Pablo Torre Finds Out - Share & Gossip & Tell with Wyatt Cenac and Charlotte Wilder

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

Are sports just gossip with analytics? How did a man named Matt Farley manipulate the music streaming economy? And Google’s new A.I. tool is coming for our podcasting jobs. (It's legitimately terrifying.) Plus: bird deterrents, license plates, poop songs, WAGs, Stefon Diggs, and your sister. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Charlotte Wilder and Pablo Torre, you are wonderful people. Someone put some piano under this. Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraff Kings Network. Cool sweatshirt, Wyatt. Thank you very much. What is the Chipmunk holding? A golf ball.

Classic. Duh. I don't know. anything about golf, but I do like the idea of little critters stealing golf balls. Me too. Yeah. I'd watch that sport. But it is the thing that Augusta does not have squirrels famously. Is that true?

Jenks. Damn it. This is going to be a weird episode. But here's the golf digest story about Augusta. There are no birds, squirrels, insects, or any other living creature, indigenous to planet Earth at the masters. Nowhere on the property. Don't they bring in the azaleas, too?

I think they do. I think they card in the flowers. Oh. And they pipe in the bird sounds because there are no birds. Right. Right. Wait, so here's the thing. I've, as I said, the only golf I'm interested in is critters stealing golf balls. So I've never seen the masters. I didn't realize that there's bird noises.

They pipe in the crowd noise like Lucas Oil Stadium with the cults, except it's birds. That's true. Augusta. These are the things that rattle around in my brain from a decade. of blogging. It's like, are the birds sounds at Augusta real? My column, you know? The whole birds are real movement.

Do you think that sort of was born out of people being at the masters and being like, I hear birds, but I don't see any birds? Birds aren't real. A CBS spokesperson has insisted that, quote, the birds you hear are live and they are indigenous to Augusta, end quote. But many remain skeptical on account of the lack of wildlife that, anyone has ever seen. Okay, so that doesn't necessarily say that those are birds.

They're just saying the birds you hear are live. They're saying the sounds you hear are from a living thing. Could it be that those birds are just Michael Winslow from the Police Academy movies? They've given him an apartment at Augusta National so that he is now indigenous to Augusta, because he lives on the land and they just have him recording bird noises. Really, that makes you think. Yeah, I've been up for 72 hours. Have you?

No. Okay, good. Also, one thing in defense, not in defense of Augusta, because good Lord, but it is harder to prevent birds from landing in trees than it is to smoke out. I mean, they made a whole movie about this, didn't they? What? Isn't Caddyshack? Like, you can smoke out groundhogs and stuff.

You can, like, get rid of squirrels more easily than, like, clearing the skies, I would imagine. I know at the airport, they have something, I think it's called, like, a zon gun. Whoa. Yeah. A zon gun? A zon gun. Oh, here we go. Found it.

Yeah. At birdbarrier.com. Wow. Zon scare gun, a lightweight portable propane-fired cannon amidst automatic thunderclaps that deter birds and other nuisance to wildlife. It's got real genocidal. Real quick at the end of that sentence. But also that, I feel like that probably wouldn't be good

for golf to have, like, the sound of thunder. Some guys about to tee off and it's just like, boom! Yeah. It was like, you just ruined Scotty Schiffler's Day! And that's saying something, because he got arrested earlier. Yeah, he was totally fine with that. It was the Zon gun that really

just was like, that's the bridge too far. 178.50. That's how much a Zongun Yeah, yeah, yeah. $178,000 or $178,000. What a business. What a business where it's plausible that it's $178,000. Can you see it?

They've only sold three. Yeah. Yeah. LaGuardia, JFK, and Nantucket. Well, I was going to say, $178 seems like too low a price point. I'm surprised there aren't more people with Zon guns. Like, if there are so many people with drones, I kind of feel like, for $178, I'm sure you can buy a really nice drone.

Why aren't there people who are just like, I got a zon gun instead? Why has this episode of Sherantel turned into a zon gun ad? Today's episode of Pablo Tori finds out has been brought to you by zon guns. Do you have birds you want to get rid of or do you just love the sound of thunder? Try zon guns. Use code Pablo for 20% off your zon gun. Propane tank not included. Wyden Charlotte, you have not been on Shareontel together.

Until now. We did it. All right. Show's over. Roll credits. Okay. This has been fun. I want to start with Wyatt.

