Mass media’s extinction event has come first for text content. Text is increasingly being "pushed down the stack" and commoditized due to AI's ability to generate, manipulate, and reformat text content. This shift is forcing media companies that primarily deal in text to adapt or risk becoming obsolete. While text isn't disappearing entirely, its role is changing. It's becoming more of an input for other forms of media rather than the primary output. Meanwhile, other parts of media are gaining in influence. This will turn out to be the podcast election, as Kamala Harris prepares to make her closing case to… Joe Rogan while continuing to snub mass media like Time and the New York Times. We also discuss the power of Fortnite, which points to a future of media where content is a means to an ends. In the case of Fortnite, that ends is a combination of a place to hang out, a hub for commercial events like virtual concerts, a competitive environment premised on participation rather than inert consumption, and a communication medium. Plus: Bill Gates is apparently a good product.

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it was my fourth anniversary of the rebooting recently, and I ran a little promotion.

I don't know if I mentioned it here, for, TRB Pro memberships.

Anyway, I, I have a new, member who wrote me and said to split the attribution, between the newsletter and this podcast.

So, some attribution there.

It's good to, uh,

I don't, I don't understand what

does that mean money?

Why are we

I just want to rewind a little Brian for, for clarity.

He said that the reason that he was subscribing was equally attributable to the podcast and the newsletter.

Yep.

great.

So that's our

Yeah, that's 160 of, of ARR.

yeah, it's a good start.

It's progress.

I feel

It adds up, it adds

it does add up yeah

Uh, and for those of you

so we are splitting the

pro members.

No,

not

goes to the podcast split by three between

Once it, once it exceeds the production cost, then we'll talk about revenue splits.

How's that?

We got a little ways to go.

welcome to People vs.

Algorithms, a show about detecting patterns in media, technology, and culture.

As always, joined by the kingmaker, Troy Young, Troy, welcome.

thank you.

Thank you for acknowledging my

No problem.

And of course, Alex Schleifer, who's not at a conference this week.

that's good to see Alex.

Are you going to take a little, take a little time off?

and what does Alex represent on this podcast is sort of a very important critical outsider view sprinkled with design and product

and, and a little bit of a kind of woke mentality.

Yeah.

Um,

syndrome

yeah, no, Alex, uh, is the voice of reason and, and, and of truth, of hard truths.

You know, so he's, he's emerged, I think, as the, as a divisive figure.

Right.

I'm trying to try to make that

And he's earning a little cash on the side is the Geico guy.

Yeah.

I don't know what that, what does that mean?

What does that mean do I look like a lizard what

No,

Like the caveman.

yeah,

Oh my God.

Yeah, well I haven't shaved in a while

You know, Troy, you made that, you made that point on this, little panel.

We did a panel.

We did a true.

That

Yeah, how did that go?

I mean,

Well, Troy, well, so let me, let me give my review of it and then Troy can react to it.

Right.

So I played more of the, like the traditional moderator role, you know, just like, you know, it's like kind of like being like the volleyball player that just sort of serves up.

he didn't have anything to say, so he just passed it over to, to, to me and I was ill prepared.

And then the

other

yes,

had speaking notes promoting his company.

It was, it was, yeah, well, I got to do that.

But what was, what was great is we were on the session with, Andrew Swinand, who is a former CEO of public, of, Laird Burnett.

And, and now, he's the CEO of another agency in London.

But what I liked about Andrew is like, we were talking beforehand and yeah, he was just like a normal guy.

Like, it's nice.

But then when he got on stage, he, he just like, because this is the agency thing, you know, destroy, right?

He unspoiled, like, all of these, like, statistic after statistic.

And like, he had, he had a, he had a, like, an opening statement ready to go

Wow.

Yeah, I mean, he sounds like a pro.

How did Troy do it?

Was it

well, then Troy was on his heels.

To be honest with you, Troy was a little bit on his heels.

Yeah, he, he, I was, I was.

I didn't

It was great.

I loved it.

I loved it.

Thank you for the invitation, Rashad and Drew.

So it didn't, it didn't go well.

I thought it went well.

I thought he made some really interesting points.

I mean, he's, he's basically, I want to run this by you.

So, I mean, he was basically saying, because this is what we talk

about with a

Is that Troy or is that the other

Andrew, but then Troy too.

Troy like caught up, but then he like, he caught Pete Blackshaw.

with a stray, cause he wrote a ad age article about FAQs.

that was a highlight actually of the session.

maybe not for Pete.

I don't know, but like Andrew made this point that, you know, within the agency world, you know, AI is make is, is already on its way to making all the versioning work of quote unquote creativity, a thing of the past.

And that, you know, his whole.

Thing was that if you look at, the growth of independent agencies versus the big network agencies, it's very clear the direction it's going and, you know, agency holding groups as a whole, make their money off of, you know, the media buying because it's super opaque.

It's super, on transparent.

I love.

I love the fact that they use the word, transparently on transparent.

Isn't that just

that sounds on the up and up.

but his basic thing was like, you know, you're going to have far fewer.

You're going to have some super talented, creatives.

Right?

but that that world will shrink.

And, you know, I think that that is a really.

You know, basic, but, kind of important point for a lot of these industries, because I think of media as I wrote about this today.

It just goes first with a lot of these things.

A lot of the pressures that are taking place and the compressions of the media business will absolutely come to contiguous industries and other industries.

I think without a doubt.

I don't know.

What was your takeaway from our conversation there?

Troy?

I mean, I thought it was relatively like boring and, uh, uh, undistinguished.

And, And in fairness, I was not prepared with my opening statement.

I would say what you just said is that, You know, what strikes me is the fall from Grace that careers in advertising have had since, since, you know, I joined the workforce when it was a, particularly on the creative side, but even on the, you know, account side in agencies was a, a, a vocation of esteem.

And now to me it's like a career of, it's like where you go if you have to go and you don't have a job and you're a liberal arts.

major and, that agencies just aren't really part of the conversation anymore.

Well, yeah, you made the point that like, you don't what is the, like, what's a big, ad camp?

Like, I have no idea.

And I think this is part of, of what I've been wondering about is without mass media, why won't mass brands follow the same path?

aren't we like, sort of like mass brands really existed with mass media.

And so if mass media is ending, and I think that's a fair point, then won't mass brands.

Continue, because they don't have the same hold overall on the culture.

Leave aside the lock in of the tech brands.

Like, that's like a ridiculous, like, totally different than,

you know, the

Just leave that aside.

I mean, that's mass media, isn't

Yeah.

Well,

I mean, what

Yeah, but, but, but their delivery channels are not mass is the point.

And

I think that, that, you know, even, even though I think we went through like a DTC bubble where we saw, you know, like new entrance in all the categories to this day, the most important use case, as far as I can tell for Facebook is shopping.

And, I, I, I, I see new entrance in the sort of men's or kind of unisex clothing category all the time.

And to me, like, that's totally a function of, the ad buying and distribution mechanics of, of Facebook and Instagram.

