least. And so, no, you have a Twitter list of accounts that have surfaced different podcast shows, if I'm not mistaken. For this very reason, because that's how I started discovering them, because I can't find any place to do it otherwise. I would never pick a show about manhole covers, but you doing that, yes, I'm going to click and listen because I know your track record and how you approach a topic and think about it. But there is still this problem where there's this long tail. It reminds me the early days of the internet where there's so much content and you just have no idea how to find the good stuff. If you're looking for something unestablished especially. I'm so glad that you think it resonates with you from episode to episode because I do a show about boring things. Like on purpose, I am scared of the world in which you read the description and go, this is going to be about manhole covers?

you know, like, and judge me on that rather than on the track record where I'm like, well, but, but I'm going to make it interesting, like, trust me on this, you know. And so I think that a show like mine does a little worse in the world where you're like looking for that celebrity interview or looking for that, you know, like, there's a reason why my show is a, is a big podcast, but, you know, isn't a big like TV show. The atomic unit for me is the show, like the program, and I listen to a ton of podcasts. I can tell you as somebody who does a show, the things that work so far are basically being on other podcasts, the thing that introduced me to a new audience. Radio Lab featured my show about three and a half years ago, and it was a huge thing for me.

So that's the main discovery tool, is other podcasts, which is why these networks and stuff are formed. How do you explain that? Is it just this sort of DVR world? I mean, that everything is on demand, and or, Or is the audience that split? I think it's pretty split. It might cross over more as the awareness of podcast even gets greater. I mean, still, it's like 80% of the world still doesn't know what the hell this is. It still has a lot of room to grow. Podcast listeners are a diehard group, and they're really searching for good stuff,

and they're motivated to find it. It's funny you mentioned that because we were talking amongst ourselves of where is the best way to promote our podcast discovery platform? on podcast. You should be buying ads right now. That's actually pretty funny. This is like taking meta to a whole new level. This is a podcast about podcast. And now we're talking about promoting podcasts on podcasts. We were talking to Matt Lieber, co-founder of Gimlet, who's also done a ton to, you know, further popularized podcast. And he would say something along the lines of that the top 50 podcasts have something like 90% of the traffic of the share and that, you know, more and more

people are creating podcasts every day. And they're actually creating a show. about, you know, what are the gems that are not in the top 50? And that's what we're trying to do, too, is surface the ones that people don't find so easily. That's great. Because I feel like there's a lot of appetite for it. For a long time, and I don't know if this is still the case, but it was true at least a year ago. The most popular page on my website was the page where I recommend other podcasts. When you get into it, and I listen to regularly like a good 50 podcasts. When you get into it, you burn through them and you sort of feel like you start to have that same thing where it's like, I kind of want to listen to this type of thing. You know, it's not

necessarily your favorite or anything, but it's just, you know, like I need something light and more conversational or I need something more produced and, you know, narrative. So I think people are still really searching. I still think that the ground is pretty soft for creators to make new things that blow people away. For me personally, I listen to podcasts. I have a dozen that I've been listening to for years now. And, you know, I listen to it. And sometimes it comes up in conversation with friends in real life, but there's no place online really to discuss these types of things. Do you see any communities for podcasts or where do people go to geek out about podcasts today? Personally, I don't know. I mean, they're a little bit like they sometimes talk in my comments,

which I don't read, actually, just for my own sanity. Like, I can't create a thing without having that stuff in my head. And so I shut it out. Somebody else monitors it. You know, I think much to the chagrin, I mean, it was of cereal. Like, cereal did not welcome this. But, you know, that show, I think, was propelled because of online communities on Reddit trying to solve the murder. And they did not embrace this because they, because that stuff makes them super uncomfortable. But it was a huge factor.

