How Odd Lots' Joe Weisenthal Turned Curiosity Into a Career, and a Hit Podcast

23:57And so we'd do things like aggressively screenshot charts from the analysts and just post them. And Pete, there was a lot of anxiety at first about that. But most of the banks liked it. A few complained and they filed takedown notices and stuff. I usually ask permission, but they're usually happy to have their chart published. They don't want the entire report published because that's their business. No, no, no, they don't want the entire report published. But most of the time, they were pretty happy, and the analysts, of course, loved it when they had their reports, or at least part of it, or spotlighted, et cetera.

24:26But because we were a blog or whatever it was at the time, we could just do that in a way that took several years, I would say, for the legacy media entities at the time to familiarize themselves with that. So, again, another one of these sort of leveling things going on at the time where someone just sort of junior or new at it could quickly catch up or in some ways supersede what the people who had been at it. Do you think that exists now? There's a leveling now. And so as you look across all the industries you're covering, you go, oh, if I'm new young Joe in 2026 and I'm coming in basically knowing nothing, where would I want to be where my lack of knowledge would not be a hindrance?

25:07You know, I think it's a little different. I mean, one of the things that I ask myself sometimes is when I look around the landscape, is there any place where, oh, they're doing something really cool and I'm not, you know, or I wish I were there? And by and large, yes, there's not really. I mean, there's all kinds of media properties that I admire, et cetera, but there's not really, you know. I even meant beyond outside of media, like whether it's like. So the one thing I was going to, the one thing I'll say more specifically, I do think, especially in the age of like substacks specifically, that there still are opportunities for someone to just sort of become the X, to use a Henry Blodgett word, on some topic.

25:50It's A-X-E. It's the old Wall Street term. Yeah, yeah. For the dominant analyst. The one who just sort of, you know what, I'm going to own this lane. I'm going to own this topic. And I do think, you know, someone could do it and the people do do it. And like, you know what, I'm just going to talk all the time about semiconductors. And I'm just going to post all the data as it is. Or, you know, the person who becomes the, you know, we're just going to focus on Wall Street purchases of single family homes or something like that. So I think there are opportunities to carve out lands for someone sufficiently motivated still.

26:23I do want to come back to Substack, but is it 2012 with the Times Magazine profile of you? That was 2012. Joe Weisenthal versus the Internet? Yeah, I think it was. The photo's you. You're awake and in bed with a laptop. Which was staged, by the way. It was obviously staged because your wife is faux sleeping next to you. Faux sleeping, yeah. Clearly, I assume. People thought, though, that that was a real photo. Well, people should grow up and understand how the world works. But it's an amazing article because, one, it's just a great profile of you in a moment of time. And it's also very clearly a New York Times writer going, what the fuck is going on in the world?

26:54Not just you. And he's describing you as a weird character who gets up at four in the morning, basically tweets and types all day long, never puts your phone aside until you pass out and you barely see your wife. And there were other articles like that, not about you saying like bloggers are dying doing this. But it was also just like, how can this thing be a product? How can this be a business? just kind of marveling at it. Like also this guy's like obsessed with speed and he's obsessed with, you know, getting the jobs number out before anybody else. But anyone who actually cares about that jobs number has a Bloomberg terminal.

27:27Right. And they get that jobs terminal before Joe even tweets it. So like to what end? Do you ever go back and look at that time and go, oh, what I was doing back then made sense at the time, but it's fundamentally wrong. Or actually what I was doing back then made sense and it's what I still want to be doing. Maybe less, you're not quite as frenetic as you were, right? You're not blogging. You're doing a podcast. I have two children now, so there's no way. You get two kids and you do a podcast a few times a week, right? And a newsletter a few times a week. I definitely don't go back and think anything I was doing was fundamentally wrong.

28:02I mean, there are things, you know, in retrospect, maybe I was commenting, you know, there are certainly articles I wrote that don't hold up or I wish I had known more. But by and large, I thought it was, I still think it was the right, it was the right approach. That cadence, that just sort of always on. I just want to, you know, this is going to sound so obnoxious. Great. But, and look, getting profiled in 2020, 2012 in the New York Times, it was incredible, etc. The only thing that I, and I thought this at the time, and I was really proud of the work we were doing at Business Insider. I thought it was good.

