Luminary and the podcast wars to come, with Nick Quah and Ashley Carman

The Podcast Wars are coming. After Luminary’s troubled launch, The Verge’s Nilay Patel and Ashley Carman sit-down with podcast expert Nick Quah of Hot Pod to discuss if Luminary or anyone could be “the Netflix of podcasts” and where the industry is headed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:13Nilay Patel?

  Hey, everybody. It's Sam from The Vergecast. On this week's interview episode, I actually have two guests. I have Verge reporter Ashley Carmen and Nick Quah, who writes the Hot Pod Newsletter. We're talking about a big controversy in the podcast world. It's an app called Luminary that came out. They want to be the Netflix for podcasts, have you pay for podcasts. They launched and then immediately huge shows started pulling out. So The Daily for the New York Times, all of the Gimlet Media shows, like Reply All pulled out, Joe Rogan Experience pulled out. They don't want Luminary to stream their shows in their player. And the reasons why are super complicated, extremely wonky, and surprisingly emotional. So I had Ashley and Nick join the show, explain what is going on with Luminary and what is coming and what I'm referring to as the podcast wars.

• 2:02Nilay Patel?

  All right, I've got Nick Quah here. How you doing?

• 2:04Speaker 03

  How's it going?

• 2:05Nilay Patel?

  And Ashley Carman's here.

• 2:05Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 2:06Nilay Patel?

  Hi, Ash. So you two, Nick, you write about podcasts literally like every day, basically, at Hot Pod.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Unfortunately, yeah.

• 2:13Nilay Patel?

  It's a real thing. Ashley, you've been writing about podcasts for us for a while now. This is a little bit of a meta-conversation because it is a podcast.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  True.

• 2:20Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be a podcast about podcasts, but there is technical controversy going on. There's creator rights in the mix.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  Beautiful.

• 2:29Nilay Patel?

  There is the spirit and ideals of podcasts as a medium. There's a little bit of the open web thrown in there.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 2:36Nilay Patel?

  It's a spicy brew, and so I think it's rich cast territory. Here's the controversy, as near as I understand it.

• 2:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:41Nilay Patel?

  There's a company.

• 2:42Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:43Nilay Patel?

  Called Luminary. I don't know if I have to disclose this, but I'm gonna just say it. One of the people that works at Luminary is a guy named Joe Perzicki. He used to work at Vox Media. That's it. That's the whole, there's no other, but Joe works there. So he's the person I know. So I was very interested in Luminary. Luminary is what? It's a paid, is that how they describe themselves? A paid podcast app?

• 3:01Speaker 03

  Well, it officially describes itself as the Netflix for podcasts. At one point, I tried to describe it as Netflix for audio, but I was corrected to say it's Netflix for podcasts, which is to say that they are looking to build a paid podcasting platform at scale, which differs from, say, something like Stitcher Premium, which is a sort of paid podcasting site business for a Stitcher app. And it differs from something like Audible, which is an audiobook company. That's primarily a platform. So they offer up, you know, $8 a month. If you pay $8 a month, you get access to their original suite of programming, which includes stuff like Trevor Noah has a show. I think The Ringer has a couple of spinoffs that they're doing for them.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  And also, what we learned last Tuesday when it officially launches, that they would also be including a free tier, which is to say that it would essentially double as a normal podcast player on top of this sort of paid closed platform.

• 3:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:57Speaker 03

  And therein lies the complication.

• 3:59Nilay Patel?

  I just wanna be clear with the audience. Ashley and I think this is the beginning of a podcast war. And I've only gotten you as so far as like podcast skirmish.

• 4:08Speaker 03

  Yes, it's the Grenada. I don't know, like I, so I think the, I, I do think a podcast platform war is coming. Absolutely, 100%. There's no way, there's no way in which the podcast industry or ecosystem can continue to grow, can continue to become popular and amass power without there being power conflicts. I just feel like nobody in the podcast industry has sufficient enough power, other than Apple, to say they call this a war. This is like a kind of like a couple of kids in like in a street corner kind of slapping each other.

• 4:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  Podcast super soccer fight. Right, absolutely.

• 4:38Nilay Patel?

  All right, so Ashley, unpack the, you've used the app, you wrote about the app when it launched. Unpack what you like free, it's literally just a podcast player? That's all it is?

• 4:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a podcast player.

• 4:50Nilay Patel?

  The fact that they keep calling it free tier to me suggests they're doing so much more than just putting on a podcast player.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  They say that they've invested like very heavily in the design behind it, so really they want you to be able to play everything you'd want, all the access from the homepage. So typically on a podcast where you have to like go to your shows or like see what's new, from here you can continue re-listening to an episode where you left off, or they have all the new episodes right on the homepage. Curated suggestion. From a product standpoint, I wasn't like, this is revolutionary. I don't know, you've used it Nick, right?

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've used it and I'm like, of course, like I'm, I'm interested to see the actual value proposition here, which is the original era. But, and I think this entire sort of attention to the free tier and its various controversies, it's kind of taking away from the fundamental question that this company is trying to answer, which is, will, can there be a Netflix style platform or product solution for Audible audio? That covers podcast-like programming? And I don't think we're anywhere close to like actually beginning to answer that question because of all this, this controversy. But at its core, it functions like a podcast distribution app. Like there is a layer to it in which you can use it exactly the way that you would use Overcast and Stitcher and whatnot. It's just that that was not, that's not the point of the product. The point of the product is the other stuff, like the stuff that you pay in dollars for.

• 6:06Nilay Patel?

  The eight bucks a month.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  Exactly, and you see their shows really heavily promoted on that homepage. Every Luminary show has a little badge that has the L on it, so you know it's a Luminary exclusive. You won't be able to access it unless you're a premium user. And that's, again, where the controversy is, is because these shows that are traditionally free, it gets into marketing of like they're the funnel and they get people to come into the podcast app with the promise of those free shows. And eventually Luminary could try to upsell them or convince them to pay to access those badged shows.