And I guess, TikTok that, you know, allow these little brands to find customers.

Like, that's the same point, right?

Like you, small brands can exist and start up fairly rapidly.

The, you know, access to product creation, manufacturing, and all of that is.

You know, has been kind of democratized and now you can find customers on Facebook.

So you get a lot of, you know, you get a lot of niche players just like you do in media.

mean, Instagram is incredible as an ad product these days.

And, and, and, and, and, and the shopping, integrated shopping and everything like that is, I They've done that full transition away after Apple, you know, shut down all the tracking.

you know, it feels like it's a fully transitioned to a place where now, I'm seeing a lot more kind of DTC, brands coming up.

so what was your question, Brian, about mass media brands and big brands?

well, I guess my point is, is mass media is, is clearly to me.

It's clearly like ending.

You look at this,

Can you define it for me, please?

Because I find like, I'm always quite uneducated on the topic as to how we define media.

Oh, yeah.

That's why we're doing a media podcast.

uh, mass media

technology podcast, because I can talk, we can talk about Fortnite and you guys think it's Minecraft.

So

uh, we can talk about, I guess.

I,

Nice

I

like, we're all here to

I don't think you read that article.

That's why I was a little annoyed because I didn't

is one thing you need to know about Alex, is that he's great with the, he's, he's less aggressive with the punch, but the punch back, he's great at.

Yeah, it's good.

Oh, really?

So mass media, I would define as what, like, arose with the consumer economy after World War II, right?

It's centered in, television, for the most part.

But mass media, we had mass media, magazines.

We had mass media in, like, newspapers.

I think a lot of times

It's shared cultural experience driven by, sort of oligopolistic, media distribution, distribution structure.

yeah, like a monocult, but,

was well, that was well done, Troy.

You should have brought that to the panel.

I saw when you saying the end of mass media is more of the end of mass monoculture of everyone consuming the same type of stuff, because a lot of these, a lot of like media properties today is have the same reach as like mash head at the time.

Right.

Technically Mr.

Beast.

It's totally different.

Like, I mean, like, let's, let's go into, the video game world, because you're itching to go into the video game

No, I'm not, I'm

I'm ignorant, I'm

I come here, I come here to have like you know, a palate cleanser from all that stuff, but we can talk about

it.

it's, it's an area that,

want to talk about Fortnite as a cultural phenomenon?

Yeah, because

Alex got all, you got all testy when, when, Ryan Broderick wrote the article that said mass culture is created in Fortnite.

yeah, like, no, duh.

It's about ethics and game journalism.

Um,

What is Fortnite, Alex, for the idiots that listen to this podcast that don't know?

Fortnite is a, essentially at its core, what is called a battle royale video game.

where a hundred people go in, there is a, You land randomly on an island, there's a zone that gets smaller and smaller, pushing people together and they have to take each other out.

And, you know, final team or final person wins the game.

Now that's how it started.

It actually started as a different game that was a failure.

and then Epic just added this as a mode and it became the biggest video game in the world.

Which is.

Which is really, kind of a wild,

Do you use, do you use guns to shoot people?

You use guns.

Is it what's called a, is it a is it a first party shooter or whatever

that's called?

first party, a first person shooter.

It's, it's, it's both the first person shooter, but it's actually a third person shooter.

So you see your characters, from the back and you run around this very colorful Island.

Now, what Fortnite has done is that they've added all these different modes and specifically events.

The world keeps changing and as it does, it kind of opens up a new season, you know, they'll have, you know, a day where Godzilla stomps across the island.

they'll have live concerts, where everybody's kind of playing the game gets sucked into this.

and it's, you know, world where I don't know, some, some, some artists things.

so it's become kind of a place where kids hang out.

The game has become not secondary, but it's the kind of peripheral to the overall experience.

it's very much like ready player one type stuff where, you know, you put on your.

Spider Man outfit.

You go in with your friends and you watch a concert.

and

Is this something

you, do you do this?

Do I do this?

Is this for children?

I think that's what Troy's asking.

Is this

for like

functioning

is, Fortnite is, Fortnite is, very, teenage boys are probably the biggest customer base.

It's broadened out for sure, but it's like, that's essentially the core audience here,

which is why I always, I always think like calling it, you know, defining, you know, like defining culture is interesting because it does target a very specific demographic.

Now gaming spreads much wider, but I think culture doesn't get defined by.

I'm not saying that Fortnite isn't important, it's hugely important.

And I'm not saying that Fortnite doesn't have, you know, a wide

audience.

It has, you know, people of all

ages and genders play

if you were explaining fortnight to me and its significance in society and culture, what, what do I need to know?

Alex

I mean, I think that the main thing is like, it's a mixture of essentially play, meaning content, because there are stories, emerging stories and kind of events that happened.

And And communication built into one, it's like a social network mixed with interaction mixed with, with, with storytelling.

So it's actually, I would say fortnight is the first version of the metaverse as, as, as a kind of more complete package,

you

has any as any packaged entertainment spun out of it,

no, however, a lot of entertainment have, has been kind of pulled into it, every movie that comes out, right.

They really skins.

Epic, which is the company that runs it, which is also the company that's.

You know, and, and has, has won a case against Google and, and, and has been fighting.

Apple, has, has built a bunch of tools.

So, there's a giant ecosystem that's being built around that.

you know, as a game developer, our, our company could decide to just build on Fortnite today, built our online games on Fortnite and, and, and tap into that audience.

should the rebooting be on fortnight?

I

be on Fortnite.

Yeah, it would be great.

But first you'd need to learn how to, like control a, a.

Character.

that.

so it sounds like, like Second Life was just sort of like ahead of its time a little bit and, and maybe not.

Mark Kingdon is somewhere in Miami.

Like, God damn it.

No, I mean, second night, here's the thing.

Like second night wasn't fun.

Second night wasn't fun.

And it was like, it

thought it was,

fun.

You can throw like dildos at each other's.

I

second, second, second life wasn't fun.

And it was, there were so many layers to kind of like push through to get anywhere, that it attracted a very specific audience and that audience just pushed everyone away.

So it's became this very niche product, but like conceptually, yes.

You

know?

I think Fortnite started with a game that was fun that people genuinely like to play and they, they had like, you know, Epic built the engine and the technology stack is so huge that now it's like, there's a certain group of specifically boys, but you know, teenage.

kids that only communicate over fortnite they get home they jump on fortnite They hang out with their friends there and then you know, they go to bed.

They don't you know They don't really consume movies Or use whatsapp or whatever.

It's all on fortnite

So is this like the new version of mass media then?

Because it has different characteristics than, than what we talked about before, right?

And I think that's interesting because to me, the mass broadcast media is over.

I think whatever becomes of mass media will be in some weird way, More niche because it isn't for everyone.

I don't know about it.

Right?

Like everyone knew about mash when I was growing up.

I mean, TV was just different than monoculture.

Right?

Like you said, it's going to be more interactive.

It's going to combine.

you're going to be a participant, not a, just like passive.

what else, like, what are the characteristics, first of all, I guess, is that true?