All right. Why would you bring us today? So today, I brought a story that I read in the New York Times. I believe they call it the paper of record. The old gray lady? Yes. Yeah. What a weird name.

I know. The old gray lady. Yeah. That's actually what this episode is about. I like my newspaper is gender neutral. Also color neutral Like why gray I mean I get the newspapers

Were gray But that also feels like Oh it's dour It's sad I just like the idea of an old lady In her attic Who's like kind of sallow And she's just like

Dolen out news Yeah She's the person who knows Tossing Papes out the window She knows everything She's on top of Everything that's happening In City Hall

Is just some old lady in her attic Yeah So I Today I wanted to ask you all Do you know about a musician? Are you familiar with the music of Matt Farley? Of course not. So Matt Farley is a musician, and I assume you both listen to music on streaming,

on the Spotify's and a Zoom, perhaps? A minisk player for me. Oh, okay, you're a minisk. But for streaming music fans, Matt Farley has made, I believe, over 24,000 songs that you can listen to, download, share, and he's made a lot of money making 24,000, or over 24,000 songs. Yes, the number in this New York Times story indicates that in 2023, Matt Farley's music, looking this up, earned him just shy of $200,000.

But as Wyatt, I think we'll explain here, one half penny at a time. Yeah, making money on Spotify, not that easy. Right. It's way, like, people always talked about, oh, the music business in general, you didn't make a lot of money. The idea was, like, record sales, you typically made a dollar on every album you sold. If you were an artist by yourself, you got that $1. If you were in a group, you split that $1 between the five of them. Wow.

The rate, though, on Spotify now, to be. clear is now apparently per Matt Farley, roughly a third of a cent per stream. So now then keep that in mind that a third of a cent per stream and he still made 200K. So that's a lot of f*** streams. What are the songs? So the writer of this article is a journalist named Brett Martin and he had discovered that there was a song about him on Spotify that was titled, Brett Martin, you a nice man, yes.

And he listened to the song, which included a phone number to call. Brett Martin, he's my phone number. 6.3, 644.040.048. And the phone number was a phone number of one Matt Farley. And so being a journalist who has questions, after hearing this song and by his own admission, he listened to it a lot. After hearing the song, he figured maybe I should call Matt Farley because he's trying to find me. That said, he only discovered this 11 years after the song had been made. So he was like, oh, Matt Farley, he put a message in a bottle, and I'm finally getting it.

He calls Matt Farley, who has no idea who he is. No. Which is a real bummer if you're like the one person who has made a musical tribute to my image has forgotten me over the course of 24,000 songs. And by the way, also about 80 different pseudonyms that Matt Farley, it turns out, has made music underneath. And that kind of gets into one of the things about both Matt Farley and this particular style of making music on Spotify, which is as one individual person, if you made 24,000 songs, it would raise alarms over at Spotify. Matt Farley is just one of many individuals who are making

large amounts of music, just volume music makers, but they have to create all these pseudonyms to do it. And the whole idea is that they're making this volume music with the idea to monetize it. And so they have 60, 70 different pseudonyms making, in Matt Farley's case, he's making albums of 50 songs doing this monthly with the idea that, all right, all of my stable of artists who are all just me, are bringing in all this money. So he is both the shady record label executive and the artists at the same time who are not making enough money. Yeah, he is Joe Jackson, Michael, and also the record label. Yes, exactly.

Yeah. And so all of this, I want to be clear. All of this is about fundamentally search engine optimization. Yes. Which is the thing all of us know, we talk about it on the show a lot, but just the idea of the internet was set up for discoverability on some level. And in the world of music streaming on Spotify, you have people entering search terms. And then what comes back, of course, it turns out at a staggering statistical rate is Matt Farley's work. Yeah.

And so he's written to just game the search engine of this. Apparently 600 songs inviting different named girls to the prom. Like 500 songs, they're just marriage proposals, like proposal plus name that someone would find. Do you know what this is? This is the modern day equivalents of going to a gift shop on vacation and finding your name on the license plate keychain. A thing I never did. Wyatt? They didn't have Wyatt?

Wyatt was never a popular name. They never had Charlotte either. They never had Pablo. Never. You know many Pedro license plates? I held in my hand wondering why my parents had to do this to me this way. So many Charlie's. I'm just staring at wistfully.

But that's sort of what this is, right? Yes. Yeah. It's 100% that. And that is, but it's a weird thing where we're not every day buying like shi little license plates. Like that's not something that, oh, on my way to work. I need a shi-lid little license plate.