• 6:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, if you are an old person like me. You step back and this looks like a very classic Microsoft move, a very classic Google move, which is Microsoft puts out Internet Explorer and it's like, here are all these keys to Microsoft services that we want to use. Google puts out Chrome, you can access the web. People think Chrome is the default web browser, but it is heavily, extraordinarily tied into Google services. So this is a pretty classic strategy. We make the best browser for the free stuff.

• 7:02Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:03Nilay Patel?

  And we use it to drive you towards our paid stuff or our services.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:07Nilay Patel?

  Why is this so controversial?

• 7:09Speaker 03

  The way I understand it, there's sort of two layers here to sort of unpack. The first is this entire conversation about licensing agreements. So the initial wave of publishers that pulled out were Spotify, The Daily, and now-

• 7:20Nilay Patel?

  We should say, we should make that clear.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:22Nilay Patel?

  So Ashley wrote the story, Luminary's out, you can get it today. And like, the night before, I think The Times-

• 7:28Speaker 04

  Really late.

• 7:29Nilay Patel?

  And Spotify said, we're not letting our podcasts go in the free player.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:33Nilay Patel?

  So The Daily won't, you can't listen to The Daily in Luminary Player, you can't listen to Reply All.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  The New York Times has some shows, just not, it's like, The Daily is the New York Times.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  Exactly. It is the moneymaker.

• 7:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  And the other podcasts, well, good and excellent. Well, that's not why the sensitive business aspects of the audio business in New York Times is. And so the conversation, from my sources, in layers of this, this sort of debacle, intimated that it was largely a preemptive measure, because they had interpreted Luminary as using their podcasts as essentially the top of the funnel to drive a business that could ultimately be complicated if successful over the long run, complicated for the ecosystem and the business as a whole. And so, traditionally speaking, third-party podcast apps can aggregate and distribute free podcasts when they're open publishing ecosystem without a licensing agreement, because it's a general sort of cultural norm agreement that like, on the one hand, everybody wins if this podcast app becomes more heavily used, because it

• 8:30Speaker 03

  just means more people, you know, listening and everybody gets data that they want. And also, like, the manner of monetization isn't like, in conflict. And so that brings us to the second way that I've heard this, this situation being framed, which is, it's the difference between mutualism and parasitism. Luminary is interpreted by some to be using free podcasts in order to grow a business that would not directly or proportionally bring benefit to the podcast that they were aggregating, without licensing agreement or without any explicit permission. And that's different from any other podcast app that would, you know, aggregate open podcasts, in which their success also means the success of those podcasts. And so- That's kind of the philosophical tenets of this situation. Luminary would argue that their free tier also would benefit free, open podcasts.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  But there are complications around the technical aspects that undermine this argument. There was also a Sign Bunny meme suggesting an anti-ad stance a couple of weeks ago that also undermines this argument. And so, you know, it's just, it's just a shitstorm. And it's a shitstorm that feels from the outset. And you can tie it back to just a lack of proper preparation or outreach to the community. And so there's a way which you could read this as like a territorial squabble, but not a war.

• 9:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, so since the New York Times, Gimlet, Parcast, all of them, that was launch day, or the day before launch day. Then, Nick, you reported that Joe Rogan pulled his show.

• 9:48Speaker 03

  Right.

• 9:48Speaker 04

  And Joe Rogan, obviously, huge, I mean.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  That's thought to be the most downloaded, yeah.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, Joe Rogan and the Daily, I'm like, podcasting, done.

• 9:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 9:56Speaker 04

  He pulled his show. Then we have Stitcher pulling its shows.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was as of Friday.

• 10:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was over the weekend. Oh, my gosh, I should actually just pull up the full list. There's so many.

• 10:07Nilay Patel?

  It was a bad week.

• 10:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, there was so many.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  I heard media's gone, Endeavor Radio's gone, Podcast One is gone, Barstool Sports pulled out midweek.

• 10:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, Barstool Sports is really bad.

• 10:15Speaker 03

  I heard over the weekend that PRX is also going pole. PRX governs Radiotopia, Gen Z Media, and Nine Veil Presents. So there, it feels like a coalition that crosses a bunch of different categories. So it's not just a bunch of big corporate publishers, you know, flexing muscles. There's also now a sort of diversity in the pushback, which kind of makes this a little bit more of an interesting situation.

• 10:37Speaker 04

  Well, and what's even more interesting as far as the diversity of pushback goes is Stitcher owns Midroll, which is like, independent podcasters can use Midroll to get ads if they don't have a full ad team. And Midroll has said that they're encouraging podcasters to pull their shows from Luminary and that essentially, you know, they're available to help maybe facilitate or whatever, like, be part of those conversations, which is a whole nother layer to this because, still, even though it's diverse, it's all big shows.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  Right, and it covers a big constituency. We, obviously, we don't know the full size of the podcasting ecosystem which large, and we don't really know the full size of percentage here, but it feels like it's past critical mass, that this has become a fundamental problem and almost an existential problem for the free tier.

• 11:18Nilay Patel?

  So there's the first bit, which is. We don't like Luminary. They're a bunch of jerks. They're taking our podcasts, which we give out for free, and they're using them to support their paid service. And also Luminary has like raised a hundred million dollars. Right.

• 11:30Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:30Nilay Patel?

  Writing a lot of big checks. Like, there's like a lot of, there's like some envy in there. That all seems like kind of emotional. But then, Ashley, you reported on a bunch of extremely kind of controversial technical moves that Luminary was making as well.

• 11:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, oh, boy. This is, this is the big one.

• 11:47Nilay Patel?

  If you, if there's ever a podcast that talks about the RSS standard. This is probably it, right? This is, this is the one.

• 11:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, so.

• 11:52Nilay Patel?

  The differences between caching and proxy servers.

• 11:55Speaker 04

  Oh, my god. Basically, yeah, it came out that Luminary is using a proxy server. So traditionally, when someone gets a podcast, like Vergecast or whatever, if you're listening through Apple Podcasts, Apple Podcasts pulls that show from the servers that are hosting platform, basically.