Like, is this the new version of mass media?

And then what are the characteristics of it and how does it differ from quote unquote old mass media?

I think it's I mean, I think that's a good question.

I don't even know if you can call it media because so much of it is like such a big part of it is just like kind of Interaction in a space with communication.

So it feels like, you know, in quotes, that version of the metaverse that people have been talking about, and yes, you're consuming entertainment and brand messages and all these things, but it feels like something very different.

So yes, maybe it's, it's replacing mass media.

It's also replacing a lot of other stuff, right?

It's, it's replacing a lot of these kids, like going out in the streets and playing.

Hmm.

Ball, you know, it's it's a like a totally

digital version of your

afternoon.

So

if you want it to pull it into what I think

media companies have to be thinking about right now.

So if you're a media company, you're saying, what is this?

Let's call it, I don't know.

Is it 3.

0, 4.

0 shift, right?

Whatever came after the kind of social media and search era.

You're like, well, what's going to be our distribution?

What's going to be.

unique that a media brand can do outside of, you know, the new aggregator call that chat GPT or any of the new news aggregators or anybody that's using interface to get above media, interface and, and, and technology.

And, and one of them is gotta be interactivity, right?

And, and that's the ability to to participate in an experience.

Gaming is obviously the ultimate in interactivity, but you know, gaming on the New York times is interactivity closely related would be, well, not unrelated, I think is your your data set.

or the thing that powers that experience, that, that the unique data, and I say data in the broadest way, which could be numbers, statistics, profiles, search results, anything have to be, you know, you know, kind of proprietary.

And, and then I think thirdly, it's, it's the power or the opportunity for a brand to create trust inside of that new environment to the extent that, that trust is a, is a differentiating factor in what someone's going to consume.

We, we sometimes naively, I think, put too much emphasis on the, the, who it came from, because increasingly, It seems like we live in this kind of, you know, you know, this kind of universe that's like, you know, 1000 points of light and, and we spend less time thinking about, like, where did the message come from?

And so I think trust is still important.

And the media brand is a manifestation of that.

But, I, you know, I certainly don't think you, you rely on that as being the thing that's, that's gonna.

That it's the starting point, but it's not the thing that's going to save you.

Hmm.

So how does this then impact?

I mean, we're going to talk about like, let's just talk about you know, media with the new aggregators, because like, as you said, getting upstream of the aggregators has been nearly impossible, I feel like for, for most, media and, and aggregators that

Yeah.

They're good too.

Like if I'm finding them interesting,

like artifact.

Well, yeah, yeah.

Artifact was interesting.

it's

I found it

it's it's it's not Yahoo news now.

Right.

particle is a new entrant, in the aggregation space that uses AI extensively to help you navigate.

A lot of content and it's kind of fun actually.

And it is interactive.

And it, I believe the founder was the head of product at Twitter.

I don't know the person.

There's another one called valve.

V O L V E, which is sort of AI generated summaries of, you know, the news that you just flick, flick, flick, flick, flick.

You can sort of see how the interface allows you to navigate a huge amount of content really quickly.

There's AI generated news, which is, I don't know if you've seen break the web, which is sort of like 10 stories a day or a couple of times a day.

in a graphic intensive app interface.

Perplexity is trying to do the same by bridging LLMs and chat, the chat experience with actually the delivery of news.

And they're extending that, you know, across mediums.

So they have an auto generated newsletter and they have an auto generated podcast, all of which are reasonably good products, I think.

and so.

You know, those are all places that consumers are gonna, you know, be certainly tempted by that, that, that sit on that, that offer no real economic salvation to a media brand.

Yeah, I think what the hard part is, like, all of these things are moving towards pigeonholing, particularly news brands as just raw material providers and downstream of the value chain.

If you look at like, who is making the most money, particularly in news content, it's the people on top Of the actual gathering of the facts.

I mean, like, we always point out that, all in loves to, like, you know, take shots at, the quote, unquote, mainstream media, but then is constantly referring to the reporting done by the mainstream media, either to say it's fake, or if it actually goes with their point of view to say, yeah, there's, there's this is proof point of it.

And I think that that is happening.

It's not just at the interface level and.

I think that is a real challenge because all of the incentives, the economic incentives, are not to be gathering the news.

It's to be manipulating the news, maybe.

It's to use technology to manipulate it into a new package.

it could be like to provide a point of view or an opinion on top of the news.

can I make a prediction?

yeah, I love predictions.

I think none of the apps that Troy mentioned will be around in five years.

I think if If you're just, recompiling information, that's all going to be provided to you by your operating system or Google or something like that.

All that stuff is going to be, you know, if you want facts, if you want access to facts, information, even something to kind of retell you a story or tell you how a movie ends or whatever, that's just going to be like straight to the vein, directly to the OS.

You're going to have these conversations.

They're not going to be intermediaries that you.

You know, whatever deals you make today, they're not, they're not going to exist.

The thing that is going to continue to exist and it's, it's kind of related to Fortnite is it's entertainment.

You know, the all in podcast, the reason people like getting their

news through that is because it's entertainment.

It's through the lens of entertainment.

People want play, right?

Which is why Fortnite is there.

And which is why, and it's the next, I think the next, and I'm not, I don't mean to be kind of.

The pitching my own book here, but the, the, the next frontier is not like, how do we recontextualize this content that's over it's going to be, how do we make this entertaining and, and, and, and people are going to be more and more demanding and it's going to be around like play and entertainment.

How can you

well, that's the way you see some, some, of that in particle where.

You can combine, recombine, sort, change, manipulate content in ways.

That's fun.

Like rewrite all the headlines is if it was the onion, you know, that's part of the,

the, the sort of

GPT to do this right now.

it's listen, they're the aggregator of those aggregators.

So, you know, the, you know, but, but the one thing I think that I would take away from it and the Brian, I would love your take on this is, to me, text is being.

Push down the stack, like text is becoming increasingly commoditized

and, and, and, and it's happening because.

LLMs can create and manipulate and reformat and make into new mediums any type of text.

So text is now an input into the machine as opposed to an output.

I think

And I think that's a, that's a big thing for media companies that trade in text.

No, I think that's totally right.

I mean, cause like, I'm just amazed.

Claude is my sort of LLMF choice these days, but,

you know, I use it to, I just used it to, to do like five bullet points summary of, you know, piece I wrote.

It's pretty good.

It's already pretty good, and I don't think it's going to get worse.

And like, that is, they're all of these tasks, kind of what Andrew said about versioning.

There's all of these things within the sort of text world that are, frankly, going to be better done by machines than by humans.

And it's hard as a, as a, as a person has produced a fair amount of texts in my day and, and continued to produce a lot of texts that might not be the most pleasant thing, but, that's, that's a reality, right?

And I think, yeah, like he said, it's getting pushed down the value chain.

the only thing holding me back from subscribing to more newsletters is that I don't have a an AI that's smart enough integrated into my email that can just give me a rundown of what's going on.

I just want to just subscribe to what I want to subscribe and then just ask this thing.