Okay, that's a good point. This feels so different where it's like, well, if you're in Atlantic City and you need a little chotchky, you want a chachky with your name on it. If you're on a road trip, you're not like, oh, you know what's going to get us through this road trip

is a stack a little license plate. Speak for yourself, Wyatt. These shi-lch-lil-lil license plates are woven into the fabric of my life. But there is a Chachky economy embedded in Matt Farley's musical career because the guy also, another thing he has figured out cleverly

to do is perform 70 versions of the song We Wish You a Merry Christmas but substitute foods for figgy pudding and he's just like creating iterations on iterations and apparently his work in the realm of poop because he has

a whole musical identity the odd man who sings about poop, puke and pee, He's earned almost half a million dollars from various platforms on just that specific content alone. Yeah. That's that's toddlers, right? That's geared for toddlers. That's toddlers who are like yelling poop into the Alexa.

I presume so. But also what this reminds me of, of course, is like the way in which every year, right, what do Americans Google when it's time for the most watched and consistent? cultural event of the year. What time does the Super Bowl start? Yes. And so every, all of these publications will put out a blog that says the time of the Super Bowl because America is searching for this. And so it is about like, there is a logic to this that is find your audience where they

are going. Right. As opposed to like try to convince people to come over here to watch perhaps an original curiosity driven podcasts. with journalism at its heart. No, I want to go to where you're searching and I'll get my third of a cent there. Right. But what also feels weird about that is,

again, it's not a shi little license plate. It's a sort of landscape that is built on creativity and imagination. And so there's, at least for me, this more larger philosophical question of, what is a song then? If your whole goal is, okay, I know that people often shout out poop to the Alexa.

I'm going to write a song about poop, and I'll write 500 other songs about poop so that I can grab, I can just grab that little corner of audience. Is that a song? Well, Matt Farley proclaims himself to be in this article. The greatest songwriter of the 21st century. So, fuck you, Wyatt. Does he believe that's what he's doing?

Or does he just, to me, it seems like he has found a way to monetize things people are already doing. He's making money off of things that are already happening that because of the internet and how smart, like everything's connected, you Google something, you Google your name, this song comes up, you click. Like, he is capitalizing on things we already do. Well, it's also kind of like algorithmic weird al, because he has these parodies. But in this case, it's almost, it's more like, I think this is why it's point. It's moving away from parody as an art form and parody as a way of fooling a search engine into playing something. And so he'll have songs like, this girl is on fire, parentheses, quick, grab a fire extinguisher, exclamation point. Right.

You know, you'll also find searching for Sugar Band, which is a title of a Matt Farley song. If you're looking for searching actually for a Sugar Man by Rodriguez, which is an actual thing. Right. And there's something about that that, you know, I listen to The That Girl Is On Fire, Quick Put Her Out. If I saw somebody on stage with a piano doing that, I would think, oh, that's a funny bit. it's weird though when the whole thing is not, it doesn't feel like it's about the audience as much as it's about the algorithm

and the algorithm is now the audience. Right. And not simply that the algorithm is the audience, but your way to succeed isn't so much about pleasing the algorithm as it is finding this little loophole that you can exploit and monetize. And so it's not, so in a world where like,

everybody else is like, oh, I'm making music because this is, I had a breakup and this is my song about my breakup. And it's just me trying to get my feelings out through sound. Here's a person who's like, oh, but there's a little, there's a little loophole in there where I could make a shit ton of money. And if I just exploit that, and there's now just an ecosystem of loop oil, loop oil, we all know loop oil. Lube oil. Yeah, that's olive oil's cousin, loop oil. Yeah.

Yeah. But it does feel like one of these sorts of mining for resource dynamics online, that is fundamentally toxic. Yes. Speaking of loop hoils. Yes. It's about who can be more clever than the rule makers. It reminds me of how CAPTCHAs work now that I think about it. Are you familiar?