• 12:12Nilay Patel?

  Megaphone.

• 12:13Speaker 04

  So in Luminary's case, what's happening is when someone asks to play Vergecast, Luminary is pinging its own servers, and then its own servers are pinging Megaphone.

• 12:22Nilay Patel?

  Which is the, the proxy. Right.

• 12:24Speaker 04

  And that is a huge issue for the industry.

• 12:27Nilay Patel?

  It's like existential, because you can't, there's so little data in podcasts.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  Exactly. That's, that's what's so sad about this. So, yeah, so basically, because the proxy server was pinging, creators weren't getting the IP addresses of their listeners, which is so funny that everyone's like, you know, so upset over IP addresses. But that's pretty much all they have.

• 12:44Nilay Patel?

  Absolutely.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  It's literally, it's not like Facebook where it's like, let's target down to the like mini-school eye color that these people have.

• 12:51Nilay Patel?

  Please sign up for advertising using the promo code, promo code. Please, it's the only way they will know that this ad was effective.

• 12:57Speaker 04

  And it's especially important because going forward in the industry, ad tech is actually a hugely developing part of this world. And when you don't have those IP addresses, dynamic ads, a lot of them are geo-targeted. I don't know what percentage, but whatever. It's, it's a big part of the industry. And When you don't have those IP addresses, you can't geo-target. And actually, the IAB, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, has standards around podcast advertising, trying to really make this a thing. And the data that they were getting from Luminary, any hosting platform, would have to throw it out. Because IAB specifically says, if the IP address you're receiving comes from a server, not a real listener's IP address, you have to throw that data out as like bot data. And it is trash.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  So not only can they not properly target ads, but also those listens basically don't count.

• 13:47Speaker 03

  You should also talk about a show notes thing.

• 13:49Speaker 04

  Yes, that's, yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  So in addition to-

• 13:53Nilay Patel?

  Everyone knows all the controversies. Well, this is a big one, too.

• 13:56Speaker 03

  This is, I think, I would argue it's bigger, because it kind of undermines any fundamental argument about like supporting non-big publishers. So in addition to the proxy server and the sort of technical fracas, various podcasters were also finding that Luminary was altering show notes of their podcasts that was this own platform. This includes removing external links. And this is a problem for a lot of, especially independent smaller podcasts, because independent smaller podcasts rely on links to direct donation campaigns and/or sponsored, like, sponsored websites as fundamental parts of their sort of revenue guarantees. Like, they rely on people finding those sponsored links and seeing those links-

• 14:33Nilay Patel?

  Because you can track way easier than a promo code is a click on a link.

• 14:37Speaker 03

  100%. Luminary has since like altered or made adjustments, or have said that they made adjustments to the proxy feed aspect of this, but they seemingly doubled down on the fact that they're getting rid of external links.

• 14:47Nilay Patel?

  They called it a security issue, which I thought was a choice.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  They call it a security concern. And it's, you know, it's one of those things where if you've been around this space long enough, you kind of go like, you just kind of look around at any other third-party podcast that, like, this hasn't really been an issue.

• 15:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because links on the internet are, they are fundamentally a security concern. But they're also links on the internet.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's very confusing.

• 15:10Speaker 03

  And this, I think, so if we want to look at it from the brass tacks of like, you know, this is what they're doing, this is the things that are in violation of, like, you can kind of go down a list of just a bunch of things. But the sort of bigger game here is just the nature of trust.

• 15:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  And it feels like every single small misstep kind of all kind of clumps together into this big picture of like, this company just doesn't feel like they know what is going on and what's important in this space and what's really relevant to the people, the contingencies, the contingents that they should be trying to win over. And it kind of loops back into the whole licensing agreement thing, which is like- Just didn't feel like they did in any outreach that felt meaningful or two way. It just, it just felt like, we are here, you're colonial saviors, let's see what's up.

• 15:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  And it's just, it's really just bizarre.

• 15:53Nilay Patel?

  What struck me, this conversation breaks down along two ways, right? There is technically, you're supposed to license the RSS feeds, but no one does it.

• 16:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:01Nilay Patel?

  And Ashley and I talked to some independent podcast app vendors and they're like, we don't want to talk because like we live in this gray area. Right? Like, we don't want to raise our hand and be like, you should do this and that because then someone might notice that we need it. So technically you're supposed to do this, but no one does it because the podcast ecosystem has developed its values and norms.

• 16:20Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 16:20Nilay Patel?

  And then there is the fact that the other side of the podcast business has rapidly professionalized to the point where there are I A B standards about IP address tracking that probably only Vergecast listeners care about knowing exist, right? Like.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  And are people who make money off of it.

• 16:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there's like, but like in terms of like a consumer audience.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:40Nilay Patel?

  I'm pretty sure our show is the one place where you can be like, there's I A B standards for IP address tracking. But like the normal consumer doesn't care about that at all, like not even a little bit. It's executives.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:51Nilay Patel?

  But so like, that's a rapidly professionalized side of this. Whereas the consumer facing side of the podcast business for so long is like, anybody can just start a podcast app. And you can like win and you can like have a better interface and you can be the person who invents speeding up the audio of 3X without adjusting its pitch. Right? And that's like, that's a way to win. And that bifurcation seems like Luminary got it wrong on both sides.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 17:15Nilay Patel?

  Like they didn't have the sort of emotional community expertise to go and participate there. And they didn't have the, the business expertise to understand how the ad market worked.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:25Nilay Patel?

  And I kind of don't understand how they had so much money and smart people, like I, I know some of them.

• 17:31Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:31Nilay Patel?

  You've interviewed the CEO, Matt Sachs.

• 17:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:34Nilay Patel?

  They don't seem like they're totally confused. But they just missed it.

• 17:38Speaker 04

  The proxy server thing is wild. Like that.

• 17:40Nilay Patel?