Hey, what's happening right now?

Yeah, I'm interested in this thing.

Tell me more.

Well, first of all, Apple is doing that, right?

Apple is summarizing.

I mean, like, if you look at the direction of travel, it's pretty clear.

you know, Apple will summarize all of your newsletters for you on the device.

that's happening.

that, without

see it kind of strategically manifest.

I just had a kind of a conversation with a company I'm on the board of that's focused on the, football media space, the soccer media space.

And, the idea, and you see this in the ESPN app, you can either start with statistics and numbers.

And things that you can manipulate around, you know, the kind of data of the, of the game, or you can start with articles about the game, or you can start with videos.

And I think that as a publisher, we're, we're having to kind of reprioritize this because to me, the, the statistics side of it's getting more interesting the, because the statistics are leading to different Gaming opportunities.

Now, the ultimate one that monetizes best is obviously.

Gambling betting, but you know, this company, for example, is doing these really light parlays where you get, you get to bet on six teams that are playing in, you know, on Saturday and if you get them all right, there's like a small reward.

So it's sort of like betting light, but if you think about it is you've got all this data.

You know, from the players to the matches to the leagues, and you can start manipulating that and then you can have fun with it.

And if you really want to, you can place your bet.

And that to me is the more, when you think about, say, the homepage as a surface area, that's the number one thing.

Because, you know, chatbots don't do that as well.

The number two thing is probably, how do we.

You know, how do we entertain with video?

And then the number three thing is how do we put smart interfaces on this corpus of millions of pieces of content?

That used to be the lead thing that are now secondary to me And I just think that that that's appointed the departure in the publishing market.

I used to host the holiday party game show at Digiday.

I might have to bring that back.

It's like a career choice.

I think that's a good idea

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, I think that was a nice

People say we're, we're, we're, we're, we're too down on, on everything on media and everything like that.

But, any, any optimistic thoughts?

Oh, so actually I'm not, I wrote a little bit.

You're not a subscriber, so you don't have access to it, but everyone else can subscribe.

You get a 20 percent discount

I just don't read newsletters, man.

It's just too, I have good friends that write them and

All right,

I have a huge list of things that I feel guilty about.

I will feed this shit into notebook LM and personally deliver you

a,

be great.

like if you want, but I'll have Snoop Dogg or,

I mean, make a podcast out of it.

We've been talking

Uh, well, I maybe, I mean, we'll see if

if

Like if you made a podcast out of it, I would, I would

cool.

All right,

done.

Um,

use the code.

You know what I'm actually really excited about?

I, you know, I was diagnosed with ADHD and God knows what that means.

It can mean a hundred different things, but

Is that real?

Is that a real diagnosis

Oh, it's definitely real, man.

if anything, you know, it's real that because when you take Adderall, your whole body calms down rather than get hyper.

So, you know, you kind of know that, that, that that's, that's one of the telltale signs.

although Adderall is, you Not for me.

school and going through just stuff in life, where I had to consume a lot of information in a certain way, right.

That was written in a certain way.

It was so against the way my brain worked my whole life.

You know, my whole life I pushed against it, right?

and I, I, I really struggled with school and things like that.

And yet I'm, you know, I'm a relatively fast learner if the information is in the right place.

And I can tell you that this age where information can get recontextualized and I can ask it to write in bullet points and I can ask it to read it out for me, has been.

The last two years has been incredible for someone like me to

be able to finally learn things like, like, you know, music theory or, or, or, or some, some computer concepts that I never got to because I just couldn't, couldn't process that information.

Self help everywhere i've been doing a lot of self help

I mean, yes, in, in, in a sense, but what I'm saying is that I think we'll discover that there's so many different types of brains and the people who usually end up writing are usually the people who end up liking to read stuff that is written.

But that there's a huge part of the population that doesn't want to consume information like that.

And now for the

first time, we're actually going to be asking the consumers, say, how do you want that information?

Imagine all that data and people will notice shit.

I only have to write five words, or maybe it has to be like this.

And it, it, that was never an option.

That was

never an option.

I

my MTV, Alex.

But the most successful

people, the one, the one thread

is they're all like voracious readers.

They're all voracious readers.

I'm long reading.

I think, I think it's a competitive advantage to be able to have the self control to read a book these days.

And

I don't think you get that

by having an

more successful

read and Snoop Dogg.

Like, uh, there's a lot of ways to succeed.

There's,

know, And I think that there's a, that there's a world, I think that there's a bias right now because the people like to write, create the type of content that they want to see.

And that's fine.

We, we just had, you know, I think,

Do you think that the people in power are biased towards readers?

Trump has never read a, has not read a book in at least 15 or 20

I'm not saying guys, I can read a book.

Right.

he didn't read his own book.

that doesn't matter.

Let's not talk about Trump.

I I'm saying it's not that I don't like long form reading.

I think it's a, I, especially when it comes like to, fiction.

I really enjoy that.

I like getting immersed in the world.

When it comes to me, learning, reading, getting real, very specific value out of stuff.

it is incredibly.

time consuming and hard for me to consume information in the way that it's presented currently.

I wonder how many other people feel the

There's a lot, Alex.

I think there's a lot.

I've had this conversation with one of my kids who much prefers consuming books via audio.

So wait, is reading dying?

What, why, what made, what made reading?

I think there was just like this academic, grandstanding that like reading was the only way we should consume information as if as, as apes,

that's what we decided to do, like, look, we're, we're

Well, I don't know.

Gutenberg was a pretty important,

yes, at the time, because that was the way to transport.

Content because we didn't have, guess what?

We didn't have, we didn't have an MP3 that you could send over

space in a

So Adam Curry is going to go down in history as like the new Gutenberg.

Maybe I, what I'm saying is what I'm saying is, is actually maybe more profound than that, is that people will write.

Content will put content out into the world in the way that they feel comfortable in the tone that they feel comfortable.

And then people will consume that content in the way that they feel comfortable.

This is like it's such a profound change to the way we exchange information with each other.

I think we're going to learn a lot about about about things and it's also going to make people lazy and it's also going to kind of destroy our attention span and all that stuff.

But, you know, I think we, we, we, we, with every new technology, like our brains change a little bit.

And this is one of the ones where I feel we'll look back and say, wow, for the past, you know, few hundred years, we've been kind of really stuck in that one modality of, of, of how

information should be consumed and transferred.

So text was overvalued is basically what we're saying.

It had, it had,

always try to get like the, the, the, the headline out

well, yeah, that's exactly what I'm trying to do because it's, it's a compelling, it's good.

It,

I can sell

but Brian, Yeah, that's the job of the moderator, Alex.

The, um,

have to like fucking dissect the frog in front of everyone.

I was

just making banter here,

Okay, so

That's that, That's my point.

I'm the disruptor on the podcast.

you're the

free party, you're the,

Uh, free, free radical

Free radical.

Okay, Brian, but you had made the point, and I just want to get your take on this, that this sort of, what you called it, the end of mass media is definitely manifest in how, this election is playing out.