28:39I don't think it was just – I sort of resented a little bit this idea that we were just high-velocity clickbait. We certainly wanted clicks, and we certainly put spin on the ball to get clicks. And you were certainly high-velocity. And we were certainly high-velocity. But I truly think – I truly thought and still think that all of us in that environment – I was proud of the capital J journalism that we were doing. I thought it was good. I thought it was informative. I thought we were bringing voices that – I think where he's poking at is like where you would go, I can't remember what the example was, was Jobs Report or some report where you go, calamity.

29:15And then you write a new thing five minutes later because you've thought about it five more minutes ago. Maybe not. And then, you know, an hour later, actually, the thing I said an hour ago was wrong, which on the one hand, you can say, well, that's just someone learning as they go. I think you said something to that effect. Our audience likes that. And then a normal journalist would say, why don't you just figure out the right thing and then publish that? I think, you know, look, I mean, look, that's not wrong either. I think if you look at the market itself, I mean, the market, say, within the first hour or the first 15 minutes of a report is always whiplashy.

29:49I think if you look at CNBC or any financial TV, CNBC, Bloomberg, there's a range of opinions. The numbers came out. They beat their estimates, but the stock's down. Why is that? They throw out an initial idea and then it gets massaged and then eventually there's a conventional wisdom minutes to an hour later. So I don't think it's like that different. It's just that we were sort of doing talk radio. I mean, yeah, we were doing talk radio in the written text. And then you go from there to Bloomberg, which at the time confused me a little bit because Bloomberg was very staid, had a very staid reputation.

30:28You are not a staid person. And you also additionally confusing to me was you were going on TV. You did not seem like someone who one wanted to be on TV or that would be successful on TV. And I was confused about was that that you did you go so you could go on TV? So I'll tell you the story, which is I think so. I went to Bloomberg in October 2014. I think they had first reached out to me sometime in 2013 about a TV thing. You know, I think the sort of the gap between, at the time, Bloomberg sort of stayed approach and me, I mean, that was part of the appeal for them, right? They wanted— We're going to get this weirdo in.

31:09We're going to get this digital person who gets the internet and all that stuff and has a big social media presence. I think that was part of the appeal for them for sure. The original pitch was TV, and to your point, like, I didn't have any aspirations for TV. I like the Internet, and I didn't watch very much TV by and large. You know, we had it on in the office, but I never thought that was the medium of the future. We had some chats, and then eventually the sort of the offer was do TV and have this role doing digital within the newsroom and help them figure out getting the Internet and stuff like that.

31:47And the other thing that was going on at the time was Business Insider by 2014 had gotten very broad. So, you know, it started off with you, Silicon Alley Insider, and then Clusterstock. But then, you know, there was, by that point, there was sports, there was lifestyle, there was career advice, et cetera. And throughout summer of 2014, I sort of had this decision to make, which is if I was going to stay in the market's lane, which is what I really love, my role at Business Insider would get more and more narrow because the site was expanding so far horizontally. Or if I wanted to sort of stay in a place of prominence at Business Insider, I would have to start broadening my interest, which I didn't really want to do.

32:31So there were already some structural things at BI by that point that made it a slightly less natural home for me. Were you concerned at all about Business Insider's prospects? In retrospect, Henry said, well, there were multiple times where we nearly couldn't hit payroll. By 2014, not really. I thought it was great. It's just it was becoming a publication that was different from the one that I joined. It was also, you know, I loved posting directly to the site. But by 2014, there was editing, there was editors and all that stuff. I hated editors, you know. So then I was already a little bit sort of thinking about what my next thing was.

33:06But there was nothing else obvious out there. And then the reason that the Bloomberg opportunity appealed to me was if another publication had just said, let's do digital stuff, I was like, I already have a great job in digital media. And so I don't need to leave BI really. And if the TV alone thing, that wouldn't appeal to me because I didn't want to leave digital. But the opportunity for both, I was like, OK, if I don't say yes to this role, then what am I ever going to say yes to? Because, you know, you think, all right, if I don't say yes to this, then I'm really here for the long haul because no one else can put together that combination.

33:46And even though I didn't really aspire to do TV, I thought not many people get a chance to co-host a TV show. So just for the life experience. So what did you learn about your TV during that experience or what did you learn about yourself doing TV? I mean, I did have fun doing it. It was fun. Live TV is fun. From my perspective, TV is a lot of effort for a modest amount of journalistic output. I mean, you know, combing your hair and putting on a tie and getting makeup done and all of these things. A lot of people are involved. And then, you know, and then you have a conversation with someone that maybe lasts six or seven minutes or something like that, sometimes longer.

