The “Popcast” hosts on interviewing Taylor Swift, killing the written review, and whether literacy is over

17:30Annie Zaleski:That seems great. That seems very civil. I wish someone would do that to me.

17:34Joe Coscarelli:We'll think about it after the show. So, yes, the answer is yes. I don't. I think the part of me that used to be fearful about getting rinsed on the Internet for disliking a thing that was popular or well-loved probably got washed out of me in the mid 2010s. been through any number of bumps in the road as far as being a critic on the internet. I do think that the way you write a piece of criticism, a 1500 word notebook in the New York Times that appears on page C3 with a photo and add a URL is different than the way we make a vertical video of me inhabiting space talking about music. There is a tone that I think you can achieve being either critical, negative, or contemplative when people see your face.

18:27Joe Coscarelli:That may not be what they imagine your face is like when you're reading something that's negative. But I think back to a song video we did about Alex Warren, Ordinary, which is one of the biggest defining singles of 2025, that is genuinely a contemptible piece of media. It should not exist in the world. But I think we were able to deliver a video that I think was approachable and fun while also being extremely clear about what my critical position is.

18:57Annie Zaleski:To the point where Alex Warren used it as part of his look at all these haters tour promo intro. Shout out Alex Warren. Like honestly, great move. Totally embrace it. Ben, you're also, the flip side of that is the booking and we're interviewing these people. And I actually think ultimately it is the fact that we are negative about certain things and we don't pull punches, even when it comes to major A-list artists that ultimately allow us to book the level of talent that we do. And that's why the critical component, the John and Joe chat component. Can you explain why is that? Yeah, because I think it goes again to asking the hard questions.

19:37Annie Zaleski:Like, sure, there will be X amount of artists every year or in the run of this show who are like, those guys said something mean about me a year or two ago. I'll never go on that show. But I think in the same way that they know coming on our show, they're not going to get to approve questions. They're not going to get to approve photos, which most entertainment press does these days, period.

20:00Joe Coscarelli:Yeah, whether they admit it or not, most entertainment press that is well-regarded, A-list press, there are behind-the-scenes negotiations of approval. We do not engage with them. That's a non-starter for us. So you're talking about Rolling Stone or who you're talking about?

20:14Annie Zaleski:I don't – you'd have to ask those places.

20:17Joe Coscarelli:As a media reporter, Ben, you tell us.

20:20Annie Zaleski:But yeah, I think that there are any number of places that we're competing with that get to set the terms. Get their terms set for them. Yeah, that set terms with an artist. And we have canceled interviews the day before they happen when we're told you can't ask about X, Y and Z. And we say we have the same rules that you you artists have the same rules as Donald Trump when it comes to being interviewed by The New York Times. Like, would you like it if, you know, the Trump administration or the Biden administration had final cut on everything you do or say in their presence? So all of which is to say, I think that us holding a line both ethically and critically allows us to be a platform that is taken more seriously by artists, their teams, their fans and the general public.

21:10Joe Coscarelli:One additional thing that I'll add to that is my feeling is if as an artist, an A-list artist especially, who can't handle a tiny bit of criticism about a song or a movie or a TV show that you participated in, you might struggle over 90 minutes on the couch having like a grown-up conversation with us if that's really where you're coming from. And I think, obviously, there have been people that we've had conversations with representatives or even with the artists themselves. And there is a sense of, oh, no, you didn't like Project A. You didn't like Project B. And my response is, well, then come talk about it.

21:48Joe Coscarelli:If you feel so passionately about it, I literally have a couch for you to come and share that opinion.

21:54Jon Pareles:Is there anybody – are there any artists who come to mind who did take you up on that who were like, you know, as you guys were in discussions for this, you know, for one of these interviews, they were like, ah, you know, didn't like that. something in the past, you said, come talk about it. And they were like, you know what, let's, I'll do that.