So you know how I am not a robot? Yes. I'm not a robot. identify every motorcycle in these things. You know, what's really happening there, which blew my mind when I discovered this, is that we are not proving that we are humans. The point isn't to validate only a human can come to this website. The point is that they're getting free human labor to flag images, to train artificial intelligence and algorithms. So we are teaching the computer, double-checking their work by saying, motorcycle, motorcycle, motorcycle. So we're doing labor for them,

Under the guise of there's another function that you've got to do a test you got to pass according to these rules to use this site. Those dirty little birdies. The ecosystem, it's so messed up that it rewards 24,000 songs about poop. And yet, like, a struggling artist in Nashville trying to make it can't get paid by people listening to their music. Right. And not only that, that struggling artist is now also being, incentivized to make music to make poop songs. Like that if you want to be a musician today, and this kind of gets back to that philosophical question of what is music,

if the idea is that success in music is to be like Matt Farley and just be a volume shooter, then the notion of being a musician is be a volume shooter. There's a musician named Damon Krakowski. He is in this band called Galaxy 500. and he writes a lot about this stuff because one day he discovered what his most popular song on Spotify was. It doesn't sound like most of their music. It was something that, to hear him tell it, they kind of wrote it as a joke because somebody at the label was like,

oh, could you make something that's a little more like radio-friendly? So they made this radio-friendly song. It was put on an album. They never thought anything of it. He then goes on Spotify and sees that that, is their biggest song because it winds up being the thing that when you put on like whatever sort of Spotify radio, that song gets lumped in with other like pop songs that fit that kind of that thing. And the way he talks about it is like if you're an up-and-coming musician,

you could then say out of desperation, well, I'm not going to be true to myself. if that's what is succeeding, I should just make that. I should just make a bunch of music that sounds like it could be whatever radio, like Kings of Leon radio or whatever the hell it is. Like I should just make something in that vein. Or better yet, you should be making like Matt Farley and producing a song about Wyatt Sannack. Get out. Wyatt Sinek, you are dad.

talented comedian and actor and writer and I really respect you. Oh my goodness. Quiet Senac, your all-time world famous man. Dennis Show. I take back everything I said. I'm like, this slaps. Yeah, this is music. This is, the philosophical question, no, this is Matt Farley, you should be making more Wyatson-A-S-Songs.

Where is my 50-song album? Okay, an important question I have about this whole thing. Is Matt Farley making this Wyatt-San-A-Song or is this AI too? Or is he making and singing every single song? Because that, like that took him maybe 10 minutes, which is still 10 minutes. How dare you present that? Whoa, yeah, I think he. I think he was.

You know how much craftsmanship it takes to make a license plate like that song? Okay. You're making it sound like he simply just changed out the letter. I'm just jealous. I don't have one. Okay? I'll say it. We did look.

Neither of us have a Matt Farley license. Which is big. Charlotte Wilder and Pablo Torre. You are wonderful people. Someone put some piano under this. And I like you very much. Put this on Spotify and let's all get. rich, it doesn't matter if it rhymes or not.

Thank you. Yeah. I really appreciate that. It means a lot. That is worth at least two-thirds of a set. Charlotte doesn't have a song named after her, but she does have a new podcast. Thank you so much. It is called The Sports Gossip Show, hosted by Madeline Hill and I.

Madeline, we both had... You need a theme song because I know a guy. Yeah. Tell them that Farley, get on it. She has an amazing substack called Impersonal Fowls, which is sports gossip. And we connected and realized that we both care about the same thing, which is who are these people that you're watching? Because you know they've got families, you know they're dating people. And a lot of times because they're famous, they're dating other famous people.

Or there's just all of this stuff that goes on around games. And I have a few questions for you guys, just about the newspeg for you. this is that Bravo is developing a reality show about the wives and girlfriends, Wags, as we say in the sports gossip is. The sports goss. Yeah, the sports goss universe. Which is just a group chat with you, me, involuntarily, my part, and Ryan Cortez. Yeah, right.

Just like. It's just me and Cortez talking about love is blind. The people.com headline, by the way, is in big text, Bravo developing reality show about Kansas City Chiefs, Wags, comma, still determining final cast members. parentheses, exclusive source. Yes. All of that sounds like search engine optimization. It would have been search optimization, whatever,

if they had put in Taylor Swift and Brittany Mahomes will not be in it. Because Taylor Swift, dating tight end, Travis Kelsey and the Kansas City Chiefs, Britney Mahomes, wife of Patrick Mahomes, both figures who are very interesting to a lot of people. But what I think is so interesting about this, and really smart of the people who are going to be involved, which is McCole Hardiman's partner, Shariah Gordon, is that she has done a very good job of, as all this attention has come to the chiefs because of Taylor Swift,