34:26You can do depth on TV. I will say the Bloomberg, the people who are on air at Bloomberg are very smart. They're very smart. They're not talking heads. They're not just people who can— No, totally. —with a strong jaw who can deliver. Yeah, yeah, totally. But it is a lot of time involved for what ends up being a fairly modest public footprint. um the sort of light bulb moment for me when thinking about i guess i think it was in 2021 so by that point we could back up at some point talk about the genesis of the podcast but we had started the podcast in um 2015 as a side side project both me and my co-host tracy had you know multiple other roles within the newsroom but then the head of tv at the time had this very good suggestion, which he said, you know, on days when you have a podcast episode out where it works, you should invite the guest on TV for a segment and talk to them live and then say, and if you want to hear a full, you know, 45-minute conversation with that person, listen to the Outlaws podcast.

35:31I was like, ah, it's a very good idea, very obvious. And that was really nice. But that was the moment I realized those weren't very sad. You know, you had this really in-depth conversation with someone. Right. Now it's with a dumb version. And then a week later, you do this really condensed version. And it's like, I just like doing the podcast so much more. I really like the time that you get to spend with the person. And that was sort of the beginning of, no, this is the podcast is really what I want to do. You're doing it in 2015. You said it didn't click. Yeah. 2021. Yeah. Six years of it not clicking.

36:06Yeah. Why are you doing it for six years? If it's not clicking, why is Bloomberg letting you do it for six years? Because for several years, Bloomberg didn't have a podcast team. And so there was no one paying attention to the fact that no one was listening, which was the biggest gift. It was incredible luck because we really didn't know what we were doing. I can't go back and listen to those old episodes. It's too painful. We did have a few. You know, I may be exaggerating a little bit. We actually put on a live show in, I want to say, November 2019, right before the pandemic and a bunch of people came out.

36:38People were actually starting to listen a little bit. By late 2018, 2019, we started getting momentum. But we really went years with just, it was cricket. And the only reason we survived is because. Why were you doing it if there wasn't an audience? I think it was fun. I think we really liked, it was a break. It was a different format. I mean, it's kind of easy. It's fun to talk to people. Yeah, I know. We're not supposed to say that. This is very hard work. Joe, this is the hardest work there is. But it was nice. is, I mean, especially, you know, you're in a studio, it's relaxing. There's not cameras all over you and stuff.

37:18Oh, the other thing too. So when we started, you know, I mentioned we have an episode coming out about the history of rope. Most of our episodes were like that in the beginning. So we were sort of consciously off the news. It's like, let's just do sort of curiosities. And we'd talk about historical, we did multiple episodes, for example, in probably 2016 about the Florida real estate bubble of the 1920s. You know, there's not stuff that... Actually, I think to answer the question specifically, the podcast allowed for a really good outlet to talk about things that were not in the news. And that was just really fun.

37:56We'll be right back with Joe Weisenthal, but first a word from a sponsor.

38:03Are you stuck staring at your W-2? Are tax refund worries holding you back? you probably have FOMO, the fear of messing up. The fix? Using TurboTax on Intuit Credit Karma. They find every credit and deduction to help you get every refund dollar you deserve or your money back. It's time to overcome your fear of messing up and get your taxes done right. Start filing today in the Credit Karma app. Spring Fest is heating up at Lowe's. And for a limited time, we have the extra big deals you need to impress guests. Get your outdoor space ready and save$50 on the select Cobalt 24-volt blower kit. Now$79.

38:47Plus, save$80 on the Char-Broil Performance 4-Burner Grill. Now$199. It's springtime, and our best lineup is here at Lowe's. Valid to 413. While supplies last, selection varies by location. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for$15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three month plan equivalent to$15 per month required.

39:26Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. Default terms at mintmobile.com.

39:35And we're back. And so now you have this very successful thing. You guys had a big fancy 10-year party at Nine Orchard for a fancy hotel. That's right. Very expensive. You are the thing that all the media companies say they want, which is a brand. Yeah. They want these people who are brands. They're looking in the world of substacks and going, oh, how do we get so-and-so who's got a substack to come work with us? or how do we generate the next person who could be that person? But you seem like you would also be in really, really good fit for that sub-stack lifestyle. You could take what you're doing and go start a sub-stack or whatever.