It's just so stark.

The other day, I opened the New

So explain, break it down for us, help us understand it and its consequences.

Well, like, we're in the home stretch to the election.

This is when all the political reporters bring out every cliche that it's a dash.

The candidates are dashing and it's a blitz and like all this.

And when you look at where we are, This is make or break time.

When you look at where the closing arguments are being made, the New York Times was aggregating an interview that Kamala Harris gave to Charlamagne, the God, okay, not technically a podcast or a radio host, but like, of that elk, she's going on Joe Rogan.

I mean, Trump has been on, like, every other, podcast, no, the mass media overall is being ignored.

I mean, time just threw a fit that Kamala Harris did not sit for an interview with Time magazine.

I'm sorry, but like, I'm sorry, Jess, but like,

She might as well set, uh, for an interview with us at this stage.

that is not a big L.

Like, I mean, who is time reaching that, is more important than these niches that a lot of these alternative media are reaching?

And I tuned in last night.

This is also a product problem because I decided to actually look at the Brett Baer interview of Kamala Harris.

I'm like, maybe I'll get something new.

At the very least, if she does the middle class thing, it'll be kind of funny.

And, I couldn't watch it for longer than five minutes.

The bickering, the talking over.

I think it's almost like those late night TV tropes, where they have those fake stories.

you called it like the uncanny valley of media.

Right, Alex?

I thought that was really smart because,

talk about Uncanny Valley.

Brett Bear looks like an.

But

but it was like, it was awful, awful to listen to, and I would much rather Theo Vaughn and Donald Trump is better than that.

but, but, but, and the thing is that, but that's because like, that's, that's their format and that's how they're pitching to their audience, but that the emergence of podcasts, right.

Has been once again, right.

Like I think it was, there were early adopters in podcasts.

It, there was a, it took a long time to get here, but just the power of.

Not only audio, but the format of a podcast where you sit down and listen to somebody talk through, there's no way this can be transferred to text, there's no way that you can get that emotion and that feeling and the pauses or anything like that.

And, and TV is just too impractical to consume at, at scale at this stage.

But, but podcasts is you have it in your ear where you do the dishes, you know?

I honestly don't think, I don't know if I would agree to like a You know, like, if I was a prominent person, nobody's writing a profile on me,

but, like, I don't know if I would agree

it goes into a black hole and somebody rewrites everything you said.

It's crazy.

really interesting point.

remember we wrote that profile of you try that called you brusque.

You wrote that?

No, I didn't write it.

She wrote it.

Oh yeah, that's nice.

She did a nice job.

I would agree with that.

But you call me you're pissed about it about the breast comment.

I mean, and I

The best one was Michael Sebastian wrote a profile of me in Ad Age, Ad Week.

Michael

Sebastian, he's now the editor.

And

that's that's the old oldest of the old school tricks.

I love

that.

was the sort of wrecking ball analogy.

Okay, well, that's

Yeah, and

that one that was when that Miley had that big hit it was

I, we, I don't know.

I don't understand any of these references.

I hope our audience does.

Miley Cyrus?

You don't know Miley Cyrus?

you know the song wrecking ball

She's

why.

Why are you just jumping around?

Okay, great.

I'm not jumping around.

I want to finish this.

I'm gonna do what I do.

It's just sort of a hostile moderating takeover the

being brusque.

Yes But Brian,

how does it

was it was better than Asshole.

I

But was it truer?

thought it was fine.

That asshole is my friend.

Okay.

So, but can you help us understand who's played this new media environment more effectively?

And why?

I think it's going to be fascinating to see at the end.

Who ends up, because I think of like Kamala Harris has run a more traditional campaign.

She gets to her talking points.

Trump was swaying to like Sinead O'Connor in front

38 minutes, for 38 minutes.

I have no idea if this is genius or pure lunacy, but it'll be interesting.

I, I think Trump is a natural, of this new environment.

I don't think it was Sinead O'Connor.

I think it was Hallelujah interpreted by Rufus Rainwright.

That

was originally a Leonard Cohen song and he.

reacted to that was one of

Nothing compares

like, He's like, don't play that shit.

That's my song.

Don't do that.

None of these artists wanted to be on that stage with

Yeah.

There are no more slow songs these days.

about the YMCA guys?

They don't mind.

well he has to, I think he has to get people who are dead because they can't object then.

That's why he's doing Ave Maria.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, so,

I think Trump is a natural, and we've said this before, we've disagreed, but like,

I think he's, he's a natural for this

Brian, we do not disagree, but he's a natural insofar as like he's an amoeba that's thriving in it.

You know what I mean?

I don't, I don't think there is a board with a master plan.

I

I, thought you were going to say maggot.

Yeah.

But like, you know, I would make the argument that having instincts is better than having a strategy

I don't know.

I mean, I guess the, the only thing that I ever disagree with is, is when people use the term strategy, right?

Like I think there's a strategy when you kind of sit down and plan stuff out.

I think there's just people who have reflexes that turn out to be correct.

That's not a

strategy.

Yes.

He's reflexive.

he's like, uh, what's his name?

Johnny Manziel.

Like, you know, he would run around in the backfield.

Like there was no strategy going on with Johnny Manziel.

And he didn't end up having a very,

He is definitely, he's definitely a natural, the media ecosystem is at the right temperature and the right amount of moisture for him to thrive.

And he's just

Yeah.

it.

It's like, you know, like when the power goes out and you leave a fridge and you leave the fridge door open, that's what happens.

There's just,

My, my mom scared me about this.

She was like, do you clean out your fridge?

before you like leave, because like, if there's a hurricane, the, you'll have like rotting chicken in there and then you'll have to get an entire new refrigerator.

I was like, really?

I never thought about the dangers of leaving chicken in a refrigerator.

Okay.

That's what I thought.

I was like, refrigerators were all back when

Yes.

This is what people come to this podcast for, by

Yeah,

we,

can cut that out, but I want to, I want to move, I want to move that because it was on my mind.

It's frustrating choice.

So therefore it's good

content.

Look at it.

He's, he's, he's, like, he can't sit still

you guys know that I

get frustrated when you, when you, when, when we, when we beat the dead horse.

So let's, let's move on.

Okay, let's move on because I want to just just dwell for a little bit on how you think about careers in this kind of environment, right?

Because my, my working theory in general is media, particularly text media goes first, right?

A lot of the pressures and the compression that we're seeing in this industry are going to spread to other industries.

And what I'm seeing a lot of is.

I think that this is actually a time to be a generalist, a new kind of generalist of sorts, because when we talk about like the negativity, we talk about like big media companies.

I have totally different conversations with people who have one to five to 10 person media companies.

There are so many opportunities out there in the media business.

It's just not a lot of these big media companies because they're trying to retrofit old models.

They're trying to get slimmer, they're battling with unions, they got screwed over by platforms, ad tech is, continues to be like kind of a mess for them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But a lot of the needs out there that I see, and this came up a lot at that Athena Project conference, is people who are kind of generalists, who are able to do a bunch of different things.

