Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Dan Speerin: Toronto Mike'd #311

Episode Date: March 5, 2018

Mike chats with Dan Speerin about his years as Toronto's millennial spokesman and the state of podcasting in Canada.

Welcome to episode 311 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery located here in Etobicoke. Did you know that 99% of all Great Lakes beer remains here in Ontario? GLB, brewed for you, Ontario. And Propertyinthe6.com, Toronto real estate done right. And Paytm, an app designed to manage all of your bills in one spot. Download the app today from paytm.ca. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week is writer producer host

and actor and i'm sure there's more things i'll learn about in this conversation dan spearin how are you welcome dan i finally get to to be down in the Toronto Mike Batcave. Remember, never meet your heroes, Dan. No, it's true. This is all downhill from here. Let me guess, though. This did not live up... Because people probably missed...

This becomes this mythic place you've heard about and you hear people complain about it on the podcast. And now you've been here. Is it what you expected? it's everything and more the gold-plated seats are a bit much but i mean i guess you're successful so don't let it get to your head you know you're close there i know you're doing a funny little bit there because that's what you funny people do but that these these seats are actually really expensive and they were given to me by a listener named doug mills so now i want to say for the 30th time i want to thank doug mills and his company blue sky agency and liberty village they gifted the toronto mic studio these two chairs they are super comfy so your your viewers and listeners are helping you

out a lot if you would come here a year ago you'd be sitting in those 17 costco chairs the folding ones which aren't bad by the way that's okay yeah thank you i don't need i don't need your elitist chairs this is a tobiko i understand the next step will be the gold plated do you find yourself in a tobiko often or is this like a big journey for you? This is a bit of a hike. I'm up in East York. So this took about like an hour and a half. I could have driven to Barrie.

You know what you've done now? Now I feel guilty. This has to be a good show now, Mike. I feel guilty for inviting you on the show now like uh that happens whether or not my travel time is is long or not is this worth a three hour

I like coming around to different places in the city like you know I came from Barrie where we're kind of like car centric and uh it's really weird when you get to Toronto everybody's quadratured like everyone's in their own quadrant and everyone's just like I ask people when you get to Toronto everybody's quadratured like everyone's in their own quadrant yeah and everyone's just like I asked people when I remember moving to Toronto because I actually this was the first place I lived because I was out for Humber comedy

and then when I came out here I'd be like how do you get to blank to like people who lived in Toronto their whole lives and they're like I don't know like how do you not know you've lived in the city your entire life like well that's in in the West End and I live in the East End. Okay, I put library books on hold. This is a very exciting story to tell you that when they come to my local library, which is the New Toronto branch, they have the barcode and the name of the library they belong to. So I always see these names.

I'm like, where the hell is that? Every time I say, where the hell is that? It's Scarborough. It turns out i don't know scarborough i know ottawa better than i know scarborough i live near the todd morden branch of the toronto public library which is the smallest it's literally like half a lady holding a book and uh so i get stuff brought there and i have the same thing i'll see like where did this come from where is this and i'll google it toronto the toronto library is like war for americans teaching geography for people in toronto we now know where things are i think about that one you said the smallest library i'm envisioning like there's no books just like readers digest it's pretty close like

it's it's actually in the it's in the community center and it's just it would it's probably the size of your basement here well you know you know, there's lots of those. I see people in this neighborhood and other neighborhoods in Toronto, they have the little libraries outside their house. You know those, there's like a post on their front lawn? It's like three of those. They need their own names. That's too funny.

I've got a song for you. This song is special for you. I can't believe you're finally here. Let me play it for you. This song is special for you. I can't believe you're finally here. Let me play it for you. Get ready. I'm ready for my jam. Who goes there? You'll like it.

Old Nasty Dan was the meanest man I ever knew. He'd stomp and scream and be real mean the whole day through. Yeah? He'd frown a bunch, he ate nails for lunch and he'd never laugh. Wow, I'd like him. He'd growl and yell and I heard tell he never took a bath. Wow. Nasty

Dan. Nasty Dan. Was a nasty man. This works on so many levels because... I was going to say Grouch and Johnny Cash. Yeah, it's Johnny Cash. That's amazing. Yeah, it's Oscar the Grouch. And it's the old school, you know, Sesame Street that I remember. Good for him. And it's like the day after the Oscars.

See how this is working in multi-levels? It's all good. There's multiple layers of trauma. Nasty Dan. So we're going to learn about you. And I know for some... I'm not far off with that intro. Nasty Dan.

Got nastier when he learned it was 90 minutes to get here. Like, how can I ever... I know I'm going to give you beer in a minute, and you're going to get, like, the coolest pint glass in the world. Maybe that's kind of worth 90 minutes. I don't know. It depends what else you got going on in your life, I suppose. I'm used to the TTC, like, failing me, so it's okay.

I gave myself lots of time. How did you get here? Did you... I did exactly how you said. I take direction. What did I say to do? Did I tell you to get to Islington Station and then take the 110 south? Yeah, but then in true TTC fashion, there were signal problems.

Oh. So we all ended up... The entire universe of the T all ended up, the entire universe of the TTC ended up at Islington Station because no one could get to Kipling. And so then the 110 was delayed. But you know what? Even with delays, because I'm a neurotic person

from the East End, I was like, oh man, I don't know what's going to happen to me if I get to the West End. I could be like Field of Dreams. I could just disappear into the corn. So I left early and I got here right on time. So it worked out. Everything's fine. No, it's amazing. Thank goodness. That was really great. And say,

aren't you Johnny Trash? Cash, cash. Have a rotten day. That would have made Walk the Line even better. Have you ever heard that before? Yeah, yeah. YouTube's kind of opened up the doors of extending your nostalgia period i think to the point now where i'm like did i see

that as a kid or did i see that in college do you have memories of yourself as a kid that you can no longer tell if it's an actual memory or just that you've been told the story like somebody told you the story so many times that you now think you remember it? Has that happened to you ever? I'm an only child raised by a single parent, so I don't have anyone else to tell me things. But your mom or your dad? Is it your mom?

My dad. Your dad. But did your dad ever say, oh, Dan, when you were four, you did whatever? No, no. I have a lot of friends who have these memories, but actually, I think everything I remember, I probably remember. There's a couple of things uh with sports nostalgia because over

the years i'll like revisit the blue jays 92 93 videos and i'm like do i remember that okay so tell me now uh how old are you i'm 34 so yeah yeah you'd have uh nine and ten when the jays win the series okay because uh that's one event i don't have problem remembering is the 92 95 time i got some years on you dan i got some years on you that's the white hairs you see here it's true though it's really weird i feel like that's like sometimes i use that if you're tony and i'm like that's the dividing line that's how i measure generations we can do have any recollection of the blue jays being a world series champion or not yeah i'm still coming to grips with the fact i can have like uh conversations with adults who don't remember like the 92 93 world series it's that's something i have and to be honest with you like i i'm nine and ten right so i don't have um a clear crystal

clear memory of every game but i actually went to game two in 93 with my dad because my dad was a hardcore jays fan um and so i remember that that's amazing a weird bunch of reasons but yeah yeah i'm trying to remember the first jays game i remember going to was like 82 i want to say so i'm doing some quick math that tells me that I'm about eight years old. Yeah, so that works. That works. Okay. Did you watch the Oscars last night?

I did. You know what? I did the stereotypical thing where you're like, I don't want to watch this, whatever. And then I didn't end up doing anything. I went and logged on to Twitter and it seduced me back into watching the damn thing. It does make it much better.

I can't remember now. Why did I watch it before Twitter? It's just me and the tv like i even feel that about things i like like the super bowl i can't go without twitter now because i'm like oh this is too just too much advertising and annoying things happening i'm really glad i've got a stream of people snarking this now with me there's something about the real time like zeitgeist feedback like like it's just amazing oh the leafs are going to overtime in a playoff game like you're you might be there you might have your you know your son with you or your brother with you or a friend with you but you've actually got like hundreds of people that you don't really know but you kind of know because you guys interact all the time through this digital service and it really

does enhance the experience the jays run in 2015 was like that too where it was it was you know when the the set that seventh inning against texas was so much more fun because twitter was like that too where it was it was you know when the the set that seventh inning against texas was so much more fun because twitter was like what is happening i would like to go back in fact after this recording i'm gonna go back and see what did i tweet yeah after joe although i thought in real time i didn't notice any bat flip like it wasn't until the replay i saw the bat flip i'm sure did anyone you don't see the bat flip in real time right because you just see yeah you make contact and then they watch the ball i think yeah i don't think anyone noticed it no you know what i don't see the bat flip in real time right because you just see yeah you make contact and then they watch the ball i think yeah i don't think anyone noticed it no you know what i don't know that's a good question only because uh of course like we all have the bat flip but in real time when

you're watching nobody i don't think i don't think you see the bat flip i'm pretty sure when you watch a home run and uh buck it wasn't playoff game wasn't buck but uh you you know you make contact and then the camera changes to follow the ball like there's no bat flip to linger on but i wonder what i tweeted because i remember falling like literally i when he hit that ball i fell like i fell to the ground and it wasn't a world series game and it wasn't a walk off even but i collapsed to the ground like it was like did that just happen i was so happy man dan i was so happy yeah. It was like, did that just happen? I was so happy, man. Dan, I was so happy. Yeah, my dad was like a really reserved,

like I kind of compared him to Hank Hill, like to give people a reference base. And when Joe Carter hit that home run in the World Series, my father all of a sudden became an MTV personality. I was like, what's happening? And I just really, that's like one of the memories I have of that happening just because my father was just over the,

literally just flipped his wig. Yeah, me and my brothers just into a pile on. A hundred percent, yeah. And then hit the streets like, this is crazy. Wow. So I watched the Oscars and I know it's become a very cool thing to say like, fuck the Oscars and their pretentious circle jerk.

Like I want nothing to do with that junk and i want to be the cool guy who says that like i think that would be a cool guy to be that's how i feel but the fact is like it's kind of like an event and my wife likes it and we watch it together and it's like uh so at like eight o'clock i'm i'm watching to see how it opens of jimmy kimmel and i watched it till they announced the best picture at like 1148. Like I watched like almost four hours of Oscars last night. And a lot of it was actually pretty damn boring. But I watched it anyway and I'll watch it again next year.

I don't know why. I just do. I think it really is a social media temple thing there too. It really has become. There's like a few things in a year that you kind of are like as i said like twitter sort of seduces you into into paying attention because you see everybody and there's that fomo of like oh i guess i better watch this damn thing because everybody else is going to be talking about it tomorrow well that's like i just in the moment i

just started like in the last week, I started Game of Thrones. For the first time ever? Yeah, episode one, season one. Because it came to Crave TV, and I have that anyway, and it just showed up in late, I don't know, mid-February or something. So now it's become,

although only three seasons are sitting there right now, but I got a lot of catching up to do. But it's just so convenient now to watch it. I said to my wife, I said, maybe we should watch this show that everyone who knows me and cares about me tells me I would absolutely love. Like maybe it's time to watch that. So I started it.

And are you enjoying it so far? Yeah, so far so good. I'm in, I don't know, like six episodes deep maybe. Winter is very far away for you. No spoilers, Dan. All I know is winter is coming. That's all I know. I know very little.

I actually have done an excellent job over the last several years avoiding any... Don't you dare ruin this. I avoid all spoilers, like all of them. I don't know anything. I didn't even know... I knew that... What is the name? Tyrrian lannister the dwarf

that peter dinklage's character peter dinklage's character right like i knew he was in this series but for some reason i decided he was like gonna be a complete like hateful asshole for some reason i don't know why i thought that but i was surprised at how uh comedic he is like how he's comic relief and no he's a likable character yeah he's a likable character so far anyway and i did not expect that so i'm going in complete pretty cold here so so i should tell you about when that one character you love dies um no don't even pretend like that i have another jam for you hold on all right because uh we we we did did the Oscar and the Johnny Cash.

I have one of those names. And there's so many versions of this song, but I decided since I started with Johnny, I would stick with Johnny. And I did wear all black for you just for that. Oh, Johnny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling. Poor Johnny Cash. From glen to glen and down the mountainside.

I would listen to him read the phone book. Yep. The summer's gone and all the roses fallen. It was funny when Hurt came out. My dad loves all that Marty Robbins and Johnny Cash. The last 10 years, the last song was sort of Breaking Bad, the Marty Robbins track. And when Johnny got really big, it was really weird because there was kind of, I wasn't one of those kids that completely rebelled

about what my parents liked, but there definitely was like, Johnny Cash is what my dad listens to. Right. And then Johnny Cash became like the badass thing because of Rick Rubin's collections and all that.

And so. And you have, you have not procreated yet. Is that correct? That, yeah. And then, and will not probably ever. But like by choice?

Yes. Okay. You want me to be honest? I don't know. That would have been a really fun Toronto Mike confession. Stop. Dan, why are you impotent? And why can't you procreate?

No, no judgments on this show. No judgments on this show. I only... No, I'm just done by choice. Roll the dice. Is it because the world... Because there's lots of room in Canada. Is it because there's... Is it a ecological decision or an economical decision or like what made you decide all of the above uh you know what i um i think it's because being really blunt like i was always

thinking of an arts career um and it just wasn't ever something that I really aspired to do. It wasn't something I was really thinking about. I was kind of just thinking about doing the career shtick. And to be honest with you, I wasn't really even gung-ho for a long-term relationship. And I've ended up in one. Are you in one right now? Yes. I'm just kidding.