I'm actually curious about live streaming, Mirkat, Periscope, other apps, and how, you know, there are some podcasters out there that, use those and actually record their podcasts with the community kind of participating. And is that, is that the future of podcasting or is that a big part of podcasting in the future? I think it could be. It's not a part of my future in podcasting, mainly because, you know, I do a show that takes me weeks to create. So I can't do it live with people around, A, because it would suck. But it just, it's not that type of beast. But the intimacy thing is huge to me. I mean, everything about the tone of show is about intimacy. It's about that kind of manipulation, mainly because of that reason of the talking about boring stuff, because I have to form a relationship to convince you that this

stuff is worth listening to, that I have to form that friendship. And then also, you know, I'm listeners supported, not 100% because I have ads and stuff now too, but in the beginning, the reason why the show took off in a lot of ways, I mean, my biggest PR stunt, basically, which didn't, I didn't mean it to be a PR stunt, but it just ended up that way, was I did this Kickstarter campaign that really got traction. I mean, really exploded. And it became the biggest journalism project in Kickstarter history at the time. I think that that's directly related to the intimate nature of the audience and host relationship. I think there was something about that that as it was growing, it was like, you're our guy. You know, like we support you. And there was

something about the personality connection. And then because of that, they're my boss. And I have a close relationship with them because I answer it to them. Public radio really prides itself on having a really close connection. I mean, public radio listeners, on average, listen to like four or five hours of public radio a day. I mean, it's absurd, actually. Like, the average listening of a radio is like 10 minutes, you know? So it's something we've always sort of counted on in public radio. I think podcasting just eclipses the public radio connection. I mean, I would rather have one podcast listener than 10,000 radio listeners. It's that important. You mentioned some manipulations that you sort of make when you're creating that connection with the, with the audience

and the podcast. So you'd mention voice. Like, do you actually actively modulate your voice a certain way? Sure. What kind of manipulations are you referring to? It's a performance. Like the way I'm talking now, I can't talk like this in real life because I'm projecting about six inches in front my face. You would never hear me in real life like this. And when we met a couple of weeks ago, I was expecting your voice to be like that. And believe me, if it had been, I would have been a little freaked out. It's impossible because I'm barely projecting. If I'm in front of a crowd, you have to talk bigger.

And if I'm, you know, if I'm at a party where there's a bunch of people, you know, I can't convey like this. So there's an aspect of that's a performance. And that's totally fine. I mean, this is something that's sort of anathema to public radio often because it's about you sound the way you're supposed to sound in a way. Like there's a real premium placed on that, which I think is nonsense. I think being a performer and being a good host is like, it's part of your job. I think it's a good part of your job. You know, you should be better than you are in real life on the air.

You know, I use music in such a way to sort of keep you. There's like the plinky, plunky, we call it thought core music to sort of, we're talking about something and you're supposed to stay interested. There's there's a ways that we use editing to keep the ear interested rather than have one person talk. We cut back and forth a lot. So sort of to make you make sure you're paying attention to those changes. We reiterate things in certain ways to make you aware of it. I guarantee you are doing something else while you were listening to me at the same time. You are definitely watching dishes. You are driving. You are doing something else. So I have to write it in such a way so that it works for that type of listener and works for the careful listener as well. Yeah. My question is the difference between a podcast versus a show or a radio. piece. And what you just described sounds to me like a lot of what those elements of a podcast are. Coming from the magazine world, for example, when blogging came out, there was some sort

of disdain with online and there was a distinction between print and online. And I think if you're smart, that distinction no longer exists. But in the podcast where it sounds to me like, at least from what I hear from other people, it still does. Will it always because of this, what you describe and how you built 99% invisible, do you think? I think it exists a little less now than it used to. So I think for a while, I only know this from my personal experience. So when people ask me what I do, I have a hard time talking about it in person. I basically engineered my life of talking to people and talking on the radio because I have a hard time talking to people in real life.

And so I'll say, you know, I'm a journalist or I'm a public radio producer. I still say that. In the past year or so, I've been saying, I'm a pocket. And that's something about five years ago. That would have killed me to say out loud. There's something about it that I think is already changing. And I think like, I think we owe a lot to cereal in that effect. I mean, that was just the biggest show. It didn't matter that it was podcast. It was just the biggest show in town. I don't think that there's this notion that it's risky to go into podcasting, that it's lesser. I think it feels like the most exciting thing. I think it's equivalent to the kind of the

startup world where you know you could have had a you know a great job at IBM or something but there's something amazing about doing something on your own and and working like crazy at it and building your own thing and I think that people across all media respect that and across the world at large too. Megan Quinn tweeted yesterday that podcasts are the future of content marketing there are just very few brands that are doing it super well right now but she pointed to a few that you know, Slack, for example, and I think she said a couple others that are doing a great job. Yeah, I mean, I worry about that a little bit. I mean, Slack, like Stewart Butterfield is a real podcast fan, so he wants to make a good podcast. As soon as it becomes just a brand exercise,