because she is bringing in this new audience to football, she is taking this spotlight and making it something of her own, which I think is very savvy. Absolutely. But look, it is. hilarious that it's like, you searched for Taylor Swift, you're getting McCull Hardman. Look, it's smart. It's, it's, it has, it has. It's the loophole a little bit. Yeah. Correct. We're in the loophole era. This is our, this is our loophole era. And if you can take that loophole

and make some money off it, and look, maybe the show is going to be really good. Like, I will watch it. I also think that something that has always been fascinating to me, is that sports is, for a long time, I've said, socially acceptable gossip for men. Yes. But that has been confined to talking about it, using language that makes it sound more mathematical, more scientific, much more complicated than it actually is,

so that it still sounds important and serious. All of the gossip stuff that Madeline and I talk about on the show is stuff that first take is talking about. We're talking about Aaron Rogers crawling during the Vikings Jets game. We're just also talking about all of the things that surround that outside of it in a way that can be inviting

to people who don't know what triple coverage is. There is a song by Matt Farley about that, I presume, about triple coverage. Definitely. I'm going to explain triple coverage now. Yeah, great. I do think, though, another way of seeing it is these celebrities who are really only known to dudes, demographically speaking,

like this obscure football player, McColl Hardman, right? Now he's a character with a new demo to access, a new quadrant to access because the Taylor Swift effect and because the big tentization of sports has made it so that these guys are just celebrities in general, as opposed to our version of soap operas. But even that, when you say our versions of soap operas, the sort of male version of soap operas, my mind immediately goes to professional wrestling. And I feel like so much of those like 80s storylines, 90s storylines in pro wrestling, it was always, there were so many that were wrapped around love and relationships where it was like, macho man Savage is going to marry Miss Elizabeth.

And you have these guys who are posturing on this idea of like, I'm a man, I'm macho, but are so invested in like, they're going to get married? And is he going to wear tight pants? Like he's literally in his underwear with a tie and she's in a dress. And it's just like, this is the most beautiful thing ever. Pro wrestling, which has a very male audience, is evidence that men also want this information and these storylines. And I think that it's often seen as a very feminine trait to want to know who these people. are on the field. Is that a good guy or a bad guy?

But the idea that like Stefan Diggs and Josh Allen are on the outs right now and have been is a function of a behind the scenes interpersonal conflict. Yes. Rumors suggest that it may even involve, I don't know, some romance in some way or another. As a journalist, I shouldn't explain further. I'm not a journalist if you want, I'll explain it. Yeah, text it to what. I'll explain it in a song.

Poop-p-pap-bib-de-poop. Poop. But the point. is that we just saw the bills and the Texans play each other and the backdrop and the post game, the analysis of look at the side ice Stefan Diggs is giving to his former quarterback, look at the stakes of this game. That was actual soap opera shit on sports programming. Yes. And it reminded me of my favorite video, I think, of any sort of sports, even vaguely sports extraction, which is when Stefan Diggs, who is just a fascinating character, it turns out,

was on the Vikings. The Vikings did one of those, like, team locker room sort of poles, and it went like this. What guy on this team would you least like to date your sister? What the hell? Diggs. Why digs?

Man, no. We're going to leave it like that. No. What guy on this team would you least like to date your sister? Oh, Stefan Diggs. Why digs? He's just, he's crazy. He's just outrageous.

Don't know what he's going to say. Just don't know what to expect every day. So he couldn't date my sister. What's on his team would you least like to date your sister? Leastly like to date my sister digs 100%. Why digs? Because he's just, he's not a guy that you want to bring home to your parents. Like you don't want your sister to bring him home to your parents,

so therefore she can't date him. What guy on this team would you least like to date your sister? And I might add, you're starting to be the runaway favorite for this. Would nobody want me to date this? I'm a great guy. I'm actually a great guy. There's actually, it seems to be, a few guys that don't think that. You don't feel differently about me?

Yeah. They just don't know me well enough as well as it is. It's to appearance. All right, who don't I want to date you about sister? Weatherly. Why weatherly? Because he's ugly. I knew that was coming.

That was the problem. I mean, that's the catiest stuff I've ever heard. Also, none of those players were like, you know what, I've got to be honest. My sister's her own person. She has her own agency. I trust her to make the decisions that are best for her. If there is a player on this team that she connects with and they love each other and support one another, then who am I to stand in their way?

She's an adult. She makes her own decisions. I'm not some dictator telling her how to live her life. There is still an undercurrent of that masculine role you play where you protect your sister. And you own her. You own her. She's not her. She's not her own woman. But something throughout all of this still, even as, you know, these sports shows are talking about, is there a fight between Josh Allen and Stefan Diggs?