  You have to engineer that. That's a choice.

• 17:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, like that, I would love, I mean, love to know the conversation that happened there.

• 17:46Speaker 03

  If it feels like a fundamental breakdown at on all levels, that's important on a technical side, on the sort of business development and legal side, and then there's also just like the plain strategy side of this. I, I argue and I continue to think they don't need a free tier. Like this is an un, this is like an unforced error.

• 18:04Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 18:04Speaker 03

  Like, I think their bet is truly the aggregation, like truly their bet is, I think, what everybody thought the bet was going to be or is right now, which is we're going to rely on the popularity of all these free podcasts to, you know, be lead generation and to bring people into the funnel. And then eventually that's how we're going to build, build our base. You know, anybody who's spent more than six months kind of really listening to the podcast community can tell you that's a political, like, mind. That's just like not something to do. But also, like, if you're going out to build a business that pretends to be the paid podcast platform, that pretends to be the Netflix for podcasting, there are precedents for on-demand audio apps that people pay for. Audible is a good example of one. Headspace, which is like a very specific meditation, like, audio experience app.

• 18:45Speaker 03

  There are, there are lanes in which you can truly experiment, that you can truly use a hundred million dollars of venture capital to like.

• 18:51Nilay Patel?

  There are older lanes. Sirius XM exists.

• 18:54Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And Sirius XM, like, the story on that is like they essentially had Howard Stern and like really locked down one major star and then just worked from there. So there are precedents in which like, there are businesses that you can build with that lane. You don't really need a free tier. And it felt like just strategically, like this was, this was an unnecessary lane to explore. And now you kind of set yourself back a couple of months, I think, from the sheer, like, political poison of this.

• 19:18Nilay Patel?

  Knowing what we know now, if you had to redo it, it seems like the first thing you do is you'd say we'd made the best podcast player. Right? And it's a good member of this ecosystem. And we have one show that you can pay a dollar for. Right? And like, we're just going to try. Like, we're just going to make the best podcast player. That's what our engineering talent is here for. And then over time, you like add another show.

• 19:39Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 19:40Nilay Patel?

  And another show.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  Get a foothold.

• 19:41Nilay Patel?

  Right. And you're like, we're in the ecosystem. We just want to make a really good podcast player and do some pay. And you'd start much more humbly.

• 19:48Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:48Nilay Patel?

  But they came out guns blazing.

• 19:50Speaker 04

  And like to Nick's point about potentially just being an exclusive platform. All their marketing materials are around the talent and the shows that they have. And unless you're someone like us or who listens to The Vergecast and you know about Luminary because you really follow the media business, I think most people are only going to find out about Luminary because they see those billboards and they love Trevor Noah or whatever. They're coming for that reason. And yeah, I agree with you where it's like, if that's going to be your whole marketing message anyway, like Spotify advertises various shows on the subway, not just their own, they're part of the ecosystem.

• 20:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:26Speaker 04

  And so, yeah, I think going that exclusive route could have been...

• 20:29Speaker 03

  But one thing I would like to add, and this is the thing that sort of really gets me, is that like, there is a lane for Luminary to win. And there is like a very real use case that a paid podcast platform can actually be beneficial to the entire ecosystem, which is the simple fact that like, there are some shows, there are some show types and show structures that are simply not efficiently monetized on the open ecosystem. Most notably, the genre that most, like I think casual podcasters in this love, which are short-run, limited, like limited series. Stuff like, I don't know, like Slow Burn, which is eight parts. There's only so much you can monetize for something that's not ongoing and weekly and has like various levels of advertiser trust and reliability to. There's so much potential to build a business that like, you can go to these publishers which are

• 21:13Speaker 03

  really, really worried about how they can compete with celebrity-driven podcasts, with bi-weekly podcasts, bi-daily news podcasts, because they make beautifully crafted 60-minute experiences. There's a way to build a coalition here. Just felt like either they didn't have enough trust in that, or it's just something that they did not see. It feels like a little bit of a waste.

• 21:31Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're going to take a quick break. We're going to have an ad with a code so you can track it. We'll be right back.

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• 22:49Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're back.

• 22:52Nilay Patel?

  I have a big question and I'm gonna just hammer you about Podcast Wars, both of you.

• 22:55Speaker 03

  Please.

• 22:56Nilay Patel?

  Here's a fight. If you look at TV, there's free over-the-air broadcast TV, it's one of those by commercials, there's cable, there's now there's all the premium streaming services. That market fragmented into multiple different options, multiple different business models, multiple different price points. Why hasn't that happened with podcasts, which are a much older sort of form of internet media distribution? Why is it, why has it looked the same for so long?

• 23:21Speaker 03

  My interpretation has always been a sort of just a lack of, this might be a bit dumb to say, but it's like a little bit lack of creativity or innovative ambition and a part of the business class in the podcast industry. It feels like the trend of the podcast executive is to like really double down on trends that everybody else has seen, which is why we keep seeing true crime podcasts, which is like why we keep seeing this sort of double down on the Hollywood adaptation IP pipeline. There is a lack of true like business model innovation from the like the investor, like the investor money class of this. And I think if we're gonna ever see real sort of price point innovation or real business model innovation, it's gonna come from the layer that requires some investment money.

• 24:03Speaker 03

  We see a lot of organic innovation and as far as like independent podcasters go, there's a lot of really interesting innovation around Patreon support networks, there's a lot of really interesting innovation around live events and, and sort of like book publishing and all that kind of stuff. But on a fundamental, how do you get, how do you connect the class of casual podcast listeners and potential podcast listeners to podcasting as a whole? There isn't a ton of that from the ground up. We're seeing, we're gonna see that, I think, from the increasing participation of established platforms like Spotify and Pandora. It feels like that is the only way for it, and that's the only way that we're gonna see this play out, which is not necessarily good for the ecosystem as a whole. But I understand why, why there is, there's a lack of it from anywhere else.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  Because I guess nobody really wants to take their risk, or nobody really wants to like plant their flag or die on the hill of podcasts.