It's one of those complicated's complicated ones it's my facebook status no no okay so i i don't it doesn't matter i don't even care what gender who cares but you have a significant other in your life who you now you want me to confess to other things i am unfortunately uh straight male cisgender it's a i know judgment's here but this this significant other of yours, what if this person decides they want a child? No, no, that was definitely, we were both in the same boat. But they changed their mind.

I just want to warn you. No, no, I did the smart thing. So she's four years older. So she knew going in. So unless she has like a really late game discovery, like at 40. Okay, but Dan, so if this woman is 38 years old, I can't tell you how many women I know between the ages of 38 and early 40s who have had children. It happens.

The things still happen. When I'm going to be in labor, I'll call you. We'll do a live birth on Toronto Mic. I'll give you a first do you promise i do because i'm very confident that won't ever happen all right because i'm just i know that like i married someone i loved and then they they said okay i just want one child and i gave them one child and then this person i don't have the word that but we i enjoy this child very much but then at some point she came to me and batted her beautiful brown eyes and said i would like another one like i feel like i got like a bait and switch there

you know your second child should be able to listen to this podcast in the future you're aware of that it's the fourth the math it's my fourth child and she uh is the best thing ever and i i'm not lying about that but i did not anticipate her and then then then she came and i'm very happy she's here she turns two years old next week which is very exciting you met her upstairs that is exciting it's exciting all right now um did she get to watch the oscars no those are the those kids are the best they go to bed at 7 30 those two and it's like goodbye at 7 30 and then you got the whole night to yourselves without the the little ones i'm glad to hear that some parents are still sending their kids to bed pre-8 o'clock because I had a friend who was teaching

kindergarten and the kids would come in like recapping Grey's Anatomy. It's just like, wow, that's a bedtime that I did not... I remember when in the 80s, if I could get to the opening notes of the Dallas theme, I was like, I was doing really well as a four-year-old.

I remember, yeah, if you could get to Don Cherry, then you'd do pretty well or whatever. the dallas theme i was like i was doing really well as a four-year-old i remember those like yeah yeah if you could get to don cherry then you'd be right right yeah well or whatever just just don cherry dad then i'll go to bed yeah dan are you a millennial i am what can you tell me and the people listening uh what the heck is a millennial like how does that range work well it's really funny but the millennial thing was is i fell back asperger into kind of being like a spokesperson for that because one of my first shows was about that generation. And then like a year ago or two years ago, maybe even the demographics broke down and they were like, this is this is you guys aren't any like early 80s born kids or a new demographic called Xennials. Because apparently because some marketing idiot was like decided that we were more like you guys than we

were like the so by you guys you mean generation x yeah the xer so we kind of had this borderline um ability and me specifically i think really has that because my father's 80 so i was raised with like a parent that should have had an xer um but just chose to have kids late in life. So the millennial generation, I think, in general is actually, I think you get caught between two boomers generations. I think social media was very much like rock and roll for millennials. We are a big number of people, so we kind of have the cockiness of numbers on our side, but we have no employment or housing. So our arrogance sort of takes a dip there um i think that a lot of it i think the number one sort of defining feature though is

is that unlike you kind of got the death rattle of television and culture in that television um and media 70s and 80s kind of way, right? Where you started to see the 90s be a lot about deconstruction in art and pop culture. Whereas we got the internet in a big way to social media became a thing and YouTube. And so I think that we kind of got our own secret club that Gen X sort of missed out on in a lot of ways

because like adults in your generation understood what you were doing so you just had to come up with like more like rap had to exist because and you had different things like that which would scare old white folk but it was it was easier to unlock well rap's kind of like rock remember Neil Young being like rap's the new folk music so it was an easy way to whereas when youtube and my father could not figure out how instant messaging like who was i talking to and what was going on on the internet and you know i think a lot of people got into trouble um i went back and listened to a couple of your like early on episodes in the first 100 and you had a couple bloggers on in that period oh uh rameamey the Minx. Right, right. And it's so... I only had the one, though.

Did I have anyone else? Okay, I definitely remember the Ramey the Minx conversation. And that is just a hilarious conversation to hear like four years later because like what people thought social influencing was going to be and what they thought they could get out of it and all of that was sort of... It was an interesting lesson. Do you know Ramey? No, I don't. an interesting lesson. Do you know Raimi?

No, I don't. I really, it's funny. But do you know of her? Because I don't, I don't know. She's not listening. I don't ever hear anything about her anymore. But there was a period in like, I don't want, I want to say like the glory days of blogging, like 2003, 2004, like in that era where maybe because I was blogging and there weren't that

many out there in Toronto anyways that I thought she was like she had tapped into something and I was kind of mesmerized by her like mildly fascinated by she put it all out there for us all to consume and it was like she was like a rock star of the era or whatever. Sure. And then I had her on of course because for that

reason but now it's like I never ever hear anywhere in my circles anyways maybe because i'm an old fart now but i don't hear anything about raimi well she's also i mean that's the thing that no one wanted to talk about right was the idea of i think that there was a ceiling for that kind of content because once volume enters the picture and there's a hundred raimis right it's hard to stay raimi i think the secondary thing that happens in that era is you also age. So you have to age with your audience

because you can't do, I'm a socialite. I mean, look at even Paris Hilton. We don't hear much from her. The Kardashians have been able to stick around for various reasons and intelligent business moves and whatnot. And they have Next Generation showing up, if you notice. That's a real helpful thing.

That's what Degrassi did, right? Yeah, they really are like the Saved the bell the new class oh yes um but successful uh so it's i think that there's an interesting thing with social influencing because i think people really thought it was going to be a model and they also put way too much stock into it like reinventing the wheel when in reality it's like you know like michael jordan was a social influencer mother theresa was a real social influencer but like you you get the idea of this sort of celebrity um moving the needle and you can only do so much as somebody who just lives a fun life and the travel bloggers and the people that would pay your meals and your meal ticket for you to show up, their ROI, you know, a lot of that early going social influence stuff had a lot to

do with like, you know, it was kind of a carny trick. It was like, follow the ball. What cup is this ball at? And no one really knew the answer. So you would get more money than you should have got in certain cases. You got more freebies than you probably should have. And I think even for yourself in podcasting, I wonder in five years if this Great Lakes Brewery will even come through for a new guy down the block. It'll always be here for you. You got in on this stuff early but even those sort of in-kind partnerships and i you know i think it's it's getting harder and harder to to get found online and to prove your worth to um advertisers now i'm

gonna rein this in here because i need to know like you mentioned that you would be you were anointed the voice of the millennials at some point in this video universe is uh can you be more take me back i don't know if we're going back to my space here or where we go back but take me back just you personally dan spearin like like who the hell are you and how did you become the voice of the millennials canada's first millennial in terms of these uh these these videos that these kids are all consuming teach me yeah it was honestly just generational timing um i came out of humber we were making videos uh we're making short sketches and short films we were going to film festivals like those things used to exist and we would do

short films that were comedic and then cbc at the time had a show called zed zed and you would upload like your short it was technically for like really art c films but we would just upload our funny random films because it was just a space to put something on youtube didn't exist so we were doing that and then down nathan fielder who people might know now because he went off and became super famous in america um he was somebody who was doing video sketch we were doing video sketch and we started asking the Rivoli where the kids in the hall like made famous in the 90s. That was still sort of a thing back then because Comedy Bar hadn't opened up and we were all doing video sketch. you know sort of opportunity because i had all these video sketches and things and short films sitting on back then like a giant hard drive right um and so we just were one of the first

youtubers and that kind of is what took off and then i got offered a tv series for digital cable siberia um digital cable it's not the real name no no it was just like there was all these digital channels in the mid aughts that were like offering television shows and chances to do things it was like a great chance to get exposure but it was really just a way to use the old system to get gear and things and then you would put all the stuff on on the internet and that's when i did an election special at that point for myspace um and it was through this tv channel i channel which no longer exists and it was supposed to be like higher brow intelligent content whatnot so we kind of used them for the studio space and we broadcast it through myspace so people could actually see it

and that was kind of the launching because i'm a youtuber i'm a myspace so then it sort of became this thing where the show that we wrote which was called twixters was about our generation wait what was it called it was called twixters which was the term the original term for millennials that time magazine coined because we were supposed to be betwixt childhood and adulthood because like the millennial thing that still sticks around right is that we're all like stunted emotionally and that we're we're coddled and we can't like live on our own or eat on our own or so that was sort of the generational perception that i thought was really absurd and at the same time i thought the student debt issue and actual issues of

millennial so we're facing weren't getting talked about because it was just getting passed off as we were like the mr rogers generation that were told we were special so i did that and then the canadian arts situation happened so to close off the story basically the canadian arts won't write about you at that point in time and entertainment sections like not going to pick up the phone unless you're with the cbc or left with sort of a mainstream outlet and they were really far behind on the internet so what we did was we realized that they wouldn't write the art sections wouldn't write about us but i knew lifestyle sections across the country would so we kind of used it um we kind of used our lifestyle sections because we knew they were going to talk about like demographics and millennials and i used it to

get into talk at talk panels where i actually met mark weisblatt one of your favorite guests he's coming in in two weeks uh every quarter like clockwork right and mark weisblatt if you guys don't know that name he's the 1236 guy that i have on for episodes that i have to cut stuff like i leave stuff on the cutting room floor to get him down to two hours because there's so much content for this quarterly business but anyway i think he's i i think he's fantastic so i think that helped a little bit too because mark's kind of plugged in the toronto scene and he just looked at me like oh god here's some millennial douchebag marketing kid and i met him at like a buffet line and i think he was going to tear me a new one for i weekly at that point and i was like no man i'm like i'm just here as a creator i've just found the back door into trying to meet

people from my space and trying to meet people to get on you know my career going um but that just had a life of its own we talked about student debt and we talked about sort of like the millennial problems of not making cash and then when the economy collapsed in 2008 all of a sudden i was relevant for five minutes and then in 2011 when occupy happened all of a sudden the financial post was calling me because i was on file like so it's just canada 101 right like there's like one millennial guy they wrote a story about and then they type it in their computer they have to file by five o'clock and they're like oh dan's there i guess you can string a sentence together once they catch once they realize that you are the millennial and you can you know succinctly you know put a sentence together and give them a good quote you're gonna you're gonna be on their list

i realized too like having parents that were older i think became really helpful because i could kind of baby boomer whisper um in a way so it's a little bit easier to like try to you they'd be like i don't understand this so i could put it into a more succinct language i'm like well it's kind of like i just think of like how i would explain things to my father yeah yeah and so that i think helped me a lot too because a lot of people my age have much younger parents that don't have such a gap and my parents are also luddites um so it's like i'm just 90 of my life is is taking phone calls to be like no that's not how you yeah you translate the millennial to uh an older generation that needs to understand uh you're like the conduit yeah it was a real pin of sorts it was

a real accident though like it was and then i kind of and then i wanted to get out of it because i was like oh god i don't want to be sitting around at like vh whatever my vh1 is going to be like remember youtube those were the days no but No, but there's probably an appetite now for the nostalgia. You mentioned Zedd, and I can't... I'm trying to remember Zedd. I don't remember Zedd, but I definitely remember MySpace.

I think MySpace is technically still around, right? I don't know. I skipped the MySpace. I never had a MySpace account. I think a lot of people did because it was sort of the beginning of the social network boom, but sort of like how Walt Disney would like figure or Microsoft would figure

out how to make something exactly the same as somebody else but just outspend them that's sort of what happened with MySpace and one of my favorite things ever was when Sorkin wrote this social network about Zuckerberg and like Myspace didn't exist in

that world like he was like zuckerberg just created a social network out of nowhere like nobody was doing that right so myspace has kind of been erased from the historical record but it was sort of the first thing that and then they were really smart because what happened at myspace but no one remembers is there was a program back then on tv called dateline to catch a predator and it would just be like this this i'm sure people listening to this remember this but it was like chris hansen was the reporter and i remember the show yeah they would bring folks over to like catch them trying to seduce people off the internet but almost always the meeting was like he started a myspace so the myspace angle sort of became this really big fear factor

of like what are my kids doing on the internet? And Zuckerberg was really smart. And you could only get a MySpace if you had a university email. Wait, that's Facebook. I mean, sorry, Facebook. You can only get Facebook if you had a university email. And at the time, I didn't actually have a university email because my family's broke. I mean, I went to Humber for like half a year.

Humber doesn't give you an email? Oh, you only were there half a year. I was there for a year. It was South Campus, right? Yeah, yeah. It was Police Academy 101. Yeah, yeah. That's funny.

Somebody was just on the show. Sean Clark. Right. Yeah, I know him too. Who was sitting in that seat like in the last couple weeks telling me about how I went to the South Campus? And I don't even know if Humber's there anymore.

I mean, the comedy's there anymore. I don't know where it is at Humber now. But we were the first batch at that Lakeshore campus and they hadn't built a residence yet. But are you the most famous graduate of this program? Is there anyone known out of this comedy program? First of all, I didn't graduate. I bailed downtown.

I was like, thanks for the way to get me out of Barrie, Humber, and now I'm going to go do stand-up and sketch downtown Toronto. I'm going to get a bit more deeper into this in a bit, but I'm going to ask the question to a lot of the old people listening right now. I was like, so doing all these videos and being the voice of this generation and then... You've got to stop saying that.