40:16Your podcast, I'm sure, could monetize really well if you took it out. However you and Tracy have talked about it. Why are you still at Bloomberg instead of going off being a solo practitioner? It seems like we're in a moment right now that is really built for your skills specifically. I mean, the honest truth is that Bloomberg is just, you know, first of all— They pay really well. We'll stipulate that. It's a really natural editorial home for us. I mean, you know, you mentioned, and it's very real, that lots of publications, they want to figure out a way where they could still be a—the umbrella brand means something, but also the individual sub-brand also means something.

40:55There's such a— And they've been—historically, they were very uneasy with that. Yeah, totally. What happens if we build up so-and-so, then they go off and leave, and then they've taken all their brand equity and we're screwed. Now they want the solo proprietor as a brand. Yeah. The thing, it's a really good fit. I mean, one of the things that a lot of people listen to, you know, we have a lot of terminal users who are fans of the podcast. It's a really natural alignment of, you know, we do have this sort of broad mass appeal, and we have a lot of listeners who are not in finance at all. But because we also have a really dedicated professional finance audience, like it's just a it's a really natural home for us from an editorial perspective.

41:39But I'm also assuming that you have run the numbers and or the people have come to you and run the numbers and said, if we just port what you're doing right now and you just own this podcast or you and Tracy own the pod, whatever it is, you can make 4x what you're making at Bloomberg, blah, blah, blah, whatever the numbers are. In theory, there should be a lot of opportunity available for you financially that could say, well, and the Bloomberg people can still listen to us because they already know where we are, et cetera. Presumably, you've done those numbers. I don't really believe any of those numbers.

42:09I genuinely don't. And, you know, when you think about the various, you know, the costs involved and the number of people, you know, we have three full-time producers working on the podcast. And you start thinking about all of these headaches. Like, I don't want to deal with that. I don't want to deal with renting – you know, just like I really like – You don't want to run your own business. You like the comfort of having someone else run the business and you be the talent. I suppose – I do – I mean, that's not a bad thing. No, it is really easy and nice to be within a large organization, a large organization that has a lot of resources.

42:43And again, a large organization whose whole mission so fits with ours. You know, I could imagine, like, I do think, I genuinely can't overstate the importance of how well we fit within that organization. Honestly, even just having access to Bloomberg terminals, which would be another whole thing, it's a really nice home. And then there's so much expertise within the organization about all these topics. Not all the time, but, you know, we often have people from Bloomberg contribute in some way or reporters or, you know, there's all the Bloomberg BNF people who know all about energy, et cetera. It just fits really well editorially.

43:29And that makes life very easy and makes it very natural. Good for you for knowing what you want. Yeah, it's what I want. And also having what you want. Yeah. It's pretty great. Pretty good. Yeah. What do you think—we've kind of talked about it, but what do you think makes the show work for an average listener? Is it the broad knowledge that you and Tracy have? Because you can jump in, you can talk about energy, you can talk about the history of rope. Yeah. Is it your lack of knowledge that sort of makes them feel like they're learning with you? What is the appeal? I think—I mean, the lack of knowledge, you know, we're informed and, you know, several of the things we've talked about, we've been covering our entire adult lives and we know quite a bit about.

44:12But I think by and large, it's that the learning along with the audience, I think, really is a big part of it. I think that's a huge aspect of it. Just explain this. And the fact that, again, our sort of mission is to ask those simple questions, clarifying questions that somehow work where the professional audience doesn't feel talked down to, because I think they appreciate it as well. But also the sort of general public audience, the non-professional audience also feels like those questions land at a level. I think one of the things that we tell our guests prior to the recording when we're sitting down, we always say, we have the most sophisticated audience in the world.

44:53Feel free to go as deep and technical as you can. You know, imagine you're at a conference of your industry peers, and that is the sort of register that you should be speaking at. But when you say an acronym or you refer to something, we don't know what it is. We're going to stop. You don't even explain yield curve to your audience, but if it's a more sophisticated or more esoteric term. And I think we have a pretty good intuition for like when we say, wait, pause. What does that mean exactly? And that's the kind of thing that I think you can only sort of build up with practice. And that way you can get the sophisticated conversation without totally going over everyone's heads.