I worry a little bit about how much noise that will create in the system. But there's good stories in all kinds of places. So there's no reason why one that's a very, you know, branded show could not be fantastic. It would totally work in a lot of ways, but I think that it has to function the same way that good public radio stations work or good, you know, editorial shops in general as just like editorial independence and, you know, like a strong narrative voice and personality and all the things that make good shows will make those, you know, those shows created for that purpose, good too. I do remember a talk a few years ago at XOXO that Mark O'Ment gave on brands doing podcasts. His whole point was that for brands,

it goes back to this theme of intimacy. It's a whole new way to strike a connection with the people that want to engage with them. Now, again, the question is whether those people actually want to engage with the brand. And also, frankly, I think that we have to expand the definition of what is a brand. Because these days, I feel a lot of brands are collectives of things that go beyond the traditional notion of a product and a company and a logo. Yeah, because of the intimacy, it's non-transferable. So you're going to connect to that host or that producer. And so in a way that puts a person in the way of the brand or the mission of a podcast that has to do with that as a goal.

Basically, the brand has to be cool enough to allow that person to kind of speak for them but not really and form that connection and, you know, be that proxy. And so the brands that are cool enough to do that will have good podcasts. I think that's certainly possible. Like, I mean, as a producer for a long time, I mean, I love these types of challenges. is. I like making interesting things out of boring things. How do you make something interesting? That its purpose, you know, from the very beginning is not necessarily about art. It's about commerce. And how do you turn that into a work of art? Making a good show is extremely hard and maintaining it. It's ridiculously hard. The podcast form, as we've discussed, is kind of unique. And Roman, over your time doing this and also doing public radio, what have you found in terms of the elements of a good segment?

like what works and and really for you at least what doesn't i designed my show to play into the intimacy so even the the micing the tone of it is about intimacy and so that's one thing whereas when you're broadcasting at large you tend to speak in different terms like i use second person a lot i just say you a lot which is not in broadcast parlance like really common because i do feel like the communication is one to one because you're listening to it solo. You listen to radio solo, but there's something about the idea of the broadcasting medium that makes you think of a group of people rather than one person. I think that works.

I think that there's a transparency in terms of your interests, I think, really shines through. So there's a reason why a lot of the podcasts are very nerdy in general, not just boring, but they're about a passion, about, you know, exposing a passion. And you really pick up on that and you get it when it's not real. Like you pick up on it when it's not real. Because of the no time constraints, I used to work against a clock all the time. And so a huge part of my job as a producer was cutting to make time or, you know, filling to hit a time.

And now I don't do that. The problem with that is if you aren't disciplined and you come into podcasting, new, your inclination is to make a two-hour-long podcast because there's no one telling you to stop, you know? I don't think we haven't. I think as long as we've gone is an hour. I think Eric and I may have done that. Guilty.

So there's that freedom to be off of broadcast clock. But we should do is like as it professionalizes and as you sort of want to craft your show more. And, you know, your show doesn't always, like I love shows that Ramble. If I love to spend time with people, like as an audience member, I like to spend time with them. I don't have a hard stop time that I'm looking for. But like to serve your audience really well is to serve the story and not necessarily listen to them when they say, I just want you to keep talking and talking and talking. And so you edit to just serve the story. And that's a great thing, but you have to be disciplined enough to know what serving the story means, you know.

And I'm trying to think other things that work. But a lot of it to me is is tone and interest and just that genuine sort of connection is really the guiding principle for me. How do you get feedback for your podcast? I mean, you have some data on listeners, which is kind of vague in the podcast world relative to metrics like our website, but how do you get feedback? How do you know you're doing something good? I always get kind of confused by the talk of how podcasts don't have good data because I worked in radio and we just sort of agreed on a lie together about what ratings meant.

It's not like better data. it's just an older lie. And so Nielsen ratings and Arbitron ratings for radio and stuff, I think those are way more problematic than my downloads. I mean, sure, there's a there's a download and you don't know if someone listened to it. But so what? Let's just all agree that that's it. And then we can measure the efficacy of the ads. That's why there's all these product codes and stuff like that in your ads. And you measure those and you start to come up with a good rule of thumb for how this all works. And I'm less worried about that than other people, mainly because I've been in old media. And that data blew.