That's so obnoxious. I love it. The voice of a generation. Come on, it's called marketing. I'm selling you. The voice of a generation. But is there any money in any of this for dan spearin uh for dan spearin no because i have morals for people who aren't in spearin yes a lot of money um there

was it was ebb and flow it depended on how much you're willing to sell your soul i wasn't willing i was more interested in honestly interesting opportunities um and a lot of those opportunities weren't that great with cash i went to the young turks that wasn't a money deal uh i what's the young turks the young turks is the is the internet news and politics network started by jank uger and anna kasparian and they took over youtube as like a progressive news network um and they were at one point i would argue like probably the top youtube news network the youtube's kind of skewed right wing now so the jordan peterson's of the world everything are doing really well you know the pendulum swings back and forth but during the bush years when progressive

media felt like there it didn't exist oh because the republicans were led right time and they didn't yeah so they rose to power through serious radio and then j then Cenk, for a while, had an MSNBC show, and they started this YouTube network. So we were the first Canadians on that. But I went into there to talk news and politics, and we went and did a TV series on iChannel about youth issues, which is not a way to make money. But what you're asking is, it was what you talked to with Ramey except certain people had just like better you know lauren o'neill who ended up at cbc she was another blogger from that era that that tried to do that kind of thing um i think she's a blog to now though all those kinds of people tried to like lifestyle themselves into a career i kind of came from film tv writing that kind of stuff so that was never

where i wanted to go with it so i felt always like i was on youtube in this weird i was always in the niche that wasn't youtube like it was sort of this thing that didn't quite belong on youtube but that was where we went because that was where our generation was going and that's where people were watching things but you were a little ahead of this curve right yeah for sure yeah i'm like i say you peaked because you're still a very young man. I peaked in that. So you peaked too early, right? I often call myself the Pete Best of Toronto

because I came up with Lilly Singh in ASAP Science and Nathan Fielder did Video Sketch with us. Wow, so Lilly Singh, because I have a 13-year-old daughter. Yep. So I am well-versed if CBC wants me to come on Metro Morning and explain what the kids are all doing on YouTube. I kind of know. Lilly Singh's a big freaking deal.

Is she big for your kids still? My daughters, I think so. Oh, cool. At least last time I checked in on this matter. Although she is, she's maturing awfully quickly. Yeah, yeah. She's dropping a lot of this stuff. She's hitting her 30s.

No, actually, I meant my 13-year-old. No, that's what I'm saying. Lily's climbing out of cool zone probably soon. But what is she called? Supergirl? Superwoman. Superwoman. Okay.

But she, I mean, she found monster coin in this game. For sure. Just timing was off and then, and you just missed the money money train as no no i just want to talk about issues like i didn't want to do makeup tutorials i didn't want to do um sketches like in i kind of came back to youtube and wanted to talk as i said i didn't want to be that millennial influencer um and we just to be honest with you like at that point you'd go into comedy network you'd go to tv networks and they couldn't figure out how your generation was going to come and show up at eight o'clock on a Tuesday because your generation was watching everything on TV.

So that was a generation or sorry, a period of television where a lot of boomer stuff like the Tom, you know, Blue Bloods, that kind of Tom Selleck again doing something that was an easier sell. And then it took the Netflix model. And now I feel like I can go back to long-form content. And a lot of us, I think, that were on YouTube now have decided like, ah, that was fun, but this isn't really where we want to be because it became a marketing... I don't know if it became.

I think it might have always been that. But it was definitely a marketing platform more than an artistic one. I first saw you... So I know you're dying to know when did i first discover that you existed this is the question i feel like when i when you answered your door today i'm like who's this guy oh yeah we are clothing the homeless tonight that's right rob ford's top five wt ford moments because f Fred hates me. Fred who?

Fred hated me. Because that was the first time I ever really had old school people go at me. And somebody brought me this. To be honest with you, I don't remember the... I wasn't a radio guy like you. Oh, you mean Fred Patterson.

Thank you, Fred Patterson. Okay, I'm like Fred. I'm catching up now. Because he saw it on your thing. First of all, Fred, I can say this. Fred Patterson. Okay, I'm like, Fred, I'm like, okay, I'm catching up now. Because he saw it on your thing and then all of a sudden... First of all, Fred, I can say this. Fred's a dear friend of mine. Fred is a very conservative, angry man. I mean, right now, this is like private email exchanges,

how upset, pissed off he is at Marcy Ian for saying that she was racially profiled. And all I said to my dear friend Fred is I just said to Fred, this is what I said. I said, Fred, neither of us have a clue what it's like to live their lives in the city as a black man. That's all I said, which to me, it's all I'm saying is... And you definitely don't know what it's like to be a black

woman. I definitely don't know what it's like to be a black woman. I don't know what it's like to live my life in the city as a black man who am i to tell somebody that their feelings that they're being racially profiled by our police is wrong like who am i to have like like you know what i mean where fred of course he just goes off anyway you got me on the fred tangent because fred he's becoming more and more that's how i found out about you though because it linked back to toronto mike and i bet you for you i'm sure fred has no idea who i am now and i'll be honest with you i More and more. That's how I felt about you, though, because it linked back to Toronto Mike. And I bet you, I'm sure Fred has no idea who I am now.

And I'll be honest with you, I don't know much. I just remember that moment. No, but he loved Ford. And anyone who pissed on Ford, he thought the star. When Kevin Donovan and Robin Doolittle talked about the video, right? Fred said to me, it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. I'm like, so you're telling me this guy, these people, these journalists for the Star, they're completely

making this up. I said, is that what you're telling me? He goes, yeah, because it doesn't exist. He goes, you know how easy it is to fake a video? Whatever. No way did that video exist. And this is the kind of guy you're dealing with there. So he was upset with you for this video you did. Top five WT Ford moments. but that's the video that probably is it the most viral toronto video you've

ever made 100 and that video when that was part of a show so we were doing a tv series on rogers at one point called truth mashup and on cable 10 in 2000 um in 2009 like the canadian industry decided the advertising industry had gone bust and they just weren't going to make anything so there's this new initiative from the geniuses at top that were like you should all go into to cable uh you know local cable again and so like if the sketchersons downtown had a show and we had a show this comedy block and that point was we the first thing we did was an election special so we were actually supposed to interview rob forks we interviewed everybody else at election the 2010 election yeah 2010 election and at the same time too i was part of that i got killed at g20 so we

did a thing on g20 and um but in that rob ford election rob ford was supposed to come do our show and we were supposed to his people had organized getting rob and i to go through the village downtown the lgbt folks on rob's bus because they're trying to like reach out to the youth demographic and then someone i think probably googled me because the day we showed up they rob all of a sudden was like oh we just we have to cancel sorry something came up last minute uh so we had this big gap in our in our show and i had to and i had to fill it because it was supposed to be a rob ford interview so we just decided to slag him because we're like well he didn't come on the show so we didn't he's an easy target anyway sure so i did that video like really fast i was super tired

i'm slurring like i'm so like it's a horrible video and it went maybe five ten thousand views the crack scandal broke in america and i woke up and it had a hundred thousand views it was one of the craziest things because on youtube for not to bore people into a slumber, but it's really rare for an old video to find an audience. It gets buried amongst the volume and it's never heard from again. So to have a spike like that was really bizarre and I went through my YouTube library

like, what is giving me this huge view count? Oh, there it is. It's the Rob Ford video. And then Rob Ford paid my groceries on the Young Turks Network for like a good two years. Good. There you go. So something good did come out of the Ford years. Yeah, it was helpful to my grocery bill and my internet bill and paying my rent. Do you have an opinion on the Marcy Ian thing?

You're familiar with this story that you put in the video, right? I have an opinion on everything, sadly, which is what got me so much trouble on Twitter in the early going. I have an opinion on everything, sadly, which is what got me so much trouble on Twitter in the early going. I think that we are, there's a lot of different things, my take on that. My first take on it is I kind of, I agree with you 100% that you don't know what people are thinking about. You don't know how people live their own lives and you're not sure what it's like to be in other people's shoes so i'm kind of preach empathy twitter's not known for that everybody wants their hot but that's a reasonable response is here's the thing you don't know what it's like to be a black man either i should point out this is a podcast people don't know you're a white guy

right right right i think they probably could tell by my lack of johnny cash and your lack of soul? Yeah. But I think that the thing that people forget about in the digital age is everyone's trying to mine niches. And the two things from this that I think people should take away from is the Toronto police have a serious PR problem. And they don't understand how to work the digital age. And they don't understand how to mine confidence in the communities like you saw saunders come out against the lgbt community like let's pretend on both counts that the police are 100 right somehow magically the gay community was not helpful in that or marcy ian is completely like fabricating the story let's just pretend the right-wing conspiracy theorists

are 100% correct. You still, as a police force, have an obligation to craft those messages in a much better way because we are supposed to be representing everyone in this city. And the tone-deaf response really concerns me as a Torontonian, right?

Because they're not thinking about what they're saying out loud. To go on a Twitter tangent like that guy did about like, well, this is what really happened. Well, you also followed her into her house. They drove all the way to her house. Like, it's just, that would not happen to, I don't believe personally that would have happened to me driving in the city.

My final words to Fred on this, just to close the loop on this one, is I said to him, I said, because he's got a podcast too. Did you know that? I said to him, Fred, I said, I challenged him. I said, find yourself a black Torontonian,

a human adult black person who is born and raised in the city. Have them on your show and ask them if they believe that they have ever been racially profiled or if tps is racist at all or whatever ask them instead of us blue-eyed white guys sitting around discussing discussing whether uh black people in the city are being unfairly targeted uh please it's been so weird too because like people don't remember like especially when i talk to younger kids like they don't remember the promise of the internet the idea that we were all going

to get to know each other much better that we were all going to be able to like talk to people in other places and like we would just bridge all these international gaps and what's really happened is is that you can have sex within 20 minutes of your house like that like that's sort of like we just localized everything um and in a lot of ways it's been fantastic for people who were marginalized to get their voices there through social media but in a lot of ways it's it's sort of i think like this is beaten this horse is beaten to death but it really has the filter bubble problem really has become something that I think we all need to address more proactively because the talk radio monster and the cable news monster of the 90s

that I grew up with as a child on the internet unleashed is just scary as hell. We're not getting vaccinated, and people believe that children are actors and school shootings and so all of these things that um are easily disseminated online we do have to have talks about educating ourselves and making sure people understand what other people are thinking and come and where they're coming from absolutely absolutely and uh this is quite a tangent but you mentioned the tone deaf tps being tone deaf i just want to point to something that irked me to no ends when it went down and it still does

and i think it was like evidence that maybe with mark saunders there is this tone deaf nature of tps which which when he changed the police cars to that one that style that looks like a stealth car okay the robocop car rightop car? Right. That's a scary-looking car. That's a car that's trying to sneak up on you. To me, that's not a friendly police officer, member of the community, like McNulty at the end of Season 5 of The Wire or whatever. This is, we're going to catch you and get you.

And to me, it was tone-deaf. Apparently, he did that on his own. He didn't clear up some board or whatever. He just gave the orders to change the paint colors to this. And I still see those cars on the road. And it irked me to no end. And I think that ties in with the things you mentioned. The blame game with the serial killer we have.

And then this Marcy Ian thing. And it's tone deaf. This Morning in the Star. We're taking this tangent for one more second. And then we're going to come right back. But this Morning in the Star. This kind of goes back to digital culture is uh they got caught using this device that catches your cell phone information stingray or something yeah yeah so stingray is it masks itself as a cell phone tower so van you know old school like think about

television series van parks outside and they launch stingingray, and Stingray pretends that it is a cell phone tower. So when your phone's pinging looking for a cell phone tower, it attaches itself to Stingray, and then they're able to get your data, like whether it's who you just had spoken to, your texts,

your information of who you had called, all that stuff. And what happened is they asked them, like, have you ever used this device? And they're like, no, we haven't. Two years ago. Now, two years later, because of of information acts and and civil liberties organizations pushing pushing pushing oh yeah we kind of did that and the fear is is like those things aren't specific you don't need a warrant these kinds of like you can use a much

lower warrant to get to get be able to use something like that technically according to the star i guess they they did look at things and it seemed that they did use it just for the numbers they were getting but you don't really know because those devices can pick up anybody on this block so if they were trying to get toronto mike they'd get my phone right now in the process as i'm sitting with you so it's all of those things but like why would you lie like we're gonna find out and then we find out and people don't trust you and right we trust that's the word trust yeah it's absolutely it's just it creates so much chaos when it doesn't need to and then they asked them like well have

you been working because they said we don't have any of those devices and then they asked them well are you working with any other police organizations like the rMP who have admitted to having those devices and they're like, no comment. None of it felt reassuring. And once again, this fuels more online conspiracy threads on Reddit, I'm sure. And so it's all around. We can talk about social media being this negative thing, but our core institutions have to make themselves

more transparent and more trustworthy and not feed these crazy people in their basements being this this negative thing but like our core institutions have to make themselves more transparent and more trustworthy and not feed these crazy people in their basements worrying about you know wearing the tinfoil to worry about privacy but then it's like oh yeah by the way there was a there was a truck parked at the end of your street intercepting data from your phone i think that truck was flyers sorry uh flowers by Right, right. It was on the side. Exactly. You know, what are we now? We're a good 50 minutes deep,

and I haven't done a sponsor mention yet, and this might be the longest I've ever gone. I really, the thought is when I invited you on, and this has been amazing, and we'll touch on some more of this, but I really want to talk to you about podcasting, believe it or not. But first, I want to tell everyone listening, all the Dan Spearin fans,

what am I talking about? Dan Spearin fans probably have no money. What are they going to do? They can't go to my Patreon. Now you've found my Achilles heel. Why? I'm not a millionaire. I was going to say, go to patreon.com slash Toronto Mike

and give what you can, even a dollar a month. It's fantastic to help crowdfund this enterprise. You did a 90-minute jaunt to get here dan but there is beer in it for you as i said the six pack in front of you from the good people at great lakes brewery all yours my friend why thank you mike and great lakes brewery this looks wonderful you're showing great restraint too that you haven't cracked one open i know well because the first i was i was going to ask you if this had, you know, specific, if you choose these specifically, because I have pompous ass in front of me. I will tell you.