• 24:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  It's just not a sexy place to die right now.

• 24:55Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's right, actually, look at us.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  I mean, I, I think.

• 24:58Nilay Patel?

  Twenty-five minutes into like, technical podcasting.

• 25:00Speaker 03

  This is, I guess it's like, like the NBA in the 50s, nobody gives a shit. Like, they just like, only wanna watch baseball, you know?

• 25:06Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's a great answer, because it leads, I think, right into where I think the, the war is coming from. Which is, my version of the, the why isn't like TV answer is, all of those TV companies have their own distribution. Right? So like, literally brought, like NBC owns antennas in the world, and they, they control a massive distribution point. Cable companies, they sell to other cable companies, it's a massive distribution point. Netflix is like, here's an app, you actually want this stuff, we're putting it in our app, we own this, this distribution. Podcasts, for the longest time, have had one distribution point that mattered, which is Apple Podcasts. Which is, I would describe it as a lumbering sort of organization.

• 25:46Speaker 06

  Right.

• 25:47Nilay Patel?

  That hasn't really pushed innovation and distribution and stuff. And so, all the other business model innovations require new distribution. And I think it's only now that you see Spotify getting into the game, you see Pandora getting in the game, you see Luminary getting in the game. The idea that this market will fragment has like, appeared.

• 26:03Speaker 06

  Right.

• 26:03Nilay Patel?

  That, I mean, that's my, is that your read on it?

• 26:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I think, because Apple had the majority of where all the listeners were coming from. And they were the winner, and that was that, and it was like, okay, we know, like, Apple's gonna do what Apple's gonna do, they don't care, like, okay. But now with Spotify, I think, having such a large portion, and the ability to bring podcasts to so many more people. Yeah, that's why we're going to start seeing more, more wars.

• 26:29Nilay Patel?

  So why do you think it's

• 26:30Speaker 04

  People see an opening.

• 26:32Nilay Patel?

  You see, you don't think it's happening now, but you think it's inevitable.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't think we're there yet.

• 26:36Nilay Patel?

  By the way, to describe what I specifically mean as the war, I mean

• 26:40Speaker 03

  True fragmentation.

• 26:40Nilay Patel?

  True fragmentation, where you have to pay eight bucks a month to Spotify to get these four shows, eight bucks a month to Luminaries to get these four shows, so on and so forth, just like you have with TV.

• 26:49Speaker 03

  Right. So my sort of formula here is like, who has power, right? And right now, so historically speaking, Apple has had power. You could argue that they came upon that power inadvertently, that the rise of podcasting was, you know, a large part just something that was not expected. It happened simply because a large kingdom did not really tend to a specific plot of land that they owned. And then when they saw a bunch of little like folks coming up and like building, like planting little seeds here and they kind of let them go. And then it was allowed to flourish in a really interesting, interestingly balanced way. They didn't change the way, I'm gonna render this metaphor. They didn't change the way that the land was irrigated. They didn't sort of improve certain conditions about the land, but they allowed this place to be sort of essentially be a free space.

• 27:34Speaker 03

  And so there is, there is a kind of power that comes from their impartial, impartial position. And so for the longest time, year over year, it was this genuinely slow but reliable growth, specifically within the Apple ecosystem. Maybe there were smaller fiefdoms with other third-party apps like popular ones like Stitcher or Overcast or Downcast or whatever. But largely, when we think about the people who are trying to make money and build companies in a podcast space, the primary player of distribution that they had to sort of really think about is Apple. And they don't really have to think about a lot because Apple has a certain set of rules. There's a certain, there are a couple of black boxes in the way that it works. But it's sort of engendered a certain culture that feels like whatever happens, it generally feels kind of fair.

• 28:17Speaker 03

  Even if I look at a chart and I kind of go like, what the hell is up with the charts? Generally speaking, because no one publisher had direct relationships, there is no real conscious way that they can be able to game the system. There's a sort of a leveling of power. You keep, you keep the top low and a lot of people can sort of benefit from that.

• 28:35Nilay Patel?

  It's also, they also offer virtually no data.

• 28:38Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 28:38Nilay Patel?

  Which I think is a huge piece of this.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, you know, I hear a lot of grumbles from podcast executives that this is a bad thing. But I think from just the way it's an organic system works, it's a artificial limiter that's allowed for a certain kind of balance. As long as no one person is able to become more intelligent as the other through the structural means, everybody is on the same level playing field. But we cut to the present, which means that we are living in a post 2014 society, which is to say a post serial, a post startup, a Gimlet startup, a post, I don't know, slow burn, post 30 John. There's like a ton of investment interests and moneyed interests now in podcasting, which then brings in, you know, Apple level competitors. We're specifically thinking about Spotify. We're specifically thinking about maybe Pandora, but we haven't quite seen how that's going to play out yet. Spotify sees an opportunity

• 29:23Speaker 03

  to diversify their assets, which is to say to move away from music and to create other business, another line of business and become an all-consuming audio company. This brings us to a position where we could see Spotify growing the overall pie of podcast listenership, but also developing power that could end up attracting certain podcasters to work away from the Apple system to allow, to sort of force Apple into a certain amount of changes, to fundamentally complicate and restructure the way we think about Apple podcasting, the way we think about podcast ecosystem and also its norms. So that is not exactly a future that a lot of people are looking forward to, but a small number of people who consent to make a lot of money out of this is looking forward to this. I don't,

• 30:07Speaker 03

  I don't know where I personally land on this. I think my rule of thumb has always been, as long as there are more people in the world listening to podcasts, as long as there are more people that can work in podcasts and make money off it, and as long as there's more money coming in, we generally should be fine. But the question is, if this is going to be a straight up oligopoly, which are a couple of small, a couple of big platforms smashing against each other, or if Apple's going to hold position and just say, we're gonna like, we're gonna tend to the open ecosystem. That's a perfectly acceptable and a perfectly good lane, but it's not necessarily within Apple's business interests over the long term. If what we're looking on the TV side and music side sort of holds true and kind of convinces them otherwise.