I was talking with one executive about this, and the idea of people, Just being complete specialists.

It's like, no, I just do sales.

I don't do the sales deck.

Someone else does that.

And all like, you need to be able to do a bunch of different things at out there.

Like you can't just be I think of like Vanya, who produces this podcast.

We should give like Vanya a lot, a lot more.

We should give her the credit she deserves.

She's a designer, but she also produces podcasts.

I feel like you need to be, it's not like generalist, but it's a new kind of generalist where you have to be able to cover just far more ground to have a, to protect yourself in some ways, because the old career path is gone.

It is not coming back.

I mean, I shared that with you guys about the accountants.

Like, what was a more safe career than going into accounting?

Okay.

And they're projecting like completely decline in accountants.

Too bad.

Learn to code.

You saw the developer statistics.

It's like, I just think how people think of their quote unquote careers has to completely change

Hmm.

Thoughts,

Thoughts, comments, questions?

I think about that.

I get asked that a lot about designers and, and product designers.

And I don't remember who it was that said he wanted.

His kids to grow up resilient.

yeah, I mean, absolutely.

Like, just like develop, an intelligence, get spread your knowledge out so you can do a lot of different things and all of a sudden you'll notice that, the more interests you have, the more you can learn things quickly and adapt to what's coming up.

So when some, some, some new change arises, you have the intuition to say, Oh, this is how I could use this.

I think I fell into that path because I was always bad at becoming a deep expert.

I was always

But wait, you're a trained designer,

but he was always like this, so it was like him, And his friend, a couple of friends and his, and his brothers on the island

In

the tree house.

This isn't

So, no, I mean, there was like, they didn't, they didn't have specialists.

all

They had, They all did everything.

And that's what I loved about Alex when I met him.

I want to connect four thoughts here.

Thoughts that I

think are important.

And the one is, obviously there's now this like kind of strata of tools that make more disciplines and more sort of functions accessible to more people.

Right.

And, that accelerates with AI that lets me build more things without being an expert as, you know, in coding or whatever.

There's the Rashad Tabakowalik point that organizational structures were about role definition.

And hierarchy and a two dimensional org chart.

And that that's changing a lot where we need kind of assigned roles against a task with a small group that takes on a project and, you know, what kind of amorphous organizational structure that kind of combines and disbands as, you know, different needs arise in an organization.

And I think that's, really true.

I also think that it connects to something that confuses me, which is like, you get into a new company that's been, that set the precedent to be remote during COVID, and you may have gotten rid of an office and, Your organization has adjusted.

Do you then go back and say, as things, you know, return to normal, everybody back to the office.

And to me, like the kind of fungibility or you call it generalists or the way we're working differently, Kind of ladders up to org structure ladders up to how do we construct work environments in the future where people do need to get together, but maybe they don't need to congregate 9 to 5 every day and you know, and spend an hour and a half commuting into New York City.

So all those things are connected.

And there's one other thing that I think is vitally important.

And it's sort of, when you look at a change program in media, it was really, really hard to get media companies to change.

And the reason that it was hard is because of role specificity against revenue streams that needed to be protected.

And we said to, Hey, Dave in sales, or Hey, you know, You know, Jenny that works in audience growth or in operations.

Like we need to build this new business that's different from the old one.

And it never really got done because you were struggling just to hit the numbers.

And so like, we, the only way you change a media company is by like.

Setting an objective, carving off a group of people that are sort of not, you know, distracted or committed to supporting an existing declining in many cases, you know, kind of business outcome and get them focused on the next thing.

And that's really hard to do when your revenues under pressure.

So all of those things, I think you want people that can play.

Lots of different roles.

You want to create an organization structure that can compensate reward and allow people to do that.

And by the way, unions want, you know, want to want to constrict your ability to to kind of evolve tasks and roles, even though their broader objective around protecting employees might be might be admirable and a good thing to do.

So I think that we're at a time.

where we're really like rethinking notions of what it's like to go to work.

And, and, and the generalist, you know, comment is I think part of that bigger picture.

Yeah, I totally agree with that.

I think there's, there's something, I haven't pieced it all together, but Alex, I want to get your, your thoughts on this.

because, you know, I, I talk with a lot of people who are, I would say in their like late forties into like early fifties, who the career ladder kind of got pulled out from under them really.

And because I think it's particular to the media business, because, you know, a lot of the top jobs have either gone.

Some of them have gone away entirely.

Some of them have, you know, a lot of companies are doing fractional sea level jobs.

I've heard of, like, fractional, like, chief product and chief technology officers at these companies, because, like, the pressure

is Quite Quite great on them and so people who had taken a path that was very sort of, you know, it wasn't easy, right?

But it was kind of straightforward.

Well, then you hit your like prime earning years.

Okay, and guess what?

The ladder is gone.

Those jobs are gone or they're or they got shrunk and you're kind of being like told to like, okay, find your own way.

And set up an LLC and like piece together a bunch of different gigs because you're still in your prime earning years.

It's tough.

Yeah.

There's this, meme about how the C suites are so excited about, AI replacing all those jobs, but they might be the easiest one to replace

as well.

look, I, I trade in a very specific.

it's hard to generalize because I think there's a lot of jobs out there.

some of them we, we rarely talk about that require all sorts of different paths and that are probably pretty safe, you know, for a long time, right.

You know, fixing our physical infrastructures

Oh, no, no, no.

I'm talking about knowledge

all that stuff.

So, so, so, but I, I think, you know, as a recommendation, that's also a good path to take if you're in the laptop class,

What am I going to tell these guys to go into HVAC at like 48?

man, man, it keeps you, it keeps you moving.

no, the, the main thing I, I, I recommend all the time is that just like, I think, specifically for designers is to just make stuff.

Like just start making things.

Things, right?

Like I think everybody should have like one, two, or three entrepreneurial side gigs where you're learning the tools and you're learning what's available, and you're building something, and you're making something real.

So much time is spent and when people have the most amount of energy trying to learn the things you need to do to get to a job so that finally at some point you'll be able to make things, but by the time you get there, you're being pressured to become a manager.

So you're not thinking about making things anymore and just.

Making shit is such a powerful thing to do.

And today we have all the tools in place.

If you're interested in moving into technology and becoming a product manager, whatever the role turns out to be, and you're not using cursor or, or chat GPT to start building your own products and having your own ideas and developing that intuition, then you're wasting your time, you know?

And if you're going to college to start learning about these things, unless you know, you want to become kind of like a deep AI engineer or stuff like that.

You're also wasting your time.

I think you, you just need the thing about when you, when you set yourself an ambition and you decide to do it, and then you figure out what you have to learn to get there.

It's just such a better way to develop skills.

And at the end of the day, if you have skills and you have more tools, you'll be able to, to be more valuable to an organization or to yourself, whatever you built.

Hey, Alex, on that point, I want to call out a new segment on the

podcast called random, random media item of the week.

That

is really a beautiful thing that I think supports your your comment about a life of, of making an art and what it means to kind of let things into the world.