22:07Annie Zaleski:Yeah. I mean, Andre 3000 straight up asked John, like, you know, why, why did the album play different from you for you than the live show? Like you wrote a mixed review, you know, what were you getting at? You know? So, so I think hopefully we could be a place to hash those out. And there are, you know, there are, they know who they are. There are artists who have a standing offer to come to chat. We'd love to know

22:32Jon Pareles:who they are, too,

22:33Annie Zaleski:just for what it's worth. The listeners of the show would also like to know.

22:36Joe Coscarelli:I promise when they take us up on the offer, you'll be the first to know. But, I mean,

22:39Annie Zaleski:our episode this week, I think, is a good example. We have Sam Levinson. We have the exclusive interview with Sam Levinson, the creator, director, writer of Euphoria after the finale. And I had interviewed him at the start of the season for print, and I had said, you know, let's see how this season plays out and come talk about it. And the season played out with largely negative reviews and people didn't like what he did. And I had asked him the hard questions before the season. I think he knew we were going to ask him hard questions after the season. And yet he was still willing to sit there and take them because I think he knew that the conversation would be in good faith.

23:20Joe Coscarelli:I often say criticism is an act of love. And I do genuinely mean that as someone who's been a critic for the entirety of my professional life. If I, as a critic, take the time, the energy to absorb a work of art, give thoughts on it, give perspective on it, whether I liked it or not is actually to me a secondary concern. It's more, have I taken it seriously? And the gesture of offering feedback is in fact a positive gesture. I would say not every artist sees it that way,

23:52Annie Zaleski:but it's how I experience it. We were talking to the chef Flynn McGarry the other week about how the New York Times food critics in particular used to really shape what got cooked in restaurants and drive a level of ambition that there's now like really no point to because it doesn't matter whether the New York Times food critic is impressed in the same way. I mean, pop criticism has always had a slightly less like gatekeeper power with pop music. But do you find that they listen to you? I mean, do you find the power of criticism partly is a feedback loop where you like realize that their next album is partly in reaction to something you said, right?

24:22Annie Zaleski:Does that still, does that happen? Not, no. I think the artists, the teams, and the labels continue to care about it a bit more than the fans because they don't read. I mean, they care about it now that they could see us in clips and we're part of that dialogue, I think. But that's part of the reason why we wanted to pursue these mediums because you can see the difference from if you write a record review and if you speak a record review, like in terms of its impact, right? I don't, I mean, do you feel that way? I think like you could, we could, we care about the written word and I'd love to be doing meaningful profiles and read John's record and show reviews.

25:03Annie Zaleski:But if the audience isn't there, we have to meet them where they're at. So I think the, it's, it's revitalized our relevance in those conversations, I think to adapt to new mediums.

25:16Joe Coscarelli:And just to answer Ben's question just in slightly more detail, I think that there are different categories or tiers of artists, and I don't mean famous, less famous. I mean people who believe that a critic is there as a sort of sounding board and people who literally couldn't identify me no matter how many videos I make. Um, there are extremely well-known artists who are in the first category who I know pay attention and pay attention at a close level. But I think the thing that I always try to remind people of is, look, my perspective is informed. It's smart. It's one amongst many. If you feel like you want to embrace it by all means, and if for whatever reason you need to push it, you need to push it away.

26:01Joe Coscarelli:That might be revealing in its own way.

26:02Annie Zaleski:Without revealing like private conversations, is there an artist in that first category, just somebody who's very interested in criticism, open to feedback that like, you know, that comes to mind? someone like rosalia who we had on our show she's a spanish pop star who engages across many genres she's a you know a beyonce in the making but who doesn't maybe have the commercial impact of that but is in every critical and artistic conversation and a live context sort of at the top of the field but is still a bit of like a connoisseur's pick and I've interviewed her multiple times over the years in various formats.

26:41Annie Zaleski:I interviewed her in a short form YouTube show that I had 10 or so years ago. I did a big print profile of her and then for her most recent album, she came on. And, you know, it was interesting for an artist like her or Bad Bunny, who I mentioned earlier, like we were some of the first people on earth outside of their teams and their business associates who'd heard their new music. And so you can tell when they actually want to know what you were drawn to.