I will tell you. I tried to give you one of everything I had in the house. Nice. That's what I tried to do. So you have six, I believe you have six different beers there. What's that one there? This is Lake Effect. Okay, the Lake Effect.

Everybody talks good things about this. I hear this on your podcast all the time lake effect my wife's company this is completely coincidental because they have no idea what's going on in this basement here but my wife's company has chosen lake effect as their beer of the month and they're gonna everybody in the company gets some lake effect like this is a complete coincidental event I just learned about. That lake effect is really popular so you enjoy that one. But enjoy all of it.

That's from Great Lakes Brewery. I like this. I like the lumberjack. That's a staple. I like the Canuck Pale Ale. I once, I was doing a bike ride on the waterfront trail.

Like this is not too far from, I'd say not too far from the exhibition place there on the waterfront. And I saw a guy running. He was running like he was like a jog. And he was dressed like that guy. That guy's name is Gordy Levesque.

That's his name. And this guy running was dressed exactly like Gordy Levesque, like completely. And I took a, you know, he's running by me, but I got off my bike and I snapped a photo and I tweeted at the Great Lakes guy. And I'm like, I just saw just saw gordy levec running by and no joke it was a guy training because he's he was going to run the marathon as gordy levec for charity like it really was gordy levec running along lake ontario oh no this is last summer that is some serious that's some serious marketing yeah and i'm like holy smokes like it was just a convergence of all my, you know.

Great Lakes just follows you now? Apparently. And so they're like, Mike will take a picture of that. That'll be great. That'll be great marketing on social. You know, I think anyone could run as anything, but he was wearing the big, heavy black shoes that Lumberjack would wear.

Like, I think that's the tough part. Like, at least let the guy wear running shoes. You know what I mean? Like, that's got to be tough to run a marathon in those shoes. I gotta find out how he did. He's in Uggs or something. Or even barefoot would be better than what he was wearing. But Great Lakes beer needs a pint glass

and you have a pint glass there. It's from propertyinthesix.com. And that is Brian Gerstein. He's a sales representative with PSR Brokerage. I'm going to play you a message for you from Brian, but I should tell Brian now. Dan refused to sell out. So because Dan had integrity and refused to play the game

that they wanted him to play in order to extract money from these millennial followers. You can't afford a home in the city, can you? No. But you do rent. You're not homeless. I rent from somebody who can't afford a home in the city. This ad is for the people that will own the future home I rent from.

I get sad. I got four kids and two are teenagers. I don't know how they're going to afford a house in the city. Like where will they end up? Like you're from Barrie. Would you go back? That's the second half of the podcast.

No, I would definitely not do that. I don't, I think that, I honestly think we're going to have an adjustment of values and adjustment of what people are going to do. And I have a feeling that your kids might take this house. Where am I going? That's what I want to, I mean you know the sad thing is and it's not sad i mean i'm very blessed that i actually own a house in a neighborhood i like in a city i love but i'm already out of room like uh around the corner from you my teenage son sleeps because there's no there's no and two kids

are the two little ones are shacked up together in the same room. I'm actually right now out of space in this house. That's why Brian is sponsoring this because he feels it. He feels it in his bones that you might be a client. Well, Brian's got some stuff going on. This guy's a cool cat. Let's hear from Brian. Propertyinthe6.com Hi, Dan. Brian Gerstein here,

sales representative with PSR Brokerage and proud sponsor of Toronto Mic'd. Enjoy my colourful new pint glass, specially made for Mike's 2018 guests. I have a limited supply left over, allocated exclusively for Toronto Mic's listeners. In order to receive one of these collectible pint glasses, whose value we'll only appreciate with time, Thank you. with the spring market arriving. To summarize the 2018 market so far, condos are hot, freehold low-rise is not.

Let me help break it down for you at 416-873-0292. Here's what you do, Dan. You phone Brian and you tell him that you're looking for something. Meet with him, pick his brain. Don't tell him you have no money. Don't tell him that part. Just tell him you're looking for something, meet with him, pick his brain. Don't tell him you have no money. Don't tell him that part.

Just tell him you're looking around. He's going to give you another pint glass just for meeting with him. You could take advantage of this wonderful offer from Brian Kirstein. You could have another pint glass. And then I will have to drink knowing I can't afford a home.

It'd be good. Oh, man. I think everybody, anyone who's even thinking about being in the market in the next 6 to 12 months should meet with Brian. Pick his brain. You're under no obligation to commit to anything. Just meet Brian. Talk to him.

And there is a free pint glass in it for you. So I think it's a no-brainer. The pint glass is nice. It is. For those at home who can't see it. I should take a picture of the pint glass. Because the old pint glass, which we just ran out of, did not have any color see it. I should take a picture of the pine glass because the old pine glass, which we just ran out of,

did not have any color in it. It was just black. And this one has like a splash of red in there. A nice red six, which is very appropriate. Absolutely. Absolutely. When did Drake start calling this place the six?

Do you know how long ago that was? Five years ago, maybe? I feel like it was longer. Maybe it was more than that. Yeah, I'm at that old age now. We're like, that was a couple of years ago. And people are like, that was a decade ago, Dan. I feel like it was longer. Maybe it was more than that. Yeah, I'm at that old age now where I'm like, that was a couple years ago. And people are like, that was a decade ago, Dan. I'm like, oh.

Dude, if you told me something happened in 1997, in my brain, I'm like, oh, that was 10 years ago. To me, the 90s kind of just ended. What's with this new music, Pearl Jam, that the kids are talking about? Like, oh, did you hear Pearl Jam's Scott McFarlane? Is he the guy? You know, they did a video for Do the Evolution. Yeah, oh, did you hear Pearl Gems? Was it Scott McFarlane? Is he the guy? You know,

they did a video for Do the Evolution. Yeah, it was about 10 years ago. It was pretty fucking good. That was 1998. Okay, that's 20 years ago. That's 20 years ago, yeah. That's crazy.

That's messed up. I used to make fun of my dad for that and now I'm 34 and I'm doing the exact same thing. Man, you're lucky you had a dad

to make fun of, okay? That's another podcast. On that happy note, let's talk about Paytm. Paytm is a free online bill payment service that helps manage all of your bills in one place. Dan, here's something you can actually do. Because you have to pay bills. You got a phone, I saw. You got bills to pay.

You just use Paytm to pay your bills and you could use uh your credit card you could you you would connect your credit card to paytm and then you can pay all your bills via paytm put all your bills on your credit card so you get the credit card points i swear to you nothing gets me more excited than biking over the no frills buying 21 dollars worth of groceries but only giving them a dollar because I got $20 in points just from paying bills I have to pay anyways. So everything goes on the credit card. You also get Paytm cash that you can use towards other bills. And here's the thing. Anybody who uses the promo code Toronto Mike, that's all one word, it gets you $10 off your first bill payment. So they give you $10 towards a bill payment just for using my promo code,

Toronto Mike. That's a no-brainer. It's a no-brainer to meet Brian and get that glass. It's a no-brainer to drink the Great Lakes beer. And it's a no-brainer to use Paytm and to use the promo code, Toronto Mike, to get the $10. So many no-brainers, which is good because Dan, you and I have no brain, so this is very convenient.

That I can use. Yeah, for sure. Honestly, and I'm not going to bullshit you. They threw money at me, talk about the service. I said, no. I said I need to install the service and use it and see if this is something I can talk about because like yourself, I'm also

very poor because I refuse to sell out. We have a lot in common here. It's good. I think it's good that people are questioning. Because it also hurts every other podcast too because people will start to use services that are not good. And then people are like, I don't listen to podcasters recommendations because they're just taking cash.

So I'm glad that you used it and can now advocate for it without a guilty conscience. The joke is, I do promote Brian Gerstein, but only after we met and we talked for a long time and I realized he was a cool dude. I've actually never used his services because you've got to buy a house to use his services. That's a big commitment there. I've got to move just to use Brian's services. Buy the red six on the pine glass. I'm going to go in and limit say he's trustworthy. Yes.

And he's got great hair. I've been told. IWCC. Right, right. Does that mean anything to you? It does. It's the independent web creators of Canada.

So once we talked about all of those things, like in the rainy days of life, uh, starting to go the other way and started to get a lot more complicated. A lot of creators in Toronto got together and started an organization to start uh advocating not only for more money from the canadian government in terms of like recognizing this new world uh for example like toronto mike for me is taking the place of what we used to give tax breaks and things to for local content um why aren't podcasters with that same reach and that

same ingenuity getting ability to get some of that money so that was part of it part of it was just promotion of create uh creators we knew that the volume thing was coming um which is there's so much 500 hours go up for example on youtube every minute so it's 500 hours of content that you're swimming against but they're all just guys playing video games right yeah yeah that's just that's just two cat that's just two channels yeah no uh yeah lots of people think of youtube too and i think so like i think a lot of us um whether it was buffer festival in toronto or whether it was us with to web fest and the iwcc we were trying to showcase that it wasn't all just party people taking photos of their pretty selves. It was a lot of smart and great content. Like your next generation of filmmaker,

your next generation of musicians going to be on YouTube or going to be on the internet. It's not going to be the old school. You know, I see, I've heard you guys talk about much music and so much. And like, it's just,

that's never coming back. You know, that centralized way of getting your media is never coming back in that same way uh despite ed the socks attempts um so i think that there there needs to be a lot more creators getting together and helping them get help each other get found too i think the tripod thing that npr did we're seeing more with podcasts you see podcast networks now and all that too. So you and other web creators get together and form this consortium of sorts?

Yeah, it actually happened before. I didn't actually start this organization. I was in at YouTube doing what Google ended up calling the Canadian Collab Project, and that was spearheaded by a bunch of us. ASAP Science and Lilly Singh and Seanheaded by a bunch of us asap science and lily sing and sean ward and a guy named andrew hunter ended up being a television writer but was a youtuber at the time and we all wanted to see youtube put more money and um resources into creators in toronto so

there was all these amazing people amazing talented people in Toronto, but they weren't getting much hype because we weren't in LA. So we started to see like a brain drain. Everyone was going once YouTube started their studio system. So we were really wanting a Toronto space. We eventually won that. And that's why there's a Toronto space downtown at George Brown. But it took a while. And so that I was there. Meanwhile, there's a lot of web series creators that were trying to make like the new tv they were working on an organization called diwcc and it caught my eye because we were trying to organize youtubers and i ended up taking that gig in 2015 i went and became like a the vice president of that organization sat on their board as chair and started to shape what i hoped would continue on after I served my terms.

So it's just one of those things, I think, that we're creating all these new things, right? And we're sort of making the rules up in some ways as we go along. And in some ways, we're forced to be in certain boxes because of the market that we're all in and because there's so much competition now. the the market that we're all in and because there's so many there's so much competition now um i can imagine like you doing toronto mic toronto mic the podcast must be really interesting from when you started it to now and how it's changed and how you know people come to you or find you and oh yeah now you're seeing this sort of almost establishment new media in a weird way like yeah which i'm sure you don't feel maybe because you're like i'm not on like cfrb or 640

or chf they can't afford me dan no it's true they can't they can just give you pine classes but no i think it's like i think this is where people are listening to to hear about what's going on in their city now. I don't think it's necessarily, as I said, it's not like Roger's Daytime anymore. I mean, I've been doing this almost six years. And it's changed so much that at some point it changed to a point where this is... Now this is just what it is, like sort of deal. Like it becomes the new normal, if you will. Like, and, and now it's like, I'll get, I'll get very lengthy passionate emails from people telling me I'm doing too

many kick out the jams episodes and I'll get things like this and I'll, you know, I, I read it. I always reply thoughtfully. I always think about it. Like, is this person right? And then I have to remind myself like why I'm doing this. And, and, and I, you know, you know, you know what, basically I have to remind myself this doesn't pay my mortgage is what I have to remind myself. That's another reason, weirdly enough, that was another big reason why. So I ended up doing a podcast in the last little while called Creator Time for the IWCC.

And that was essentially why we did it. Because people like yourself can really give a lot of info to people who are starting out. And I used to joke around like why did you you know why are you part of this organization i said it's nepotism for people that don't have nepotism because nepotism is always thought of as like somebody just hands you a job but what it really does is it tells you where not to go and what mistakes not to make and when you're starting out independently you have no idea like what to do or what not to do or oh yeah there's no blueprint like yeah you're the only way to learn is to make the mistakes.

