Episode 102

full
Published on:

27th Sep 2024

Productive Tension

The heart of organizations is tension, which when productive can lead to great outcomes. If it goes to extremes, disaster. This week, we discuss tension at OpenAI between its non-profit mission and massive ambitions, the tensions of hacking attention to sell products, the Trump tension between the truth and making a valid a point, and the tension between tech changing consumer expectations and media business models.

Episode links:

Elsewhere:

Transcript
Troy Young:

why did they ask us to do this?

Troy Young:

Cause they liked the podcast.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

Are you surprised.

Alex Schleifer:

You sound surprised.

Alex Schleifer:

Why do

Alex Schleifer:

you sound surprised that people like the podcast?

Troy Young:

I don't know what people like Alex.

Brian Morrissey:

yeah, it's on October 10th.

Brian Morrissey:

It's the, I don't know.

Brian Morrissey:

It's like the close, the closing keynote of it.

Brian Morrissey:

They say that to everyone.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

I'm uh,

Brian Morrissey:

got to butter people up.

Brian Morrissey:

Everyone gets a keynote.

Alex Schleifer:

commit to it live on air.

Alex Schleifer:

You're gonna do it guys

Troy Young:

I'm going to the West coast.

Troy Young:

I'll fly back the day before.

Troy Young:

So I'll come back.

Troy Young:

I'll do it.

Brian Morrissey:

Good.

Brian Morrissey:

It'll be fun.

Brian Morrissey:

Welcome to People vs.

Brian Morrissey:

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

Brian Morrissey:

Alex is back this week.

Brian Morrissey:

You were on, what was it, an Ayahuasca retreat?

Brian Morrissey:

That's

Alex Schleifer:

yeah mostly with other ceos and

Brian Morrissey:

I'm also, we are also joined by Troy Young, who is just recently christened the Kingmaker, in Puck by Dylan Byers.

Brian Morrissey:

Troy, that

Troy Young:

it.

Troy Young:

Why?

Troy Young:

What are you

Brian Morrissey:

that must feel,

Brian Morrissey:

pretty good, right?

Brian Morrissey:

Because you can't be a king unless you're born into it or you're in private equity.

Troy Young:

okay, so I'll never get the king, but king makers, not bad.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, do you want to, do you want to tell us all about the, the, the Forbes plan or do you not want to talk about it?

Troy Young:

Let's just keep going.

Troy Young:

We'll go out other stuff.

Brian Morrissey:

All right.

Brian Morrissey:

I just, you know, I have to do,

Brian Morrissey:

you know, people would give me shit if I didn't ask you about it and I respect, you know, confidentiality.

Troy Young:

for what?

Troy Young:

For

Brian Morrissey:

Well, because and we're going to talk about this later today, about

Troy Young:

own podcast.

Brian Morrissey:

About yours, it's ours.

Brian Morrissey:

you know, about the role of journalism and all that.

Brian Morrissey:

And, you know, but I appreciate that.

Brian Morrissey:

You're not going to, like, spill the beans.

Brian Morrissey:

If there are any beans to spill, it's up to

Troy Young:

knows.

Troy Young:

Speculation, Brian,

Brian Morrissey:

That's how we don't comment on rumors and speculation.

Brian Morrissey:

I love that.

Troy Young:

great business in an enviable position given the media climate.

Troy Young:

And I'm proud to be, in some minor way associated with it.

Brian Morrissey:

Oh, so you're confirming

Troy Young:

No, I'm not confirming anything.

Troy Young:

It's public knowledge that I'm on the board of a Forbes marketplace.

Troy Young:

So, you know, that, that, that, that's not a secret.

Brian Morrissey:

There's a lot of stuff being written.

Brian Morrissey:

There's more stuff being written about, because I don't think anyone

Troy Young:

just read what they're writing and then you'll get all that you need to know.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay, so it's accurate, this stuff about

Troy Young:

I never said it's accurate.

Troy Young:

You said it's

Brian Morrissey:

Okay.

Alex Schleifer:

What is

Brian Morrissey:

goes, Alex?

Brian Morrissey:

Isn't this

Brian Morrissey:

good content?

Brian Morrissey:

Isn't this good

Alex Schleifer:

gotcha journalism?

Alex Schleifer:

Troy is,

Brian Morrissey:

is, this is, this is my Kara Swisher

Troy Young:

right?

Alex Schleifer:

hopefully, yeah.

Troy Young:

we, move into

Brian Morrissey:

Next question.

Brian Morrissey:

Next question.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

I did want to talk about the ayahuasca because I think the VCs are down bad.

Brian Morrissey:

They've gone from blaming like Jerome Powell to, well no, it was the media.

Brian Morrissey:

Quote, unquote, the media to Jerome Powell to now there's have you seen this?

Brian Morrissey:

It's maybe it hasn't made it to threads Alex, but, some of the VCs now are blaming, ayahuasca for the lack of good founders.

Brian Morrissey:

They say a lot of founders have gone off.

Brian Morrissey:

And gone to some ayahuasca retreat and come back and been like, I'm not doing this.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't want, I don't want to spend my entire life in San Francisco where restaurants close at 8 PM and I have to like go back to my little apartment and make a B2B SaaS software.

Brian Morrissey:

is there any accuracy in this?

Brian Morrissey:

You're on the scene.

Alex Schleifer:

wow, that's a lot to put

Troy Young:

He lives in, he lives, he lives off

Brian Morrissey:

It's a lifestyle.

Troy Young:

He,

Alex Schleifer:

mean, just to, I used to have a big, high powered job in the city, and now I live on a farm.

Alex Schleifer:

So, so there you go.

Alex Schleifer:

Have I, have I done psychedelics?

Alex Schleifer:

Maybe.

Alex Schleifer:

were they

Troy Young:

I think I've done them with you before, so I, I, I can, I can

Brian Morrissey:

I like this.

Brian Morrissey:

You don't comment on rumors and speculation either.

Brian Morrissey:

I take it.

Alex Schleifer:

No, no, I think, well, I think there's a couple of things.

Alex Schleifer:

First of all, California and the Bay Area is, a place where you can, where you can come and experiment with psychedelics, if you're interested in those, there are a lot of ways to access them,

Alex Schleifer:

there are a lot

Troy Young:

you go to, that's where you go to

Troy Young:

experiment?

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, no, I mean, seriously, like, right, like, isn't it,

Troy Young:

I thought it was Nevada.

Troy Young:

I thought it was the Black Rock Desert.

Alex Schleifer:

But I think you have a lot of access to them and it's culturally acceptable and people are doing all sorts of,

Brian Morrissey:

but I just want to get to the business angle.

Brian Morrissey:

Is, is,

Alex Schleifer:

On the business angle, I think it's been, it's been happening in tech for a long time.

Troy Young:

Are you high right now, Alex?

Alex Schleifer:

I'm always a little high.

Alex Schleifer:

I actually, I actually am drinking fucking decaf so that I can be

Troy Young:

Right, but you're uh, have you done the ADD meds this morning?

Alex Schleifer:

I stopped doing those actually.

Alex Schleifer:

no, but what I'm saying is like, just like the culture of Northern California and, and psychedelics has always been, what I'm trying to say is it's always been there.

Alex Schleifer:

It's always been intermingled with tech.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't know what's changed so that it's become the new scapegoat, you know, the new kind of, you know, like satanic panic of VCs now, but I think they just need an excuse of why things aren't working and why,

Alex Schleifer:

and why

Troy Young:

better ayahuasca

Alex Schleifer:

people are feeling.

Troy Young:

than trust falls.

Brian Morrissey:

true.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

But I think the iOSca thing is interesting because if you have a, you know, such a, you know, after draining your internal mental ocean, if the first thing you think about is I got to quit my job, then, hey, that's better now than later.

Alex Schleifer:

Right?

Troy Young:

Is that what

Alex Schleifer:

I think they should get,

Troy Young:

team at OpenAI?

Troy Young:

They all did ayahuasca on a retreat, or did they all

Brian Morrissey:

yeah,

Alex Schleifer:

mean, Talking of Kingmakers, I think, Sam Altman is just like Game of Thrones ing himself, like, to the top of the Iron

Alex Schleifer:

Throne there, right?

Troy Young:

Finally, you and Elon Musk agree on something, Alex.

Alex Schleifer:

while we agree on a lot of things.

Brian Morrissey:

the drama of, of the, the tech scene.

Brian Morrissey:

It's kind of off the charts.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, open AI is a great example of this.

Brian Morrissey:

I, I can't like, maybe Twitter had this similar level of drama, but Twitter was always like a bit player.

Brian Morrissey:

Really?

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, it wasn't, you know, as a company, it was never, A massive platform.

Brian Morrissey:

It was obviously major impact on the information space.

Brian Morrissey:

But, I mean, open AI is trying to at least purportedly, you know, build this entire new technology paradigm and lead in it and billions and billions of dollars.

Brian Morrissey:

And it seems a total mess.

Brian Morrissey:

It seems completely dysfunctional.

Brian Morrissey:

It gives me a lot of hope to be honest with you.

Troy Young:

Sorry, Hope 4.

Brian Morrissey:

Well, I mean, cause I think we all, I don't know, maybe I'm speaking out of term, but like ended up thinking, you know, inside any organization, I feel like you feel like, Wait, is everywhere kind of a shit show or is it just here?

Brian Morrissey:

And you know, any organization I've been part of that has been a shit show internally.

Brian Morrissey:

Right.

Brian Morrissey:

But this seems like on a different level.

Alex Schleifer:

yeah, OpenAI is a different level.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, maybe it's simple.

Alex Schleifer:

Maybe it's, you know, they started with this ambition with a very research minded organization.

Alex Schleifer:

that's it.

Alex Schleifer:

you know, where people thought that they could run this as an organization and it wouldn't ever amount to that much.

Alex Schleifer:

but then, you know, and apparently it was Sam Altman who pushed for it, you know, they released ChatGPT, and they became the kind of coolest kid in school all of a sudden and they said like, well, you know, fuck all the research and, other ambitions we had.

Alex Schleifer:

This is a big business and we're going to raise a bunch of money.

Alex Schleifer:

And it created, you know, a rift in the organization.

Alex Schleifer:

And now at this stage, I think everyone that was part of the old world has left.

Alex Schleifer:

And it's now, you know, a tech company that's going to move

Troy Young:

Wait, are we going to start getting 404 errors in chat, GBT?

Alex Schleifer:

I mean,

Brian Morrissey:

Well, he said he's going to focus on, on the product now, now that he's, he's, he's, and I'm like, wait a second, you're not even technical.

Brian Morrissey:

okay.