27:08Joe Coscarelli:Olivia Rodrigo. I mean, even on the Olivia Rodrigo episode, in the middle of the episode, she just sort of stops everything and says, can I just ask you guys, what did you think of A, B, and C? And literally open the conversation by saying, I've been reading you for years. I've been watching the show for a long time. Like, I think that's an example of someone who is in a tier of artists who you would think would be almost too famous to even be mindful of what a critic or reporter would say. And there she is on the couch being like, I'm here specifically because of the things you've written and because of the things that you've reported.

27:39Annie Zaleski:And that speaks to the beat conversation as well, because these are sources, essentially, who we've had the pleasure of getting to know over a large span of time. So, you know, A$AP Rocky, same thing. You know, it's like a lot of the people who we've had the most success with on our show, we've reported on in the past. And so we come with a level of knowledge and they know our taste and we know their taste. And we've sort of seen them at various points in their journey. And I think that lends itself to a different tier of conversation.

28:09Jon Pareles:One thing that you guys mentioned a few minutes ago was, you know, the idea that the ways in which people consume criticism has changed. And that's one of the reasons why you guys have moved more into video podcasting, short form video criticism and whatnot. As I was scrolling through the last like year of you guys' bylines, it did strike me that there were very few written reviews. Most of the criticism that you've done was in audio or video or like framing these interviews that you've done. I mean, do you guys, I mean, do you just not write reviews down anymore at all? Is it all audio and video criticism?

28:45Jon Pareles:And when did that specifically change?

28:47Joe Coscarelli:Yeah, I think it's overwhelmingly audio and video. I think for me personally, it changed when we began the Song of the Week vertical video series, which was maybe February or March of last year. I think everybody in our department was very encouraging of saying, go try this out. This is really before the full reporter video push at the New York Times, before the sense that most work had to have a video component in addition to a written component. I think I was given a bit of a green light to say, go try this out, see what you can make of it. And we sort of invented what we sort of casually call the car song series, which is me driving around in my car talking about new music.

29:28Joe Coscarelli:that has taken priority. I think probably over the course of the next year as the rhythm of the show settles down, it's been a little bit erratic up until now, but we're now on a weekly cycle. Every Thursday, new YouTube interview. Every Tuesday, new vertical video for Song of the Week. As those things kind of settle down, I think probably once a month, there'll be like real criticism, written criticism coming from me.

29:55Annie Zaleski:Yeah, I mean, interestingly, the one thing that you wrote and that we didn't make video about in the last couple of months is Kanye West that, you know, and you did a critic's notebook about the album and the live show that we saw. And we were sort of trying to figure out if it was a, an audio episode or a video episode or what we wanted to do with it. And ultimately you just wrote a piece like you might've wrote a piece a couple of years ago. Would you like to have him on? Sure. Yeah, of course.

30:19Joe Coscarelli:To me, that's not a, I mean, I'm, I'm also writing a book about Kanye. So, uh, you know, that's not a, like, that to me is not exactly a red line. You know, that's a person who's a legitimate newsmaker who is going through an incredibly strange stretch of his career.

30:36Annie Zaleski:And who hasn't been asked tough questions in a really long time. So yes, the answer is yes. Have you talked to him for the book?

30:41Joe Coscarelli:Pause.

30:42Annie Zaleski:That's enough. Are you no commenting? Yeah, I'm no commenting. All right, fair enough. But Max, to your question about writing or not writing, like, I come at it, I'm a news and features writer, and I've also done way less of that. I think part of it, to John's, point has been about the ramping up of trying a bunch of things so it's just a bandwidth issue like i still want to write there are news stories i still want to cover i've done a couple big profiles or news pieces along the way we just don't have the time as we've been throwing so much stuff at the wall to to see what fits but i do think there's a certain there's this kind of artist where i'd like i'd rather spend a bunch of fly on the wall time with them and not just have them come to us and sit there for 90 minutes and take a photo and bounce like that's great and we can get a lot out of that but there are people who i want to go see them in their natural habitat i want to spend time with them we're also trying to incorporate more video into that i did a big piece last year with this up-and-coming pop star lola young and it was an experiment in trying to do half video half writing it with but with access still at the core of it yeah well we have a lot

31:51Jon Pareles:more that we want to get to with John and Joe from Popcast, but we have to take a short break, so we'll be right back with more after this.

