There Are No Girls on the Internet - The Big AI Podcast Rejection

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Happy New Year! We're starting 2026 on a hopeful note. We all know that AI is threatening human labor across a bunch of industries, especially creative work. This episode is about an encouraging win for humans – a case where human creators are being centered, protected, and valued in an increasingly automated entertainment industry. Bridget talks with Will Pearson, head of podcasts at iHeart, about why betting on human creators is good business. (Spoiler: Because that's what listeners want)   Let us know what you think by emailing [e-mail] or leaving a comment on Spotify.    Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet || bsky.app/profile/tangoti.bsky.social   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than adds supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call

844-844-I-Hart. Life is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional athletes, and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHart Women's Sports. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. And nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo, and every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headline. And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment, and the stuff nobody gets to hear.

Listen to Sports Slice on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slices Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. We want to make sure people are at the root of all. all of this. There are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Happy New Year, so I wanted to start 2026 off on a hopeful note. I know that we often focus on health technologies like AI are undermining human creative

labor. Those concerns are very real, and we will definitely keep talking about them in 2026. But this episode is about something encouraging, a case where human creators are actually being centered and valued in an increasingly automated industry. Because one of the questions I get asked a lot as a podcaster is, aren't you worried that AI will one day replace you? The truth is, there actually are already AI generated podcasts and podcast hosts. And AI could actually replace my voice already.

But would anyone actually want to listen? Great questions. Hi. This is Bridget's AI generated vocal. Clown, generated by her podcast recording software. Listeners are really clear that even though AI generated voices like this one exist and are abundant and cheap and easy to create, no one is tuning in to listen. Because humans want to engage with and build trust with creative work they know is produced by other humans. Okay, so I won't lie that vocal clone does sound a little bit like

me, I guess, but it also sounds weird as hell, right? And it's no wonder that IHeart is keeping AI generated voices like that one off their platform. So what does all this mean for the future of creative work going forward? To get into all of that, I turn to Will Pearson, because without his support, this very human podcast might never have existed. Will has been making cool stuff on the internet since back before we really knew what any of that met. And today, he runs podcasts for IHeart and was one of the people behind this decision to only feature human podcasters on the network, not AI. Will, people might not have heard you on Tangoady before, but you're kind of like, to quote swingers, like the guy behind the guy behind the guy of IHeart's podcasts,

is how I would put it. That may be fair. I'm happy to see you, Bridget. It's been a minute. Great to be on. It has. It has. When people ask. me what it's like working at I heart. I always say that one of the things I love about it is that the people who are making a lot of the decisions are also creatives themselves. You have been hosting podcasts for a really long time. Recent Signal Award winner, right? Ah, thank you. Yes, and congrats to you. Oh, thank you. So how did you first come to this work? What brought you to podcasting? Mm-hmm. So I have to back up to the first part of my career. I say first part of my career. I really only had like two different jobs. But in college with a classmate of mine,

we started a magazine and then a small media company called Mental Floss and grew it and ran it for about 10 years before we sold it. And then we were working for that company that had acquired mental floss for a few years. And toward the end of that time, someone reached out to us from Stuff Media, or more publicly known as How Stuff Works, with some of the best podcasts in the world, you know, shows like stuff you should know, stuff you missed in history class, stuff Mom never told you.

You might have heard of that show, Bridget. I am. Some other really, really good shows. And there was sort of a shared spirit behind what was happening at, and how stuff works and what we'd been doing at Mental Floss. With this whole idea of people like to feel smart, people like to feel well-informed. But sometimes there's a block to that.

Sometimes learning can feel daunting. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming to learn in categories that you may not be an expert in. But our whole goal was to help people learn things across so many different subject areas. And How Stuff Works was doing sort of the same. And at that time, this was back in 2016, 2017. They were thinking about spending off their podcast division and seeing what could happen with that, because people kept talking about, you know, podcast and what these were going to be. And you can remember that stage where not everybody had listened to a podcast at that point,

not everybody had even heard about them, but they started to hear about them. And we were really intrigued, the two of us that started mental flaws together. And we had the opportunity to join the team. And, you know, as you mentioned, first in the form of hosting a podcast, we have a podcast called Part-Time Genius. but also in jumping in and the ability to help sort of strategize and figure out how to grow what we were doing and how stuff works. And we had the good fortune of working with some of the best shows in the business. They were just independent shows at that point.