45:32What happens when that level of sophistication comes up against, I'll just use shorthand, the Trump administration, chaos, right? Where like, you know, you go back to April of last year with tariff day and, you know, there's whatever Donald Trump said about the rationale for the tariffs. There's whatever math they did or didn't do to come up with the tariffs. There's the fact that then the tariffs move around day to day and then it comes up with new rationale. And so everything that you would learn that a normal, rational person would learn to assess how markets work, how economics work, kind of goes out the window because there's just – what's the John Mulaney bit?

46:07There's the horse in the hospital running through the hospital. Where everything that you would normally bring to bear kind of doesn't work because you're working with some kind of unknowable psychology. I think the answer is having good intuitions about guests and having talked to people for years and years that we just trust. And again, yeah, like April 2025, that was a wild time, et cetera. But the good news— It was very exciting for you, I assume, right? I mean, I remember the week before Liberation Day and everyone could felt it was coming. I remember we talked to the team. It was like, this is going to be a huge month for us.

46:46This is going to be a historic month for us. So, you know, lock in everyone because we're going to work like crazy and we're going to get as many episodes out as possible. And we're going to, yeah, we're not going to take any breaks for the whole month. But I think what we could do, and everyone had a million questions and no one really knew what was going on, et cetera. But on any given day, I think the one thing that we really had was we had people that we liked and knew, who we trusted, who we thought had good judgment, who were informed and understood things. and the thing that we did was found good people that could help make sense of the world.

47:23I was following it, not nearly as closely as you were, but it seemed like the commentary was essentially, Donald Trump's crazy, this goes against every sort of like basic understanding of how economics and trade works. And then anyone who defended it was just sort of a Trump flunky. And so kind of beyond, like they had to say, Donald Trump knows what he's doing, regardless of whether that was true or not. And so there was kind of pointless to talk to them. And then after you talk to the first couple people who say Donald Trump doesn't know what he's doing, what else can you learn? Well, so that's a good example of like, OK, it's one thing to say this.

47:59None of this makes sense. This is going to wreck the economy. Right. So maybe that's the April 8th conversation. But by the April 15th conversation, you know, we were talking to clothing retailers and just asking, well, what are you doing right now? How are you thinking about your orders for the next year? And then you could step out of the, you know, step out of the conversation. Is this good, bad or wise? This is just reality. So how are people dealing with that reality? So a lot of our really good episodes from the time were really just talking to various businesses who didn't actually have the luxury of debating whether this is good or bad or smart or whatever.

48:34They just had to live in the world, which is not that different from spring and summer 2020. You know, when the lockdowns happened, et cetera. A bunch of people didn't have the luxury of debating things. They just had to figure out, well, how am I going to keep my business open? How am I going to place orders? How am I going to do X? So in a way, we were really in our comfort zone there because we had sort of realized that there's all kinds of people, supply chain people, et cetera, who can just answer. How is this working now? Yeah, how is this working now? Not is it a good thing? Yeah. And so we certainly had those conversations.

49:06Is it good? Is it bad? Et cetera. But our best ones at the time were like, let's talk to the shipping guy we talked to in 2020 about what's happening at the ports. Let's talk to the retailer about how they're placing the orders, et cetera, because they didn't have any, you know, again, they don't have the luxury of debating it. One of the things I wanted listeners to get out of this was one tidbit of information they could use at a cocktail party or whatever qualifies for a cocktail party in 2026. So let's make it a terrorist question. Okay. April 2025, total chaos. All the smart people are saying this is going to blow up the economy.

49:43Trump tacos on a bunch of stuff. But still a lot of those tariffs exist. The economy has not collapsed. Right. What did all of the people who thought the tariff regime was going to collapse the economy get wrong in April 2025? I would say a couple. I mean, so look, obviously, they came down to a significant degree. So I think you have to start there. But I think, and again, I would say it goes back to the lesson from 2020. Businesses are incredibly resilient, or many of them. American companies are incredibly dynamic, and the ones that exist are extremely well run. And they find ways to improvise and pivot quickly.