One thing nobody does is, is speak in a way that lets in casual viewers who might be interested. It is very hard to find a sports show where, like, if you're my mom who follows sports because I work in sports, but doesn't have the encyclopedic knowledge of who everybody is, nobody identifies the characters. And it is as simple as saying Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes instead of just saying Patrick Mahomes. And all of this language, I feel, is built to keep people out, to keep casual fans out. and I think we saw this more than anything with when Taylor Swift started dating Travis Kelsey. And like, there isn't a show people could really listen to and know what's happening because so much of the way we talk about sports and sports media, at least,

is based in the lore and the knowledge that we already have, which has to be built over decades. And I know this, because when I started working in sports, I had not been a sports. I was not a fanatic. I liked my teams. And so I remember what it felt like to try to have to learn this. And I was blogging for USA Today at the time. I would blog for like 12 hours straight. It would be like, Carmelo Anthony's wife had a baby post the Instagram.

And I'd be like, okay, Googling Carmelo Anthony, Googling his wife, Googling. Like, there is no way. The barrier to entry is so high. So part of what I hope this show does, the sports gossip show, is let people in in a way that they can, then start to become a part of those news cycles because I think a lot of people in this business just assume that everybody knows what's going on all the time. It's an interesting sort of wrinkle, right? Because when I remember like the Red Sox and other baseball teams selling like pink hats

to appeal to female viewers. And it was sort of like condescending. It was like, why I'd have to be pink? Can you just give like the normal product? And I think yes, that is true. That was just sort of like very textbook and wrote. But at the same time, there is a way to invite people who are not versed in the, in sports canon to appreciate and to join this group of people that is already without them, the lone monoculture left in America. But it's not only girls. I know a lot of men who are like, I don't follow sports.

How am I supposed to? Like, I think the gendering of it isn't even always fully accurate. And it's very simple. You just qualify people. Like, instead of saying Andy Reid, you say, Chiefs, I think, it's these little things. Something I think about as you're talking is when I first started on The Daily Show, I felt similar to you in that I remember going into the writer's meeting at the, like, my first week. And, you know, there are 20 plus people in this room. But everyone's talking about politicians and people on Fox News and MSNBC. in CNN and they're saying all these names all very much to one another as though like we all know

who this is. We all know and it was just like Mitch McConnell and they're and they're talking like kind of like the dbs of politics, you know, and all apologies to Dominique Foxworth. But it's like, oh yeah, I don't know the dbs. I'm sorry. I just can't get over the fact that Mitch McConnell and Dominique Foxworth are both quite similar insofar as they. are both turtles? Turtles. Yeah. Oh my God.

Let's go Terps. Yeah. Oh, my God. So my topic is also the first topic. What does this mean? I'm glad you did not ask me that. There is a technology that Google has released that is jarring, even to people who've, like, done episodes as I have about AI and voice bots and all of that stuff. is an article in the Wall Street Journal that I actually want to introduce to you by playing you

the podcast technology product that it is about. So press play. Okay, so picture this. You've got this stack of stuff to read, right? Articles, reports, the works. But what if instead of, you know, slogging through it all, you could just sit back and listen to a podcast about it? Well, that's kind of the idea behind this whole AI audio thing. And it's already causing a stir. Yeah, and get this. We're not just talking about like summarizing an article. This is about AI actually creating engaging audio from any information you feed it.

I read this piece in the Wall Street Journal by Ben Cohen. Oh, yeah, I saw that one. It's pretty wild. Yeah, he got to try out this experimental tool from Google called Notebook L.M. Notebook L.M, yeah. It's like having this AI that can turn, well, anything into a podcast-style conversation. Right. It's not just reading it back to you.

it's actually creating a back and forth like we're having right now. It's really remarkable how it pulls out the key points and turns them into this engaging dialogue. And this deep dive feature, that's where things get really interesting. Oh, yeah, the deep dives. Apparently, even Andres Carpathy is hooked on them. And this guy knows a thing or two about AI, right? Exactly.

If it's got him hooked, you know it's got to be good. And we're not just talking tech stuff either. He's listening to deep dives on everything from Wittgenstein to get this, pomegranate. Pomegranate, seriously. Seriously. I guess even AI

needs to bring from the heavy stuff sometimes. I guess so. But, you know, it makes you think if this AI can make pomegranate

sound fascinating. Right. Imagine what it could do with something actually interesting. Is this AI right now? Charlotte.