32:03Annie Zaleski:In this week's Branded segment from Think with Google, I talked with Google's VP of Marketing, Josh Spanier, about how marketing leaders are using agentic AI. Agentic seems to be the word of the year in a lot of tech and marketing circles. What does it actually mean? And I guess to use your framing, do you see it as signal or noise? It's definitely a signal, but maybe if I sort of quote Oprah Winfrey, you get an agent, you get an agent, you get an agent, everybody gets an agent. This is what's happening inside of marketing today. Everyone is going gaga for agents. Where I'm really seeing agents make a difference is in what you might call agentic operations, actually making marketing smoother and better, workflows and process, that sort of thing.

32:42Annie Zaleski:And can you explain how that's working? So there's three areas where I'm really seeing it happening right now. First, it's just making marketing flow better, making our established ways of working more efficient. That's been fairly clear, and I'm seeing a lot of good examples of that. It's also, though, leading to agents helping us innovate in our workflows and our processes. So right now, many, many brands are producing hundreds of assets and soon thousands upon thousands of assets. You can build an agent like we have to actually review all of those assets, review them in real time, and actually benchmark them against your best practices and a whole set of other criteria so you can actually operate at a scale that wasn't possible before and make those agents autonomous and learning continuously about what's working.

33:29Annie Zaleski:It's a really smart way to actually invent new ways of working, which will help everyone. Third, collaboration is really, really interesting and agents are helping. I recently interviewed the CMO of L 'Oreal on my Frontier CMO podcast. She built an entire tool set using agents, which connects 5 ,000 L 'Oreal marketers in ways that previously weren't possible so they can collaborate on a bedrock of agentic-powered information and sharing. It's really, really impressive. There's great work there. That's where I'm really seeing agents step to the fore. And where can people find that podcast? Where can they go for more?

34:03Annie Zaleski:Head on over to thinkwithgoogle.com.

34:15Jon Pareles:What's the audience for Popcast now? And for, I guess, pop music criticism and journalism now versus a few years ago, do you think it's actually bigger now that you guys are on video and audio than it was when, you know, you were doing most of the stuff was just print? You mean for us specifically? For both of you. Yeah, for you guys and for in general for kind of the coverage. And I guess the reason that I ask is if I looked at this in my glass half empty kind of way, I would think, man, you know, I grew up in the kind of peak of the pitchfork music criticism era. You know, at the time when, you know, people remember, you know, the major pans, like the Jet Review, obviously, is like the famous one.

34:53Jon Pareles:Yeah, of course. A feed of video journalism. Yeah, actually a video review. Original video journalism. Anyone who's curious about that can go look it up. Yes, exactly. Though I guess that review is also probably behind the paywall. So I guess there's a part of my view that kind of feels like, oh, this is sad that people aren't reading this type of music journalism and criticism. On the other hand, I look and I see you've got millions of views on these videos. You've got, you know, hundreds of thousands of people who are listening to various clips and stuff. So I guess I'm kind of curious, like, how big is the actual show?

35:25Jon Pareles:Like, how many downloads are you guys getting? how big is the audience for these episodes and how big is the audience for for the clips give us a

35:31Joe Coscarelli:sense of the scale to first talk about just the philosophical thing of the pitchfork of it all right first of all shout out mono and the whole crew who are sort of the new crew at pitchfork over the last year but um i don't know how old you are max but if you were talking to people who are five to ten years younger than you are they might say that anthony fantano is their pitchfork

35:53Jon Pareles:He's the needle for people who don't know. He's the needle drop guy. Actually, an original video music video criticism person. I profiled him over the pandemic.