Brian Morrissey:

but I, what I find interesting with this is something you, you've mentioned it, Troy, which is tension.

Brian Morrissey:

In organizations, right?

Brian Morrissey:

And I think a media organizations, there's always tension.

Brian Morrissey:

I wrote about this in a newsletter.

Brian Morrissey:

so I stole it again from you.

Brian Morrissey:

there's always tension between sales and editorial, but about rushing, rushing out products versus, you know, making

Troy Young:

You mean like a productive tension,

Brian Morrissey:

well, that's the thing you have productive tension and then it becomes a rift, right?

Brian Morrissey:

Like you can have productive tension and you need productive tension.

Brian Morrissey:

Right?

Brian Morrissey:

And

Troy Young:

attention to me kind of defines a lot of media organizations because it's essentially about the, the, the sort of push pull and collaboration between sales and content.

Troy Young:

And

Troy Young:

that's, that's what those orgs are and productive tension in the magazine world, for example, was.

Troy Young:

You know, the interplay between the publishing and editorial organizations and one would, you know, need, always need to find new things to sell and the other, the other side wanted to make what they wanted to make and have the other people sell it.

Troy Young:

And it was that kind of tension that grew the business.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

problem with the tension here, right, is not that like, oh, you're going to release a product and it's going to be like an AI pen that people are not going to buy and you're going to look like a fool.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, You know, even that they've released a new OpenAI has released a new one engine that has been deemed a medium risk for chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear threats.

Alex Schleifer:

Like it's not, you know, the tension is, you know, this whole

Troy Young:

Oh, the it's existential.

Troy Young:

I agree with that.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

It's at the it's it's it's mission level.

Alex Schleifer:

the question is, do you trust Sam Altman or not?

Alex Schleifer:

and It started with a, you know, don't worry, we're nonprofit.

Alex Schleifer:

Then don't worry, we're nonprofit with a for profit arm.

Alex Schleifer:

Don't worry, we still have researchers.

Alex Schleifer:

Don't worry, all the old founders are still there.

Alex Schleifer:

Now don't worry, Sam Altman's got it, you know,

Troy Young:

And then the ayahuasca weekend it's don't worry, be happy.

Alex Schleifer:

mean, maybe, maybe after Sam Altman does Ayahuasca, he'll be like, you know, shut it all down.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't know.

Alex Schleifer:

but, but it, it is, it is, I mean, they are kind of at the forefront, their technology that, that Oh, one engine.

Alex Schleifer:

people hate us using those words, but, it simulates reasoning a lot better.

Alex Schleifer:

It,

Troy Young:

something that can solve connections on the New York Times.

Alex Schleifer:

for example, which, which is, when you think about it, you

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

Have you seen the good AI's already ruined, apparently, like online poker?

Brian Morrissey:

When are we going to get the benefits?

Brian Morrissey:

That's

Brian Morrissey:

what I had.

Brian Morrissey:

My tension is when are we going to get the, when are we going to get the upsides without all the downsides?

Troy Young:

yeah, because it's a tragedy that online

Alex Schleifer:

well, have you guys been using, have you guys tried using, Notebook LM, Google's kind of like research and learning?

Brian Morrissey:

I have, but

Brian Morrissey:

I haven't used in a little while.

Alex Schleifer:

I uploaded a hundred episodes of transcripts.

Alex Schleifer:

And I asked,

Troy Young:

from, from this

Alex Schleifer:

from this show, first of all, listening to the podcast about our podcast is kind of incredible.

Alex Schleifer:

Maybe we can slice a couple of clips here.

AI:

All right.

AI:

So today we're diving into people versus algorithms.

AI:

This podcast, right?

AI:

That's all about AI and how it's changing media and tech.

AI:

One of the things that really jumped out from this people versus algorithms stuff was this idea of a huge interface shift.

AI:

Alex, he's the design guy on the show, he's saying we're about to see something as big as when we went from like physical buttons on everything to those, you know, sleek search bars we use now.

AI:

Okay.

AI:

So it's not just that it's convenient, it's that the AI understands what you need in a human way, almost.

AI:

Yeah, and that's where Alex really gets going, like, mind blown by it all.

AI:

But people versus algorithms doesn't sugarcoat things either.

AI:

It makes you think, if anyone can easily make content now, how do we find the good stuff?

AI:

And that's where Troy comes in.

AI:

He's the media expert on the show, he's got a different take.

AI:

He thinks AI could actually be the solution to this too.

AI:

Imagine AI as a filter.

AI:

But AI could give more power to The platforms, the ones controlling these algorithms.

AI:

And that's what worries Troy.

AI:

He sees media companies becoming way too reliant on these platforms, basically at the mercy of their algorithms for, like, everything.

AI:

Does People vs.

AI:

Algorithms offer any hope there?

AI:

Well, Brian, the journalist on the show, he's surprisingly optimistic.

AI:

He actually thinks independent creators could do really well, even if it seems counterintuitive.

AI:

Really?

AI:

He says they need to focus on what algorithms can't do yet.

AI:

Really unique, high quality content for a specific audience.

AI:

So find your people, build that loyal following, offer something that stands out from all the AI generated stuff.

AI:

Exactly.

Alex Schleifer:

uploaded it

Troy Young:

Oh, did it, did It like our podcast?

Alex Schleifer:

says, this is a podcast that's talking about media subject, about media with heavy hitters like Troy Young from Hearst and media analyst, Brian Morrissey and Alex Schleifer, head of design at Facebook.

Troy Young:

I wish I would have said fallen, fallen angels.

Alex Schleifer:

Well, I mean, the fact that it said Facebook is, is, is, it's funny.

Alex Schleifer:

So I asked it to like rate our characters and our, our,

Brian Morrissey:

but wait, can you just, can you just back up for those

Brian Morrissey:

who are not total AI nerds and and just explain,

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

Notebook, notebook LM.

Alex Schleifer:

And there's a really good Verge cast interviewing one of the people on it.

Alex Schleifer:

It's basically, you know, there's similar things with Claude and, but notebook LM is specifically a learning resource tool where you can upload a lot of, different documents or links or, or copy paste stuff into it, and then it will absorb all this knowledge, have access to it all at all times.

Alex Schleifer:

So you can ask it questions.

Alex Schleifer:

So, for example, you could upload literary work and say, when does this author,

Troy Young:

When does Frodo get the ring?

Alex Schleifer:

or more, more abstract stuff.

Alex Schleifer:

Like, when does this author use romantic language to actually build tension?

Alex Schleifer:

Right.

Alex Schleifer:

Like,

Troy Young:

There was a great example, Alex, when he had notebook LMD, this author had him deconstruct when in the text, the instances where the author used foreshadowing and how they were resolved,

Troy Young:

which is pretty amazing,

Alex Schleifer:

some more kind of everyday practical stuff is that I'm downloading PDFs for every appliance that I have in my apartment, and I'm going to upload them in there so that if

Brian Morrissey:

Is this why you missed the last episode?

Troy Young:

that's deviant behavior.

Alex Schleifer:

that's, you know, so

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, go back to the Ayahuasca.

Troy Young:

Did, oh I think this, is this, is this what happened after the ayahuasca?

Troy Young:

You're like, I'm gonna get straight with my

Alex Schleifer:

I don't know, I think people listening, I think at least half the people listening will think this is great.

Alex Schleifer:

We don't all want people to do like to turn on a coffee maker.

Alex Schleifer:

or learning like music theory, kind of, you

Troy Young:

So did you

Troy Young:

make an announcement at the dinner table?

Troy Young:

That, you know, moving forward, if you have any questions about appliances in the house, you have a

Alex Schleifer:

know, Troy, it's for guests, it's for guests if it's if ever like Brian or you want to come to San Francisco and you want to crash at my place, you'll know how to use my German appliances because they're inscrutable.

Alex Schleifer:

Okay.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah, now we're getting too deep into this.

Alex Schleifer:

If

Brian Morrissey:

Like a European washing machine?

Brian Morrissey:

I

Brian Morrissey:

mean, LLM for one of those.

Alex Schleifer:

they're very efficient, but they're Anyway, so I asked it to, to see who speaks the most.

Alex Schleifer:

it, it

Alex Schleifer:

it

Troy Young:

it's not, it's not Troy.

Troy Young:

it's, not

Alex Schleifer:

hang on, it says, it says it's hard, without a quantitative analysis of each speaker's word count, and all the transcripts.

Alex Schleifer:

But,

Alex Schleifer:

anyway, it said, it weaseled itself out of it, it said, it says, In general, Troy frequently steers the conversation.

Alex Schleifer:

He enjoys playful banter and frequently teases his co hosts.

Alex Schleifer:

this suggests that Troy is a very active participant.

Alex Schleifer:

Brian often plays the role of moderator.

Alex Schleifer:

Brian is the main host.

Alex Schleifer:

He sets the agenda for the episodes and sometimes tries to

Troy Young:

And Alex, Alex is what, the pain sponge?

Alex Schleifer:

Alex's conversational style is more reactive.

Alex Schleifer:

Alex participates actively.

Alex Schleifer:

He's often responding to points made by Troy O'Brien.

Alex Schleifer:

He occasionally expresses frustration with the direction of the conversation.

Alex Schleifer:

However, feedback from listeners suggests that Alex's contributions

Troy Young:

is a revela this is a revelation.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah,

Brian Morrissey:

You're like the 2D character in

Alex Schleifer:

uh

Alex Schleifer:

huh.

Alex Schleifer:

And then, and then, uh, and then I asked her to judge our characters and Troy's opinionated and insightful, playful and provocative and connected and in the know.

Alex Schleifer:

Brian is measured and analytical, respectful and diplomatic,

Troy Young:

when he fucking, when he freak, when he freaks

Alex Schleifer:

oh, self aware,

Alex Schleifer:

and open to

Brian Morrissey:

Self aware!

Brian Morrissey:

open to feedback.

Brian Morrissey:

I love this

Alex Schleifer:

And Alex is direct and candid, values authenticity and appreciates appreciates design and user experience, which means I must talk about this shit a

Brian Morrissey:

These, these AI things, I appreciate that, but they're all suck ups, I find.

Troy Young:

They

Troy Young:

are.

Troy Young:

They're

Troy Young:

sycophants.

Alex Schleifer:

They're sycophants.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

Which I can't, you know, you know,

Troy Young:

Did it say you were, did it call you, Alex, did it call you woke?

Troy Young:

Did it ever bring that up?

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

Grok, uh, told me to go eat shit, cuck.

Alex Schleifer:

I,

Alex Schleifer:

uh, but, you know, the sycophancy thing is interesting, but it's also for me why I tend to go to Cloud or OpenAI to.