50:29I mean, you probably remember having the same questions in, you know, early 2020. It's like, how is any restaurant going to stay in business, et cetera? But then the restaurants are like, you know what? We're going to shift to takeout, and we're going to put a plexiglass. And they were open the next week, right? And they found a way to do it. And all of the big firms, you know, they were pretty surprisingly agile in retrospect in the midst of what was the biggest global coordinated shock in history, the pandemic. And I think I've come to think this over time that, you know, people may underestimate the resilience of a well-run American business.

51:13Well-run American companies where the people are paid a lot of money to deal with these disruptions. Given that we're going to have a disruption again, who knows when, we're going to have one. How are you going to use that thinking? Because what you want, you don't want to overlearn the old lessons. You don't want to overlearn the lessons. That's right. It's really tough. And I do think the big lesson that people overlearned was sort of assuming after COVID that we would have some sort of long quasi-recession or something like that, because that was the experience of 2008, 2009, and the slow growth after that.

51:52You know, it's really hard to know because the next big shock probably won't look like the last one in any respect. And, you know, I do think, OK, the resilience of American companies is a very important thing to internalize. There's nothing that can really, you know, company, if you have like a broad general economic downturn where spending really slows down sustained wage dramatically, a lot of companies are going to go out of business, regardless of how much Elon, the management team has and so forth. So, you know, there is a limit to how much creativity can save you. And I also, by the way, you know, I think it's important, the story of the tariffs is not over by any stretch.

52:39And one of the things, you know, after the initial shock, you probably I remember it's like, are the tariffs going to set off a wave of inflation was the big question. And my view at the time and one of the things that I think has held up well is, and I did say this going back to last spring, which is that I didn't think the tariffs would be inflationary per se. The way I conceived of it is they would raise the cost of doing business. They would make business. It was like throwing some sand at the gears of business. And I think that is true. So it's not that they necessarily – that consumer prices automatically go up in lockstep, but that doing business in America becomes harder.

53:20And you definitely see that. When some of those costs do go to consumers. And then some of them definitely do. Or companies eat some of the costs. And yet, like, you know, the manufacturing sector in the United States has really struggled in the last year. I would say tariffs are definitely a part of it because even if the idea is to help American manufacturing, any sort of reasonably complex business is going to have inputs and raw materials that they import. And, you know, you see it, you know, we did, we were in Alaska last year, and we talked to this guy who runs the biggest furniture chain.

53:55You went to Alaska. No, we like talked to this guy and he said, you know, so we were asking him how he dealt with the tariffs. And he's like, well, we've shifted some of our imports from China to India, But even the Indian exporters, they don't necessarily want to make commitments for a year out. Maybe they only want to make commitments six months out because they don't know if the tariff schedule is going to change. So this is the kind of thing where he can live day to day or month to month with shifting imports from China to India. But the business is not going to be as efficient because they can't make orders as far in advance as they could.

54:32So I think there's a lot of little things like that where they don't amount to a big bang, but they have this sort of degrading effect on American productivity. And I don't think that story is over yet in terms of how it shakes out. So we established at the beginning of this conversation that you're going to keep doing this no matter what because you're just sort of built for it. So whether you're at Bloomberg or anywhere else, this is sort of what you're going to do. But I also know that you are a country music aficionado slash aspiring songwriter, guitar player. Yeah. Tell us about that. I love, all my life I've written music, or at least since high school, I love songwriting.

55:11I love playing music. I love performing it. A couple of years ago, I think maybe it was 2022, I had a birthday party and I put on some country music. And my friend who is there is like, who doesn't like country, he said, I'm going to drink till I like country. And I was like, oh, that's a great, that's a great title for a song. And so I wrote one over the weekend and I uploaded it to SoundCloud. I played it into my phone. I uploaded it to SoundCloud. And someone from Nashville like reached out and like, that's a really good song. Like I could maybe sell this to an artist to get it recorded. And I was like, oh, my God, it's like the dream.

55:47That's all I want. I would sacrifice my entire journalism career just to have one of my songs be played by a recording artist. It didn't sell. A label put a hold on the song, and then they shopped it around to their artists, and none of them bit on it. But then I really got the bug to get back into music. And then some friends and I, we started a band called Light Sweet Crude, and we played a few shows. We played shows in 2023, 2024, last year. or keep playing, you know, it's a side. That's not your music I hear in the odd lots. People have always asked, they're like, oh, do you write? No, we didn't write that.