36:03Annie Zaleski:And my thought while I was profiling him was like, I'm a little late here. Like, Fantano's been a thing for a really long time. I called him in the headline, the only music critic who matters, parentheses, if you're under 25. And I was thinking like, you know, and I interviewed Robert Criscow, you know, of the voice for that piece. And, you know, I was like, oh, there's something going on here. There's a couple more people like him popping up on TikTok. And it was a classic case of I think this piece is late, but it's actually early. And even for myself, you know, I didn't do it because I was thinking about becoming a video presence, but it just happened naturally.

36:41Annie Zaleski:I mean, I had done some video previous as well, but I think the ceiling is just way higher. Like Pitchfork is still niche, was niche, even at its most popular, you know, whether it was swaying artists' careers or not. I think that all comes from a gatekeeper, you know, again, the people in the industry care and that can trickle down in various ways. But what we're doing, I think, with this show is we're reaching people who don't even know that they want music journalism or pop culture criticism like that. It's not in their framework. They're not necessarily seeking it out. But if we can bring it to them in a natural package, you know, so to your question of audience, you know, we think of podcasts as a suite of products.

37:26Annie Zaleski:Every episode is a long form YouTube video, full RSS feed audio product in podcast feeds, an online article page that is excerpts from the interview, which then makes its way into print, which then gets cut up into social clips. So we have social clips at 10 million views. You know, most of them are at least in high five figures. Our sweet spot is sort of like low to mid six figures and both clips and YouTube full length, which we hope will maintain. But if you're looking at impact in terms of aggregation, you know, pickup, newsmaking, plus viral clips, plus breakout YouTube videos, we have episodes that do way better on site or in audio.

38:14Annie Zaleski:And then we have episodes that do way better on YouTube or in clip form. And I think we book with that in mind. So all told, I think the ceiling for how many people we can reach is so much higher than if we're just writing simple print columns or features or news stories because of the way that we are parceling out the information. And we're really careful about, OK, this is somebody who is going to land with New York Times readers. This is somebody who people are going to click on this article a lot versus like nobody who goes to the New York Times homepage knows who this is. But we promise you a young lean or an Ethel Cain video is going to go nuts on the social.

38:59Joe Coscarelli:Yeah. And I would add one thing, which is, you know, we talk about it in quadrants, not to be overly data about it. But I do think one thing that there's an intangible aspect to are the viral moments or the things that are bigger in aggregation than perhaps in any one of our specific. You know, I think a lot about the Jack Harlow episode. He said something about race that was maybe not that. Big in clib. Yeah, it was a little maybe was not that elegantly framed. And it spawned quite literally about four full days of Twitter memes. It was one of the most chaotic weekends on Twitter that I can remember really for the last 10 years.

39:37Joe Coscarelli:Popular culture. And that's, you know, whether that redounds to us in specific numbers, I don't know. Actually, no. But what I do know is almost any room that I walked into for the next couple of weeks, people kind of looked at me and go, you're that guy who asked Jack Harlow the question. And I, yep. And that counts too, whether or not it's reflected in the specific numbers.

39:59Jon Pareles:Do people recognize you more? Do you think like, are you kind of like minorly famous now? Are you actually famous? I wouldn't go that far.

40:06Joe Coscarelli:I don't think in those terms, but I do, for the record, I do carry podcast stickers with me. and if someone sees me in the street and says something, yeah, I received one recently. Yeah, I received one recently. Yeah, it was awesome. You know, I do hand out a few of those on a random day.

40:19Annie Zaleski:No, but I was joking earlier about this parasocial aspect, and of course it's like ratcheted up an insane amount just by us putting our face on things. We always had people who were like at shows, especially like, oh, are you the pop cast guys? But now it's not a question anymore. You know, we're riding around in John's car, filming a Song of the Week video, and like, you know.

40:38Joe Coscarelli:Yeah, I get stopped in the car.

