The Future of Narrative Storytelling

You're listening. twentyw thousand cats The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds I'm Dallas Taylor Our last episode was an adaptation of a documentary about podcasts called Age of Audio. It covered the creation of podcasting through the gold rush era of about five to ten years ago, to the bubble bursting and the mass layoffs that followed. It ended at the strange place the whole podcasting industry is in now where there are more podcasts than ever, but it's much harder for narrative shows like ours to get the funding we need to survive Age of Audio was directed by my friend Sean Michael Cologne, and after spending years interviewing many of the brightest minds in podcasting, Sean has this unique front row seat into the state of the industry and where it might be headed. Meanwhile, I've been hosting this independent podcast for close to a decade now, so I also have a lot to say about it Because these things have very real consequences for twenty thousand hertz When I interviewed Sean about his documentary, our conversation was so fascinating that I felt it deserved its own standalone episode Let me just gush over the film. I don't think I've got this on tape. So what Sean made is incredibly important to everything that I've been experiencing since I started twenty thousandousand Htz. He has documented it with all of my heroes and all of my inspiration And I've seen the cut many years like early cuts, late cuts, And I've been able to watch this thing transform into the defining podcast movie in my mind. Like this will be the thing that people will study for decades to come about podcasting, because it's just a fascinating look at this entire industry in a way that has never been visually documented before. So thank you for making it Thank you for saying that. That's as the person who was the seed of the idea This is like a full circle moment. I'm on the show Like, it started seven or eight years ago. with me Reaching out to you because of the show And now I'm a guest on the show. All I had to do was take seven years to make a documentary. That's all it took. Why did you feel that this story specifically needed to be told. time casting was beccoming very popular And I felt there was a certain type of audio storytelling that wasn't being represented and a lot of the discussion about podcasting And I always felt that the power of audio and audio storytelling was something that was very special. from an artistic point of view and wasn't always just two people talking into microphones, which is Ver enjoyable There are people who are creating these works of art. that you sound design and storytelling techniques and interviews and created these more or less masterpieces And I thought that was being lost in discussion. And I hope to elevate The ide of what a podcast could be. through the film people who may not know more about it that, hey, this is a medium that people can create all different kinds of things with Something simple somethingomet fun or something that's a moving And significant I feel like you also documented a very, very important moment in podcasting And it almost feels like podcasting has moved out of that gold rush era. And I'm curious how you would define the current era that we're in I think we're in the corporate era The dayay that we landed in New York begin filming with Iraglass and a few other big podcast notables was the day that Gimlet sold to Spotify for two hundred million dollars. Gimlet was the podcast studio behind shows like Reply All, Heavyweight, and Science Vversus which there had been previous purchases The numbers were never that big. So I feel like we were there at the very start of the gold rush and through the filming which took about Five to seven years We were around documenting the up and the down of that particular gold rush in the industry where the top ten ast on the Apple podcast list were almost all narrative where you had this American life you know, at the top, not the very top. Joe Rogan has had that crown for a long time, but The majority of that top ten lists were NPR shows audio documentaries and narrative podcasting We've definitely shifted into an era where It's more celebrity podcasts. There's a lot more for lack of a better term, tech bros and the money that's being spent seems to be spent on not storytelling but more easy to produce or select celebrity driven type podcasts. Welcome to Smartless with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and me, Will Arnett. Hi. it's Gwyneth Paltrow, and this is the Goop podcast. I'm Travis Kelsey's my big brother, Jason Kelsey out of Cleveland Heights, Ohio. shout up to the Heights All of those other things still exist But they're not the thing that is the most popular anymore And I think the film that we made At its inception was a discussion about art and commerce and For a brief moment called it the gold rush, but really It was this moment where The thing that was the most popular thing was the art Audio storytelling It was well produced and thoughtful really was the top thing. It was the most popular and I think there was a thought that they had hit a moment and that would continue on forever. And it only lasted a few years And then then a lot of these companies realized that unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of money to be made in these very expensive shows It happened for a moment and it