Alex Schleifer:

So I had questions about a specific technical issue I was having with some hardware I was having and I know that if I go into a forum or Reddit forum there's always going to be something well that's because you're using a Mac you should be using a PC or you know like there's always somebody in there that's upset about what you're trying to do or how you're trying to do it.

Alex Schleifer:

it's kind of nice to get an answer from some, you know, no matter how stupid your question is, you know,

Brian Morrissey:

So Troy, can

Brian Morrissey:

you

Alex Schleifer:

to learn.

Brian Morrissey:

apply this to media?

Brian Morrissey:

Like, okay, this is very early, but we've all played around with this.

Brian Morrissey:

And so where does this take us if this really does catch on and really does develop the way it seems it's going to develop?

Brian Morrissey:

We should

Troy Young:

We brought this up last week and at the risk of exceeding my word count.

Troy Young:

I think that there's something going on that challenges the fundamental structure and that we've been playing with as digital media people for a long time, which is, you know, the, the website and, and.

Troy Young:

the website and then the website augmented with social media.

Troy Young:

and the way I see it is that there's a couple of kind of things that stand out of my mind.

Troy Young:

The first is that newsletters were really I think a route around a broken web.

Troy Young:

So they offered, a finite amount of space with way fewer disruptive ads that came to me and as such were a welcome departure from the noisy cacophonous.

Troy Young:

You know, terrible things that we did with advertising on the internet.

Troy Young:

And then platforms, I remember this, I think Alex and I, in the old, old days, used to talk about how platforms train consumers because that's where they spend the majority of their time.

Troy Young:

Right.

Troy Young:

And so the, you know, it started with feeds and what did feeds do?

Troy Young:

They showed you that content was short and connected and algorithm that can be delivered and you could move it with your thumb and they were perfectly suited for the phone.

Troy Young:

now what we're being, we're educating people with question and answer, right?

Troy Young:

Which is you, you have a question, you get something perfectly customized to you, like that personalization is manifest in an answer to yours and only your question, you know, and mostly, or potentially per the case of notebook LM, something that's trained on your corpus of information, right?

Troy Young:

So we're now, you know, snippets.

Troy Young:

without headlines, without bylines, without decks, without the trappings of these very clunky, what seemed clunky to me now, you know, web page article as a construct, right?

Troy Young:

And so the web originally, if you went back, was a document repository, I think communication, but also a document repository.

Troy Young:

and it's defining.

Troy Young:

characteristic was that it was interconnected with links, right?

Troy Young:

That was the web, right?

Troy Young:

Documents connected with links.

Troy Young:

And, it was a new medium.

Troy Young:

And when we, we created media on it, we, we basically were, it kind of was an elegant extension of the print world where we thought, okay, well, there's, you know, homepage is my cover and, articles are article pages and we're going to put advertising in there.

Troy Young:

Right.

Troy Young:

Except that.

Troy Young:

We broke a couple of rules is 'cause the web, the print was a way better ad model because it was sequential.

Troy Young:

It was like article, mostly article ad, article ad, article, article ad ad.

Troy Young:

And what we did on the web is we, I'm answering this question.

Troy Young:

Maybe I do talk more than you guys.

Troy Young:

the, the, the, uh, an

Alex Schleifer:

you don't, you don't,

Alex Schleifer:

you don't need iOS to have a re revelation

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

But I'm going to get to the, I'm going to get to

Troy Young:

the point now.

Troy Young:

Cause

Brian Morrissey:

episode

Troy Young:

well, I had an ayahuasca guys.

Troy Young:

I had an ayahuasca like moment when I used network LM, because I realized that it was kind of pointing to what the future looked like and what did we do that kind of made the modern web kind of shitty?

Troy Young:

One was we put ads on pages and basically ask consumers to do two things at once.

Troy Young:

Look at an ad and look at content.

Troy Young:

To me, that was a troubling, construct.

Troy Young:

Secondly, we

Brian Morrissey:

I think there was tension there.

Troy Young:

publishers handed ad rights to middlemen, right?

Troy Young:

So in the old days back, I remember this very, very explicitly when I was working at a newspaper in Montreal, we would never give a third party the rights to sell our advertising.

Troy Young:

Because it was an undercut what we're able to do in the market, but on the internet, we gave our ad rights to everybody, right?

Troy Young:

That was, that's really the sort of the, the, the, the, the foundation of, of programmatic.

Alex Schleifer:

where you had to.

Troy Young:

Well, cause the aggregators sat on top of you, both aggregators in terms of interface and aggregators in terms of ad sellers, right?

Troy Young:

So then that kind of made this all up.

Troy Young:

Now, when I looked at, at notebook LM, I was like, the more I use chat, GPT on my phone or, or Gemini, the more I get.

Troy Young:

Comfortable with a frictionless model.

Troy Young:

I have a need.

Troy Young:

I get an answer.

Troy Young:

And

Troy Young:

to me, that's going to influence how content is delivered and and and publishers and media companies need to respond to that.

Troy Young:

The second thing I thought is that maybe notebook L.

Troy Young:

M.

Troy Young:

Is really just the new CMS where the job of the content creators in, in, in companies is to load the knowledge base.

Troy Young:

And that doesn't mean there's not features or articles or things that need to be delivered intact.

Troy Young:

But like if you're, if you're, your CMS is a repository for, for, for a document construct and all the content that you put out as a, as a publisher.

Troy Young:

And now notebook LM is, is, is the same kind of repository.

Troy Young:

But you query it differently.

Troy Young:

Right.

Troy Young:

And it delivers things back that are sort of personalized and it's multimodal because it'll create a podcast for you, or it'll give you an answer to a question.

Troy Young:

So to me, I think that what it sort of.

Troy Young:

You know, points to is a world where the fundamental construct of, you know, homepage, section, page, article, page, all connect together by Google.

Troy Young:

And then social comes along and it delivers things in the feed.

Troy Young:

There's a new paradigm coming up.

Troy Young:

That's way more personalized and, and there's still room for people to create ownable IP inside of that world, but it's going to change radically.

Troy Young:

And, and and the notion is that a citation sort of replaces the link.

Troy Young:

And what is the difference between a link and a citation?

Troy Young:

Well, a citation is the reference point when the question is already answered.

Troy Young:

If you want more information, whereas a link sends you somewhere to get the answer.

Troy Young:

Different, Right.

Troy Young:

so I think all of those things together are what our audience and people in the industry need to figure out, which is where to all your people creating content and selling access to those audiences.

Troy Young:

Where do they live in this new world?

Troy Young:

And you gotta map it.

Troy Young:

Cause it's, it's way different.

Troy Young:

Was it

Brian Morrissey:

I think a few things like one, anyone in our audience who isn't using these tools really should, I think this goes back to like early social media.

Brian Morrissey:

I remember just talking to a lot of, you know, CEOs and executives who are closer to like my age now, but they weren't using, you know, the tools and they didn't really get an understanding of how fundamentally, social media was going to change.

Brian Morrissey:

how, how information was distributed.

Brian Morrissey:

I think the other thing is this is same day delivery.

Brian Morrissey:

For information, right?

Brian Morrissey:

When Amazon came out with same day delivery, it set a totally different expectation.

Brian Morrissey:

I can remember after that going to buy a, a gift for, I guess my now wife and then girlfriend.

Brian Morrissey:

And it was like an expense.

Brian Morrissey:

I don't know.

Brian Morrissey:

It was some, it was kind of expensive, I guess, some piece of jewelry or something.

Brian Morrissey:

And it was

Troy Young:

Vitamix?

Brian Morrissey:

it wasn't, it was like five.

Brian Morrissey:

It was, but you had like seven day delivery or something.

Brian Morrissey:

it was like, this does not compute

Troy Young:

Wait, you bought you, you bought your girlfriend jewelry on

Brian Morrissey:

I don't remember.

Brian Morrissey:

It wasn't on Amazon, but my point is it just changes expectations.

Brian Morrissey:

And I think when you start to use these tools, you start to realize that's why I keep saying about the back button.

Brian Morrissey:

It's really difficult to understand how a publisher is going to compete.

Brian Morrissey:

With those kind of expectations that are set when you use one of these tools and, you know, the more I use them, the more I see it.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, I use Claude this weekend because I was doing this research report, which everyone should check out.

Brian Morrissey:

it's a state of sustainable news businesses.

Brian Morrissey:

it was really helpful in going through a ton of information.

Brian Morrissey:

I'm not going to say it was the editor, but it did editing.

Brian Morrissey:

Absolutely, you know, and not like line editing, but it was I uploaded transcripts of interviews.

Brian Morrissey:

I uploaded a ton of data.

Brian Morrissey:

I uploaded, you know, the survey that we had done and, you know, it was absolutely part of this.

Brian Morrissey:

And to me, the, the experience, that's just the creation experience, but actually retrieving information is going to be, it's clearly going to be more interactive.

Brian Morrissey:

It's going to be more.

Brian Morrissey:

I think of it as a choose your own adventure kind of thing.

Alex Schleifer:

Absolutely.

Alex Schleifer:

we've been talking about how profound this change is.

Alex Schleifer:

And I'm pretty sure a lot of people that are running media companies can also see it, but the issue is, I think you have inertia in organization to adopt new technology.

Alex Schleifer:

I was listening to the Ben Thompson podcast and he was talking about the volition, of people in organization to accept new technology.

Alex Schleifer:

And when the computer came out, it's not a people thought like, Hey, this is going to make my job easier.

Alex Schleifer:

Most people were pretty reluctant to start learning a computer.

Alex Schleifer:

So the first changes that happened were the ones where you could replace one to one, a person with a human being, because you could do that decision at the top and say, well, we used to have a person crunching those numbers.

Alex Schleifer:

And now we have a database computer that's doing that.

Alex Schleifer:

Right.

Alex Schleifer:

And it, I think it's similar with AI, because I mean, I can see it.

Alex Schleifer:

I can see my behavior changing.

Alex Schleifer:

I can see that I can adjust my tone of voice via an AI and it makes my writing easier.

Alex Schleifer:

And then I see that I use the AI to adjust the content that I'm receiving, and adjust it and reshape it in a way where I can absorb it better.

Alex Schleifer:

And I can't see anyone like, you know, not doing that over time.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, maybe not with fiction or things like this.

Alex Schleifer:

but it's, it's becoming.

Alex Schleifer:

Totally malleable, right?

Alex Schleifer:

The way you can absorb information and then

Alex Schleifer:

put

Troy Young:

Alex, when, when do you think you need to preserve the integrity of the, of the artist's work?

Alex Schleifer:

I don't know.

Alex Schleifer:

And I don't think it's when you need, I think people are just going to do what they do.