40:39Annie Zaleski:Like literally I'll be driving my car on a random weekend day and people will be like, oh, what's the song this week? You know, it's like it's obviously a billboard for the work that we're doing to put our to put our faces front and center. And everything is video. You know, like you look at how do you guys look at your phone? You know, Ben, I know you've been around long enough. Like I have to like the amount of pivots to video we've gone through in our careers in online digital media is insane. But you think this is the real one, right? This is the real one, for sure. It's over. It's over. Literacy?

41:15Annie Zaleski:Literacy is over? Yeah, I mean, maybe. Maybe. Unfortunately. But again, it's like we can cling to our shrinking pit of land and just be like, the only thing that matters is the written word until we're writing for only each other. Or we can try to take the dumb containers and fill them with smarter things.

41:36Joe Coscarelli:Yeah. And also just to deepen the answer, Max, to your question about audience before and numbers and kind of who what the scope of the target is. Right. Like think about magazine subscriptions. If we're really going to go back four to six generations of media distribution. Right. It's like 400000 people subscribe to a blank Conde Nast title. and you know you're selling ads against those specific 400 ,000 people. That is the function. Obviously, there's newsstand, but you're essentially selling ads against a predictable audience base that is numerically consistent. Our episodes, some could be 100 ,000, some could be 500 ,000.

42:20Joe Coscarelli:Our clips, some could be 10 million, some could be 300 ,000. The thing that I've learned about working in video and especially algorithmically driven video platforms is the audience for each individual piece of content is inherently different. We are reaching people with our Sam Levinson exclusive who don't even know who Olivia Rodrigo is. We reach people with our ASAP Rocky interview who don't know who Ethel Kane is. Every time that we sort of send a volley out into the world, we're opening the door for hundreds of thousands or potentially millions of people to learn that the New York Times does a thing that they care about.

42:58Joe Coscarelli:And if you aggregate just 1 % here and 1 % there, that's how you grow your real core audience.

43:03Jon Pareles:So I want to flip it for a second because I was thinking while you were talking about the Anthony Fantano comparison, which I think is really interesting. And I hadn't kind of made the connection before. When he first kind of emerged and I was in college and some of my friends, my younger friends in college radio were starting to share his videos or like cared what he thought. And I remember watching some of them and thinking like, I think this is really embarrassing. And I much prefer reading criticism on Pitchfork or whatever it was at the time. I was like, I kind of don't, I hate this like, you know, straight to camera kind of thing.

43:38Jon Pareles:It's cringy and he's kind of annoying to me. Is there anybody who liked your written criticism who now they see this stuff and they're like, actually, I find these guys to be really annoying and I liked it better when they were just writing. Really? Okay.

43:51Joe Coscarelli:Annoying but cute is kind of how I'm thinking about it. So that's okay.

43:54Jon Pareles:I like how these guys look physically, but I don't like what they're saying.

43:57Annie Zaleski:Yeah, that's fine.

43:58Joe Coscarelli:We're leaning into that.

43:59Annie Zaleski:The thing I always tell John, though, is a podcast is not successful unless half of your audience hates you. Like, that's just what it, I mean, it's just what, as a longtime listener myself, you know, it's like, that is, yes, I am totally sympathetic to anyone who thinks like, ah, geez, these guys, you know, they're really embarrassing themselves. But look, I'm just being real. It's like I hear it. I see some people are good at this. Some people aren't. Your mileage may vary. It is without a doubt an inherently humiliating medium to be to do what the four of us are doing right now. But there's no choice.

44:41Annie Zaleski:It's like, do you want your ideas and work to reach people? And if not, go ahead. And like, if you're happy writing for a small audience, more power to you. I consider this both a passion and a job. And my job is to reach people with the information that I think is valuable. And if I'm not doing that on video, then I'm just seeding way too much ground. And the other people who are going to do it are going to be doing it worse. So that's where I'm at.

45:46Joe Coscarelli:opposite chairs or soon to be a couch. There's nothing unnatural about us having a conversation. I don't think we have a radically different version of the conversation off camera. I mean, on camera than we would be having off camera. The second thing is for the review videos in the car and in and around the car. That's how I organically listened to music. It was one of many, many pivots to video ago. I was in a meeting at the times. We're literally going back eight to 10 years. and they said, do you have any idea? And I said, yeah, I drive around and listen to music. We should film it. And a funny sidebar, Kareem Rama, who does subway takes, used to work in video at the New York Times.