broke through, and it It's still presented these great stories to a wider audience How has the addition of video into podcast changed the art form and the industry It's really diminished the idea of an audio story and what that art form could be because now it's seen as just Basically another version of cheap to produce television show And there are still people out there making exquisite audio pieces and I'm very happy about that. It really diminishes what has been historically important about this audio only medium And creates more complexity for someone who wants to get something out there Before you could set up a microphone, if you had the ability to record an MP three Basically you had the ability to produce your show. And now even though you can still do that Many people feel like, okay, now I have to get some cameras. I have to learn how to edit video and audio makeake sure I build a set thinkink something about just using the power of audio. is disarming to people that you're talking to because they're not concerned about how they look or the way they're going to be presented. so the way people will present themselves is different when they know they're going to be on a camera And it's very hard to get that candor sometimes or be able to have your person you're talking to feel disarmed and feel very natural when there are cameras. because now it creates this whole other element. You may forget that you're being recorded and kind of get lost into the conversation But if there's cameras Almost Kind of always aware that you're being watched You're absolutely right. I've discovered through the life of twenty thousand Htz, there's a lot of individuals and there's I would say a good third of the guests that would come ono twenty thousand Hertz wouldn't even come on to it if it required a camera going to their home or going to a studio that's super well lit with a crew of people They just simply wouldn't feel comfortable enough, let alone comfortable enough to become vulnerable But when you take away the humongous burden of camera lenses staring at you and lights all around you and have a one on one conversation with someone, you get much, much deeper. So I would Ecourage people to understand like that the alchemy of how to actually make authenticity happen matters immensely. And I think that's what I love so much about highly narrative podcasting of the likes of this American L, a radio lab, a ninety nine PI And what I'm trying to do with twenty thousand herz is that You're able to just get much deeper I mean, there's been many times where people get incredibly choked up and very emotional, including myself at times. and I just that's not going to happen with three camera people and a big lighting setup and you know, a green room It's funny. It's like I watched the greatreat outdoors the other day with my oldest daughter And in it, John Candy tells a whole bear story No, this is u A bear story. Tue bear story And I feel like that's so representative of what I remember from the eighties and the nineties is like older people going on these long stories about their lives that would have like a beginning, middle and end, and it would be in like a quiet place or on a porch or in a living room. And I feel like that is this kind of magic that We don't often get because we have phones in our way We have noise constantly happening. We have every corporate entity possible trying to vie for our attention at all times. And yeah, I feel like that's kind of what leans back into why I'm doing this. It's because it's magical to see these pictures in your head and be like in sync with someone else's brain. Podcasting started very much as an open ecosystem and I'm even seeing in my world the encroaching Tempt for platform control or the YouTubeization of podcasting. from your vantage point, do you see us slowly drifting toward platform control Yes and no In the film, we go into a discussion about RSS. Can you explain what RSS is to a ten year old and how we can connect the dots of why that's open and yet something like YouTube is not Well, RSS is basically A set of code that allows someomeone to upload an audio file and allows someone else to subscribe to it And one of the discussions we had as we were making the film, some of the producers were like, This is kind of technical. Do we want to include this But I thought it was incredibly important for people to understand This medium is unlike almost any other mass medium that's ever existed in that a corporation does not control it. And that is extraordinarily rare in the society that we live in And although YouTube I think is amazing thing. You know, I think it's an amazing opportunity for a lot of people. you are always beholding to the changes that they're going to make. Yeah, when I post something to YouTube, it's on YouTube only and there is no way for it to show up in other places. You can embed it onto a website, but it's still playing from YouTube. So therefore, if you see an ad, it's coming through YouTube But with podcasting and why it's unique is that I could literally post twenty thousand hertz. on a computer in my closet And then set up This bridge technology AKA RSS feed that then any let me let me let me say. o Oh yeah. real quick, sorry Really simple syndication. the really simple syndication code that then every single podcast app can find and therefore because there is no Monopoly, if you will You could have a hundred