And then about a year or so after that in 2018, IHeart Media had come along, obviously the biggest player in radio in the U.S., but at that point wasn't in podcasting, but wanted to figure out how to grow what they were doing. And somehow they found us qualified to be a part of that. And it was a lot of fun. I love building and I love building things with sort of a small business mentality at first and then sort of scaling from there. And so we've had the really good fortune of being part of the podcast division here at IHeart for the past seven years, I guess, now.

And it's just been a blast to be able to grow this. So I'm so glad that you mentioned mental floss. This is a show about the internet and technology. For people who are a bit younger than me, they might not remember. Like, Mental Plus has been around since, like, the very early aughts, right? And so when you think about the early days of where you would go to feel cool, they're smart on the internet, mental loss was one of the big players. And so that's one piece that I want to highlight.

But also so many people and things that we think of as just ubiquitous online today. Like Hank Green, right? Like, I follow him on social media. He's like, like, got his start, early days, mental flaws. And so it's just interesting to me how you all were really sort of building the architecture of what would become, you know, how we just understand media and interesting content being online today, even in 2025. Oh, that's nice of you to say that. And it was, you know, with any, whether it's a success story or just story of building a business, there's always this combination of, of course, hard work and, you know, having the skills to try to build a thing.

But then there's also just a lot of luck with timing and the kinds of things that happen in the world around you because we started mental floss as a print magazine in 2001, right after we graduated from college, we had first started as a campus publication. And then as you pointed out, in the years after that, of course, the Internet really blew up. then social media comes along in a more meaningful way. YouTube, YouTube comes along in a more meaningful way. And you're really at the beginning stages of all of these game-changing, communication-changing medium and platform.

And it was so exciting to be able to take this concept of helping people learn, but in a really entertaining way, and to be able to see what that felt like in social media, in video, and, you know, other medium that we could explore in. And you're right, to have the good fortune to work with creators like Hank and John Green that helped write some of our early books that hosted and co-created our YouTube channel. There were just a lot of creators coming up around that same time that were interested in exploring these spaces and it was a blast to get to do it all together.

Do you think that we're living in a time where folks can still do that, where folks can just start a publication just because they're interested in something and watch it turn into like a real meaningful thing. Sometimes I worry that if you didn't start your cool project, you know, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, now it's just going to get kind of lost in the sauce. What do you think? You know, it's hard. Do I ever have that worry? Definitely. I definitely have those kinds of concerns. But then you look around and you realize that the ways of cutting through may be a little bit different. But we're constantly watching the creator space and seeing who's coming into it, how they're cutting through the clutter.

And I still do strongly believe that if people are creating something really meaningful and if there is an audience that's eager to learn or just discover in those categories, that there are ways to get in front of them. It's a lot of work. It takes a lot of, you know, for creators, the creators that know how to market to the audiences that want to consume their content are definitely going to have that. leg up. And that was a thing that we learned very early on with mental floss. And I think those same rules apply today. We couldn't just create a thing and put it out in the world and hope that

people discovered it. We had to create the thing. And then we had to go around to as many like-minded, you know, people and audiences and publications and websites and social media platforms and try to get what we were doing in front of them. It was as much a part of the job as anything that we were doing. So it was, you know, it took a lot to do that. Of course, it's still, it's still a concern sometimes, you know, in a, in a world where so many people are trying to create content, I actually think is a very good thing. You know, everybody deserves the chance to try to create if they want to create. But it's a crowded space across podcasting, across any other form of content creation.

I still do believe that the creators that are making content that's really, really, really good, have the opportunity to break through. I do think one of our realizations early on with mental floss was the marketing side of things was as time-consuming and needed as much effort and consideration as the content creation. And I think the creators that we see that learn that very early on and understand it's not just going to be the big marketing firms and the big companies that are going to do the marketing for them, that it requires a ton of hustle. And we've seen a lot of creators.

There's a show that we have called The Psychology of Your 20s, which is this fantastic show that sort of came out of the, it really is, came out of the pandemic. The name says it all, right? It's a podcast focused on mental health for those primarily in their 20s. And this was one creator, Gemma, out of Australia, that just had this great concept. and she was making something really meaningful

and it started to find an audience and she really worked hard to get it in front of as many people as she could. And you know, you fast forward a few years later, we ended up bringing it on to our network so that we can help amplify that and get it in front of even more listeners and now viewers. But yeah, I do believe that it is still possible for independent creators and, you know,

sort of young creators to be able to cut through with show concepts. There is truly nothing that fills my cup like doing creative work. It's the thing I love the most, and honestly, it's something I think I'm pretty good at. But what they don't tell you is that if you want to be a full-time creative, the job is not just creating things. It's also contracts, taxes, juggling deadlines, communicating with stakeholders, selling your ideas to people who aren't creatives, people who don't always share your vision, let's just say.