And I discovered it.

I think it was from Taylor Lorenz's email newsletter.

And it was a 19 minute talk on YouTube that I would encourage.

I don't know if you guys have watched it, but I would encourage everybody to watch it.

And it's from this guy named CabSassersar, Sasser, who's one of the founders of an app development company and game company called Panic.

Oh yeah.

And, and, and he's a quick, he's a he's a, quirky dude and they've made some really interesting things.

and there was this mural on the wall that,

I don't even know, oh my god, okay.

This mural was better than it had any right to be.

It was the Sistine Chapel of McDonald's wall art.

The, the brush strokes are incredible, the lighting, and I'm, I'm, I'm actually not joking.

The lighting, I love this, I love the, the hat.

Nobody remembers Captain Crook anymore and that's fine.

But this pose, I couldn't stop thinking about this pose.

It's just incredible.

Oh man, there's whatever is going on.

There, and then there was a name in the corner.

Which is surprising to me, for a piece of art in a McDonald's.

There was a name in the corner, Wes Cook.

There's an event called XOXO I don't know the event.

But he presents at it.

And the gist of it is, is he goes into a McDonald's in Washington State and discovers this glorious piece of art on the wall.

And it's a kind of Washington kind of diorama.

Of McDonald's characters and he's like, holy shit, the brushstrokes, the lighting, the depiction of Hamburger and grimace and all of these characters and Ronald McDonald is milking a cow and, Apparently, so he, he starts to research this person who, who painted it and turns out that this guy led a kind of lonely life of creation in Los Angeles and was responsible for, for many things, including like environments at Disney Japan and, this, you know, crazy kid shows and all of this stuff, but, you know.

wasn't, there's no Wikipedia page, there's nothing written about him.

And it turned out he found all of his drawings on eBay and bought them all.

Anyway, it's a long story about, the two things that are legacies of people, the time you die and the last time someone says your name.

And, He found this guy and kind of, like pointed a light at a very incredible life and it was all sort of circumstantial from like falling into this, you know, McDonald's in Washington.

on a road trip and it's an amazing product.

It's an amazing story about the sort of human creative spirit and it's really, really great.

Yeah.

And I would say panic is you know, the company I wish, I was running.

they just, you know, do the stuff that they want to work on, they built it.

It's commercially successful.

did you see the little hardware they made called panic play date?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's got a crank on the side.

It was done.

It designed by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Those guys.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle engineering.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

and it, and it updates two games a week for 12 weeks.

You don't know what you're going to get.

It's a wonderful kind of serendipitous product.

It's really cool.

Really cool

Yeah,

that was my random media item of the week connected

to your,

Is this connect to good product?

Is this like,

no,

because we

product.

we have a different, well, we had a segment, we, we we have to wrap it up, but we also had a little brief segment on mentorship.

we wanted to talk a little bit about mentorship because I don't know, Brian, you think it's, it's a, not a thing or it's overrated or,

I'm, I'm against it having been productized

as part of HR.

No, I don't.

And I've always, I mean, I think Gen X people think mentorship is bullshit in their hearts.

I think they do.

Do you have a mentor, Alex?

I counted you as a mentor.

I

Well, that's, but I don't think it can be abusive.

no, I don't have a mentor.

I don't believe I, I, I mean, I've, I've probably been doing what people would call mentorship with some folks, but I always find that like a little bit of a loose term.

I like advisory or apprenticeship, like stuff that

Apprenticeship makes more sense.

And I think we need more apprenticeship,

But you've had good bosses.

Like I've had good bosses that are, that are kind of mentors in a way, right?

Mark Kingdon for a time from organics.

Steve Schwartz at Horthurst.

My collaboration with Matt Sanchez over many, many years.

Matt's now at Yahoo.

Those were all sort of collaborations, mentorships, bosses, you know,

those are important.

But.

Well,

think Brian is

talking about it the way it's been kind of like weaponized

Yeah, it's become productized and it's like you get matched to a mentor and now I'm going to meet you're my mentee and like it becomes just another HR exercise when it enters the

and I'm, I'm thinking about it, like, I had a sort of personal slash professional problem and I called a guy who is a very walking just a really smart person and a really successful person, and he in a half an hour deconstructed it for me and helped me see my dysfunction in this process and help me understand kind of what was really happening.

And, I found that kind of mentor like relationship to be really valuable.

And that happened last week.

and then I've also been watching like my son, you know, he, he, Seb makes, makes records and wants to be a producer and, you know, has been kind of isolating himself, playing every, he plays everything.

He sings the backups.

He does all the production, all that stuff.

And a friend of mine, who's a very successful, music producer said, you got to stop doing that.

I'm going to send you, Seb's going to Indiana tomorrow and is going to be, The guy connecting cables at a, at this crazy studio in Indiana, Fort Wayne, and is going to go in there just to learn.

And the point of this person, this person's point to Seb, this, this, this music producer was like, you don't know anything and you need to go learn things from other people.

And so that's apprenticeship, I guess,

Yeah, because I think apprenticeship is different than mentorship.

Apprenticeship is work,

Yeah,

when we think about like colleges, like more colleges should look like Drexel right than like Columbia.

Yeah.

Drexel is, is, is a great engineering school, and they send you off, half of it is working.

It's apprenticeship.

You're in, you're in companies, you're doing real work.

Not like getting coffee, you're doing real engineering work.

I think mentorship, like strokes, the ego of the mentor,

you know, I think in some ways, it's just become like such a common question.

Like who's your mentor?

but yeah, I agree.

I wish we had apprenticeship, especially now, I think, you know, and it goes back to my point about doing stuff.

It's just having just like.

in your youth, apprenticeship where you dropped in, like, like, like Seb, like putting cables, like making sure that stuff works, building stuff, being, you know, having your work actually, be impactful and be, you know, reviewed by someone and a mentor feels like just kind of this weird therapy otherwise.

so I've changed my mind around it.

I felt it was.

useful back in the day, but I always, I always kind of wished we went back to, to apprenticeship and that, that should be the way things work.

Well, I think we're gonna have to, right?

Because of the way the hollowing out of a lot of companies is happening.

a lot of the roles that were played by incredibly junior people in some of these organizations, they're getting wiped away.

Right?

So, like, the, the, again, that ladder.

Doesn't really exist.

Like, I mean, what Andrew was talking about was a lot of junior roles being automated away.

Well, you know, because they could hire a ton of him and he called him 23 year olds, but like, I thought there were 25 but okay, you know, agencies were always filled with, with, with all these people.

Right?

And because they have to do a lot of, I don't want to say it's cognitive manual labor, but some of it kind of is, and you sort of learn the ropes and that doesn't really, you I can see that sort of disappearing.

Like, if you think about, like, let's say in, like, newsrooms, you get super junior people, they're doing a lot of aggregation at the end of the day, right?

So they don't, they're not experts in anything.

and they have to, you know, get that, get there and, you know, That's going to be taken away.