46:27Joe Coscarelli:I remember having lunch with him at Margona on 46 and he was like, we should do something. And I was like, let's do the car thing. And then it just never, I mean, this is quite literally in the mid 2010s we're having this conversation. So how do we avoid the cringe? Because me yammering in my car, talking about new records that are playing out of the radio is something I do regardless of who's in the passenger seat. This person just happens to have a camera. Shout out Arjun, doing a great job.

46:52Annie Zaleski:Yeah, that's our producer and shooter on social stuff. And yeah, I think so much of it is naturalism. And to the Fantano point, like whether or not you like it or you don't like it, you believe that guy. They believe that he believes it. Yeah, for sure. And when we see media organizations who are trying this stuff and failing, It's because it's unnatural. Though another reason that media organizations try this and fail relative to creators is because they find it harder to make money. Like the creator businesses, you know, they will – they'll do host reads, which I think you guys at the Times won't do.

47:27Annie Zaleski:But then they'll also hawk products in all sorts of ways that – Happy dad seltzer. Yeah. We're not being paid for that. No, no. Sorry. I'm just a dedicated viewer of Theo Vaughn.

47:39Joe Coscarelli:I'm sorry.

47:40Annie Zaleski:I think there is sometimes a view that that's like a crippling disadvantage. Like there are people who leave mainstream media because they're like, wait a second. Like if I was on the outside, I could be making so much money, which is probably true of you guys if you left and just, you know, hawked whichever album paid you the most. Like do you think about that at all? Are you in those conversations about how to draw that line? More so than ever. I think we're willing to be the guinea pigs to try to figure it out. And whatever the New York Times wants to do to try something new in terms of how have we not thought about our products before.

48:12Annie Zaleski:And again, when I'm talking about this suite of offerings, like we're not just selling podcast as an audio episode once a week, hopefully, because you're getting all these other elements that are reaching different types of people. and I hope that we can be part of the evolution of thinking in terms of creatively monetizing in a way that others have been doing for so long. What's new there at the Times? Like what have you been, if I go listen to the latest episode, what's like the... I don't think we're there yet. I think, you know, we just, we're here with you because we're, you know, in the process of relaunching the show and making it more regular and giving people more real estate to sell, basically.

48:56Annie Zaleski:You know, we're trying to say, you know, here's an article page. Here's a clip format. Here's segment A, segment B, segment C of the main show. You know, like. But no branded supplements. Mix and match. Are you offering? Not yet.

49:14Joe Coscarelli:And I think. But they're emergent. I would say it's an emergent editorial. Like, Max, your first question is, what is Popcast now? And I said it's an umbrella. It's an umbrella under which a number of things are going to fall. I think that in and of itself is a bit of an emergent editorial idea at the New York Times. I would say you have it to an extent with Dealbook, which has obviously you have newsletters, you have live conferences, you have the core written product and emergent video product. I think we see ourselves an umbrella and I would imagine there are emergent business propositions tailored towards the shape of this emergent editorial.

49:48Annie Zaleski:Yeah, live shows. You know, Hard Fork, our colleagues in video podcasting, they've done some New York Times branded live shows. Obviously, live podcasts are a huge market at this point in terms of doing small tours around the country or the world, meeting your fans where they are. For us in particular with entertainers, you know, we've hosted two large scale concerts within the New York Times, two and a half, three even if you count what we did recently with Lizzo in the Times Center. We had Andre 3000 and Erykah Badu literally set up in front of the Page One conference room and play a surprise concert for the office.

50:27Annie Zaleski:And, you know, there's hopefully more plans there. And one of the things that we can offer there that other any number of YouTube live performances can't is journalism that comes attached to it. and the New York Times name. And there should be some way to hopefully brand and sell, you know, a major pop culture figure plus the rigor of the New York Times journalism, but also make an entertainment product. So we're at the beginning of that conversation.