Alex Schleifer:

And, shared this experience where I was right.

Alex Schleifer:

I was reading this fiction.

Alex Schleifer:

book, the science fiction book.

Alex Schleifer:

And I wasn't liking it.

Alex Schleifer:

And I was like, I see where this is going.

Alex Schleifer:

I'm a third in there's another 400 pages.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't want to read this.

Alex Schleifer:

So I asked Chad GPT, like, Hey, without spoiling the book, can you tell me if I should continue?

Alex Schleifer:

can you tell me if it's heading in that direction?

Alex Schleifer:

It says, yes, without spoiling the book, it's heading in this broad direction.

Alex Schleifer:

I was like, okay.

Alex Schleifer:

all right.

Alex Schleifer:

I'm not gonna, I'm not going to read it, but can we talk through the ending and kind of the philosophical and, and, and, and, and it helped me through it.

Alex Schleifer:

And you know what?

Alex Schleifer:

I would have stopped reading the book, but, but the thing I want to talk about is I, I shared that on,

Troy Young:

gave you like, gave you like 20 hours of your life back.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

And I, and I think it would have been like, if I had a friend that read the book, I might've asked a friend, Hey, I feel this book is going in that direction.

Alex Schleifer:

So most people were interested when I shared it on, on social media, but there's like 30, a good 30 percent that said, this is the dumbest thing.

Alex Schleifer:

You're killing art.

Alex Schleifer:

you know, how dare you?

Alex Schleifer:

And don't, you know, it's probably imagined that whole ending, et cetera.

Alex Schleifer:

Now here's the issue, right?

Alex Schleifer:

Forget, forget

Troy Young:

Are they getting snarky in

Troy Young:

your threads,

Troy Young:

Alex?

Alex Schleifer:

yeah, for

Brian Morrissey:

This is the downside of

Troy Young:

They're getting snarky on, on

Alex Schleifer:

let,

Brian Morrissey:

you know,

Brian Morrissey:

welcome

Alex Schleifer:

but that's, all right, here's the, here's the context.

Alex Schleifer:

So here's what's important.

Alex Schleifer:

everyone listening, you have people like that, or you might be one of those people in your organization.

Alex Schleifer:

you need this, this volition to say, Hey, there's this new technology.

Alex Schleifer:

It comes with flaws.

Alex Schleifer:

It is not perfect.

Alex Schleifer:

Right.

Alex Schleifer:

But I'm noticing it as well.

Alex Schleifer:

And sometimes in my team, we say, Hey, AI coding tools, and then an engineer, their first task is to try to find everything wrong with it, rather than to try things, and it was the same way with computers when I was, you know, or digital video editing, right, where I had video editors telling me, we'll never switch from film and, and I would show them, but look what this can do.

Alex Schleifer:

And they would be so good at figuring out every fractional issue that there is with it.

Alex Schleifer:

This is the thing that's going to keep companies back, right?

Alex Schleifer:

This is where, and I'm not going into my own founder mode here.

Alex Schleifer:

It's just like, You need to hire people that have the energy, volition, spirit to say, Hey, this is something really interesting.

Alex Schleifer:

And we're going to kind of work around the rough edges and we're going to try to figure out philosophically what it means to us, rather than the people are going to sit back and just constantly say no.

Brian Morrissey:

yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

But here's the thing, in reality, in reality, you need, and just to try to shoehorn the theme in even more is you need that tension.

Brian Morrissey:

You need the sort of, I think they call them insultants, right?

Brian Morrissey:

You need people who pump the brakes, right?

Brian Morrissey:

Because otherwise you're just going to be taking ayahuasca, taking all your clothes off and like worshiping the AI gods,

Alex Schleifer:

I would say that there's a balance and I would say tech companies are, maybe shifting.

Alex Schleifer:

Too much on the, like, gung ho, let's just go for it.

Alex Schleifer:

But media, I, I think on average media people feel more threatened by AI than many, many other industries.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, because they

Alex Schleifer:

you need to,

Brian Morrissey:

I

Brian Morrissey:

mean, there's a

Alex Schleifer:

to figure out that balance, right?

Alex Schleifer:

You need to

Troy Young:

This is my, this is my free radical theory.

Troy Young:

All societies and organizations need free radicals

Alex Schleifer:

Okay.

Troy Young:

You just need to disrupt.

Troy Young:

Like, you know, for better or worse, you know, Trump, Elon, whatever.

Troy Young:

They're free radicals.

Troy Young:

They shake the foundations of how we live and how we think.

Troy Young:

And, you know, as such, I think are really valuable.

Brian Morrissey:

You know, something kind of interesting to that, just a

Brian Morrissey:

little.

Brian Morrissey:

Sidebar

Brian Morrissey:

is, you know how a lot of people when they're running organizations, they say we have a no assholes policy, which I'm always like, Oh God, you gotta be kidding me.

Brian Morrissey:

Like who has like a yes assholes policy.

Brian Morrissey:

It's just such a dumb thing to say.

Brian Morrissey:

but what the more interesting thing is, what is your troublemaker policy?

Brian Morrissey:

what is the ratio of troublemakers you're willing to have in your organization?

Brian Morrissey:

Cause I think, The highest functioning organizations, they do need some troublemakers, right?

Brian Morrissey:

A lot of salespeople are troublemakers.

Brian Morrissey:

I've noticed they're really good salespeople.

Brian Morrissey:

They're feral, right?

Brian Morrissey:

And

Alex Schleifer:

I think that with AI, there's a balance, right?

Alex Schleifer:

That, that notebook LM thing I tried, the first thing it did was get my old job wrong.

Alex Schleifer:

Right.

Alex Schleifer:

And there are some people that would have jumped on that and say, well, throw it all out the window.

Alex Schleifer:

And I think we, you can't have people in your organization that, that say, throw it all out the window.

Alex Schleifer:

I think you need critical thinkers.

Alex Schleifer:

I'm not saying everybody should just go out blindly and be, you know, pro replacing everything with AI.

Alex Schleifer:

But there are, you know, I think a litmus test is

Troy Young:

Dude, it's not like it made you a junior designer at

Alex Schleifer:

But it doesn't, it doesn't matter if it didn't even, like, I have seen computers being able to struggle to move a white dot around the screen and now rendering somebody's sweat in 4k like in an NBA video game.

Alex Schleifer:

Like we've seen this, this, this transition so I can look at this and, you know, project it out into the future.

Alex Schleifer:

And I don't know if you guys have noticed every two months there's something mind blowing that comes out.

Alex Schleifer:

You know, everyone, please go to NotebookLM, upload anything, and render one of those fake podcasts.

Alex Schleifer:

It is uncanny.

Alex Schleifer:

It is, and sure it is silly, and, but I do think, like, do that litmus test.

Alex Schleifer:

The people who will, like, come back with the first three points of feedback is everything that I got marginally wrong.

Alex Schleifer:

When you have a computer that is, absorbing information and outputting it in a way that is coherent, without seeing the wonder of that, or at least, like, the.

Alex Schleifer:

Terrifying change that this implies to your industry.

Alex Schleifer:

I think, you know, you gotta have a serious talk with those people because like, like the, the spaceship remains

Brian Morrissey:

Oh, not the

Troy Young:

You're using your word count up.

Alex Schleifer:

while I'm trying to, uh, I'm trying to catch up with you.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

Well, can we transition from this Brian?

Troy Young:

If you don't mind me doing what the AI says I do, just a quick, not a long one

Brian Morrissey:

can you make it a tension because that's the that's the theme i'm trying to

Troy Young:

Well, this is sure.

Troy Young:

Anything can be made attention.

Troy Young:

This is about, how meta so massively outsmarted

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, that's tension.

Brian Morrissey:

They have a tension in their different, approaches

Troy Young:

I know that Alex is not using his Vision Pro.

Troy Young:

He's going to lie.

Troy Young:

He might say it's going to be great to have it, Alex, but it is a bookshelf item.

Troy Young:

Now, I I just like my, you know, that little orange thing that I have here, Alex, you're at the house.

Troy Young:

You saw it.

Troy Young:

what was that device

Alex Schleifer:

The rabbit,

Troy Young:

The rabbit,

Troy Young:

will, I barely even turned it on.

Troy Young:

It's just going to go on the bookshelf.

Troy Young:

Stupidest device ever.

Troy Young:

Now.

Troy Young:

Okay.

Troy Young:

So meta.

Troy Young:

Does this partnership with Luxottica, genius partnership, right?

Troy Young:

And they're the glasses are nice.

Troy Young:

It's a brand that people will put on their faces and they have a basic use case, right?

Troy Young:

Record videos connected to the meta apps and make calls.

Troy Young:

Apparently really great for making calls.

Troy Young:

You'll use it for that and keep the sun out of your eyes if you need that.

Troy Young:

So it's actually useful.

Troy Young:

Now you have a starting point with a device that you can iterate on and put more and more technology into.

Troy Young:

So they've started, they've spent whatever it is, 50 billion dollars.

Troy Young:

Building.

Troy Young:

a kind of future oriented version of this, that they showed the market this, this week that, combines a, a wristband with a heavier glass that's not quite ready for prime time.

Troy Young:

with a sort of an offloaded some of the compute into something you put in your pocket,

Troy Young:

like a little transponder unit.

Troy Young:

And now what you have in this unit is basically all the functionality that you have in the Vision Pro.

Troy Young:

So you can see things on top of the world, you could watch a movie, you can do a voice call, you can play, or you can do a video call, you can play Pong with someone.

Troy Young:

And, You have basically something that you can start to see people actually using because they don't look utterly ridiculous, and you're not cut off from the world.

Troy Young:

At the same time, they release Their new VR product, right?

Troy Young:

Which you can see through basically does everything that vision pro does, but it's two 99, it's 299, not 2, 000.

Alex Schleifer:

What are you talking about?

Alex Schleifer:

Three and a half thousand dollars.

Alex Schleifer:

The vision

Troy Young:

okay.

Troy Young:

Oh, three and a

Troy Young:

half thousand dollars.

Troy Young:

Right?

Troy Young:

So like for two 99, parents will put that under the tree, right?

Troy Young:

It's 300 bucks.

Troy Young:

It's a cool gift,

Troy Young:

right?

Troy Young:

You can play you know, a ninja game with somebody like, so to me, unless you have enough people buying at a low enough price point, you can't create the ecosystem that allows you to get developers making content because there's no incentive to do it.

Troy Young:

They've gotten all the costs out of that technology at 209.

Troy Young:

I think that people will actually buy it as a toy.

Troy Young:

It will mature from there.

Troy Young:

And at the same time they have these new glasses, they are absolutely checkmating the industry right now.