It's also figuring out how to market your work so people actually. find it, all while still trying to make the thing that you set out to make in the first place. And honestly, these are the parts of the job that I've never really had much of a brain for. But Will is someone who knows this dance very well. Is it hard to balance sort of the creative, like I am someone who makes the thing side of your brain with the I am a decision maker part of your brain, like marketing, the, I sometimes find it hard to be both. And I can only imagine what that would be for someone in a position like yourself.

It can be. I mean, I think really what happens from time to time is sometimes there are show concepts or pitches that we see that I fall in love with. And I might know at a gut level, those shows are never going to be huge. Just because maybe they're just super niche topics or for whatever reason. But one of the things that I love about our. you know, our network here. And one of the advantages

in working of a network of this size is we have the opportunity to balance that out a little bit, right? For every Jay Shetty and Las Culturistas and Chelsea Handler and, you know, the Breakfast Club and all of the other huge shows that we may have,

we also have the opportunity to create content and shows for a more niche audience where that's relevant. And I think that's important. I think, you know, podcasting will really lose it way if it all becomes about just the mega creators. I think the beauty of podcasting is there really is

almost something for everyone right now. The industry is still, I think, trying to address that and making sure that there's representation and content for all audiences and where there's not, I think we have the opportunity to jump in and try to fill those gaps. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite, unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group?

The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, uh, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yarn herds, right? That's the name.

The Harvard Yard. They're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny.

Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music. from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message

to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind.

Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise. Breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athletes themselves. Their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear.

The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context and ask the questions everybody wants answered. Sports Slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to Sports Slice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's social. Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year.

Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At our back. Late last year, IHart, the company that publishes this very podcast, announced what they're calling their guaranteed human initiative. It's a company-wide policy committing to only airing music. and content that's performed and created by real people, not AI. That means no AI generated podcast hosts, no AI musicians on IHeart radio stations,

and that network DJs will actually announce that they're guaranteed humans. Now, IHeart will use AI behind the scenes for things like analytics and scheduling, but not for the voices and creative work that audiences here. And this move came directly in response to what audiences were saying. We want human authentic connection, not AI-generated content in our media. Now, yes, obviously, I will admit that I am biased as a human who hosts a podcast. But this announcement made me deeply happy. I don't want to be super clear that nobody at Eyehart asked me to do an episode about this initiative.

I just personally really like it because I think that standing up for human creativity is so important, especially right now. My producer Mike and I actually talked about this announcement when it first came out. Is not going to try to replace us with robots? Yes. And when people ask me, aren't you worried about AI taking your job as a podcaster? Honestly, I think that the more AI garbage that's out there and flooding the space, the more of a premium that is going to be on actual human connection, an actual human art and content. And so I am like, oh, that can only bode well for people, for, for humans who are still invested and interested in telling actual human stories through human voices. And so, yeah,

thank you for everyone listening for continuing to be part of like the human revolution. We are putting a flag in the ground for the human, the human podcasters. So this is what you've really given me a. great segue into sort of why I wanted to talk to you on the show is the I Heart announcement about guaranteed human. So listeners may be hearing that this is this podcast is guaranteed human before the show, which they know I am a guaranteed human. You know, I feel as we've been having these conversations about AI, AI generated content, this is really to me, I heart doubling down on human creators, right? If more and more of our content becomes AI generated, I think it's a risk

exactly what you just described happening, where all the content kind of sounds the same. You can sort of clean it out because it's all sort of the same. By doubling down on human creators, human voices, perspectives, people who like have a meaningful connection to the reason why they wanna tell you something, you know. Yeah.

I think it's really, I guess it just feels like a very exciting moment in podcasting. I, the reason why I'm drawn to this medium is that I'm a nerd, I want to hear other nerds, nerd ad on something. I want to hear someone obsess over something and be like, damn, that actually like, who knew this topic was so interesting?

You get that from humans. Yes, yes, exactly. And that was, you know, beyond this being a thing that we felt like was the right business decision, it's also overwhelmingly what audiences are looking for. When you think about the medium, especially in audio, of podcasting, of radio,

why people listen to podcasts, and the nature and the experience of listening will just stick with podcasts. Sometimes that word, you know, intimacy is overused a little bit just in terms of explaining that, you know, experience of listening to a podcast, but it's really true.