So and we'll get back to Creator Town because I want to hear about that. But I recently, when I did the 300th episode, I wrote an entry like things I learned on my way to 300 episodes where I just decided to share for the masses everything I learned. Like I've broken a lot of eggs like to enjoy this omelet, if you will. So like I made these mistakes so you don't have to. Right. And the only way, in my opinion, the only way to learn when there's no blueprint and there's no guide and you're sort of on the bleeding edge, if you will, is you have to

get your hands dirty and you have to do it. That's the hard part. You got to keep doing it. And then you figure it out as you go. Yeah. And it's the value of experience i suppose it changes yearly like what the advice is but there are a lot of like general knowledge things that people can hand down and and i think that when this kind of first wave of independent creation we're gonna have a lot of

like funny stories about you know how this all started in your basement one day. But in the grand scheme of it, a PR agency isn't dismissing Toronto Mike anymore. Somebody who wants to get on your podcast isn't thinking twice about showing up to your basement. Whereas 10 years ago, we might have thought that was crazy. And it would have been a really harder sell. It would have had to have been like a former radio disc jockey is now doing it out of their home. And they have a few, like Jesse Brown's a really good example of somebody who could start up because they had so many connections inside the industry that they could, they had the privilege of saying they were an outsider because they could connect themselves so quickly to being an insider. For those of us

who truly were outsiders, I think that this really helps for other people to share knowledge and to share information because you don't know. But there are things I think 10 years now into this, you know, going into my YouTube career, quote unquote career, that you can share with people that are helpful and other things you have to pass to someone who's doing it right now and succeeding right now and they have to tell you what their tips are because it does change i'm gonna we're gonna do what i call the state of the union for podcasting in canada so this is good this is based on those tweets you sent uh that captured my attention but before we dive into the state of union podcasting in canada uh crater town so this

where do you record crater town so creator town's part of girth radio which is a podcast network in downtown toronto that runs out of the pacific junction hotel which is at king and sherbourne and that was a bar that decided to basically knock out the front of their seating and install a podcast booth in the front window so it's actually a really fun place to record because you get to sit on king street and watch streetcars go by hang out big glass window also connects you to the bar so the bar folks can watch you do the show sometimes they pipe the audio in to the bar um and that's where we do creator town and we we're looking for a space at the time that worked for what we were doing which is basically like an

educational super niche podcast for those who are interested in becoming a creator looking for a space at the time that worked for what we were doing, which is basically like an educational, super niche podcast for those who are interested in becoming a creator and wanted to listen to advice because a lot of people listen to American podcasts and the Canadian world is just not the same animal. Like it's just a lot of that advice does not help you if you're starting out here and how to get hype or how to, you know, meet people, all that. So, and like where your options are to pitch things etc etc depending on what you're doing uh so that's a collective a podcast

so like one of you know i joke around with um i think you've done kareem kanji's welcome correct i was so here i was so early you hate the audio on this because i hate the audio on it like i so you know i and you know kareem i bump in him a lot like I bump into him at a Barenaked Ladies concert. I bump into him at a Raptors Heat game. I see him out and about. And he's a big fan of my podcast and we'd have lots of discussions and stuff. And he started his own with Girth

and he invited me on. So I said, yeah, let me bike over and I'll do that. But when I listen, and this is like I said, about breaking the eggs to make the omelet. Karim was still breaking eggs. I can't listen to my own episode because I couldn't handle how the audio sounded.

Now, he fixed that. I think he's fixed it by now, yeah. Because I went on that show, but it reminded me of Toronto Mike when I said I listened to his show. It reminds me of Toronto Mike. Sometimes I listen to Karim, though. Sometimes I hear Karim's show and I think,

did Crim just copy me? Like, is this, you know what I mean? Is this a facsimile? Well, what I, it's funny because I listen

to those types of podcasts more. I'm not into true crime stuff like other people are as much. I'm not so much into sketch comedy podcasts. Right. Even though I support that community.

But, I really love interviews. I love listening. I love your two-hour sessions with Mark Weisblatt, who's sort of a great Toronto social mapper and journalist that's, you know. And underappreciated. So who else is having Mark Weisblatt on?

He's super underappreciated, solely just from, like, I know there's a lot of political differences on my side of the world, and I'm sure his side of the world doesn't like me too much in parts, but there's, I think, a mutual appreciation society

for people that were pioneers in doing digital right and trying to push that rock up the hill. Because Canada is not, they're not in love with risk. We're a very risk-averse media culture. So anybody who like, you know, there wouldn't be that bringing that even newsletter culture to media if Mark hadn't pushed that rock up the hill, I don't think. Mark, I have him on as often. He'll come, which is once a quarter. But the other gentleman I have to give a shout out in the same breath is Retro Ontario, Ed Conroy, who I have on regularly.

We just did a Christmas crackers thing, which I think if I had to, hey, I think that is what Toronto Mike, the spirit of Toronto Mike, I think is in that two hours i had with him at christmas time but uh like that he's been you know he's the guy out there on the floor like uh archiving the old the memories of you know old toronto tv and radio and everything and it's and he's got the stories behind he just hooked me up with the actress who played muffie on today's special oh my god really she's coming on like muffie's coming on, like Muffy's coming on. That's amazing.

So Ed Conroy, and I'm just a guy in his basement trying to give these people like an outlet or whatever, but Mark Weisblatt from 1236 and Ed Conroy from Retro Ontario, I think they're just like underappreciated Toronto jewels. So I talk about them whenever I can. And it really, if you're not like, I didn't grow up here. I got here. I've almost been here now. But close enough, like you had our tv and i was gonna say i i've also i now have been

here almost as long as i lived in barrett because i literally tunneled under a walmart as soon as high school was over to get to toronto so when i now i've been here for a long time but like all those years the 90s stuff the guys i was asking kareem about this like and sammy union who's the guy who runs girth they have have this affinity for Edge, right? And they have an affinity for the real radio stuff in the 80s and 90s. You mean, because pre-Edge, you mean CFNY? Yeah, CFNY.

No, but Edge, too. Sammy was found at Edge, too. But yeah, CFNY and all that stuff. And that's pre-my memory. But it's really, I'm a nerd, so I love listening to hearing about like how the toronto mediascape landscape was and when i listen to your show too there's a lot of great interviews from people that i kind of like i just listened to your steve anthony oh he's amazing i

love that and like i just like steve anthony for me was the guy who introduced weird alan when weird took over much music i was like i was young and I wasn't watching Much Music very much. I remember Kareem had Erica M come in and he records his podcast after we do. And I kind of had a moment where I'm like,

all of a sudden, a memory unlocked. I'm like, oh wait, that's Much Music personality I remember from my... That's great. Yeah, yeah. So it's cool to listen to those things and hear about what happened before you i'm not a fan of the when i when i run into young people and they're like oh that happened before i was born i kind of want to shake them that's ridiculous i hate that i snuck up on my daughter with her friends because i was giving her this dress that my wife mended so she could go dance in it and so uh they have beatles playing aloud in their circle.

It was the Beatles, okay? And I was thinking like, okay, this is kind of neat. Like these girls are all 13 or 14, some of them, are listening to a band that recorded these songs in the 60s. So this whole notion, like I don't know about, these people are like, that's before my time. Like so was Dunkirk. Like are you not going to watch Dunkirk?

You know what I mean? Because World War II is before your time. Nonsense. So was Dunkirk. Are you not going to watch Dunkirk? You know what I mean? Because World War II is before your time. Nonsense. It's weird to think you're not supposed to know things before your birthday. It makes me feel like that to me is the worst of the worst. It's before my time. It doesn't mean anything to me. Please.

I just had a guy on just to talk for 90 minutes about the Horseshoe Tavern. We're talking about Stomp and Tom Connors doing 25 Nights in the early 70s at the Horseshoe Tavern. That, you know, we're talking about Stomp and Tom Connors doing 25 Nights in the early 70s at the Horseshoe Tavern. Like, that's before my time, and I'm fascinated by this. Yeah, me too. I find the whole thing interesting about Toronto history and what's going on in Toronto. You know, this is episode 311. Should we be giving random...

Oh, yeah. No, it's 311. Should we be giving random Toronto statistics? Yeah. Should we just be giving random Toronto information to people since we're 311? Oh, that's right. 311. That's great. You're right.

You're right. Oh, man. We'll insert random Toronto facts in post. If you have any, drop any, because that's great. Back to Karim, though. Sure. I hope that didn't mean to sound like, oh, he ripped me off. What's an asshole?

I mean, it's very... So does he say that he's inspired by Toronto Mike? Is this something he's public about? But I think what's happened that I think is really important to talk about when we're say that like he's inspired by toronto mike like is this something he's he's public about but i think what's happened that i think is really important to talk about when we're talking about podcasting if you're into that culture is local media plus like for example in barry so there's a podcast network in peterborough and there's a podcast network in niagara region there's a podcast network in uh alberta too but we'll stick to the ones in ontario since

we're and they're really doing a good job of bringing local creators together but why it's so important is like the berry examiner i grew up with is no longer existing it just went out of business um the packet and times up in orillia my dad my dad's from up there that's gone the local cable channels now are disappearing right the tens the 10s. So I think what you're seeing is that you got in on this sort of idea of, I'm going to take a specific media culture of Toronto and I'm going to do a podcast on it. But I think what you're seeing is people who are of their city now not having these places that they can go to to feel connected to where they're from. And you're seeing more people kind of almost legacy what you're doing.

Not necessarily because i think they were like i want to be toronto mike but they were like this guy's providing a service but you as we talked about the top right kareem's got a different lens of this city um than you do and he he definitely has a different story than you do and i think it's important that even if he's going to interview, say like you've both interviewed Maestro Fresh West, but those interviews are coming from a very different place. And I think that's also important in Toronto. Like we don't we talk about our multiculturalism a lot as like a pamphlet, but we don't talk about how it actually does matter that depending on where you're from and depending on your own upbringing, you gonna have a different take on what something means to you so i've really enjoyed actually even when there's crossover episodes of different of your shows i'm actually interested in like the toronto mike lens and and the welcome

lens that the cream brings and so i think that you're seeing more of those i think there's a don't get me wrong there's a ceiling for that. Once like seven of these things exist, the cream will probably rise to the top. But it will be, I think, good in the short, in the sort of the long run of Toronto media to have more of this stuff that you can listen to. Oh, no doubt, no doubt. And that's what I, you know, Krim is still going and he's what I, you know, Crim is still going and he's producing

real content and that, I'm still kind of impressed that there's this bar that just gave up like some of its valuable real estate

to create a space. Like, so, and it's called the Pacific Junction Hotel. Yeah, it's Pacific Junction Hotel. And Girth Radio is the name of the network. And so,

is there any barrier of entry to get on the Girth Network? Or are they just, we'll let any content person who pitches us? You have to pitch. And so if you go to their website, girthradio.com, Sammy Union will end up getting your pitch. But you can also go in a lot of times.

So the funny story behind us is we went in, because I was researching where I wanted to go, because I knew I wanted to go into a network model because I also wanted to help people with the... Because what we were doing, obviously, with the IWCC and TEO WebFest was a collaboration thing. So we definitely wanted to go and be a part of a network. And there's a few networks in Toronto.

There's Never Sleeps Network that Alex Ross runs. He's a radio producer. Do you know I'm completely ignorant? Even though I podcast every week in my basement, I think I've become sort of like an island of sorts. It happens. There's no guide. There's no blueprint.

It's like, I'm going to do this the way I think it should be done, and I'm going to figure it out as I go. And I know of girth because I did the Karim podcast. Otherwise, I'm actually completely ignorant. And that's part of why you're here, which we're now at this part, and you're going to tell me, finish your story here about the networks. But this is now about podcasting in Canada. For sure.