Troy Young:

And at the same time they have.

Troy Young:

an open source AI project that will start to, create.

Troy Young:

The environments without costing huge

Troy Young:

amounts of money.

Troy Young:

It's amazing.

Troy Young:

Actually, I

Troy Young:

think it's really amazing.

Brian Morrissey:

Did you listen to the Zuckerberg podcast on the acquired podcast that he ended up doing?

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, he talked very clearly about they're taking a, I guess, in Silicon Valley, they've called an orthogonal approach, which makes sense.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, you're not going to beat at, you're not going to out Apple, Apple, right?

Brian Morrissey:

So you're going to have to go mass.

Brian Morrissey:

They're not going to do close.

Brian Morrissey:

They're going to do open.

Brian Morrissey:

And, You know, whatever they can say.

Brian Morrissey:

And he says, it's like pragmatic.

Brian Morrissey:

Sometimes open makes sense.

Brian Morrissey:

Sometimes closed makes sense.

Brian Morrissey:

I think people try to make it ideological.

Brian Morrissey:

It's whatever is best for your competitive position in the market.

Brian Morrissey:

So, I mean, right.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, why would you want to try to compete with Apple on a high end, everything like integrated perfectly?

Brian Morrissey:

Why not go mass?

Brian Morrissey:

It just makes a ton of sense.

Brian Morrissey:

And.

Brian Morrissey:

You know, we'll see.

Brian Morrissey:

I think that's the best thing is people taking different approaches and then the market deciding,

Troy Young:

so so Apple is going to spaz out and they're going to need to compete with glasses.

Troy Young:

For sure.

Troy Young:

There's no doubt they got to make that product.

Troy Young:

Google's got to make that product right now.

Troy Young:

There's three companies in the race, Google, Meta, Apple.

Troy Young:

They're all going to try to compete around the glasses and potentially around VR.

Troy Young:

Although I think it's a smaller market

Brian Morrissey:

Wait, what about

Brian Morrissey:

Microsoft?

Troy Young:

Microsoft?

Troy Young:

won't even be in the game.

Troy Young:

They just can't do it.

Troy Young:

And snap is going to get completely decimated.

Troy Young:

There's no way that snap can play the game.

Troy Young:

I

Brian Morrissey:

They should bring the Zoom

Alex Schleifer:

snap doesn't have the infrastructure.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, I think even so I agree with you, Troy.

Alex Schleifer:

I think the, the, maybe a couple of things that really changed the game were those Ray Ban glasses that didn't try to put stuff in front of your eyes, because they made a useful product today rather than, potential.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah,

Alex Schleifer:

no, I, I would, no, I, don't have them.

Alex Schleifer:

I would potentially buy them.

Alex Schleifer:

I think the other thing is that the reason I don't use the, my vision pro as much is that Apple has completely given up on it.

Troy Young:

They didn't build an ecosystem

Alex Schleifer:

No, the expectation, my expectation was that a bunch of developers would buy this, but that Apple would be funneling money into it.

Alex Schleifer:

So, but the updates aren't even coming out.

Alex Schleifer:

And there's one that would be truly useful for me, which is a new white screen where you can have an extra large computer display when you're working on certain things.

Alex Schleifer:

And I'm just waiting for that update.

Alex Schleifer:

It's meant to come out in, in fall.

Alex Schleifer:

So we'll see.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, if you go to an Apple store, it's like in a corner now.

Brian Morrissey:

Like, you just look at real estate.

Alex Schleifer:

I, I, and Apple, I don't think is doing particularly well on a, on a lot of fronts right now.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, I think the OS is, is getting overly complicated.

Alex Schleifer:

I think they got, they, they got caught completely flat footed with the AI stuff.

Alex Schleifer:

And and then three, I think Zuckerberg's reinvention has made him more confident.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, he's still an awkward person.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't love Zuckerberg

Troy Young:

I think he looks really good right now.

Troy Young:

I think

Brian Morrissey:

Otzok Otnihil.

Alex Schleifer:

It's incredible what a multi billion dollar

Troy Young:

No, but he used to have that like Roman emperor cut.

Troy Young:

And like, now he's got kind of teased curly air.

Troy Young:

He's jacked.

Troy Young:

He looks good.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah, I know.

Alex Schleifer:

That's a, I'd remember everyone that's available to everyone.

Brian Morrissey:

you see his shirt that he came out with?

Brian Morrissey:

It said Aut Zach Aut Nihil Like,

Brian Morrissey:

Without Zach With nothing or something

Alex Schleifer:

I, I, look, look here.

Alex Schleifer:

You know what?

Alex Schleifer:

He's one of the billionaires that hasn't been red pilled yet, so I'm pretty good with it.

Troy Young:

Oh, he's been red pilled.

Brian Morrissey:

I will say this for, for Zuckerberg.

Brian Morrissey:

I said this on a previous podcast.

Brian Morrissey:

I think like being a child prodigy is just the worst fate like someone can have, right?

Brian Morrissey:

Having success, extremely young, rarely works out well to being a functioning

Brian Morrissey:

adult.

Brian Morrissey:

And like, you know, for everything, considering like what, he didn't really have a young adulthood at all.

Brian Morrissey:

And I think, you know, you've got to grade, you know, how you like on a curve, because I mean, look at how many, you know, Child prodigies become complete weirdos and failures.

Troy Young:

It's been tough for me.

Troy Young:

I got to tell you,

Brian Morrissey:

eh.

Alex Schleifer:

I think a lot of that's been, you know, linked to coming from, you know, poor family and having this massive leap.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, I think,

Alex Schleifer:

you know,

Brian Morrissey:

Zuckerberg?

Brian Morrissey:

Isn't his

Alex Schleifer:

a lot of No, that's what, no, no, no.

Alex Schleifer:

Here.

Alex Schleifer:

That's what I'm saying.

Alex Schleifer:

Like a lot of the,

Brian Morrissey:

He lived in Scarsdale, I think.

Alex Schleifer:

that's what I'm saying.

Alex Schleifer:

He, that his leap wasn't as big as like, you

Alex Schleifer:

know, uh, growing up and,

Alex Schleifer:

and then all of a sudden being like pulled into, look, I still don't love Zuckerberg.

Alex Schleifer:

I still don't love meta, but I think they are, doing it right.

Alex Schleifer:

And I wouldn't be surprised if Apple completely resets their ambition around.

Alex Schleifer:

and I mean, after last, Apple event, their big push is going to be health stuff.

Alex Schleifer:

and honestly, if they release glasses, I would probably buy the Apple glasses because they would connect to my phone.

Alex Schleifer:

They have an ecosystem play.

Alex Schleifer:

And

Troy Young:

that

Troy Young:

well, that's, that's met as met as biggest fear, right?

Troy Young:

Is that the ecosystem of Apple is so powerful, but I would make

Troy Young:

one last observation on this, Alex, is that.

Troy Young:

I said this before and I don't, I have, someone just texted me from Apple.

Troy Young:

I love both of these people that, that I have a couple of friends there.

Troy Young:

great company.

Troy Young:

You know, I've, it's been one of the great pleasures of my life using their products.

Troy Young:

their current presentation of their products and their brands gives me the icks.

Troy Young:

It makes me sick.

Troy Young:

It's, it's so polished.

Troy Young:

It feels so fake.

Troy Young:

It feels so sort of Northern California, idealistic sanctimonious that I don't like it.

Troy Young:

I like their products and I think their, their, their new phone will do really well.

Troy Young:

Having said that, contrast that with what face, what Zuckerberg did two days ago.

Troy Young:

And what they did is, They made mistakes on stage.

Troy Young:

It was kind of haphazard.

Troy Young:

They showed off uncompleted technology.

Troy Young:

To me, it was more like, it was more, this is how the life is.

Troy Young:

This is how the world is.

Troy Young:

I, I found it better.

Troy Young:

I liked it better

Alex Schleifer:

I

Brian Morrissey:

that isn't that the tension between like the Apple approach is ship things that are finished.

Brian Morrissey:

And I think maybe they're like embarrassed by the vision pro because it went against their, their sort of ethos.

Brian Morrissey:

But Zuckerberg on this, on the acquired podcast was talking about, you know, they had to get back to shipping things that are imperfect to iterate on that's, that is their view of how to build technology.

Brian Morrissey:

And,

Troy Young:

they're software people.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah, but I would say that, I mean, part of the tension with Apple, and, and there's been a turn with how people see the brand.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't know if it's, I mean, we're, you know, in our own bubble, but people would call me after Apple events and say, what should I get?

Alex Schleifer:

And, I used to be able to explain what the fuck was going on.

Alex Schleifer:

I actually don't know what Apple intelligence is and what it can do and not.

Alex Schleifer:

And they're, they've, they've kind of broken.

Alex Schleifer:

And I don't know if it was a rule at Apple where they went from, you know, talking about feature and how they can impact your life to talking about a technology and underlying technology, because they feel like they have to, and they feel like they're on the back foot.

Alex Schleifer:

Right.

Alex Schleifer:

And what, what you're sensing now with Meta is that there's a company that's confident and with Apple, there's a company that's like lacked confidence.

Alex Schleifer:

That's like losing confidence.

Alex Schleifer:

You know, they're, they're adding more buttons.

Alex Schleifer:

which is great.

Alex Schleifer:

The, the AI stuff is just being sold

Troy Young:

Can you make the AI, can you make it go?

Troy Young:

Can you show us on the screen?

Troy Young:

Can you?

Troy Young:

Make the little, the thing around the perimeter flash or pulse or whatever.

Alex Schleifer:

it, it actually doesn't look as nice as old Siri.

Troy Young:

Oh, that little shake is cool.

Alex Schleifer:

It is cool.

Alex Schleifer:

It gets pretty old pretty quickly.

Troy Young:

Alright,

Brian Morrissey:

When the phone comes out,

Troy Young:

move move on.

Troy Young:

move us to the next topic

Brian Morrissey:

all right.

Brian Morrissey:

The next topic.

Brian Morrissey:

No, the next topic is I want to talk a little bit about, MKBHD.

Brian Morrissey:

he, he came out with, a new product.

Brian Morrissey:

You know, and look, a lot of times you use, you use attention, right, and this is the, the new playbook, is you, you get the attention, and maybe it's ads, sure, maybe it's subs, but maybe, Maybe use it to turn that attention to a better business, like making a product.

Brian Morrissey:

he came out with this wallpaper app, I

Troy Young:

You're talking Marcus Brownlee, the famous YouTube reviewer,

Brian Morrissey:

YouTube reviewer.