Like it is when you're listening to podcasts, unlike when you're watching a TV show, unlike when you're consuming many other forms of content, you're usually on your own. You're usually, you know, exercising, cooking, doing, you know, in a commute, whatever it may be. And it's just you and the podcast host or host. And that's an incredibly intimate experience. And when people talk about the parisocial relationships that occur between a listener and their favorite podcaster or radio host.

And so that's really why people listen. We find that time and again, you know, you can have great guests after great guest after great guest, but if the host isn't right, the listeners won't come back. And so they're here for the host. And so as we started exploring the tools available to us now and the tools that are emerging within AI technology, we saw a lot of promise just in terms of, oh, here are ways that may make production easier. Here are things that may make some part of our process a bit easier. But at the end of the day through survey after survey, whether it's ones we've done with listeners, whether it's third party surveys that have been done, you see more than 90% of listeners are saying,

I want to make sure that the person I'm listening to or the people that I'm listening to are real people. I want to have that connection. I have no interest in listening to something that is not just created by AI, but voiced by AI. And so it was sort of a no-brainer for us. Now, I'll say when we rolled this out, we didn't really know what the reception would be. I mean, we didn't think it would be negative, but we didn't really know exactly how people would respond. And to your point now, when you listen to an IHeart podcast or a lot, you know, on radio as well, you'll hear this is an IHart podcast guaranteed human. And we just started doing that a couple weeks ago. And I know we communicated about this, but the number of listeners that we heard from

almost immediately was pretty overwhelming in a very positive way. And the other thing that we started seeing was creators, like yourself, also reaching out. And across the board and saying, this is incredible, how can I do more to get this message out? And so now what we're starting to roll out across our shows, we have a big roster of shows, so it'll take some time to do this, is having each of the creators actually be the ones to voice that tagline, that messaging of guaranteed human. And so now, you know, pretty soon here, when you're listening to Jay Shetty, Chelsea handler, stuff you should know, and, you know, I'm hoping there are no girls on the

internet, you'll actually hear the talent themselves saying that. And it's a pretty cool experience. I just heard the sample of it the other day from Chelsea. And you understand how important these voices are. You hear this is an I-Hart podcast, and then you hear Chelsea's voice say, guaranteed human. And that's meaningful to know like this is her, this is the listener, that relationship. So weirdly in a moment like this that sort of generates so much fear, understandable fear on the part of consumers, listeners, viewers, it actually has given us a second to take a step back and say,

what is it that really brings people to these shows and gives us a reminder and a way to say, this is a very special relationship we've created. Don't screw this up. And so I think there's actually been a great moment and it's sort of a rallying moment through all of this. If you listen to this podcast, you probably already know that when it comes to AI and technology and media,

we are not often talking about anything even remotely happy. Usually it's quite the opposite, in fact. But when I heart announced this, listeners were actually really responding. Even in the corners of the internet where I hang out, where we're usually just tearing AI use apart, it was something we could be kind of cheerful about. I think when I emailed you,

I had had three different people reach out to me about it, and now it's gone up to five. And this has not been out for very long. And even into like one of my favorite I heart podcasts is better offline, there was a whole thread. So Ed has really built a community of like people who are like, I would say like skeptical, right? Like I would almost use the word like,

lovingly like haters. These are people who are like, I have a lot of criticisms and I'm going to voice them. The thread about guaranteed human, it was like positive comment after positive comment. And I was like, wow, I love it. I spend a lot of time in this subreddit. I've never seen such an overwhelming positive response to something before. And I just think that people, yeah, in a time where I think just wading through content and digital content and it just has gotten so fraught, it's just nice to have that understanding that, hey, you're listening to a real person who was a real voice, you know, whatever trust that you would place in the voice of another human, you can place that trust here.

And that's, there's just something about the medium of audio that I think that's the, that is the currency. Like, that is why we do it. Yes, I completely agree. I love that you bring up Ed because, you know, what he's done is. And I think you're right, sort of like the playful haters. That's such a great way to put it. because I don't think they're out there to try to hurt anybody,

but I think they are out there to really force us to think about the things that we're doing as a society and in the world of technology. And so I love having that show in our network and his team in our network because they push us to think about these things as well. You know, any company, any group of developers, anyone trying to build a thing that doesn't have some checkpoints here and there is probably not going to be the best. version of itself. And so I love that, you know, the work that you're doing, the work that Ed's doing to really cause us to stop every once in a while and think through these things. And also to acknowledge, you know, the world of AI and the technology there will be life changing, can be game changing for this world if we do it right. And I think there are moments like this that really do cause us to step back and say, okay, yes, we have access to these tools. Why do we want to