So I really think the network model is really important because now you were like me with YouTube. You got in early. And when you get in a little bit early, you have a great head start on everybody to build up your content. a little bit early you have a great head start on everybody to build up your content and then once as you i'm sure you could tell people listening like once you get that first really good interview you have sort of a calling card now that you can tell people you can trust me as a podcaster i'm going to do a good job i'm going to give you a good interview like you have references yes it really is it's very much like a resume um and so now that a lot of people have that or that you're seeing bigger names get into podcasting even within the toronto

who already have the pre-built contact network um you're seeing more and more podcasts so with volume like we saw on youtube you get drowned out so network's really important to like not only promote your podcast but for new people starting out it's really the only way i think to start unless you have a really brilliant niche so like sick boy was an example that did really well and i now i'm like losing because i'm i'm bad with all these titles i have in my head but there's a burling i think there's a burlington podcast that just got featured in the star and it's um a true crime podcast it's doing really well and they're actually helping it's like people on death row so anyways there's a lot of different podcasts happening so if you have a really smart niche there's always ways to independently blow up but

but for most folks i think it's really important to like get into these networks to cross promote and also with girth for newbies um it's set up so you've got a full-blown mixing board here too right it goes fairly simple into your laptop with girth the setup's all there for people so really all they have to do is maybe fiddle with a couple of the volume meters if somebody's hot on their mic sure sure sure or if someone's riding their you know that they're riding faders or whatever that's about it yeah um but so does girth provide the web space for the mp3 file yeah so and do they is there a technical person in-house that yes okay wow yeah so it's like really you just have to bring the content yes you know it's funny though great for a lot of people but that's not how i roll like i part of the fun is touching all the parts of it like a to

z like i would i would hate to do a show where all i had to do is talk in this microphone and then go do something so for me we tell them they don't need anybody so we go in and do it all ourselves because we're like you yeah like that's the fun to me the fun is uh we actually brought our own gear the first time going down there because that's how cynical we were of this setup we were like okay whatever we bagged our own gear and then we realized oh no everything is really well done here fair enough um but yeah so it's set up i think sammy's vision of it to speak for sammy is uh he really wants the best ideas for a podcast so not everybody who's going to pitch is going to you know he's talked about out loud before on a

show i think and we did a panel at pod camp last couple weeks ago um and he talked about like people wanting to pitch like a sex in the city podcast and he's like what's your angle why you like so those types of things sometimes get shot down but if you have the right niche or you're you really passionate about a subject he's really open to it and that's i think why he set it up as sort of um plug and play for people because it really he's trying to get the best ideas in and a lot of times we're losing out really good ideas or people who are really talented at talking and interviewing because that they're not tech minded and so they do lose out you know a lot of it's intimidating it's you tell somebody that you tell somebody who might be a wonderful conversationalist

and a very thoughtful, smart person, oh, by the way, it's all driven by an XML file. I feel like that a lot of people are like, that's like, okay, I'll do, like, nope, I'm out. Like, it's tapping out. And you jumped in with blogging first too, right? So there's a lot of stuff where you knew how to run a daily thing that people, you knew how to keep your audience's attention between episodes because you were already

doing that with your first love and also i think you're right about that because so i'm already creating content it's just written form and i've been you know doing that regularly for years but then when it comes to podcasting uh you mentioned uh fred patterson earlier when we were so angry about Rob Ford there but Humble and Fred podcast they've been doing it for six years plus and from day one I was the guy so they would create the mp3 and then I would do

the stuff in the back end or whatever so it's like I got to see results, I got to see how it all went through the A to Z before I ever spoke into a microphone. That's why we joined the Young Church Network on YouTube because I knew they were going to be like, they have, you know, 3 million subscribers

and like 2 billion views on you. And so I knew that kind of volume would teach me a lot more than just being on my own. Like, so I really think it is important when you're doing things to get... Now you're selling me on this, but now I'm wondering like, so should I be part of a network like do you think i should be part of a network i think you were first through the door so i think like i'm surprised you haven't

gone to e1 because that's what e1 did in the late and so in late december e1 the great media company the behemoth in canada started a podcast network and they picked up shows like comedy above the pub which has been going on for years um our fake history sick boy went there and so basically they all went under one banner e1 yeah so now it's sort of like they're like this so do they they basically approach successful podcasts yeah but they did not approach this one so i'm now by deductive logic i am not i realize that they don't see me as a successful podcast because i never got approached you know what it is though in my opinion is i think that your local niche they're probably looking for things that could work anywhere or at least work nationally

i actually think this because i'm toronto and arrogant so i think we're the center of the universe but i think that this does work but you've branded yourself so successfully as toronto mike that they're probably like well it is a double-edged sword it is yeah it works really well also i don't really think you need the help in what people would think um you've just got so many episodes up already and so many people um of note that people would want to hear talk so i i think for you, as I said, there's always, same with the YouTuber culture, right? A lot of the YouTubers never went into multi-channel networks because they were just big enough because they got that head start.

But I think I'm talking more about the person who's starting out right now with zero episodes. Right. That's scary. And now, so I'm going to structure this the way you structured your tweet. Sure. Okay, cool. So your first, so this is basically 12 observations you've made, I guess, about podcasting in Canada as it is happening right now.

So let's talk about your first one. Let's talk about the first one let's talk about the cbc right and their podcasts yeah so last year on to web fest we we uh had an arif nurani who um is the guy at cbc podcasts and what we quickly learned was that cbc's model was going to be only three or four a year tops and they were going to be top-notch quality they're going for the npr model like and a lot of times i actually i think one of their you know not to criticize but i think sometimes they're going too far down that niche where almost some of them are almost copycat podcasts in some ways a couple of the new ones aren't i think that they're and then missing and

murdered was really smart and they've done a lot of good things with that. At the same time, CBC also has local news podcasts. So during the Gerald Stanley, Colton Boushey trial, CBC Saskatchewan did a weekly recap podcast. So I'm glad to see those things happening that can be done on the fly because most of that network, when you pitch a podcast, it's a really long process. And they really wanted the audio to be crystal clear clear and they want it to be very highly produced so for most people out there thinking like i'm gonna get my show on cbc it's probably gonna come from in-house it's probably

gonna have been sick in that style like we already have someone and now they're gonna do a podcast um when i went into 2010 before this whole thing blew up. We were doing, I did a radio pilot that turned into like a digital special. And we were doing, what I realized later on was we were clearly the guinea pigs to show. I think we might have even just been straight up. We don't need this recording studio anymore because the kids know what they're doing. And we were the last people to go into that awesome studio space downtown. And CBC, like the Harper government and CBC sold it off. So we were really lucky to go into this amazing soundstage with Foley.

And we got to do a lot of fun, like sort of radio drama type stuff. And that's no longer there. They don't do radio dramas anymore. We were part of that, kind of the end of that. And that was so much fun because I'm a nerd and like i love like old comedy like george carlin started on radio and you know jack did you listen to the sunday funnies on uh chem fm my friend and i were so into stand-up when we were small we would actually we would do the old push play and record on our tape recorders uh on our CD sound systems at home,

and we would record them, and we would make mixtapes of our favorite comics from Sunday Night's Funnies. Get out of here. Yeah, yeah. So that was like that. Once again, the week... Well, have you heard the Rick Hodge episode yet?

You got to go... Oh, you have? Okay, good. I'm a nerd. I listen to this stuff. That's great. I really do love all that stuff. But so CBC, for just those at home

trying to be a podcaster or whatever, it's going to be very small. it's going to be very cbc um so you know and i listened to uh although i haven't listened to this current season but i did listen to someone knows something uh because i i wanted to hear like the true crime stuff i wanted to hear cancon like i want to hear like local references and stuff did you like it the first season i thought was okay and i actually liked the second season but i actually bailed on the third season it didn't feel canadian anymore like it's not a canadian story it's not in canada but i mean let's put this way that second season i've had you know mike richards uh mike richards a broadcaster he's been on the show a couple of times. He's in that season because he's hosting the CHCH.

I think it was CHCH had a New Year's Eve party where this couple that's in this true crime story get engaged live on the air. And Mike Richards is the guy doing it. So the interview, they go to Mike Richards' house. They talk to him. Like, it all felt like I could touch these people. Like, it all felt so kind of close to home.

You know what I mean? Like, where third season lost me and now I'm not listening to the fourth season but yeah i thought it was okay like i think i thought it was okay first one was okay second season they quite liked the second season mike's by the way down doing his uh morning show out of that oh is he at girth yep he's at he invited me on on girth technically so there's two companies that run out of there's another called though they're connected which is a whole confusing thing but basically for lack of confusion he does do his show at the same studio recording what's scheduling like like if karim says hey i need tuesday at 8

p.m like he just signs something or like like how does the schedule there's a social media person there's a scheduled person there's um everybody so mike richards is doing the morning so nobody in our ilk wants to come in every day nine in the morning so they open up the bar i think for him and he does his show when no one else is there i love that studio space because of the visuals weirdly enough so it's a really fun atmosphere to do audio out of because you can hear the bar and we kind of want that fun podcast. The ambient noise.

I like that real shit too, man. That's authentic stuff. So we wanted to go there and what we really realized for our podcast is our people are so, like as I'm sure you know as a creator, you end up spending so much time on your computer, you end up so much alone time

that it's sort of nice to go out and do people's shows to make people aware that you're out there doing something. So the social media aspect that you do in front of your house with the beer and like everybody always takes a photo, we have a nice little spot there to do those kind of social media moments that people have. You know it's going to be dark when we take this photo? I don't know if I've ever had a dark photo, but we'll do it anyway.

We'll do flashlights like the old Conan O'Brien in the year 2000. Oh, I won't do it anyway. We'll do it with flashlights like the old Conan O'Brien in the year. In the year 2000. Oh, I won't do that again. Don't worry. So that, okay. So the CBC, we got it. As you can tell, I'm live to tape, as they used to say.

I know it's not tape anymore. There's no editing. I won't edit a stitch and there's no production. I'll do a couple. I'll compress the file and then I'll spit out the MP3. So we can do that Conan O'Brien homage again. I loved that. And at the time, I don't know the MP3. So we can do that Conan O'Brien homage again? I loved that. And at the time, I don't know what it was.

It felt so far away. 2000. Like we blew by that thing 18 years ago. Yeah. Max Weinberg and the Max Weinberg 7. Those early days of Conan, I was a massive fan. I was a huge Letterman fan, but I knew Letterman from CBS. I never got to be a part of the NBC years because I was too young.

And when I was watching Conan, that was kind of our Letterman from my generation. But then because of the internet and because of my nerddom with Letterman that we'll get into later, I'm sure I'll bring up somehow. It's been funny to watch. I want to say stolen, but how much of that early Conan was very homage-y to early Letterman. You know, I was a big, still am, but I was a huge Simpsons guy from day one. So just the fact that this guy

who wrote these episodes was doing a talk show. So I was on Conan from day one because of his Simpsons connection. And there's a lot of people that were on there from day one because they love SNL and the history of like, so Smigel was his head writer there. Yeah, very cool. So the second second you've actually touched on this already but your second point was e1 uh the guys who have never tried to acquire me but uh so do they bought like when they put you on the e1 network is it just hey we're not going to give you any money for this content

but you'll be on our network so we can help promote you like that's the is that the trade-off so well i'm trying to actually actively get somebody from e1 to explain what their deal is because i don't i don't know if they have i'm not sure if they will i'm not sure if everyone has the same deal i'm really interested i have not heard yet what they offered in terms of uh support or help or if they're going to give studio space up so maybe folks as as maybe like, I'm curious for you, like, would you rather get to a point where you're doing it in a full blown studio to not have this in your home?

Or do you actually love the fact that it's in your basement and folks come to you and it's just easy to parent in the whole nine yards? Yeah. There'd have to be real money in it for me to do that. Like to me, I've, I've really got this, this thing you're a part of here,

three 11. i really have it in the passion project category which is that i'm now lucky enough i have enough patrons and i have enough sponsors that it doesn't cost me any money like the everything the server space these microphones everything everything keep it all running i had to replace the hard drive it can all be kind of taken care of by crowdfunding yeah but in terms of like uh making money i have no evidence like you know i hear i read a lot of articles about u.s podcasts and they've got you know there's money flying around everywhere in my experience and i have a lot of i've helped a lot of podcasts get started in this in some very famous people there's no one's i mean we'll get

to jesse brown in a minute like as some great outlier but there's no independent podcaster getting you know rich off this thing that i have found yet no so basically what i want to like i like i really do like the way i do it because right now it's fun like it doesn't feel like a job it's it's great fun for me it's a great passion you and i here on a monday monday night shooting the shit i'm enjoying this convo if you move it into some other environment and then it becomes like a job there better be what jobs need to have to be jobs like there's got to be proper compensation there for me to do that i would say and i think that what you're seeing i think that will attract those networks will get more attracted to people who are like stand-up comics who have other things on the go because i think they're always going to be that person

that's got a passionate niche that they want to talk about. Like you really obviously love Toronto media and you like connecting people to like past things and things you grew up with. And there's a nostalgia factor to it. And then there's people that are new to the city that you're having on. But I think a lot of comics or musicians that are going to be doing podcasts probably are on the road or doing a lot of things. And they'll be attracted to going into a studio space, knocking four on a sunday right and then going home and they have their months and they use the podcast sort of to just promote where they make their money which i guess is in the stand-up uh circuit yeah it's just also i think a way for the brand yeah i think it's also i think people all love doing it i just don't think people love the internet like you love the

internet in some ways too like you really do enjoy keeping your blog up. It's a hobby, right? Like, it's sort of a hobby that became an odd, like a side profession, which I'm sure you don't like the word job. But it is sort of, you know, you do a lot of upkeep on a daily basis. You've got your morning. I can, you know, free plug for you, but you've got your morning, you know. You're aware of TMI. I am aware of TMImi you're one of them

yeah yeah so it's like those are great little things right and i think that more podcasters are doing now like there's a show called the secret life of canada that was part of the passport 2017 um project and now they're on patreon but katie jensen is producing that who was a ex-canada lander who's done a lot of different podcasts in the city as well but they do these little short snackable things like where they do a little history on in like two minutes about somebody like uh Abby Hoffman who was you know steal this book or no not Abby Hoffman like the Abby Hoffman which is who I would have no but like um the uh the great uh woman uh Canadian sports icon who, you know,

hit her hair as a boy and tried to enter hockey as a boy as a child and then ended up being like a five-time Olympian and held the flag in Montreal. I was a flag bearer in Montreal and et cetera, et cetera. But they can kind of condense it down in two minutes. You're seeing those things take place too. By the way, since we're being so honest here about podcasting and I've never actually had this discussion

in the 311 episodes, but I often wonder, like fantasize, if I didn't have a full-time gig, which takes up a lot of hours of my week because that pays the mortgage

and feeds my children. Like if that disappeared, what I, because what I could do, like what the potential of what I could do if I had time to do it, sometimes makes me think like,

I would like to see where that goes. Because right now, like I'm jamming these in to like a spare 90 minutes here. That's why the part of, you know why there's no editing on this podcast. It's all like, yeah. It's all like, what do you call it? Sarah, what do you call it?