Brian Morrissey:

I think he's mostly known as MKBHD now, but

Alex Schleifer:

Yes.

Alex Schleifer:

MKBHD.

Brian Morrissey:

he has a little like, I guess, product studio.

Brian Morrissey:

He came out with this wallpaper app that's been You know, utterly panned, by I don't know, maybe it's the Twitter thing, but, it just

Brian Morrissey:

seems like,

Troy Young:

it's a wallpaper app, guys.

Brian Morrissey:

it's a grifting app with like, well, it costs like 12 bucks a month.

Alex Schleifer:

Well, I

Alex Schleifer:

mean, this is more of a story.

Alex Schleifer:

This is not a tech story and this is more a story about reputation, right?

Alex Schleifer:

And, and software being hard.

Alex Schleifer:

and I mean, he's still going to probably make a bunch of money, but, I think his, his

Troy Young:

Software being hard, it's a grifting story.

Alex Schleifer:

Well, I mean, it's, it's incredible how his, how his brand has suffers from, from this, right?

Alex Schleifer:

There's there's been plenty of influencer products, you know, like Logan Paul has this prime hydration stuff.

Alex Schleifer:

And then

Alex Schleifer:

Mr.

Alex Schleifer:

Beast has been, no, it's terrible, but you know what?

Alex Schleifer:

It's sold

Alex Schleifer:

to kids.

Alex Schleifer:

It's sold to kids which are not discerning, right?

Brian Morrissey:

I know.

Alex Schleifer:

that's,

Brian Morrissey:

you want to make your

Alex Schleifer:

that's where you want to make your money.

Alex Schleifer:

Right?

Alex Schleifer:

But, if you look at, at I mean, what you want to be, you want to be like a Rihanna with Fenty, or you know, Jenner with Kylie Cosmetics or something like that.

Alex Schleifer:

these things are, You can do that transition into a good product.

Alex Schleifer:

And Marcus Brownlee has had like interesting product collaboration with this, this wallet brand and shoes and stuff like that.

Alex Schleifer:

And those have been well received.

Alex Schleifer:

but I think, yeah, I think where this, I think where this dropped is also where there's a tension where people are sick and tired of, you know, applications on the app stores.

Alex Schleifer:

And I think Apple's really guilty at allowing stuff to happen, which are so, there's so many dark patterns, right?

Alex Schleifer:

There's so many rules around the app stores.

Alex Schleifer:

You're not allowed to say this and that, and here's how you place a link all around, like making sure that, uh, payments funnel through Apple.

Alex Schleifer:

But then there can be such misleading tactics like tracking, you know, overuse of advertising, a weird subscription system.

Alex Schleifer:

And, and I think people are genuinely tired of this.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't think there's one person that is not tired and not suspicious of an app.

Alex Schleifer:

So when somebody

Troy Young:

You should download the, the, the, the ad app.

Troy Young:

It's just ads.

Troy Young:

All the time.

Alex Schleifer:

yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

When, when somebody that you trust, when somebody that you trust tells you to do this thing, and now you have a place to voice your frustration, that is actually a frustration with the entire ecosystem of

Troy Young:

Alex, we should build this.

Troy Young:

Seriously, we'll get AI.

Troy Young:

We'll, we'll

Troy Young:

build this.

Troy Young:

We should build, Just,

Troy Young:

as a lark, just ads.

Troy Young:

And the app is called Ad.

Brian Morrissey:

yeah.

Troy Young:

A D.

Troy Young:

It's a real,

Brian Morrissey:

homepage.

Brian Morrissey:

it's million.

Brian Morrissey:

It's like, remember the million dollar homepage?

Troy Young:

No, but we'll do a better, which this is way better because it's going to have animations and

Troy Young:

leaderboards and all that

Brian Morrissey:

yeah, Rich media.

Brian Morrissey:

Eye blasters.

Brian Morrissey:

Um,

Brian Morrissey:

but yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people are looking for different ways to launder attention,

Troy Young:

That's our first product.

Troy Young:

You guys, people versus algorithms

Troy Young:

app ad, and it's just ads.

Troy Young:

It'd

Brian Morrissey:

This is.

Alex Schleifer:

I would say Troy.

Alex Schleifer:

What did the ally I said is he says Troy often likes to inject humor into discussion.

Alex Schleifer:

Displaced fullness, however, sometimes borders on being dismissive.

Brian Morrissey:

Borders.

Brian Morrissey:

See, as I said.

Brian Morrissey:

AI is a suck up.

Brian Morrissey:

That's the problem with it.

Troy Young:

Oh, no, you know what we can also do.

Troy Young:

The second app we'll do is just called paywall, just a paywall, different

Alex Schleifer:

Sorry,

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, we'll just take the money.

Alex Schleifer:

just to pay well,

Alex Schleifer:

I mean, that's, isn't that every media app?

Brian Morrissey:

But I think this is the story of, again, I'm just gonna keep going like the tension, but like in modern media, you're trying to launder attention in different ways and influence, and you're trying to redirect it into better economics, basically, you know, whether that's establishing a reputation over, over many decades and laundering that into, let's just say, SEO, optimized content for affiliate, or it's something like this.

Brian Morrissey:

He's just trying to launder attention at the end of the day.

Brian Morrissey:

And I think that can work, right?

Brian Morrissey:

And there are examples of it working, but we also see tons of examples on the media side and on the influencer side where you try to launder that attention into an area like a product.

Brian Morrissey:

And look, this is, we've talked about the content and commerce problems a lot on this and it just doesn't work.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, these are different skill sets,

Alex Schleifer:

I think that's true.

Alex Schleifer:

I think it can work.

Alex Schleifer:

I think we've, we've seen, you know, like influencers or artists, you know, very successfully going into products, you know, whether it's like Clooney with tequila or whatever.

Alex Schleifer:

Uh, George Foreman with the grill.

Alex Schleifer:

I do feel like the story here more is more about a tech journalist or somebody that you trust, releasing a tech product that suffers from, the issues that so many societies have.

Alex Schleifer:

apps suffer now, which is this kind of, they've been weaponized to extract as much attention or money out of you as possible.

Alex Schleifer:

And I think there's like people that at a breaking point with a lot of these interactions, it's incredible that you cannot, that you cannot find a video game right now on the app store that, that isn't somewhat, you know, structured to either make you see an ad or, or get rid of, take more and more of your money

Troy Young:

I hate to fulfill my destiny as the, the, I would predict, but like, this is getting, okay.

Troy Young:

Yeah, they sat in a meeting.

Troy Young:

They said, we need to make more money.

Troy Young:

How are we going to monetize our fame?

Troy Young:

Oh, let's make an app.

Troy Young:

What kind of app do you want to make?

Troy Young:

Oh, let's make one of those apps that.

Troy Young:

Makes lots of money.

Troy Young:

Oh, we could do a, what's the easiest app to make?

Troy Young:

We're not going to do a social network.

Troy Young:

We're going to do a screensaver app or a wallpaper app.

Troy Young:

And they make a stupid app and he, someone makes it and they put it out and it's not well thought through.

Troy Young:

And that's the end of the story.

Troy Young:

It's not that complicated.

Troy Young:

This is bad judgment.

Troy Young:

It's bad judgment.

Alex Schleifer:

I mean it's a hundred percent it's bad judgment.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah,

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay.

Alex Schleifer:

that's well.

Alex Schleifer:

All right, let's move

Troy Young:

I mean, I'm

Troy Young:

sorry to end this conversation, but it's like, I feel like we're

Alex Schleifer:

I think you're

Brian Morrissey:

All right.

Brian Morrissey:

No, no, no.

Brian Morrissey:

Let's Thank you

Alex Schleifer:

good.

Brian Morrissey:

as, as predicted accurately by AI.

Brian Morrissey:

Good.

Troy Young:

Elon mechanic?

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah, but then let's get into a good product because Alex, Alex has a hard stop.

Alex Schleifer:

Wow, I better not say anything about that trump topic because

Brian Morrissey:

Uh, we're talking Trump again.

Brian Morrissey:

I, okay.

Brian Morrissey:

So my Trump thing that I want to talk about this week, a little bit, but then you can take it in your own direction is it's, it's going to be fascinating to see Kamala Harris is going to weigh, she's way outspending, the Trump campaign in, in advertising.

Brian Morrissey:

And, I don't know if it's going to be as effective.

Brian Morrissey:

Trump has hacked this system.

Brian Morrissey:

Like he's hacked all of the information space.

Brian Morrissey:

And his basic thing is why pay for the ads when you can be the show.

Brian Morrissey:

And whether that means creating like crazy, you know, conspiracies with their eating the pets and whatnot.

Brian Morrissey:

it doesn't matter as.

Brian Morrissey:

As J.

Brian Morrissey:

D.

Brian Morrissey:

Vance said, because, it's going to get people to talk, talking about an issue that Trump wants them to talk about, which is immigration and its impact.

Brian Morrissey:

And it is going to bring up the, it doesn't really matter if it's true or not, basically that's what it is.

Brian Morrissey:

So I'm, I'm interested to see if the, the traditional approach, which I think Kamala Harris is really taking a very traditional campaign approach, how it, It fares against, Trump who always goes in a different direction.

Brian Morrissey:

Troy, what is your take on this?

Troy Young:

Okay, so the first thing is my favorite political campaign ad of the season is the remix of the part from the Trump Harris debate where he says he's eating, they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs, I mean everybody at this point has probably seen it, but it's, they put that, that genius guy puts that sort of Latin dance track behind it and it's, they're eating the cats, They slow Trump down.

Troy Young:

They're eating the dogs.

Troy Young:

They're eating the pets and the people that live.

Troy Young:

It's hilarious, right?

Troy Young:

I can't quite understand who it's an ad for.

Troy Young:

Is that an ad for Trump or is it an ad for Harris?

Troy Young:

But it's the one I remember most and it's the one I see the most.

Troy Young:

And it's distributed for free because it's distributed by the people.

Troy Young:

to per your point, Brian, one thing that you and I have talked about a lot is I always tried to sort of deconstruct the Trump.

Troy Young:

Mechanic, right?

Troy Young:

And it's one that I think he understood before us.

Troy Young:

before most people, right?

Troy Young:

And it's that democratic media, the internet in particular, would fuck the rules up and that the next winners would throw out the long bomb, right?

Troy Young:

A radical idea that was like, what the fuck?

Troy Young:

What's this idea?

Troy Young:

this is crazy.

Troy Young:

They're eating the cats who eats cats.

Troy Young:

And it's weird enough that we all moved to it.

Troy Young:

Like moth to flame.

Troy Young:

It's like, this is weird enough.

Troy Young:

And he sort of like, this is a, it's just a disruptive notion.