use these tools. Like what is our real goal here? What are we actually trying to achieve? And hopefully if it's in the service of making lives better, making the world better, that will channel the way that we use these tools rather than just saying the whole goal is just to make everything for companies cheaper and faster and all of that because then you just end up in a world that's making really bad stuff. And so I hope that this is just one example of many, many, many, many, many things happening across the corporate world, the tech world, that I hope causes to step back and really ask those questions before we continue to dive too much deeper into all of this. Yes, and I don't know if this is something that you can speak to or not, but IHeart is really,

you know, a major player. We're like leading the way. And I can't imagine that IHeart would have made a decision like this if they did not think it was also going to be like good for business. And I just something about like all of the, like, all of the, like, like warm, fuzzy stuff that gets my head tingling as a creator that you said I totally agree with, but also affirming human creators in this moment can be good for business too. More after a quick break.

Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel. help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group? The worst?

Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open to change.

Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged. One erection. Listen to humor. with Robert Smygel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hulmer me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny.

Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHart can extend your message to audiences. across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think I-Hart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-8-4-I-Hart. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are

trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants answered.

SportsClyce brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to SportsClace on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slic Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all,

embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. I have a whole talk that I give about the importance of centering humans and creative work. I've delivered it to many different audiences over the last few years, and usually folks will assume that I'm going to affirm all the warm, fuzzy, squishy reasons

for why it's important to amplify humans and creative work. That creativity is all about humans connecting with other humans. And that is all true. I do feel that way. But it's not just about feelings. There is solid data demonstrating that business types should also want to center humans and creative work because doing so is good for business. Yeah, no, that's the, I mean, that's the whole point.

And you have these opportunities. And I think they happen way more than people want to or sometimes think that when you really can find the intersection of what is it that people actually want? what is it that actually can provide a very positive service for people and be the thing that's very good for business? This is definitely one of those cases. You know, if the overwhelming majority of people were like, I really want AI content for some reason, then that would be a conversation we would have and a thing that we would explore, but it's just not. And it's actually been kind of fun to see, and I have two teenage kids, it's actually really fun to see that

generation that I think five years ago it would have been easy to assume, oh, these are all kids that just were born with and have grown up with an incredible amount of technology at their fingertips. All they're going to want to see in here is AI content. They're the most vocally opposed to all things AI from our experience is what what I could see. My kids very actively seek things that they know are 100% human and are. are up in arms when they see something that they feel is sort of not just cheating in the system. I don't mean that those that aren't ever using AI tools to sort of make the things that they do easier to do, but whether it's the creation of art, whether it's the creation of music,

whether it's, you know, whatever it may be, knowing that these are things really created by people is important to this younger generation, which I find to be encouraging, for sure. Oh, this has been my experience as well. And I actually have a theory that we're going to see, especially younger people, shifting more toward like, because they value authenticity, right? They really value like genuine connection. They can, let me tell you, as a parent to teens, I'm sure you know, they can sniff it out when somebody is not being authentic and they will roast you. Yes, yes. They, I come.

It has been my experience with young people as well. Yeah, absolutely. And so that part is encouraging. So, you know, it's going to be really interesting to watch. over the next three or four years to see, you know, there was just this mad rush over the past few years to get these tools and things out in the world. And I actually think there is a movement here to try to help us slow that down a little bit and just make sure we're really thinking through what are we trying to do. And maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I actually think

this is an encouraging moment that we're seeing here and voices that are stepping up to say, collectively, we want to make sure people are at the root of all of this. Definitely. You know, as we wrap up, one of my favorite things about both being a podcast creator and a listener of podcasts is those moments in a podcast where you could never plan for it. You could never write it in. AI could never replicate it because they're so dang human. Is this a thing that you feel?

Have you experienced moments like that on shows? We were like, AI could never do that. Oh, 100%. And actually, I think part of what it is, and I'm going to use the word flaw and imperfection. And I don't even know if those are the right words, but they're still part of what makes us human. It's sort of like when, to back up a little bit, when we used to listen to podcasts at the beginning and then editors came along and would try to clean up things too much and remove the ums and ahs and stutters and restarts and those kinds of things. and then you realized that that started feeling less human to people. So that was sort of the early version of what this felt like.