Mother, who's the invention that's the mother of necessity? Necessity being the mother of invention. And a lot of stuff is because I have my, i give myself like two hours a week for the project if you want and i do my best i think i do pretty good for the two hours but imagine i had like imagine if i had like i don't know five hours a day like so going back to the iwcc for one second one of the other reasons why we're we're diligent about that is once again like youtubers before you we are seeing a real class divide in who's creating content and who gets to make content because it is the folks who have all of this spare time versus sort of a working class folk or more average people who have a bigger breadth of experiences and we're seeing sort of the richer

classes be able to take over these mediums because they don't have to spend the amount of time working or taking transit. So there's been a lot of that with YouTube. There was a lot of daddy's money problems that were happening. Well, it's like in the media, I talk to a lot of media people,

but who could afford to be an unpaid intern except people whose mom and dad are helping them pay their rent? Journalism has a huge problem with that. I'm really kind of cringing about when we're going to have our next income inequality discussions from my generation. Because who got the jobs from my peer group? That's a whole other podcast. Number three, the Huffington Post Canada.

So what's going on with HuffPost? I'm interested in what HuffPost can do because their American counterpart did some really good stuff but it all seemingly came out of their New York studio. So it's almost all the podcasts have the same producer. And there was kind of it felt like a flash in the pan. But in Canada they've got a couple of podcasts. Obviously

once again in-house reporters doing their thing. One's on religion. The other one is like kind of a power and politics thing that Alfi Erej does from CB. People would know her from the at-issue panel probably most, but she's the lead politics reporter filing from Ottawa. So it's a weekly podcast on politics that they do.

I think that's an interesting model that I think more print media should be interested in like i would be i'm more interested and this isn't something i'm just going to include you because we're here but i don't think you want to do it but that's if i'm the toronto star that's what i would do for the hell of it i would say hey toronto mike i want to make a deal with you versus e1. And our newspapers have seemingly not been as interested in diving into all this kind of side content that could exist. A really good podcast is actually, I didn't put in that thread, is Safe Space on Metro.

Metro Media across the country has a podcast that is called Safe Space. And I think it's a really good listen. So from all the news podcasts I enjoy, that's probably my favorite. And I wish companies would do more of it because I really think there's a lot of cool people in different communities that would be willing to partner to get found, to get above the noise.

I would do the star thing if I could have Ed Keenan as my co-host. That's my caveat. Ed Keenan's a cool dude, man. You hear him kick out the jams? Because he's been on my show a bunch of times. I love Ed Keenan. I did his CFfrb show yeah yeah yeah he had an hour show on sundays or something yeah it was sunday night it was really fun to do because it was kind of like a ghost town at cfrb oh yeah so you kind of had your run of the place and it was it was a fun time he i could i

mean i think i could go grab a beer of him and talk for hours i think that guy's the coolest man he's great guy he's yeah man. He's a great guy. It's one of those people that I think has a very unique... He's the best voice on the left, I think, in Toronto. Do you think he's on the left? Because I feel he's more down the middle. I never got a lefty vibe. He just seemed rather reasonable for somebody on the right.

If you talk to somebody on the right, you're going to say that Keenan's on the left. But they think everyone rather reasonable for somebody on the right. If you talk to somebody on the right, you're going to say that Kenan's on the left. But they think everyone at the stars. Sure, let's not get into the labels. I just think he's one of the most responsible and interesting voices we have in Toronto. Absolutely. He kicked out a mean jam. It was great.

Now, your number four is the aforementioned Jesse Brown from Canada Land. Canada Land. Canada Land. Yeah. Canada Land. John Candy Land. That should be a podcast.

Oh, I'm sure Torrance and Teg are already thinking about it. So Jesse Brown is making real money from crowdfunding his independent podcast. Like real cash. Like thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars a month. You know, he's got that Bitstrips money coming in in too at some point that's supposed to be a big chunk of change mr mark weisblatt tells me that jesse brown doesn't need the crowd nobody knows what's in scrooge mcduck's vault no so just what should we what can we say about jesse except that he's the most listened to indie model in Canada. More to say?

Yes, let's get into trouble. Okay, so here's where my take on Candleland is. And I am kind of interested in this model because I'm interested in where it can go. Because it started off as, he started off on YouTube, actually, no one remembers, and quickly vanished because he realized the overhead, I'm sure,

was high and that the YouTube audience was not there, which Vince and I, who I've done all these projects with, Vince Casemorti, we found out pretty quickly that a YouTube audience was in Canada. We are a CBC radio culture. We're also very much a CBC culture. And also, if you're going to pick an audience who is underserved, it's not liberals in Canada.

It is definitely right-wingers or the internet libertarians, which Jesse has mined quite well. I think that what needs to be talked about with Canada Land is there's an interesting model of televangelism that happened that I wasn't even a part of accidentally. I didn't really think I was getting into, but the Young Turks definitely had this too, where it's sort of this personality-led organization that has sort of a call to action, right? Like Jesse is very critical of the CBC and thinks Canada's bland and milquetoast and we're going to shake things up. And if you want to hear the truth, you listen to this. And I had a conversation once with somebody behind the scenes of Candleland who will remain nameless.

somebody behind the scenes of candeland who will remain nameless and they were talking about this issue of jesse being so much the brand that it hurt other initiatives that people were trying to do within candeland because jesse sort of just like engulfed everything and if you don't like jesse you won't listen to this other stuff right maybe nothing to do with jesse it's hard to get like the other shows off the ground because there's this perception of what Canada Land is by its flagship show. And the Young Turks had the exact same problem on YouTube. Everything was so jank filtered. And it really took five years for them to get away

and launch other people. So I think that's the interesting thing from Canada Land is can they launch other shows at that same level? And if they don't keep getting the gawker-esque scoops are people listening to that program at the same are they willing to keep their pockets open as there's more competition for jesse and i'm interested in that from an indie standpoint because jesse's definitely figured out a smart model he gets paid to do speaking tours like a lot of people he gets paid um by canada land we don't know how much the bitstrips money so we don't we're not sure how if he's independently wealthy so canada land can keep going

and how much of that money for example he brings in maybe he doesn't have to pay himself at all maybe he can just pay staff which would be wonderful in canada because that's the real problem is to say you're a journalism podcast the young turks had the same problem where they were like weary journalism but they were really a curation show with interviews there's a difference you know what i mean like don't get me wrong you can be a journalist in that way but until you're like actually fact finding that's a whole other game. And so the Candleland got a really great boost, obviously, off the Gomeshi trial. And now I'm really interested to see what they can do in Thunder Bay. That's going to be, I think, a really interesting chapter in Canadian media is what they can if they could actually go in with some with some crowdfunding money.

in with some with some crowdfunding money and focus on areas when all the other media outlets in in canada are like juggling and spinning plates and having a real hard time getting their money together and they can just hyper focus on an issue that could be a game changer that would be interesting to watch but that's a big if number five you've covered quite a bit it's the girth radio it's the indie networks yeah so you's the Indie Networks. Yeah. So you have maybe... Not too much more to add to that, except for the fact that it's... I just think we need more collaborations.

We need more shout-outs. You know, even among your independent podcasters, I'd love to hear, you know, on an episode of Toronto Mic for all of a sudden you to do like what NPR did last year with tripod with which is like you should listen to this too because there are a lot of great shows that aren't produced by the cbc that i don't think people know about yeah absolutely yeah for sure and

the other network never sleeps network though what's that one never sleeps networks alex ross network he's a producer at 640 or done a couple shows like that he does that show um inside jokes i think it's called i might be completely messing that up but it's a podcast or it's no i know this is a woman hosts the show right yeah yeah yeah yes i've heard of this so it's um it's it's a show that like comics do and and so uh he's done some of that stuff and he started his own podcast network. And the podcast is just much like yourself here. It's a room in his apartment and you do it there.

And just a bunch like this, his own gear and the whole thing set up. And but a bunch of different shows run out of it. And so he's mostly the comedy community. It's very, very. But there's a show on there people really like called Speech Bubble about comics. And as I said, once again, niches work really well. The more hyper-niche you are, the better. You're absolutely right.

Number six, community networks. Tell me about community networks. I think these are bigger outside Toronto, but tell me some. Yeah, so we touched on this a little bit. Peterborough is a good example of one. Niagara's got a group. Alberta just started one, which is really on this a little bit. Peterborough is a good example of one. Niagara's got a group. Alberta just started one, which is really out of Edmonton,

but they're trying to do province-wide. The interesting thing what they're trying to do is replace that vanishing. So like Great Lakes Brewery is a really good example, right? They might have gone to a local paper 20 years ago to try to launch. Now that local paper doesn't have the same effect, and it might not reach the same amount of people that Toronto might. Do you know they're 30 years old? Do you know that? I do, now that you told me.

But yeah, your point's valid in that we recently had that whole... Still, I had Keenan on that week to try to explain it to me, but this whole where the post media in Toronto and, in tour star swap papers just to shut it, shut it down. Yeah. So we law, like there's,

there's a, there is a definite crisis in small markets where you might, some, some small markets have no newspapers anymore, but digital would be what fills the void. Yeah. And also like you look at Toronto, like where,

you know, I jokingly call myself sometimes like the black widow of Canadian media because a lot of the things I've done, I've shuttered my space by TV. I did some stuff for Jason Agnew. Yeah, that's gone. So what I guess I'm really getting at,

not to be depressing, is that the media landscape is just always changing and we're going to have less and less of that sort of centralized content and to fill the void for local advertising and people in the community being like where do i find out about blank um like you're that's you know tmi i'm sure is where that spawned from your head right where it's like how do i find out about what's going on in the city or what's happening? And so I think you guys are filling that niche. And so that's where community networks are to me. It also, once again, though, goes back to people who are smart in your community,

people that connect, maybe aren't the tech-savviest of the bunch, maybe don't know how to do it. So it, once again, drops that barrier to entry. Number seven is where I come in here. So solo podcasts. So these are the independent guys who are kind of rolling their own and handling the A to Z in their basements, etc. Tell me about the solo podcasts.

I think the solo podcasters are either somebody who, as I said, jumped on a really smart niche that nobody had figured out, which is a really hard thing to do, or there are people that got on the train super early in the morning and you know were able to build their library of episodes before most people were like what's a podcast so you know it's funny youtube just shut down it's um like if you're a youtuber they you lost monetization if you don't have 4,000 minutes of watch time and 1,000 subscribers. And because I was doing such a large amount of content for TYT,

I clear 5,000 minutes a month just on the library. And that is where, and that's content that hasn't been, like this has been sitting dead for a decade. So that's where I think the Toronto Mike stuff comes in and the people like that you are able to live off of. If I'm Googling Toronto example, whatever, you're going to come up because you've been at it for so long. So those are kind of the people that have been able to survive. And the question will be like, do you end up at anyone? Do you end up just keeping on keeping on because your core audience is there? And i don't want to get i'm not going to ask you these questions specifically but the

other question is can those folks grow is it just a passion project in this era all of these things are kind of new right so will they go become radio broadcasters not to throw sand in the ointment here yeah but i mean the fact toronto mike.com the blog which has been around for uh 16 years and then this podcast which is on year six i mean they the reason they keep going is because the guy who does it all uh has decided long ago that he'll do it without making money off it like you know what i mean like so like will it keep will it survive like well i don't have a payroll like i'm not even i don't i just i like to make some beer money gas money

just to cover some of the stuff going on here and so i have ads on the blog and i have you know sponsors and patrons but if if i needed to make money like if i do the math on like uh how much if all all the hours i've pumped into these passion projects and how much i've made on it like you know i'm making pennies an hour like this wouldn't be around if i needed to make money on these things no 100 and so there's that's where that's where that solo thing comes in where i was talking about which is so you just need somebody who does it for love of the game a lot of folks are going to be able to survive because they are that's just their bowling league well yeah like i was thinking your networks like uh you have your independent not networks and they

come in of their shows but obviously they're doing it because they enjoy doing it but what happens when they a they don't enjoy it anymore or b they they get tired of working so hard for no money like that's what kills things like this it's the biggest problem for networks is that somebody will come in with a brilliant idea and the problem is okay you've got a great idea but because you're not dance beer and you're not mike tronel mike you're not doing the diligence you don't understand how much work it is so that happens a lot where people start burning out after um like you know a year they're like oh my god like doing this every day you have 300 episodes kareem just uh did his 100th live at upstairs at betty's which is they're attached to uh pizza hotel yeah and we talk about that all the time like people don't realize how much work goes into

doing a show like that so you have a lot of people think i'm gonna do this amazing thing and then a network's like well there goes that show because somebody flames out at like episode 50 because they're just like this is too much work i'm not getting anything out of this i'm really happy to say though i think the gold rush has finally died which is really exciting for people who love independent creation or podcasting or youtube or web series whatever because there was a lot of people in it thinking that they were going to- Get rich quick? Yeah.

Yeah, I noticed a lot of people are like, I'm going to, and I had a lot of heart, I'll tell you a lot of people we know and love too, like, oh no, we love them so much. But a lot of famous Toronto people have had one-on-ones with me where I basically gave them a little reality, like just some reality,

because somebody, we mentioned already on the show, but it's like, this is going to make me so much money. And I'm like, well, these are more realistic expectations. And there's been people on my podcast who have come on and said, I'm going to start my own pod podcast.