different podcast platforms and all of them are sourcing it from the exact same spot Yeah, it does have some limitations because of how old it is but it still remains something that anyone can use and no company controls. And I think there's something of value in that What do you think most people fundamentally misunderstand about the podcast industry that you can make money at it. And I might get in trouble for saying this But I think there's a lot of the industry Eespecially the conferences and A lot of the businesses behind podcasting really tries to push the idea that anyone can make money doing this and I feel like that is A little disingenuous when The last statistics that I've heard is ten percent of all podcasts that are active any money at all notot even a little bit of money, but it's only ten percent who make any money It's like playing in a band Anyone can do it But there's only a select few they can build that audience, they're going to be able to make money doing it. You know, there's literally millions of independent bands out there. What's propped up is the companies that get you on Spotify's playlists or get you placement or this that and the other. because there's almost no money to be made in the bands The money is in selling The dream to the bands And I feel like the parallel is almost identical to podcasting so much of the way the industry is kind of built is selling this idea that You can make money doing this Here are all the tools you need And I think That's the wrong way to think about it. The way to think about it is do you have something you want to say? Do you have an idea? Do you have something that you want to put out there You should put it out there And if it becomes popular There are tools out there to monetize that. You shouldn't be doing it to try and make money I'll say this I won't say who, but there was a company that wanted to share the documentary with their audience And I said, Well, you should watch the movie first And after they watched the movie, they said, this is a brilliant This is amazing but I can't show it to my audience. because it's not fully posositive And it shows the realism of what is in the industry And I think that's because that particular company is selling that dream and the film in a way can undercut that. I could go on a whole manifesto on how twenty thousand Hurts makes money. I've never said it on the podcast If you're interested. I would love it After the break, the not so secret financial secrets of twenty thousand Hertz, plus the future of narrative podcasting Fourth of July savings are happening now at the Home Depot with select appliances starting at three hundred and ninety eight dollars Plus, get free delivery on appliance purches of three hundred and ninety eight dollars or more, no membership required Upgrade your kitchen with a modern and sleek GE profile refrigerator featuring hands free autofill for the perfect pour every time. And make laundry day easier with two in one washer dryer combo innovation that completes laundry in about ninety minutes shop topop brand appliances now at the Home Depot. offer about june seventeenth, to July at the USLC store online for details Congratulations to Chris Bovitz for getting last episode's Mystery sound right That's the sound of Ferris Bueller's keyboard in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. In that scene, Ferris is talking to his friends on the phone and using his keyboard to trigger a bunch of coughs and sneezes to make himself sound sick. At one point, he presses a bunch of keys at once, resulting in that over the top sound. Hi, Ferris, how's your bob? Oh my go, you're dying ven Is it serious?, I don't know. I hope not. And here's this episode's Mystery Sound If you know that sound, tell us at the web address mystery. twenty k dot org dot Anyone who guesses it right will be entered to win a super soft twenty thousand hertz t shirt I want to tell you about another fantastic podcast that I recently discovered. It's called Riter to Fighter. Rriter to Fighter is about a Hollywood writer who has a bucket list item of being in a boxing match, and all the things that go between not boxing at all to being in a boxing ring with somebody else who's hitting you. But really what's fascinating is it's not really about boxing. It's about just perseverance in all forms. So it's just a magical inspiring piece that's beautifully written and the production is high, the sound design is great I remember listening to the end of this story after these eight episodes, I actually had a legit driveway moment where I did not stop listening to the last twenty minutes of it because it was just so compelling as far as who would like the show, I would consider this more of maybe like young adult through adult ish. But I think anyone that's going through anything, which is all of us, would highly identify with this So right here in your podcast app, search for writer, that's W R I T E R to fighter, tap subscribe and then enjoy the ride. Starting a new venture is exciting, but it can also be terrifying. When I launched this podcast, the doubts came fast. What if no one listens? What if it never makes any money? I know those feelings well, and if you do too, then you need Shopify. 