I think this is kind of the same thing. It's those moments of slip-ups. It's those moments of, again, being human that cause us to connect to somebody. If we just hopped on it, we were talking about this topic, and it sounded like we were reading from an encyclopedia. People may get their information, dip in and dip out, but there's no real connection to the people there. So, yeah, I completely agree.

when it comes to humor, I mean, frankly, this is just going to be a very interesting experiment and evolution of AI just to see what that looks like. But as you and I both know, like, at the heart of humor is the element of surprise and weirdness and things that throw people off in a way, even from a minor to a more major scale of that. And I think that's really hard for AI to to replicate. and the same thing with emotion to know what it feels like to be human, I think is very difficult to replicate that. So I'm encouraged by what we're hearing. I love that you're talking about this so much.

I think it's incredibly important for us to be regularly talking about this to do what we can to try to get it right. You know, the reason I wanted to talk to you and sort of highlight this decision is that, you know, we talk about technology on this podcast and there is certainly a lot to be bummed out about. and then also the podcasting space and just media more generally can be tough. I'm often talking about things that are tough.

And so having an announcement that made me genuinely happy and proud to be with the network that gets it, I was like, oh, we should spotlight this. But I guess my final question for you is like, given all that, when you think of the future of tech and the audio landscape, are you hopeful? Are you happy about what's on the horizon? Are you hopeful about what you think we'll see and hear next?

Yeah, no, I definitely am. I think, sort of back to one of your earlier questions, what we always have to grapple with and think through is how do we make sure that those that are creating really good stuff are able to get that in front of audiences? Sometimes that's mass audiences, sometimes that's smaller audiences, but that really want and need what they're hearing. That part of it, that evolution is what I'm very interested in. How does the world of certain? change to help audio content, you know, as we've seen with, whether it's websites or social or other things. These are the challenges that I think we have to think through. You know, we have the very good fortune at eye heart of having the kind of megaphone that we do, but I still want to be able to root for the independent creator that's just doing it all alone and has just started something in their garage and is putting it out in the world to know that there is a path to be able to get their, their show, their content in front of other people. Those are the the kinds of questions I think as an industry we're going to have to be asking is how do we

improve all methods of discovery to make sure people can find the really good stuff out there. But like any medium and any form of communication, there are ways to do it. It will all evolve. I'm optimistic about it. It makes me so happy to hear this. You know, I think it's important to note that this isn't just about podcast. I mean, this is about all forms of art and expression that are out there. Part of what I was really pleased to see, you know, I have no decision-making ability when it comes to like the radio and music side of the business. But our friends over on the radio and music side of the business here at IHeart were also 100% aligned with this thinking. And so you're seeing more and more music created that is

not only AI created, but AI voiced as well. And from that, you're even seeing a few of these shows. We've seen headlines about shows hitting the charts and the country music category or in the hip hop category. And I love that I heart on that side of the business as well also made that decision to say, look, if they want to create that, fine. They should have the right to create that. We're not here to play it. We're not here to surface it. We're here to focus on those that are truly human-voiced, human-created. And when we know that to be the case.

So I was pleased to see that as well. And I think other medium, other companies, others will join us in this effort. And I think it will be a very, very good decision on all of their parts when they do. I could not agree more. I think it's really about listening to your audiences and listening to what audiences are saying that they want in their media. Absolutely. I could not agree more. Yeah.

Well, I just want to say thank you for talking about this, for giving me a chance to come on and talk about it. But I appreciate the work that you're doing, Bridget. We need more Bridget Todd's in the world, but thanks for doing what you're doing. Thanks so much for being here, Will. Where can folks keep in touch with you and your work? Well, I hope you will check out. We don't necessarily talk about AI and the work of what's happening in the industry that much because we're sort of a nerdy.

Let's talk about the happy things across history and science and other stuff, but to check out part-time genius. But also to check out several other I-Heart podcast. It's my favorite part of the job as we get to think about shows. across pretty much every category and podcasting, and it's just a lot of fun to do it. The way that I describe part-time genius to folks who have not heard it

is that if you are in a relationship where your partner goes to sleep and you are awake on your phone being like, let's go down our Wikipedia rabbit hole. It is the show for you. Like, if you're ever like, what's a good Wikipedia page to just spend a couple hours on?

Yeah. This is the podcast for you. Thank you. I appreciate that. We try to be really family-friendly. it's definitely more sort of youthful oriented in terms of the topics. A lot of our listenership are actually, you know, teenagers and even some younger. But we try to just take a very playful, nerdy style to all the things we want to learn about.

Thanks so much for being here, Will. Thanks, Bridget. It was good to see you. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoati.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer.

Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, write and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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