And they'll say things like, you know, I hope to have a million listeners or whatever, like a million unique, whatever. And I'm like, okay, this guy needs to know what,

what realistic numbers he should expect. But on that note though, real quick, I don't think there is a category for this where is there a category for the mainstream media people like bob mckenzie and james duthie or you name it who as part of the tsn or whatever they get podcasts like there was there's been a huge glut of podcasts lately from people that are not independent guys in their basement but are names we know from tv and radio like for sure that list i did on twitter was really for people who are independent or thinking about becoming okay because even with those networks are independent so yeah there's and that's what i'm worried about though and that's why i believe in

the network model because there are going to be here's the thing that's really interesting your your fans and listeners are much more into sports i think the average maybe podcast uh might be they're into like media personality so sports net 10 years ago decides we're gonna make a killing by just pointing cameras at our radio hosts oh yeah like bob mccowan boom content right like tim and sid's a full-blown studio nicely done it's one of them well that's just tv only that's what i think that's the best thing we've ever done but i think that's a podcast though isn't it can't you listen to that it might be a podcast but it's not a radio show sure no but they but what i'm getting at was with with the original stuff they pointed and shot a camera at it as the tv model starts to slowly dwindle down and we're all on apps and everything like that i don't know what those networks do do they

keep doing stuff like that are all podcasts going to become television series video podcasts didn't really bring in money uh like you remember there's a thing called the video podcast network in the states norm mcdonald live was a show on it on youtube and that was supposed to be this video podcast model it never really worked because once you add video into the mix, editing, all these things, you have to add more crew members. Well, that's what Mike Richards does, right? Isn't his video? Yeah.

Okay. All right. We'll leave it at that. Yeah, but it's really a webcam, which is great, I think, but it's a webcam and it's a two-shot and there's no video. It's not thought. They're not thinking about video. They a two-shot and there's no video it's not thought they're not thinking about video they're thinking about audio and there happens to be video if you're interested but this whole thing you know we can say sports net 10 years ago bob mccown but i i believe this is all just the howard stern model right like howard stern was the first show i watched where

it was just cameras on the radio what i was trying to say to you though was with that model they were really making money on the tv right so once the tv money goes away is the incentivization to do all these things still there are we going to lose more and more people um in terms of talent because we're also consolidating talent right like we're consolidating talent at a crazy rate because it's like you're you're work for company X. Now you're going to do articles for me. You're going to do a podcast for me. You're going to be my vlogger. So like if you look at like a company like CBC, you've got people wearing multiple hats and multiple jobs and they're probably still getting the same salary.

And how are you going to compete with that volume coming out of TSN if you're a sports podcaster? Or how are you going to compete with that volume coming out of tsn if you're a sports uh podcaster or how are you going to compete with that uh if you're like you know competing against toronto stars ed keenan all of a sudden does a podcast tomorrow and interviews everyone from toronto and he should uh number eight podcasting as community bulletin board and we're going to do these last four we're going to go a little quicker only because i see we're up against the two-hour mark. Holy smokes. I don't want to get into Wiseblot territory here. Sorry.

What's my record again? Oh, it was Howard Berger. I think he went two and a half, but I think we'll come out of that. But tell me about podcasting as a community bulletin board. We talked about that already, so we can almost skip this one because it really is just basically like what I said.

You don't have a place now for your local media to go anymore. You don't have a place for people to find out what's happening you can bring me on and talk about TO WebFest happening in May you could bring on somebody who's uh you know about to do the Toronto insert event here um and that those people have really nowhere to go anymore and also if you get a blanket spot in a newspaper or like a blog that only goes so far, you have a dedicated listenership that actually cares about events in Toronto. So it's a better bang for your PR buck if to come to a podcast that has an audience. And you actually also covered number nine here earlier. It's podcasting as insight.

Yeah. I think that there's a lot of people that are really good at giving you long form content in podcasting form. So as I said, with that example of like the Colton Boushey case, actually having a podcast you listen to, because we're also in an era where clicks really matter in print. And so like our long form content is getting less and less. We're trying to package everything really fast in a Facebook social video. getting less and less we're trying to package everything really fast in a facebook social video so there's podcasts can give you sort of a long-form content but you can listen to it on the way to work or you can you know listen to it while you're doing something in multitask in in that sort of radio even radio has become very like hot take uh american style radio you know we had gurney on

here um a little while ago and and i interviewed him back in 2010 and and that national post style of radio for serious too it's it's that callers are you upset about stuff like let's hear it and even i know matt was saying they wanted to try to change that when he went into the morning show i'm not sure if it worked so well um but it's a it's an it's sort of a valiant attempt um but as i said that's where podcasts is going to come in because you don't need the same amount of clicks. You don't need the same amount. There's not the pressure on it to deliver fast.

Number 10, promotion. Yeah, like we said before, just the more people you're involved with, the actual social part of social media, the more people you're knowing. You're not just by yourself. You have all these other shows that can promote your show. can have them on their show you can go on you know they come on yours you go on theirs you build a community it's not unlike how blogging original

culture works the blog rule yeah it was it's very similar to that podcast is going to have a similar thing it's there's a ceiling once again like there was a blogging people move on so it's like it's about staying on top of what's happening in your niche do you have to do a tmi if you're a podcaster who's been doing a weekly show is it more important to make sure there's content there for your daily listener all these things that you're thinking about i think all podcasters are thinking about and everybody should subscribe to tmi uh torontomike.com slash tmi their episodes are like three minutes long and they drop every morning at like 8 a.m. If you don't like it, unsubscribe.

You know what I mean? There's no fee here. Give it a go and let me know what you think. And it's a good thing to listen to. So that's also Community Bulletin Board as well, by the way. So to go back a step. I think that's it though, isn't it? Well, number 11 is Ad Industry.

Oh, okay. Well, this could be an entire podcast on itself and we'll condense it down to a sentence canada is risk averse uh so i hear so like the a here's the thing that the internet era taught i think canadians and media and i hope it did anyway is that we used to have this like idea that it was like a big bad suit at cbc that was lame and what we found out in this era is Canadians are like very risk-averse humans as well. They're not bombastic waiting for that sort of shock value content or like, where's the Canadian Alex Jones? Rebel media had to really preach to American narratives to get their audience.

So I think Canadian digital media kind of proved that it's not, it wasn't just like a stuffy old suit that made CBC quote unquote lame content. It's like, that's the audience. Like people want to watch Heartland. Like that's Canada. Go outside of the city. There's not a lot. It's a lot of Canucks.

So, you know, what we've seen work in digital is stuff like Letterkenny a lot of the times and stuff like Taggart and Torrens. And the hoser content is there's going to be a market for it. I think it's also given us things like Galcast and things that are, you know, a little bit more niche that weren't existing before. But we still, at the end of the day the ad networks are not buying in it's too risky they're afraid that's why the network model is going to be the last charge i think of of podcasting as perhaps a job idea i think as you've said most people have decided against it but at this point they realize it's going to be a side hustle or a hobby or uh whatever it is but the network model does give people the opportunity if they all come

together like an e1 or something can you scale something um and have that be valuable maybe it's not a monetary job um valuable but can it be something in its own right that is valuable to the country at large? And, you know, true, maybe Toronto Mike doesn't make you rich, but what you learned from doing it and what you could teach others who maybe there's a company or there's a commercial podcast, if you will, or something corporate that has, you know,

monetization is actually possible like when i said how many people know a to z uh and can can can hold your hand and in walk you through the steps when i said sell out earlier and i was kidding kind of um i didn't mean things like great great lakes brewery or like you know property of the six and property in the six i meant what a lot of people will do is actually go and be like marketing spokespeople. And that's how they'll make their money. So people will do like a millennials podcast and then go to marketing conferences as like said millennial. Right.

Because they have this podcast that they juice the stats on or whatever. Like this is what, you know, influencers do that whole thing on their own too and say, we're awesome, and then get free hotels places. But that's sort of shrinking, and I don't think it's going to be a long-term model. The most important podcasting question I could ask you today is, do you like the Kick Out the Jams episodes of Toronto Mike? I really do.

Is that true, though? I'm looking in your eyes right now. I'm a music nerd, so I really love listening to people talk about what they love. And you sent me, like, what jam are you going to kick out? And I had a panic attack. I was like, oh, God, there's so many good jams.

What jam do I pick? So I picked the most Toronto Mike jam. I haven't been doing this for a while. I'm popping my P's, so forgive me at home. The beauty of this podcast is that we pop our P's on this podcast. That's the beauty.

You know, Dan, I love this jam and you mentioned earlier that you would talk about David Letterman again and you're going to get your chance in just a second. This is Warren Zevon, the hockey song. It's Hit Somebody, parentheses, the hockey song. Which is, we're going to hear it, when does it commence?

Soon, right? In like 15 seconds. To the right. A check at the blue line looking for a fight. Brains over brawn that might work for you. Hit somebody. Who's saying hit somebody, Dan? It is Mr. Davis Letterman. I love it, man.

It's a great jam, man. I mean, we talk a lot about Warren Zevon because somebody like a Mike Stafford or somebody will come on and kick out the jam, then he'll have a Zevon track, and then we'll end up talking about the Enjoy Every Sandwich and his Letterman appearance when the end was nigh. So, yeah, tell me why you love this song.

So this song's kind of a personal jam. I've been, I kind of vanished off the Toronto scene for a couple years. This is like my first comeback into doing something. And I'll be doing actual content creation again soon. But I was taking care of my dad, so I've been super nostalgic. So this song's written by Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press. And my dad and I are giant Red Wings fans. album of the detroit free press and my dad and i are giant red wings fans so we would listen to wjr back in the day when like the wind was right and like it would pick up we would pick up the

detroit radio station because he would do a red wings radio show uh and then we would listen to it on the radio uh on the internet radio because he was that era of real player and all that jazz back in the like late 90s early 2000s so when i'm a kid i came down to the gardens to watch the red wings and i'd get stuff thrown at me and people go like 1955 kid and i was like okay you just wait and of course then the red wings hit their 97 98 and the 2002 stanley cups and everything was good again absolutely but i was obsessed with dav David Letterman as a kid. So this brought everything together for me in a song because I grew up loving hockey and the Red Wings from my dad. And Zvon, I actually just adore.

I'm a big Ben Folds fan too. He calls his music punk rock for sissies, which I feel sort of is where I'm a big Ben Folds fan too and he calls his music punk rock for sissies which I feel sort of is where I'm at in life. I've always been sort of that rebellious but in the context of not very violent. So anyways, this track

what's funny talking about Enjoy Every Sandwich this track is from an album called My Rides Here which when they did the here comes the insert paul shaffer on organ so shaffer's on organ here a couple of band members from the late night band the cbs orchestra world's most dangerous band yeah yeah Late Night Band, the CBS Orchestra. The World's Most Dangerous Band? Yeah, the CBS Orchestra era.

But Mitch Albom wrote this, and Mitch Albom, weirdly enough, in my drama class, one of the first plays I ever did was I did a version, I directed a version of Tuesdays with Maury. Of course, I knew it was coming. And I took a kid that was this big, gruff kid and made him Maury and everyone's like,

oh my God, we were so scared he was going to shoot up to school and now we think he's amazing. I'm like, yes, kids,

big picture. But going back to Enjoy Every Sandwich, when that tribute album came out, the Springsteen track of my rides here is actually recorded

on that Skydome show where they actually had the roof open. Oh, wow. So it was three days after Warren Zevon passed and I was at that show. It was only my second, I think, Springsteen concert. And it was the first time that the Dome was open for a concert. And it was such a good show. But the very first thing, Springsteen came out with the guitar and sang My Ride's Here in honor of Warren.

And there's Letterman doing his screaming. When he does the track on the late show, it's just Paul Schaefer and he's in full-blown Paul Schaefer mode screaming, Hit somebody! Thunder Bay's own. So, good old CanCon to end the show.

No, thank you so much. I mean, I hope it was worth the 90 minutes to get here because hopefully it's a little shorter time to get you back. But did you have a good time? I got some beer. I can give it to somebody on the ride home to get home. Be careful on Lakeshore that nobody takes that beer from you, okay? It's a little sketchy at night.

Oh, thanks for that. As I'm leaving, thank you for that beer from you. It's a little sketchy at night. Oh, thanks for that. As I'm leaving, thank you for that reassuring note. When you do 312, can you let everybody know if I made it home or not? Just tweet me when you get home so I know you're okay because I'll stay up

until I get that tweet. Take the beer. It's just from podcasting. Leave me be. Just keep that pint glass, though. Maybe use it as a weapon. Just smash the end of this pint glass and defend your beer. That's what you're going to do on Lakeshore'll need, maybe use it as a weapon. Just smash the end of the pint glass and defend your beer.

That's what you're going to do on Lake shore. Dan, I loved it. That was great, man. I could talk about podcasting with you for hours and hours. And, uh,

and we did, and we did, and we should do it again sometime. Even if I don't record it, I think we should do it again. All right. Sounds good. And that brings us to the end of our 311th show.

You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Dan is at Dan Spearin. That is S-P-E-E-R-I-N for Spearin. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Propertyinthe6.com is at Brian Gerstein. And PayTM is at pay TM Canada. See you all next week. Yeah, the wind is cold, but the smell of snow warms me today.

And your smile is fine, and it's just like mine, and it won't go away. Because everything is rosy and green.