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I did not make twenty thousand herz with any intent to make money Early on, the first ten episodes were completely non monetized The only way that it gained a large audience is because Roman Mars played twenty thousand hertz on ninety nine percent Inisible. My love of sound and story is why I was excited to find the new podcast twenty thousand Htz, which tells the stories behind the most recognizable and interesting sounds And because it's so much in the DNA of what ninety nine PI does and how that show was my guiding light on what I wanted to do. But sound with Roman's blessing grew very quickly. And the thing is is I was paying writers and sound designers and my team and all of that and my hope was that if it did well, that money would actually come back through my own company de facto Sound, because I wanted to esssentially highlight notot only the technical prowess, but the thoughtfulness of understanding story and documentaries and films and things through our own thing that would signal to other people that My company, which is for hire, de facto sound, is trustworthy enough to hire on very large projects. By this point, five years into the company, I was now starting to work a lot with Discovery, National Geographic, independent Dcs, shows on these channels And my hope was because I loved edutainment. a lot of the stuff I was mixing was like how it's made on the science channel. and Things that just brought value. I was basically doing that but for twenty thousand Hertz in the world of sound. to hopefully attract that feel good edutainment type of content that I love working on myself through the podcast Now. By ten episodes in, I had spent an enormous like all my savings I was just so in a bad place because I hadd spent so much money on writers and staff that I was very like depressed because it was just like, I don't even know how in the world anyone makes this thing happen because it was so labor intensive. took us an entire year to make our first two episodes and they were only like eleven minutes each So it was around episode ten where a company reached out out of the blue saying, hey What if we put blue apron on your show? And I was like, yeah, right, that's just for real podcasts And I remember talking to one of these podcast ad buyers who basically like laid down the entire podcast industry on the phone And eventually they bought on the show And so that started to now recoup some of those enormous losses. And then Bose came along and we did the special partnership where I essentially sold them and I said, like, hey, we're show about sound. If you could float us for ten episodes, it would be a pretty big service to the sound world, I think. And they did it. And that was such a great partnership. And that bridged enough time for other podcast ad agencies to pop up And then we started getting kind of all the regular players. But in a large part Through that time, exactly what I intended at the beginning was that it signaled to the right people, the right thoughtful types of people that I want to be working with that de facto is trustworthy, even though I don't sell the company really in the show Effectively, the only ad if you will, is at the end of the show where I just say twenty thousand hertz is produced out of my sound design studio, de facto sound. Learn more here That's it, because we do a lot of really amazing cool stuff over there, but like I don't want to overplay my hand on that and start to make twenty thousand herdz feel like an ad for de facto sound. I think it's a signal to the zero one percent of the people out there that recognize that signal and go, I want to be close to those type of people because they get it. So something we talk about internally here all the time is that de facto sound has to be healthy for twenty thousand herz to exist. I make my living from de facto sound, not from twenty thousand Hertz Like twenty thousand herz, sometimes it roughly pays for itself There are many times where it doesn't. But I bury that money so much that I don't want to look at it because if I just looked at the numbers for twenty thousand hertz, I would never Like it's not something that just works on paper but it only works through this very invisible alignment that comes through people working with de facto sound which effectively the people who work with deef facto sound are subsidizing. twenty thousand herdz I'm going to make a comparison, but I don't want you to take this the wrong way Okay So Disney makes all their money through the parks, right? Exactly. If you look it's something like seventy percent of the money that comes into Disney is from parks The exact percentages vary each year, but Disney experiences, which include parks, resorts, and their cruise line, are by far the most profitable part of Disney, becausecause while their movies, shows, and sports technically earn more money, they also cost a lot more to produce and distribute Let's just say it's a majority. and then you're like, well If they have all this entertainment stuff and they're making money over at the parks, why do they have to have this other part of the business Pe into the parks That's how you get people into the parks. That's how you make the rides. The thing that people care about and are emotionally connected with is the art And you can't have the commerce without the art. And I think there's a similar parallel with what you do. You're making this piece of art and you're making it for art's sake and you're making it because you care about sound and telling good stories. And people who hear