So I don't see any,

Yeah, but I love this idea of unstructured kind of guidance combined like in some cases, maybe it's, it's tough truths or tough talks combined with love that to me represents what mentorship is, which is, you know, I can help you see another way and I care about you.

and I'm going to tell you things that maybe you don't want to hear.

And I know a lot of people throw around the term, Oh, my mentor, he's my mentor.

In some ways it's, it's kind of an error.

There's an arrogance to it.

Like if your mentor is successful enough, maybe that says something about you.

But, any, anyway, I think it's, it's a nice idea.

I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand, but

I mean, I think maybe we're mostly annoyed with way the term is being used and the triteness of it all.

I think there's definitely like an ego exchange in that like this person's my mentor and i'm this person's mentor, right?

which has devalued it somewhat but

but there's also a lack of a loss of agency in my view in that, in that it's, there's a lot of like, appliers out there, like people who are really good in the system.

I think what you were talking about, maybe to try to.

Pull off the weave is is that the system was really set up to be really good at applying you.

You did your you got the grades.

You did the required extracurriculars in order to apply.

So some group at a university would say yes, you get in and then you go through college and you.

you get the, you get the, you apply to the internships, you get the right internships, you get like, okay, everyone gets good grades, I guess, in college these days, and then you apply, and then you apply to McKinsey, or you apply to HBS, and you see it on all, and like, none of that ends up.

You know, having the same kind of value, I think, in, in this world, like being really good at applying for things and having to me, like wanting to have be handed a mentor through a mentorship program.

It's just another application process, and I don't think the world is going to be as kind to, to those who are really good at applying, than those who are a little bit more feral, I guess, out there doing stuff.

should we just

Yeah, just do good

Alright, let's just do good product.

wrap it

I don't know anything about, you know, his affairs or any alleged connection to, to Epstein or any of that stuff.

Oh my God.

This is, this is going to be a great, good product.

don't

woah, woah, woah,

What is it?

Bill Clinton,

shit.

All I know is that he's a good friend.

I'm

like, this could be like, this this could be like a hundred different dudes.

Jesus.

So, so

to me, Bill Gates is a good product and.

And, and,

and, and I, and I find that in interviews, he, he, he has a kind of nice mix of nerdiness and authority, but is personable, and he's incredibly clear and smart, and I find when he talks, it's usually You know, I think he's a good communicator and it's valuable.

And so, so the reason I like, there's a lot of billionaires that get into the media business, right?

So, you know, Elon got into the media business and Bezos got into the media business and Benioff got into the media business and Trump got into the media business and Balmer got into the media business and Bill Gates is in the media business and, You know, he has this show called what's next the future with bill gates on netflix and it's it's it's a great

And he was interviewed by the one and only sanctimonious Kara Swisher.

and I, I found him to be, you know, he's like a terrific interview and each of the episodes.

It, I feel like he's a billionaire that goes into media for good reason.

Just kind of like the Balmer thing, which is to, to help shine lights on the light on important changes in society that are occurring because of changes in technology and the implications of that and making it understandable.

And so each of the episodes kind of focuses on a different challenge, like artificial intelligence, climate change, misinformation.

And a lot of times like in misinformation, it's like, I don't understand it.

But let's see if we can understand it together.

You know, his focus on, you know, eradicating disease.

And there's another one on income inequality.

And so he finds big thinkers in each of those categories.

And some of them have, you know, different points of view.

And, he gets a perspective in it.

And it was a sort of eye opening experience for him.

And I think for the audience.

And I think that's, this is the right way for a billionaire to get into media.

And so to me, Bill Gates.

You know, obviously at a stage in life where, you know, he's giving away more money than he's taking in incredibly, you know, incredibly rich.

He's very human, right?

Like he's been mistakes.

I'm sure.

but, he's an admirable character and, he's contributing to the world as opposed to taking away and, and it doesn't feel like media as.

You know, as a vanity play, it feels like media that, that, that's kind of useful.

And for that reason,

I think this week, Bill Gates is my

But he's a very controversial character these days.

I think it's impossible not to be a controversial character beyond the Epstein stuff.

Like, there's a lot.

I mean, they have spent too much time on X, but like, you know, there's a large group of people who believe that, like, he's trying to push vaccines on everyone and that he's making money off them and that he's buying up all the farmland and that this is all just a

Most of that Brian, by the way, is, is, is misinformation, fake news and

yeah, this is, this

Okay.

Well, Peter Thiel, you know, Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel,

was also sort of trafficking in this, so I don't know, I mean, I,

I'm, the, the VCs are the public intellectuals

it's, it's a guy, a guy with billions of dollars is really looking to, to, to make money off of vaccines.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I guess the point that I was trying to make is that it's nearly impossible.

I don't think it's possible to be like a billionaire and, and, and not be a recluse without being a controversial character at this point.

Like, there's no, like, sort of, I mean, are there any sort of who are the good billionaires left?

Like, yeah, Buffett doesn't get a lot of, like, grief.

That's true.

right?

I think Buffett would be the example.

Anyway, Bill Gates is a good product.

You, you guys can,

Yeah.

I mean, maybe he's also, he's also a quirky little dude.

Maybe he's got his little things going on.

I don't know.

Can you like, you get, you mean he gets his freak on?

and maybe he gets his freak on and that, in ways that we wouldn't agree with, it's hard, it's hard, you know, it's, it

It's hard to, it's hard to divorce it from like a little bit

of

reputation

same thing.

Like we just, it's, last 10 years has been all, all about like.

Us like wrangling with the fact that we needed to divorce the art from the artist and then the achievement from the achieve, from the achiever.

Like, I mean, like I have my views on Elon and then he lands a fucking rockets and

chopsticks.

Like, I'm like, how do I like

disconnect?

for that.

Yeah, how do I disconnect the fact that he's also like, just like a horrible human being?

Like, how do I put these, take these things apart?

it's, it's all very confusing.

So the construct of Bill Gates as a, as an intellectual, I would agree is like, he's, he's, he's very focused and I think very valuable.

it's hard to, have an opinion about the person.

Otherwise, I don't know.

I think if we,

know,

I, I've, I've now gone, I've gone, I've gone from like, I don't know, pomegranates or something like that to human being

to, yes, maybe

one day we'll actually recommend a product.

Yeah.

Well, we, when we see nice products, we single them out.

And I think last, last week, and I got some feedback on this and so did Steve, by the way.

people appreciated us having Steve on and he, I think he laid it down with like the super glue and all that stuff.

So,

That was great.

That was That was, true, true brilliance.

I love that.

You know what's a bad product?

My cat.

yeah, you

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

This is fun.

Have a good week.

Like and subscribe.

Also, you can watch us on YouTube now so you can

also for, for just a little bit longer, you get 20 percent off your TRB pro, subscription.

And I will, give partial credit to the PVA podcast, for any of the

Oh shit, yeah, since we're making money out of that, we're all gonna start chilling it.

It's a

great read.

I recommend it.

I'd pay full price for it.

You're not, but you sued.

All right,

Thanks.

bye