• 30:48Nilay Patel?

  Especially as Apple reinvents itself as a subscription service.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  A services company, yeah, which is the real complexifier here, to use business's term. You know, it's, it feels like we're moving to a completely different phase, but we're not there yet because Spotify does not have sufficient power yet, I think. What's your read, Ashley?

• 31:04Speaker 04

  Well, I'm just trying to think of how ad tech actually plays into these sorts of decisions. Because like Spotify, so Spotify's opt-in. People can insert their own RSS feeds and you allow Spotify to ingest your RSS feeds. So it's not, it doesn't run on RSS at all. But when you opt-in, you say, okay, you are giving me access to millions of people. Also, I'm getting a really robust analytics platform unlike any other analytics platform. Like Apple's starting to dabble. And I'm just kind of curious, like Spotify's looking into ads and like, I don't know, there's a world in which Spotify is an ad network and starts really making money for podcasters with the catch, let's say, that your show has to be a Spotify exclusive.

• 31:47Speaker 04

  And I feel like that is where the motivated, motivation is really going to come in for people to with, start withholding shows, start making decisions about where not to populate. Because right now with Luminary, Luminary doesn't have anything to offer.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  Right.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  It's like, what do you, what, you can give me a few thousand listeners, which I don't even know what you're doing with my show. Like I, you were using a proxy, so like, I don't know what's going on. And Apple, I mean, you see the players, some of the podcast players doing like tips and things like that, where it's like, okay, trying to give podcasters the ability to monetize in a way that's different from ads.

• 32:18Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  And I guess I'm just thinking through like Stitcher has Midroll again, that's sort of basically like an ad network. How ad networks are going to actually really influence the industry and where people make decisions to put their shows.

• 32:29Speaker 03

  Right. I think what we're going to see is that increasingly the ad network or ad tech layer is just going to be the platform layer. There used to be a sort of a layer of companies like, you know, Panoply that just did the advertising relationships aspect of this. I think as, as the other platforms sort of force everybody into an arms race over monetization, that's just going to go away and get, get ingested. I think the other X factor that we should really sort of consider is like, I'm not so sure if there are enough hits to justify a sort of a balkanization yet, right? So I think if, the past 16 months has been kind of weird for podcasting, there hasn't been any one show that I kind of feel like was a world-ender, like a world beater. Uh, the last one maybe, maybe was the second season of Slow Burn where like I talked to ordinary humans that have not really heard about podcasts, talk about that podcast.

• 33:13Speaker 03

  I think you can't really drive a paid business unless you have like a genuine capacity to make hits. And there isn't a single team other than the people of This American Life, I would argue, that can reliably create hits. I think largely because like- We're very early in this particular version of radio as a creative medium. We can see those sort of parallels elsewhere, right? Like, why would you subscribe to HBO? So I could get The Sopranos, so I could get Deadwood. Like, there has to be that class of creators. We're not there yet. And the ones who are celebrities benefit more from being open ecosystem people like Bill Simmons, like, you know, people who are like Derogan, who are weekly or daily.

• 33:50Nilay Patel?

  Neelai Patel.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  Like Neelai Patel.

• 33:52Nilay Patel?

  Sitting right here.

• 33:53Speaker 03

  Business is a personality.

• 33:55Speaker 04

  So you're blaming it on lack of creativity in the form rather than terrible discoverability?

• 34:02Speaker 03

  Blaming it, I'm suggesting that this is a real, this is fundamental to why people would pay for anything. Because there is something that I just cannot live without. Like, the reason why I would go out to a movie for the first time in a long time is because, like, Avengers Endgame is happening, but how many, like, there are only so many places that can produce that kind of event. And I think that is the layer that we're not quite seeing, and that's the layer that I think we need in order for this sort of balkanization to truly happen.

• 34:31Nilay Patel?

  When I talk to people, what podcasts I listen to, they say, like, The Daily. And The Daily is great.

• 34:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:35Nilay Patel?

  I think the Vox show today, Explained, is better. I'm contractually.

• 34:39Speaker 03

  I'm aligned with the CBC's Fred Berger. It's largely because of that American.

• 34:46Nilay Patel?

  But like, those shows, and I, both teams are very good, but Sean is better.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  Shut up.

• 34:51Nilay Patel?

  He's my boy. I sent him an email shirts, now he's like my boy forever. They do the same job, right? And they can do them in better or worse ways, but the job they're attempting to do is the same. And I think so many shows, podcasts in particular, are all kind of doing the same job.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 35:07Nilay Patel?

  Right? And once you try to elevate past doing one of the four or five jobs, you might as well just make a TV show.

• 35:13Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 35:14Nilay Patel?

  And it feels like where a lot of podcasters want to go. And I think that expansion of the creative form is like the real big question. Luminary is going to pump $100 million into this ecosystem. What are they going to make that you can't actually get for free?

• 35:26Speaker 03

  That's 100% a great question.

• 35:29Nilay Patel?

  No one, as far as I can tell, like, knows the answer yet. Because everyone is like throwing their Luminary app like into the ocean.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  But the secondary creative question is that, like, who would you hire to make that decision?

• 35:39Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 35:40Speaker 03

  Like, who is the visionary class here? And like... This is only, this is, this community, this version of podcasting community has only been around for like five or six years. And it's, a lot of them are aged up through like the public radio system or the comedy world. And then have subsequently left to do their own things in television, whatever. Like the incentives here, the incentive structure still doesn't quite make sense to, to generate world enders. You know, like real experiences that kind of stops time. And that's, that's the thing that will make me throw my wallet into the ocean. And that's the thing that's, that's why I'm really here in this sort of business for it. Because like, I'm really looking for and really curious as to how that happens in this space. It just feels like, I think, I'm not so sure the incentive's aligned just yet. So we'll have to see.