I mean, it was terrible data. This is way better data. When you come from the web world and you do get data. I mean, God, when we were at Wired, I was glued to chart beat. Like, you know, where did people drop off? Like, what happened next? And so for me, it's very frustrating to not know a lot of those things. And tonight I'm able to answer those questions when people ask. And I always say, well, it's early days of podcasting technology analytics yet. Right. And, and, and it's, it's hard to tell. I mean, to your point, you're right. Like, at some point, everyone agrees to tell the same lie, but the point is it has to be the same exact lie. Yeah. Which is what Nielsen was. When it's something where you have a hodgepodge of very different tools and one tool will measure RSS and one won't, and another will

include demographics and another won't. You're just, there's just a lot of insight, I think, that people miss. I think that's true. There's definitely tools that can be made. And you definitely hear, when you hear someone talk about their download numbers and you're kind of like, no, I don't think I count downloads the same way you count downloads and stuff like that. But I tend to go in with that, you know, like I, somebody sells my ad, like I work with PRX and Radiotopia and they sell my ads for me and stuff like that. But I also do them, I do deals like that on my own because sometimes I can get better deals. And I like that part of it. And I just use bluster. I mean, I just sort of say, because I only put ads at the end of my show.

Because artistically, that's just what I want. I don't have. a problem with it with other people. I don't love it with other people, but it's just my choice. And people just say to me, well, we've been trying to only buy mid-roll and pre-roll ads because we find that they're the most effective. And I was like, no, you just think they're the most effective. But if you advertise with me, I will prove to you that mine are better than anybody else is. It always works. You talk about finding an audience, but how do advertisers who want to advertise at the end of a show about boring things finds you or decide that, hey, that would be great for our brand. Oh, they just like the show. They're a fan. Okay. In the show, when the show started

about five years ago, I felt like I was on to something special because I'm, I'm a radio person. So, like, when I go to other cities, I visit their radio stations, you know, because I'm a nerd. But, like, you know, like I hang out with other public radio people. And in the beginning, you know, no person in management knew what 99% Invisible was, but all the interns knew. And I was like, okay, I'm on to something here. And so what's happened over time is that, that these deals often happen because there's one person in the marketing department that's just a super fan. And they just push it forward. And that's what ends up happening. And that these corporations are made of people. One of my first advertisers was Facebook. Facebook doesn't advertise

with anybody. Why would they? You know, they have the biggest platform for a lot of things. And so there's no need. But the Facebook design team was just like, we want to be associated with you. We would like, we'd like to help because I'm a little bit in the public radio. radio world where it's like to support me is not only an act like a transaction and an act of commerce, it's also like a donation and this affinity thing that makes you feel good. So Ryan and Eric, as listeners of podcasts and now as curators and active discoverers of podcasts, from the audience perspective, what do you guys think makes your podcast work or the podcast that you listen to work so well or not work so well?

What's interesting about podcasting is unlike radio, you had a limited number of stations to listen to or shows to listen to. Now there's a ton of podcasts out there. And just like the internet, you can now find a niche, like a tiny little seemingly small little place for you to geek out about some sort of topic or some sort of thing or some personality that you're really attracted to. And so podcasting, just the nature of the internet in general, podcasting is this place where you can find all kinds of shows out there. And it may not be massive like serial. but there's probably some niche podcast out there that you might personally love or maybe a group of people like yourself love. And that's what I like about podcasts. I'm personally really big into a lot of the startup podcasts. Like startup by Gimlet is a big favorite of mine. This weekend startups by Jason Calicanus. I've watched since episode one.

And I think he's on episode 500 something. It's insane. And a number of other podcasts, I'm a big fan of. What do you think? I'm also a fan of shows that allow me to get into worlds that I wouldn't get into otherwise. So, for example, Mark Marin, you know, with actors and comedians, and long form with journalists, I feel like I'm a fly on the wall of two people having a very intimate conversation.

And the more authentic and, you know, intimate and honest, it's almost like they don't even think that they're being recorded. Yeah. And so I love just being there with them and getting to see the world at such a top place that I couldn't get to otherwise. I'll give you two of mine, cooking issues. This guy Dave Arnold, who wrote a cocktail book out of New York, what's all like food tech, you know, nerdiness.