Troy Young:

And so then people go there.

Troy Young:

So he owns the moment.

Troy Young:

He owns attention in that moment.

Troy Young:

We moved to it.

Troy Young:

He defines the conversation around that weird thing.

Troy Young:

And.

Troy Young:

it, it defines the discussion for a day or two, but interestingly, is that underneath of the crazy, there's always the shred of a story.

Troy Young:

He always does something that is, will lead you somewhere where you're not completely empty handed.

Troy Young:

So for example, if you watch, you know, Channel 5 News on YouTube, that great little sort of Gonzo documentary thing that that, that kid does.

Troy Young:

He did like the people living

Troy Young:

under Las Vegas.

Troy Young:

He did people on the streets of San Francisco.

Troy Young:

So he just did one.

Troy Young:

Around what the hell is going on in Aurora?

Troy Young:

Right.

Troy Young:

Are the Venezuelan gangs taking over Aurora?

Troy Young:

Have they really occupied this condominium complex?

Troy Young:

And did they do it with guns and all of that?

Troy Young:

And of course the truth is yes.

Troy Young:

And yes, migrants come up from Venezuela through into Colorado.

Troy Young:

And do they do disruptive things?

Troy Young:

Some of them, the other side of it is, is that there's lots of hard work and people that live there and are trying to figure out how to get away from a nasty authoritarian place and build a new life.

Troy Young:

So it's both right.

Troy Young:

There's criminal elements.

Troy Young:

It's nasty.

Troy Young:

There's lots of stories there.

Troy Young:

It's.

Troy Young:

You know, we're letting people into the country, without any kind of systematic, filter.

Troy Young:

So, there's going to be problems, and at the same time, there's a lot of people that are coming here and contributing to the country and making a better life for themselves.

Troy Young:

So, I guess what's been interesting is, This, this mechanic is throw out the long bomb, make sure it's connected in some way to something that people are going to be, wait, look, there is something here where there's smoke, there's fire.

Troy Young:

And he's done it brilliantly.

Brian Morrissey:

I think he's just a natural.

Brian Morrissey:

He gets memes.

Brian Morrissey:

I, think he gets memes

Brian Morrissey:

without even knowing what memes are.

Brian Morrissey:

That's why he's killing with Gen

Alex Schleifer:

you,

Alex Schleifer:

right, you're, you're, You're looking at someone who is just reflexively saying shit, right?

Alex Schleifer:

And then you're

Alex Schleifer:

applying all that line.

Alex Schleifer:

Wait, wait, no, no, let me, let me be dismissive for once, because I think that is not an interesting conversation.

Alex Schleifer:

You're saying, well, Every person that talks about, conspiracies, it is always linked in some truth.

Alex Schleifer:

It is always connected to something that happened.

Alex Schleifer:

Nothing ever comes out of thin air.

Alex Schleifer:

You can go talk to that crazy guy next to the bodega, and you'll go, hmm, you know what?

Alex Schleifer:

he, you know, this guy might be drunk, but actually There was some weird stuff with aliens or there are UFOs like you can always find a source of truth.

Alex Schleifer:

He's not like the way people are applying genius because this guy is so shameless and just like rattles off whatever comes in his head as a way to protect himself or gain some sort of power and then start thinking that there's like he's some sort of media genius.

Alex Schleifer:

He's just craving attention

Brian Morrissey:

So wait, you,

Brian Morrissey:

don't think he's, you don't think he's a media genius?

Alex Schleifer:

Oh, I, I think he's a, he's a

Alex Schleifer:

media savant, which is different,

Brian Morrissey:

Dude, he was a reality star who

Brian Morrissey:

became

Troy Young:

Are you kidding me?

Troy Young:

Someone said to me someone said that he, you know, he is, maybe we'll go down for the next,

Brian Morrissey:

with Jared Kushner running his campaign.

Brian Morrissey:

No, I think he's a media genius.

Troy Young:

he's definitely a media genius.

Troy Young:

He's the new Barnum.

Troy Young:

And someone would say that someone said to me yesterday, he'll go down for the next, like hundreds of years.

Troy Young:

They'll look at him as the

Alex Schleifer:

guys, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys, All right.

Brian Morrissey:

You can dislike him.

Brian Morrissey:

That's okay.

Brian Morrissey:

But you gotta like

Alex Schleifer:

right.

Alex Schleifer:

Wait, wait, wait, wait, right.

Alex Schleifer:

I'm, I am putting that to your side.

Alex Schleifer:

Let's have, let's have a reasonable conversation here.

Alex Schleifer:

You can put a gorilla in the ring and say, Hey, The gorilla is going to tear the guy's arms off.

Alex Schleifer:

But what's happening is you put the gorilla in the rain and he's saying, look at this gorilla.

Alex Schleifer:

He is so strategic.

Alex Schleifer:

He's thinking this through.

Alex Schleifer:

Look at that.

Alex Schleifer:

How he flung that

Alex Schleifer:

shit at the other, the other fighter.

Alex Schleifer:

But no, but like, like, I want

Alex Schleifer:

us

Alex Schleifer:

to be just like,

Troy Young:

No, let him

Alex Schleifer:

uh, let let me, I, I want us to be intellectually honest here.

Alex Schleifer:

There's logic.

Alex Schleifer:

And then there's just instinct.

Alex Schleifer:

This guy runs on instinct

Alex Schleifer:

and, but okay.

Alex Schleifer:

Instinct isn't genius.

Alex Schleifer:

You can call it anything you want.

Alex Schleifer:

But the fact you're saying, you know, when he said this cats and dog thing, he was thinking that people will trace it back and then figure out, and he was like, beautiful minding this thing.

Alex Schleifer:

He just didn't know somebody told him cats and dogs.

Alex Schleifer:

He goes yeah, I hate Brown people.

Alex Schleifer:

And that's probably.

Alex Schleifer:

True or I'll get the people going and he just said it.

Alex Schleifer:

All right.

Alex Schleifer:

So what you're dealing with is a guy that's purely made of it That's just of course.

Alex Schleifer:

He's a savant, but he's a gorilla.

Brian Morrissey:

but here,

Brian Morrissey:

so

Brian Morrissey:

here's the thing,

Alex Schleifer:

He's he's not Bruce Lee.

Alex Schleifer:

He's a gorilla He's gonna win the fight, but that's not

Brian Morrissey:

This is a bugbear of mine because I find that there are different forms of intelligence

Brian Morrissey:

that people, that people of the, and this is where a lot of the resentments that they put, there's different types of intelligence that people have.

Brian Morrissey:

And we, as societies, particularly in the quote, unquote, elite areas.

Brian Morrissey:

Overrate a particular type of intelligence.

Brian Morrissey:

It's usually the type that you get from learning books and being, and being very like quote unquote, traditionally smart, there's totally different kinds of intelligence, that the, someone like Trump has, it's very instinctual.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay.

Brian Morrissey:

And I'm sorry, he understands more.

Brian Morrissey:

About he's not precise, but he is accurate.

Brian Morrissey:

He understands, he understood more about where the country was than all of the people from like Yale who spoke in complete, perfect paragraphs.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay.

Brian Morrissey:

And I

Brian Morrissey:

think there's different

Brian Morrissey:

forms of intelligence.

Brian Morrissey:

Salespeople have a different form

Brian Morrissey:

of intelligence.

Brian Morrissey:

That's why I honor my friends on the sales side.

Alex Schleifer:

the, the problem with me is that we're implying thoughtfulness in this process, which then kind of elevates him

Alex Schleifer:

to somebody who can

Brian Morrissey:

it's thoughtful at all.

Brian Morrissey:

I think,

Brian Morrissey:

he's got a preternatural feel for this stuff.

Brian Morrissey:

He just sniffs

Alex Schleifer:

think he's very, he's very easy to manipulate, right?

Alex Schleifer:

And the people who, who know him can do that.

Alex Schleifer:

There's a lot of, and, and so when he did the cats and dogs thing, he's just responding.

Alex Schleifer:

He's just like an expert.

Alex Schleifer:

He's like an animal in his element and he's responding to the moment.

Alex Schleifer:

I think just the language we use is important because, because, you know, these are, there are different convictions to how you're doing something.

Alex Schleifer:

And, and I don't think he's calculating.

Alex Schleifer:

I think just the way he responds to the world has hacked the media ecosystem has hacked our attention because he is just so,

Troy Young:

Well, that's why, that's where we started.

Troy Young:

And that was

Troy Young:

actually the point we were making.

Troy Young:

So,

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

He's an amoral genius.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay.

Brian Morrissey:

Let's get on to good product.

Troy Young:

Alright, alright, alright.

Troy Young:

My Good Product is, This week my son, like yesterday or the day before, released an album.

Troy Young:

And, I think it's a good product.

Troy Young:

So, his name is Seb, and he's on a journey, and he recorded this album traveling across the U.

Troy Young:

S., mostly spending time in California last, well, I guess about six months ago.

Troy Young:

And, his project is called, I don't know if this project has been, I don't really know actually, it's called Chronically Offline.

Troy Young:

Brian, I think that you would like that.

Troy Young:

So his, that's what, That's the kind of moniker moniker he's using, and the album is called Made With Longing.

Troy Young:

So it's kind of, I think, of our time, and it's about, a young man coming to terms with, his place in the world.

Troy Young:

And, you know, dealing with childhood shit.

Troy Young:

to me, it feels like a California record.

Troy Young:

and he doesn't, he doesn't love to compromise.

Troy Young:

He wanted to make a whole record.

Troy Young:

He wanted to make art.

Troy Young:

He wanted to make something.

Troy Young:

He played, he played everything on it.

Troy Young:

He wrote it.

Troy Young:

He sang it.

Troy Young:

He did the harmonies.

Troy Young:

He produced it.

Troy Young:

He had the help of this great guy, Tim in California that helped him do some of the production.

Troy Young:

And the part he hates actually is marketing it.

Troy Young:

and in it, I feel, I won't review it.

Troy Young:

It's, it's hard, you know, whenever your kids make music, you think it's great.

Troy Young:

Cause it's like your DNA making music, but it feels a little like the Beatles.

Troy Young:

There's a huge influence of his, a little like kind of fountains of Wayne, the little Mac DeMarco in there who he loves and Elliot Smith.

Troy Young:

and maybe a bit of Bon Iver.

Troy Young:

he plays a little banjo on it, so that's cool.