56:24And so is that a second slash third career for you, or is that just a hobby? Unfortunately, I think it's just a hobby. I mean, it is a dream still to have a song that I wrote get recorded by someone. I love songwriting. And I don't think my voice, I couldn't really be as successful. My singing voice isn't that strong. I can sing, but it's not really, it's not quite at the level. All right, channels listeners, if you are in a position to help Joe achieve another one of his dreams, let me know. This is the one, this is the one that if anyone out there, please just find an artist who will perform one of my songs.

56:59That's all I want. Done and done. Joe Weisenthal, thank you for your time. Thanks. That was a blast. Thanks again to Joe Weisenthal. He is a fun guy to talk to. Highly recommend. In a minute, I'll be talking to director Adam Balalow, but first, a word from a sponsor.

57:37app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday.

57:48Adam Balalo is a documentary filmmaker. He's made a bunch of great stuff. Most recently, the Funny and Odd Telemarketers miniseries for HBO a couple of years ago. Highly recommend you check that out. Now he's got a new movie out. It's called Deep Faking Sam Altman. It is one of those titles that tells you exactly what it's about. Adam creates a fake Sam Altman using the same tech that powers Sam Altman's enormously powerful open AI. Adam, I love a stunt that gets carried out all the way. Did you go into this project thinking this is going to be a stunt movie? No, definitely not. I went into this thinking this was going to be like potentially a traditional bio doc on Sam Altman or a larger doc about AI and Sam Altman being the entry point into the conversation.

58:37One of the two. And it ended up being neither of those. It ended up really being a story about humans and our experience with AI and how our lives are changing and by the day almost because of AI. So it's more about humans than it is about AI. It's more about humans than it is about Sam Altman, who may or may not be a human. Yeah, and it does not appear in the movie, much like Roger Smith in Michael Moore's Roger and Me doesn't appear in that movie. You guys directly referenced that in the studio. Were you thinking about Roger and Me the whole time you were making that movie i definitely was as altman started to ignore me and i started the pursuit immediately roger and me came to mind because it was you know there was there were similarities i mean obviously similarity between altman and roger smith being they're both ceos of massive corporations um similarities between me and michael moore being we're both documentary filmmakers seeking an interview.

59:43But then there were even more similar similarities like me being, you know, in the WGA and being on the picket line. And part of what we were fighting and during the strike was AI. I mean, that was people don't don't people forget that was one of the main points of contention. It became one of the main points. It didn't start out that way as those negotiations were starting. And then it sort of leapt to the forefront. The fake Sam Altman that you guys make and it takes a lot of work on your part you guys fly to india hire a firm you hire an actor to be the sake the fake fake sam altman that you're going to deep fake you spend all this time and effort making this and then you realize it's not a very convincing sam altman um i'm sure well you guys show in the movie you guys say it's very disappointing because you've got this sam sam allman doesn't doesn't fake anybody out but as a filmmaker is that a thing that that your tech the tech and effort you put into this doesn't actually get rid of your job yet i mean yeah i didn't i didn't think that was where you were going with the question but but i think on on numerous levels it was a good thing my editor alex mckenzie liked to say that every time i screwed up it was good for the film because you know nobody wants to see somebody winning you know what i mean and and every single step of the way it's like i was falling on my face which obviously was funny, but also, yeah, I mean, I think to answer your question, I don't think, I think the deep fake technology is going to advance so quickly and become so perfect within by probably by the end of the year that the film in a way documents what I like to call a very quaint moment in the history of the film.

1:01:34of AI. And by that, I mean, it's a moment when AI was not yet perfect. Right. So to the visible eye and ear, you can tell that's not Sam Altman. Yeah. When did you guys, it looked like you guys made this, what, 2024? Yeah, it was 2024 into 2025. We were shooting and editing basically up until the premiere, right before the premiere at South by Southwest and May of 2025. So do you think if you made this movie today with the exact same conceit that you would have a much more convincing sam altman that it would that it would uh convince kara swisher she was talking to the real sam altman i don't think it would convince her but i think i would have a far more convincing deep fake and as well you know i think one of my favorite parts of the movie is really when when Sandbots takes over and he starts making, you know, he starts making B-roll himself.