They keep saying, and get this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So... I hate this so much. I feel creepy.

I hate robots. What's remarkable about this is that Google has developed this technology that has sort of hit upon a fundamental human interaction that I think is key to how we like to consume things. And it actually kind of is the through line from topic one, Wyatt and this SEO thing. And topic two about like characters and human drama. It realized that you actually want the simulation of human imperfection in a conversation between two podcast style archetypes such that you, you, you, you, heard them stutter, make mistakes, catch themselves. Like, that's now part of what the robots are doing. That was the most disturbing thing, because I could, because something was wrong.

Something was off. I could hear it. And I feel, I feel, I feel duped, but I also feel like I'm in the Truman show, even though I am, because there are cameras everywhere in this room. But get this. No, that's... We fed it. We fed it. We fed it the Wall Street Journal article about the technology.

So you just did that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was, I thought that was... Oh, no, no, that was not like a pre-packaged thing. And in fact, in fact, this stuff can turn around in minutes. You feed it audio and a transcript, and it'll create a conversation summary that has taught people about... I mean, has allegedly been used to teach people about philosophy and complicated topics in a sort of like summary. Yeah.

In a conversation-style spoon-feeding that we're familiar with given how podcasts generally tend to be. Did you make a... Did you make one of those... that was about what Pablo Torre finds out the podcast is and who Charlotte and Pablo are? Well, to prove the point, what we did was something even better, which is I had Cortez behind the glass. While we were taping our first segment...

No. No. Make this. Ever gone down a Spotify rabbit hole? Like really specific playlists? Mid-evalute music for cats, anyone. Well, today's deep dive is about... someone who didn't just ride that rabbit hole. He built the whole dang theme park. Meet Matt Farley, a musician with over 24,000 songs on Spotify. 24,000. And here's the kicker. He's making surprisingly

good money doing it. So how is he pulling this off? What's fascinating is that Farley treats Spotify almost like a search engine. He's tapped into a hyper-specific musical version of SEO. Okay, SEO for songs. I think I need a little explain, like I'm five on this one. You got it. Think about how you use Google. You type in, Best Pizza near me, and boom, Google delivers. Farley's doing the same thing, but with song titles. He likely analyzes popular searches, prom proposals, potty training songs, you name it. Then craft's titles designed to appear in those results.

So he's not waiting to be discovered. He's making sure the algorithm leads listeners directly to him. Fuck you, Cortez. But we just had, why would you listen to that when you could listen to the actual podcast? It was that. I haven't heard this. I'm like listening to, they just bit out in minutes. That's not clever.

That's not clever robots. That's terrible. They're not funny. The robots are not funny. You're incentivizing the wrong things, robots. Similarly, to how people who watch sports want to know who the characters behind the athletes are. I believe that people want to know who the people behind the podcasts are, that there are real people talking, that you can look them up, and that maybe you could run into them on the street someday. Because...

This is how the parisocial revolution begins. Sure, but that's better than, like, listening to those robots. Oh, yeah. And it's not even... You don't even have to know who we are. You just have to know we're real. Oh, my God. But also, why, like, why are we incentivizing this?

Like, that's the part of it that feels so bizarre. Let's have AI, like, just crater the podcasting industry. Like, let's... Let's have it eat our vomit and then regurgitate it and feed it back to us. Yeah. And here's, again, where it kind of goes back to the top, where it's like, okay, there are actual people who enjoy making music, who enjoy just like they don't need to make 24,000 songs, which I will say one of those songs really amazing, but they don't need to make 24,000 songs.

They are just making music for the sake of making music. There are people who make podcasts because they enjoy making podcasts. What this seems to incentivize is don't enjoy it, monetize it, capitalize on it. And then, okay, you cut out the human element. What are we humans supposed to do? That's what I mean. Well, I think we're supposed to listen to this. It's a per stream model. Yeah. So even if each stream only generates a fraction of assent, multiply that by 24,000 songs and a potentially huge volume of very niche searches. Exactly. It starts to add up, especially since Spotify emphasizes playlists, which often group songs based on themes or moods, rather than just big-name artists. Which is where Farley's strategy,

really shines. He's not competing with Beyonce for playlist space. He's dominating the songs about toilet paper category. Speaking of which, some of his song titles are, well, let's just say they're memorable. Like, this girl is on fire. Quick, grab a fire extinguisher. I mean, you have to admire the commitment to the bit, right?