• 36:21Speaker 04

  Isn't that person just an algorithm? That's the conversation. I mean, I asked Luminary when I met with them before my piece, I was like, you know, because during Hot Pod, they were hyping up, they're gonna have all these amazing shows. Like, in my, in my mind, I was like, okay, I don't know what they're gonna throw out there. I mean, it could really change the game. And then they were like, oh, it's Manoush Samarodi, Karaz.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  Stuff that you've gotten, you have gotten before.

• 36:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, if you had asked me to pick a podcast network, I'd be like, oh yeah, here's the biggest podcasters. Let me build my network with them.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  No offense to Guy or Manoush.

• 36:54Speaker 04

  No, of course not.

• 36:54Speaker 03

  Wonderful people making great.

• 36:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, but like, it was.

• 36:57Nilay Patel?

  We're like saying their names, but like preemptively apologizing.

• 36:59Speaker 04

  I mean, it was just an obvious, duh, you wanna build a big podcast, get the big podcasters. So I was like, you know, where, where are we gonna see you shine as far as bringing new creators in?

• 37:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:10Speaker 04

  And I think they think data's gonna be a big part of that.

• 37:14Speaker 03

  For now, it also seems like they're betting on like celebrities, right? Bringing in Trevor Noah.

• 37:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, but the next stage. And I mean, I'll be interested to see how Spotify does it too. Like you have to think, they, data is already influencing their acquisition, how you're like, what they're buying. Podcast, they literally said in the press release, people like true crime and horror. We bought a network that does that well. Like, they said in the press release, and so.

• 37:34Nilay Patel?

  Is it data driven though?

• 37:36Speaker 04

  I mean, I, you could guess it, but I, I believe that they wouldn't buy that if they didn't see evidence of it on their own platform. And I think, I think the one thing that is tough to qualify for is that sometimes shows succeed because you just really like the hosts. Or like the hosts.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  Hundred percent, yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 04

  Just have some kind of chemistry.

• 37:51Speaker 03

  I'll watch a certain movie because Brad Pitt's in it. Like that's, it's a normal, everyday dynamic.

• 37:55Speaker 04

  For sure, and that is why I don't, I don't know if you can. Qualify a show necessarily. Like, I don't know if the data can do it all. I, I think, I, I definitely think that's part of the strategy.

• 38:08Nilay Patel?

  And stars also sometimes make bad things.

• 38:12Speaker 03

  Stars often make bad things.

• 38:13Nilay Patel?

  Right, so like, Brad Pitt is not actually a reliable indicator.

• 38:16Speaker 03

  Absolutely not.

• 38:17Nilay Patel?

  Actually, in particular, Brad Pitt is not a reliable indicator.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  Shout out to Brad Pitt.

• 38:21Nilay Patel?

  We don't have to apologize to Brad Pitt.

• 38:23Speaker 04

  We'll apologize.

• 38:24Nilay Patel?

  Okay. So, actually, this is my last big question. We've talked about it a lot, but I think this is kind of underlying it all. Like, the emotional sort of tone of the industry right now is summed up, is like, this is John Gruber headline, which is, "All podcasts are shows, but not all shows are podcasts."

• 38:42Speaker 03

  A hundred percent.

• 38:44Nilay Patel?

  And that is tied deeply to distribution, right? You're only a podcast for real if you're distributed over RSS and any player can, can pick up your feed and listen to your show. Personally, I think that is bonkers. It's like me saying, "All articles must be printed on paper."

• 39:01Speaker 03

  A hundred percent.

• 39:01Nilay Patel?

  Right. I don't think the distribution in the medium, I think they inform each other.

• 39:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:06Nilay Patel?

  But they, they're obviously separate, right?

• 39:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:08Nilay Patel?

  And so Spotify ingesting RSS feeds with permission and then delivering a lot of data back to you as a podcaster. Well, no one's out there saying Spotify is breaking podcasts, right? Luminary doing something like that, maybe less.

• 39:26Speaker 03

  Effectively.

• 39:26Nilay Patel?

  Effectively, that's one word to use. That's another version of that. Everyone's like Luminary's breaking podcasts. And it seems like the notion of RSS distribution is still tied into what this ecosystem thinks it's doing. And that feels like the first domino that's gonna fall. Is that kind of what?

• 39:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, so my feeling on this has always been like, for the longest time, the cultural identity of the space is driven by a certain technically oriented segment. As the nature and a number of publishers and podcasters, and makers, participating in the space just grows and diversifies, if people with different ideological views, different, different relationships to the original technological premise of podcasting.

• 40:11Speaker 03

  Has participated in the space and also increased their profile. That it has fundamentally complicated what we think the podcasting community is, right? It's just a bunch of different kinds of actors wanting different kinds of things from the space. At the end of the day, it's the only thing I feel that's truly important in sort of what the masses end up interpreting podcasts to be, which is why the luminary thing is really interesting, which is why the Spotify thing is really interesting, which is say like there are these sort of fundamentally non-podcast technology platforms essentially appropriating the culture, the branding and the goodwill of this space, which brings us to a core like at the heart of what the question is, which is, is podcasting the community or the technology?

• 40:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:53Speaker 03

  That's a political fight. And you know, the secondary question to that is sort of like, what is the future of open podcasting within that framework, right? If we do live in a society in which like, an American society in which like a lot of people who know what, who listen to podcasts, are our podcast fans, don't actually listen to them through RSS feeds or whatever, they just get them wherever they get them. And they kind of have an affinity to this certain kind of audio programming, audio entertainment, then that that kind of renders a lot of this questioning mood, but I think it's meaningful to still a strong minority. And it's also meaningful to a certain, to a certain, you know, system of creativity. Because I don't really want to live in a future in which like only four or five major publishers get to dictate what's cool and what comes up, what comes down, essentially what music is today.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  It would be nice to still see a like an open podcasting ecosystem where like any interesting random person could just break out a hundred percent. There's a way in which I think that could still happen within an open podcasting first ecosystem. I also think there's no way that can happen in a non-open podcasting first ecosystem. Might not be a popular thing to say, but I'm not an idealist and I am not particularly optimistic about anything. Corporate money is going to do what corporate money is going to do. We're just going to live in that world, you know?