And I like listening to Welcome to Nightvale, just because it's so funny and weird. I love that one too. I have a huge list of podcasts, as you mentioned earlier, Ryan, on Twitter that I maintain. And the ones that I actually like the most are super indie, very raw. Like, you know, literally there's like three women

talking about their dating adventures in New York City. Like, that's one of my favorite podcasts. How is the redesign of the San Francisco flag going? It's going okay. we just sort of, it's a little bit ahead of itself. So we, the TED Talk came out where I talked about how bad the San Francisco flag was. And then we had to sort of put up a page just to collect people. And so right now, Autodesk and I are kind of trying to figure out the plan for how to make this all work. There was an article in the newspaper last weekend about it. And there was some good response and some extremely negative response. I know, I think that it's going to happen. I think it's going to happen. And clearly manhole. covers are your next target for redesign but yeah i'm i'm hopeful i don't think anyone really loves the old one which is why which is why it'll work it's it's fun i i've been involved and now since the ted talk came out people send me all about redesigns of flags and so it's an interesting

world to be a part of and people want me to weigh in on it i was getting begged to buy people in new zealand to like please comment please do something about new zealand and then i was getting really and then i was getting emails last week about um from san francisco and say, just fuck off about our flag. Which is dropping all right? Well, that's actually another neat example of where the community thing comes into play. One of my favorite things is when people actually,

when they listen to our podcast, someone drew a diagram based on it, not just write a post, but like someone actually drew a diagram saying, well, here's how I envision the big data stack based on this podcast. I love seeing those kinds of products, like physical artifacts that people can talk about,

which is one of the things I love about your podcast. So one last question to wrap up then is coming back to this theme of intimacy and kind of connecting it to tech again because Roman, you talked about and other people have written quite a bit about how smartphones played a really significant role potentially in this so-called podcast Renaissance. And I think we have a tendency to view a smartphone as like a piece of tech in our hands, but there's a whole level of intimacy that comes with voice. And I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts, all of your thoughts on how that plays out more. beyond what we've already talked about, I'm trying to get at other ways we might create intimacy through tech, whether it's through voice, is it the smartphone, is it the intimacy of the car, is it building a community? Like, what are the things that sort of create the sense of intimacy? I think there's a number of things that can create more intimacy online. I think live streaming,

as I mentioned earlier, I think has a lot of opportunity to create that intimate kind of conversation because it's a participatory media is what Ben Rubin from your tech kind of describes it, where you actually change the course of the narrative and you are actually interacting with the podcast or the person on the camera. But then there's also like virtual reality and technology like that. We have yet to see how that will actually change the way we interact with people online,

but I can imagine that being extremely intimate because it's probably going to be the closest thing to being right next to someone online through digital means. On the community front, we've seen podcasts like death, sex, and money, you know, solicit recordings from people and then put them in their own podcast as well. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Roman, how about what's your view on this? Because I know you have such a wonderfully, highly produced approach. How do you think about this? I mean, you described some of your

techniques earlier. I like that connection. I mean, I definitely get ideas from from people. I can't really incorporate them in real time, but I think that there's something there to have that conversation. And I rely on Twitter and Facebook for those things. And I love that part of things. I like interacting with the audience. As this develops, I think the hosts that are going to really do well with this are the ones that are going to embrace all these points of connection with people, and it's going to be just part of your job as a host. I mean, I think voice works because you don't have earlids. It's literally in your brain. It's happening in your brain. And, you know, I'm getting in there, and there's a way that we can paint the picture as talkers. I completely

control your imagination in those moments. And there's something about that that is just super powerful. That's one of the reasons why I like doing something so visual, like covering architecture and design on the radio is the perversity of that connection is because I know that people have real visceral reactions to the way things look. People look at modern buildings and they hate them, you know, and they love Victorians and Gothic architecture and stuff. But if I can tell you the story of that building before you see it. When you see it, you'll love it. There's something about the power of knowing the story of something that just transforms the way you think and observe things. I've never seen anything like that. There's no other way of communicating that

works in that same way. You know, I just hope that the voice part is always part of what I do. I want to say, Roman, just keep doing what you're doing and we will keep listening. Don't listen to the naysayers about the San Francisco flag. Forge ahead by God. And do it in New Zealand, too, for that matter. And, uh, you know, I hate manhole cover. So have at them as well. Ryan and Eric, uh, we will keep product hunting with you. And, um, thank you guys all so much for joining us. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.