Troy Young:

and it's kind of deeply inspiring to me, and, you know, I personally don't want to stop growing as a human being, and it's really great to watch him grow, and Kind of produce something that's so deeply personal and we should play a clip of it and see what People think but it's cool and it's definitely like every week when

Troy Young:

I do the good product It's sort of I don't pick a good product it I kind of encounter something in my life that got my attention that made me feel something that That I want to highlight and this is what I wanted to highlight this week I think you in you know, seb, you don't know seb brian, but to alex, you know seb and

Brian Morrissey:

Well, he was on the podcast.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, I know him as a podcast

Troy Young:

Well, yeah, he was on the podcast but alex you might maybe even listen to the record.

Troy Young:

I don't know

Alex Schleifer:

I will

Alex Schleifer:

i'm going to listen to the record

Brian Morrissey:

so if you were to go back to when he was like eight, are you, would you be surprised that like you made a, cause I'm interested cause I don't have children, but you have two kids and they went in totally different paths.

Brian Morrissey:

Like is it

Brian Morrissey:

three kids?

Brian Morrissey:

I was sorry.

Brian Morrissey:

But like your daughter and like said, went in different paths.

Troy Young:

daughter is a banker,

Brian Morrissey:

Right.

Brian Morrissey:

So are, were you surprised at where they ended up?

Brian Morrissey:

if you were to go back when, when they were like young or are you not surprised

Troy Young:

You know, maybe a little bit, I remember when I first bought Seb electric guitar.

Troy Young:

we lived in Mill Valley at the time and he never touched it for three years.

Troy Young:

so a little bit, he then, he, yeah, he kind of, he, Seb isn't the kind of person that You know, like you couldn't sit him down at a piano and say, you know, learn the piano as a young person.

Troy Young:

He has to discover things himself.

Troy Young:

That's who he's, yeah, A little bit surprised.

Troy Young:

My other daughter's kind of super, super driven, analytical, you know, like kind of, you know, banker type.

Troy Young:

So

Troy Young:

she

Brian Morrissey:

child?

Troy Young:

uh, she's a, I'm gonna outwork you and I'm gonna beat you kind of

Brian Morrissey:

Oh, yeah.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay.

Brian Morrissey:

You got to do the 80 hour weeks.

Brian Morrissey:

Alex, what do you, what, what profession do you think your son is going to have here to have to predict right now?

Alex Schleifer:

Oh boy I don't know.

Alex Schleifer:

I think it's either going to be making video games or Working on a farm.

Alex Schleifer:

I think it's like he's, you know, between those two worlds right now.

Alex Schleifer:

So,

Brian Morrissey:

It's safer to go into, I think, the

Troy Young:

Maybe what he'll do is make the new Farmville.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah.

Alex Schleifer:

that would the amount of, farming cozy farming simulators that are coming out in gaming.

Alex Schleifer:

I don't think, you know, but it's, a massive industry of just, you know, chore simulators of people managing and I think post pandemic and just, you know, people can't buy their own houses and they, they, they don't have time to go out and touch the grass.

Alex Schleifer:

So they play these video games where they plant beets and, and, and

Troy Young:

We can maybe make that our third game after add and paywall,

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah, I find,

Brian Morrissey:

Farming Is

Brian Morrissey:

a great tax strategy, right?

Brian Morrissey:

If you're super rich,

Brian Morrissey:

I think.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah,

Alex Schleifer:

All right.

Alex Schleifer:

tell me

Brian Morrissey:

like,

Brian Morrissey:

owning, I think that's why Bill Gates owns, there's that, that's why the conspiracy theory about Bill Gates, because he owns so much, farmland.

Alex Schleifer:

Well, I know that there's

Alex Schleifer:

like, there's, you know, there's a lot of benefits to, having farmland because you can just apparently, make an egg building and build whatever you want in it, which is what people are doing around here.

Brian Morrissey:

if you're in the EU, they'll pay you not to farm on it too, depending on the market.

Brian Morrissey:

So, it's good.

Troy Young:

you keep coming back to hijacking media.

Alex Schleifer:

Me or Brian?

Troy Young:

Brian, you put it in it.

Brian Morrissey:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

in your notes,

Brian Morrissey:

Well, it has.

Troy Young:

right?

Brian Morrissey:

Does that even have to be said?

Brian Morrissey:

Like, I mean

Troy Young:

Well, but at first you talked about it like it was a new format.

Troy Young:

Yeah.

Troy Young:

Where this sort of conversational go direct to the, to the audience format and tech people saying we can make media too.

Troy Young:

We don't need your,

Troy Young:

your, your shit.

Troy Young:

and then to me, I just sort of thought of it as, I don't know, having lived in, in Silicon Valley and work with lots of technologists, it's sort of, uh, The job of tech as it applies to media and most things is put a new layer on top, right?

Troy Young:

To aggregate and to take, take it directly to the user and take data control and break shit to get there if necessary.

Troy Young:

Right?

Troy Young:

that's what Facebook is.

Troy Young:

And that's what Google is.

Troy Young:

It's the layer on top of the media.

Troy Young:

And through that you find immense power.

Troy Young:

And what you see in the way tech thinks is this kind of black and white.

Troy Young:

you know, they're all really kind of fundamentally smart, the, the good ones, obviously, and there's, there's this kind of tech righteousness that understands the world is a sort of solvable problem where they have better solutions for media.

Troy Young:

They do media better than media, right?

Troy Young:

And, you know, they were also neglected in high school, mostly,

Brian Morrissey:

But they also look down on media.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, it's very clear.

Brian Morrissey:

I mean, Zuckerberg is

Brian Morrissey:

now, like, just coming out with it.

Brian Morrissey:

He's most of these publishers don't even have He goes, we won't even take their content if they don't want it, but it's not that valuable anyway.

Brian Morrissey:

I

Troy Young:

So yeah, they make media, right?

Troy Young:

And they should make media because

Troy Young:

if they make media that's better than the media that you make, good on them.

Troy Young:

Like amazingly, say what you want, Alex, all in made media that people like better

Troy Young:

than other media.

Alex Schleifer:

Right.

Troy Young:

I mean, not, uh, not a lot of business media, not a lot of business media can sell out six,

Troy Young:

7, 000

Brian Morrissey:

I agree.

Alex Schleifer:

But you conflate, you conflate me not liking them, and not liking their politics, and not liking their message with, with me thinking that

Alex Schleifer:

they're not successful.

Alex Schleifer:

I, I I can say that, like, Fox is really successful.

Alex Schleifer:

Troy, really successful.

Alex Schleifer:

Alex Jones had a massive podcast.

Alex Schleifer:

Joe Rogan is hugely successful, but success to me doesn't validate why I should listen to them.

Alex Schleifer:

Like, you

Brian Morrissey:

I think to me it's more like I like to look at things and learn from them and understand them and then sort of

Brian Morrissey:

take them and like reconstitute them.

Brian Morrissey:

Because I think if you just dismiss things

Brian Morrissey:

that are clearly successful, you're not going to aren't there.

Brian Morrissey:

Lots of video games that you see that you don't like the dynamics of them or

Alex Schleifer:

Sure.

Alex Schleifer:

Sure.

Alex Schleifer:

Sure.

Alex Schleifer:

But you're, you're, you're a media analyst and maybe there's value to that.

Alex Schleifer:

But even let's say Jason speaks like 20 minutes, 40, 30 minutes on this show, Saks speaks another 20 minutes on this show.

Alex Schleifer:

I'm not wasting 45 minutes of my week on these guys.

Alex Schleifer:

Like, uh, why I, they're successful.

Alex Schleifer:

They ran a successful show.

Alex Schleifer:

People come in their show because they're successful.

Alex Schleifer:

Good for them.

Alex Schleifer:

I have other things to do.

Alex Schleifer:

I just don't like them and I don't find them particularly insightful and once you've heard that shtick over and over and you're, it's kind of, you get it.

Alex Schleifer:

Yeah, I get it.

Alex Schleifer:

I get it.

Alex Schleifer:

and I also like know that there's a huge kind of industry around successful people.

Alex Schleifer:

People want to listen to successful people.

Alex Schleifer:

I can tell you from firsthand experience that when I was head of design at Airbnb, I could fill a room of thousands of people that wanted to listen to me speak about I run the team and how I got here and stuff like that.

Alex Schleifer:

I couldn't give them that knowledge.

Alex Schleifer:

I got lucky.

Alex Schleifer:

I did what I did for 15, 20 years.

Alex Schleifer:

So I was good enough to get the

Alex Schleifer:

job, but, but, but, but, but we'll get to that.

Alex Schleifer:

But I think that at the end of the day, people want to be close to, to, to what they see as power or success, because they feel that they can learn from it.

Alex Schleifer:

Which is why, and you know, if you're an NFL star or whatever, then if you have a modicum of like, You know, media smarts, you can create a product.

Alex Schleifer:

I think it's completely unfair comparing like a billionaire to like some upstart journalist because the billionaire has like the light to the mouth attraction and that people want to hear like, well, I'll hear about their life.

Alex Schleifer:

And

Brian Morrissey:

Oh, I get it.

Brian Morrissey:

No, no, it's, an unfair.

Brian Morrissey:

It's an unfair.

Brian Morrissey:

It's leverage is an unfair advantage.

Brian Morrissey:

Quote, unquote unfair.

Brian Morrissey:

that's why

Alex Schleifer:

we're applying media genius to, to all this stuff.

Alex Schleifer:

It's not, it's just that's the way it is.

Alex Schleifer:

It's like It's like saying it's like seeing the the the the housewives of whatever minnesota are media geniuses it's like people just like to watch the car wreck and like to see the Wealth and like to hear the thing and it's it's it's great.

Alex Schleifer:

I'm happy for them Like i'm so happy that jason's successful.

Alex Schleifer:

He's so deserving of it I mean, you know like he's been brown nosing for 20 years that guy deserves a

Alex Schleifer:

break

Brian Morrissey:

it's inspiring

Alex Schleifer:

It is inspiring and I think it should teach us all to just suck up just do it You Just

Brian Morrissey:

yeah, no, that is true.

Brian Morrissey:

If there's if there's 1 lesson we can take from this episode is that the ends absolutely justify the means.

Alex Schleifer:

Yes.

Brian Morrissey:

Okay,

Alex Schleifer:

Good luck to them.

Brian Morrissey:

This is fun.

Alex Schleifer:

I'm glad we stayed on

Brian Morrissey:

Bye.

Troy Young:

you

Next Episode All Episodes Previous Episode

Listen for free

Show artwork for People vs Algorithms

About the Podcast

People vs Algorithms
A podcast for curious media minds.
Uncovering patterns of change in media, culture, and technology, each week media veterans Brian Morrissey, Alex Schleifer and Troy Young break down stuff that matters.
Get our newsletters:
https://www.peoplevsalgorithms.com/
https://www.therebooting.com/