• 42:05Nilay Patel?

  It'd be kind of wild if Apple ends up as like the SoundCloud of podcasts.

• 42:10Speaker 03

  I would actually love that.

• 42:11Nilay Patel?

  If people are like, check out my Apple Podcasts. What do you think is going to happen?

• 42:14Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm just thinking about, I'm kind of responding to what you're saying, but a couple of things. One is that.

• 42:23Speaker 04

  Everything we saw with Luminary definitely seems like people coming down on the side of a podcast is the community, not the tech. Because like we said, Spotify, and just the RSS feed, no one blew up at Spotify. I just think it's about the community. It's the norms, it's the culture. You didn't talk to me before you pulled my show into your platform. Like, talk to me, man. Like, that's what they want. I'm also thinking about you saying you want a world in which there could be breakout podcast stars. And I think about it from the perspective of YouTube or Instagram, where you can break out on YouTube or Instagram, but that's because the algorithm serves you up and is like, hey, you made viral content, good job. So I feel like this gets back into this issue of the discovery.

• 43:02Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:02Speaker 04

  And it's like, how, and it comes back to community and politics again, because you can't, how do you get a break? I mean, Serial was made by, you know, plus, yeah, exactly, like, big names. How do you become a breakout podcast star? And I think that is actually a huge thing that needs to be solved, if that's ever the promise of the open ecosystem.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:23Speaker 04

  So.

• 43:24Nilay Patel?

  And Luminary's answer is actually just spending money on ads. Like, they're just gonna advertise the podcast. They're gonna put faces on buses. And that's like a very standard way.

• 43:33Speaker 04

  If they start actually getting talent that is truly unknown.

• 43:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:37Speaker 04

  But if you're like a kid in your bedroom and you're like, I'm gonna make the next great podcast, well, right now, good luck. I mean, you have to have some connections, for sure.

• 43:45Speaker 03

  But like, I mean, it also, there's like another really elemental question, it's like, how do you manufacture cool? Like, how do you manufacture the cool of like Old Town Road or something? And this is like, some of this is unquantifiable. Like, this, any, there are.

• 43:56Speaker 04

  But you don't have the machine to serve up what people are finding cool that's unquantifiable.

• 44:01Speaker 03

  But like, do you? Like, there are many, many machines that it's not directly related to the machine that you're running. Like, you know, I run a freaking newsletter, I could easily try to like, go game another system to draw attention to that newsletter. It's like, my tweet went viral, let me put my SoundCloud link. Like, it's kind of a cross-channel jumping, and I feel like there's a way in which we can think too much in silos and buckets here, whereas like, podcasting is a segment of all entertainment, and we are all contenders and players in the culture. So we can break the culture in many different ways if we want, but we just have to sort of be a bit more creative around that. Like, you guys see that, like, that's.

• 44:36Nilay Patel?

  We do our best.

• 44:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:37Nilay Patel?

  Nick, we'll have you back for a 45-minute discussion on what is cool and how do you make it?

• 44:41Speaker 03

  I'll bring my cousin, my 14-year-old cousin.

• 44:44Nilay Patel?

  It appears to be the only answer, is whatever the teens are doing is cool.

• 44:47Speaker 03

  Hire children.

• 44:48Nilay Patel?

  Yes, that's the answer. The final metaphor Nick has after agrarian farming and Granada.

• 44:55Speaker 03

  Granada.

• 44:55Nilay Patel?

  Children are cool and we should hire them. That's great. Well, Nick, thank you so much for joining us.

• 44:59Speaker 03

  That was really fun.

• 45:01Nilay Patel?

  Ashley, as always.

• 45:02Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me.

• 45:03Nilay Patel?

  Luminary is going to do more. It's very obvious. They're not going to stop.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  No.

• 45:06Nilay Patel?

  They have too much money in the bank, so we'll have you both back to talk about the next twists and turns of the podcast.

• 45:10Speaker 04

  Hopefully, yeah.

• 45:11Nilay Patel?

  God willing.

• 45:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:13Nilay Patel?

  All right, that's it. Thanks, everybody. All right, well, that's it. Thank you so much to Nick and Ashley for unpacking Luminary and I have to say the surprising complexity of the podcast world. We just do the show and there's a whole machine out there that makes it a success. That machine, by the way, includes all of you. I want to say thank you to every Vergecast listener who voted for us in the Webby Awards. We won the People's Voice Award for Best Science/Technology Podcast. Very exciting. Super proud that all of you voted for us. Thank you so much for that. And I have some very exciting news, which is that we'll be taping a special live episode of the Vergecast right after Google I/O on May 8th. Deter and I are going to be interviewing Hiroshi Lachimer, who's Google's SUV for Android Chrome, Chrome OS Play,

• 45:54Nilay Patel?

  comms and photos. It's a lot of stuff. And Stephanie Saad-Cuthbertson, who's Director of Android. So two power players in the Android ecosystem and Google ecosystem, talking to us live in front of an audience at the Computer History Museum about the future of Android. It's going to be right after I/O, so presumably they'll have lots of announcements. You can go look on the website if you want to try to get tickets. There might be a waiting list. We might be sold out already. But that episode will be out in the feed right afterwards, so you won't miss anything if you can't get in. We would love to see you there if you can make it. We'd love to hear what questions you have for Hiroshi and Stephanie before we go in, so we can be responsive, bring the community to them. And we would love to hear what you think of our live shows as we do more and more of them. That's it for this interview episode. We'll be back on Friday with a regular chat show.

• 46:38Nilay Patel?

  Another interview on Tuesday and the wheel keeps turning. Let me know what you think. I'm at Reckless on Twitter. I'll see you next week.

• 46:52Speaker 07

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• 47:39Speaker 06

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