But jokes aside, this really highlights how Farley's using humor and absurdity to further exploit those algorithm quirks. It's like he's figured out the musical equivalent of clickbait. And as that landish as it might seem, it works. That element of surprise. the I can't believe this is a real song factor

probably encourages people to click to listen, which then feeds back into the algorithm, boosting his visibility even more. It's like he's hacked the system. Like we did this better, right? They're not funny. I'm not laughing.

You know what? The one thing robots aren't funny. The robots are fucking lame, not funny. I would not want to be friends with them. I also feel like there's a weird part of this that, yeah, it feels uncomfortable because it feels like we're just saying,

oh, journalism is a thing. It's not a craft. It's just a thing and anybody can do it. And not just anybody can do it. The computer can do it. Can I end on one note of hope? Please. The one thing that makes me hopeful,

as we talk about all of this, is I think that the one thing robots are not is alive. One thing humans are is alive. And I think for a lot of us, that feeling of joy comes from the feeling of connection. That feeling of delight comes from surprise. And I think that even if these things, I'm not saying, you know, they'll never take our jobs, they could. But there is a part of us. They're trying.

But there's a part of us that will always, as people, want to feel something. And these robots don't make us feel those things in the same way. Maybe for some people they do, but I think that as long as we are still wanting to make things and wanting to consume things that other people made, that will keep happening because that's the whole point of being alive. The thing that... Being alive.

You're alive and you're being. Oh, ba-bah. I really, I... This, if anything, this... has maybe charted a new career path for me. Robots are never going to be funny, though, because if the algorithm is based on making connections that already exist, humor is based on connecting things that seem completely separate

and making those together, putting them together in a surprising way, that someone laughs. Okay, maybe they'll be able to do it. I don't know. But Charlotte, you wanted to end on a note of hope? No, I did already. Well, I tried. And then I said maybe computers can be.

be funny. Well, let's see if this computer can be funny while summarizing an article that you have written on Substack that we just fed into it. No. Okay, so we're diving into this whole Taylor Swift Travis Kelchay thing. Kelchi, aha! It's like when she showed up at that Chiefs game, right? Right. This article we've got, it's saying it wasn't just her like, you know, just being a fan. they're saying it was like a calculated thing. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it was definitely like to make a statement.

Right. And like it was a big deal, right? It wasn't just like a casual thing. It was huge. Like the internet exploded. Everyone was talking about it. No, that's the opposite of what I said in the article. Everyone was talking about it.

Thanks for this nightmare fuel, Pablo. I really appreciate it. Is that what your new podcast is like? I have no words. No, it's not. I can feed some into a computer for you. Please, oh my God. I'm going to be at home just, like, feeding stuff in being like, the robot messed up here.

Calché. Travis Calchay. God. What do we find out today, guys, at the end of a show about finding stuff out called Pablo Torre finds out? I feel like I today found out, one, that Matt Farley needs to make more songs about not just me, but everybody. That to me feels like if he really, if he truly cares about. about the art, he needs to open the phone book and get the fucking work. Get to Pablo.

I learned that robots can talk like people, but that they aren't funny and I will die on this hill. What I really found out today is that there was no free shipping on the Zon Scaregun I just ordered. You ordered it? Yeah. No free shipping. Come on. Did you use code Pablo? Yeah, even with Code Pablo?

Oh. Also, I've been informed that is actually $500, and that I'm currently the owner of a new timer for a zon gun, which has set intervals between detonations, anywhere between two minutes to 30 minutes. I knew $178 was too cheap. Yeah, that seemed a little. But, wow.

So now you've got to buy the zon gun because it's weird, it's weird to just have a timer. The tripod is $213. You need a tripod for this? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't just hold it? No.

Put it on a cinder block? Instead of the end of Say Anything where he's holding him boombox, it's just Pablo is a zon gun. Automatic thunderclaps, deterring birds and other nuisance wildlife. See, a robot would not have put that together. They wouldn't have been like, oh, say anything in a zon gun. No. And if they did, that image of Pablo would have seven fingers. There you go.

Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Michael Antonucci, Walter Averoma, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Rachel Miller-Hawood, Ethan Schreier, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tuminello, and Juliet Warren. Our studio engineering by RG Systems, our sound design by NGW Post, our theme song, as always, is by John Bravo, and all of us will talk to you on Tuesday.