1:02:34The stuff that's in the movie was largely created with Runway. And I think that even that app has like advanced so much since we made it. I think at some point in the very near future, the B-roll and archival that AI generates will also be close to perfect. And that's kind of scary. Yeah, this is sort of the core debate right now. And we don't really know what's going to pan out. But is whether AI and associated tech is going to be stuff that's used to speed up movie making, whether it's going to reduce costs, all of that stuff. but it still is fundamentally a human-led project or whether we are going to get to the point where you can basically type in a prompt and make a whole movie or something close to that.

1:03:29Ben Affleck, you probably saw that clip of him talking on Joe Rogan, says, yeah, that's not going to happen. That's not how this tech's going to work. It's never going to be good enough. You seem to think that this stuff will be good enough sooner than later. Yeah, I mean, I think it'll be good enough. You know, it probably already is. I think that the question is what you consider good enough. I think it will be able to create kind of a standard traditional documentary or news footage, right? Maybe even entire, you know, short or feature length documentary. That will be good enough, right? Good enough.

1:04:10But what's missing is the artistry. and the artistry really comes from the human touch this is something that uh that benny safty and i talked about during our q a last week um after one of the screenings is what makes our films what makes us interested in filmmaking and what what draws us to to filmmaking really is is the idea of like the happy accident you know and it's not what what's not what's interesting about film and art is that it's created by humans is that it's not perfect that that there's something intangible about it that you can't put your finger on that makes it um different and ai is not going to be able to replicate that it will be able to make i think very dry and and traditional documentary or or even movies um is this something people are going to want to watch possibly like i feel like there's i see a lot of true crime uh docs on like and i'm talking about like the Z grade stuff on like Pluto TV, no disrespect to Pluto or Tubi, right?

1:05:30That it could create easily create, like, why not? Like, but is it going to create something like similar to, you know, a Michael Moore film like Bowling for Columbine? I don't think so. But, but that, but that, I mean, there's a middle ground, right? Where you say, well, human sort of steering the thing and coming up with ideas and maybe adding bits of of of the unexpected and then a bulk of the work that would be done by humans working for that human or with that human has been replaced by robots. That sounds like where you think we're going. Yeah, possibly. I think I mean, there's a there's a number of schools of thought on this, you know.

1:06:13There are those who think like who say, well, your job's not going to be replaced by AI will be replaced by a human that can knows how to work with and do ai like very very well and much better than you um so that's one school of thought obviously the other school of thought is that yes your job will be replaced by ai all of you and i talked to some you know whistleblowers at open ai who truly believed that so it was scary talking to them and hearing that because they're the ones who were like on the front line, like creating this stuff. So I had to figure they probably know something I don't.

1:06:52Um, and then obviously there's the more rosy school of thought that like, none of this is going to happen and it's a giant bubble and it's just going to burst and we're, we're worrying over nothing. Yeah. I don't believe the latter one. No, no, neither do I. Uh, it's, it's, it's, it's here. The, the movie ends with you walking up to San Altman's, mansion in Russian Hill to drop off the digital Sam Altman? Because you haven't talked to him the entire time he made the movie. Do you know if he looked at it? Did you get any response back from him or his people? We have yet to get any response. You know, either way, like either, like he's basically, I think what he's, he's done the smartest thing he could do, which is completely ignore the film they ignore its existence because if he tried to shut it down that'd probably be the best thing he could do for the film I think you know we are just starting out our theatrical release like it just premiered last week in New York and it's premiering this weekend in LA so uh and we we have yet to book any screenings in San Francisco which is odd but like at some point, maybe we will.

1:08:06I don't know if they're just scared up there of booking it. But at some point, he's going to have to address it. I think someone's going to ask him in public or somebody, you know, he's going to he can't completely ignore it forever. Do you have a deal to get this in people's homes via streaming? Not yet. We're holding off. It was really important to me to do a theatrical and to take it around the country. And, you know, I think there's a lot of interest in AI at the moment and among the general public. I think there's a lot of anxiety. People want to talk about it. So it's been a great response in theaters.

1:08:47And I've been trying to do as many Q &As as possible. So I'm kind of just trying to do like almost like a roadshow type of thing and take it around as many places I can go and hold off on on doing a stream, a streaming deal until until we feel it's time. OK, well, thanks for including me in your round of Q &A's. I appreciate it. And good luck with the screenings. Yeah, thank you. Thanks again to Adam Balalo and Joe Weisenthal and my producer, Charlotte Silver. Thanks to our advertisers and to you guys. See you soon. Ah ah