that and connect with that say, I went to work with these people And that can turn into the commercial work that you get It's because the intention of the art you make is not to sell someone. The intention of the art you make is to make someone feel something And that translates into this other side of your business. And I think that balance is what Most of us that live in a capitalist system that make art strive for We want to make something with the intention to move someone And then maybe willll be able to pay our rent And unlike Disney, which can have a lot of control over how much they can make in the park. I'm putting all of it in hope and faith that the right situations will come because I can't control it. And I just believe that putting something good out in the world for free will hopefully signal to the right people I hope my comparison to Disney wasn't taken the wrong way. Oh, no, not at all. I think that's a perfect example that people can understand. and it's a brilliant business model And I just hope that in my little microcosm, it works too I would say that That's the monetization side of it. I think a lot of those people who make those Disney movies, the people who are actually making them the writers and the animators, those people are doing something that they love and are probably not doing it because they want to make money for the park. They're doing it because they love storytelling and they love making something. And this is the path and what you can do that and have the ability to reach the most amount of people with the art that you make Oh, the other thing I did want to mention There's also kind of the Patreon subscriber model. And we do have a subscription version of our show. So you get the entire catalog, past, present and future with no ads And I think last time we checked, it's about one percent of the audience subscribing with recurring monthly or yearly donations. And that is helpful, but it only really accounts for maybe five percent of our production costs So if we could get that number up to you know, even two percent or five percent or gosh, ten percent If we had that many people chipping in The entire business model of the podcast changes from being advertiser funded to listener funded, which would be incredible And then advertising could be either icing on the cake or allow for us to do more robust, dreamy things that we've always wanted to do So how about this? We'll rapid fire the last bits of these since we're already well over. Doesn't mean you have to speak fast, just, you know, Give me some sound bitites. sure. What does the future look like for highly produced narrative podcasting in your mind Future of narrative podcasting. will be the people who love and care about it and will continue to make those things because they love and care about them Some will connect with a wider audience Some will find a niche audience, but they will continue it exist because people that love to make stuff will continue to make stuff regardless of the financial outcome Those people are still out there People are still making podcasts. People are still making films People are still making art People still write poems. Art is eternal Connection is eternal. And regardless of the economic value of each of those things at any given time People will continue to make things that they love Yeah, I know where the power lies. The power lies in one thing And that is the person listening becausecause that's where we grow. That's where we don't grow And that's also why you see certain styles of podcasts grow. veryer fast because they're poking at very divisive issues And that makes it very easy to short circuit someone's brain to get them to engage because negative clicks or negative engagement still pushes engagement It still pushes things to the front page or righteous playaying off of people's emotions to put them into you, righteous anger or any of those things all play into the algorithm The only way that we're gonna to have nice things. like twenty thousand Hertz or some of these other highly stylized crafted podcasts that take a lot of labor is if E audience member shares it or takes up the torch and goes, I believe in this and I want to tell people how great it is. This is why it's like quality of audience is so much more important to me than quantity of audience I would take Every single listener of twenty thousand Hurz a million times over than somebody else's audience that's ten or fifteen times bigger because I just believe that people who listen to this deeply care about sound, but they not only deeply care about sound They care about art They care about design. They care about emotions and relationships and nuance I don't know, anytime I meet a listener in the out in the wild, it's like, they're just the most delightful people I've ever met in my entire life. and I'm just always like flustered and taken aback when I meet somebody who listens to the show Quite literally when I meet someone who comes up to me out of nowhere and they're like, Oh my goodness, I love twenty thousand herz and they can site. different episodes To me, that person is a celebrity because I'm just head down working, my team is head down working. and when somebody actually goes, I'm listening to it. I'm like, what are you kidding me? This is amazing. Like tellell me every, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? And they're always like so sheepish about it