50:59Jon Pareles:So last one before we wrap up, and I'm sure you guys have gotten this before. Best interview and most disappointing interview that you guys have done, especially now that you're doing more of these. Sure.

51:10Annie Zaleski:Best. Okay. Rosalia? You were going to say Rosalia. Yeah. She's a—most entertainers are not natural thinkers and talkers. At that level. Yeah, and we take to the few that maybe might have been writers or critics in another lifetime. Like that's a, that's more rare of a stripe of, of pop culture person. Were you going to say Addison? I wasn't going to say Addison. Addison Rae. Addison Rae. Another favorite. I, you know, I really love some of our less successful, like there's this Texas rapper called Big X the Plug. Yeah. And he gave us.

51:54Jon Pareles:I learned about them from you guys when you guys were doing, I think one of you did a country music, country rap crossover. I think that was you, John.

52:01Annie Zaleski:Yeah. Yeah, that like that's a person who is not maybe considered on the level where he's even been asked to tell his story in that that deep of a way. And he studied for the interview. You know, he watched other people's and he came in and he said to us, like, I'm ready to say some things I've never said before. And he truly went there like bawling, crying, raising his raising his son and just telling us the story of his life and learning to rap while he was incarcerated. Like, just like we just had a real human conversation with somebody we'd never met before and who had never done something like that.

52:35Annie Zaleski:And that doesn't maybe get the attention of, you know, a Taylor Swift exclusive or whatever. But I think it's like you just can't find there's not that many places who could take a flyer on someone like that and get to the heart of someone. Actually, I have a I'm going to do a little spin on your most disappointing interview. I actually think we did a really good, different interview with Ed Sheeran, but nobody fucking cared. Nobody watched it. No one watched it. You think, you hear, I say big X the plug, right? And you're like, who's big X the plug? Or I had mentioned Young Lean earlier, you know, like people who love Young Lean love Young Lean.

53:09Annie Zaleski:But I say Ed Sheeran, everyone's like, oh, you interviewed Ed Sheeran? Like that must have been a blockbuster. And I'm like, actually, it totally tanked for us, even though I think we got at something with him. This is somebody who used to be the most famous person on earth and is now doesn't have that level of heat on his, you know, last five or seven years of his career and being able to like. Talk and really give and take about that. Yeah, and like nobody's going to say to him, you aren't as popular as you used to be. Like, let's talk about that. And he was caught off guard, but also game. And so I'm just disappointed that nobody wants to hear from someone like that after they've sort of cooled off a little bit.

53:50Joe Coscarelli:That's really interesting. Don't worry, when we're genuinely disappointed, we'll let you know.

53:54Annie Zaleski:Thank you guys for being so good. Yeah, this was fun. I hope this was good for you. Like and subscribe.

54:00Jon Pareles:Yes, thanks, John. Thanks, Joe. This was great.

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54:45Annie Zaleski:So, Max, first of all, what was the Pitchfork Jet review?

54:49Jon Pareles:It's probably the most famous digital piece of music journalism, which is just an early 2000s Pitchfork review of one of the albums by the band Jet. And it's just a video of a monkey peeing. Oh, God, I'm sorry I asked. Yeah, exactly. I don't know if the sponsor... Sorry to, you know, those who didn't want to know that. But that's why I said they could look it up if they wanted, if they were curious about it.

55:10Annie Zaleski:But gosh, I don't think I've ever left one of these interviews thinking like, wow, everything actually is becoming TV.

55:16Jon Pareles:But I feel like you're one of the proponents of that thesis. Yeah, but I'm not sure I believed it before.

55:20Annie Zaleski:Do you?

55:21Jon Pareles:Yeah, I mean, I think that popular music, of course, is a format that lends itself to something like that. Celebrity interviews, of which they've done probably the most high profile, are obviously forms that lend themselves to something like that. I think that it's definitely true that what Joe and John are doing is of actually higher journalistic quality than many of the other people who are getting access to some of the people that they're getting access to. I mean, it's amazing that they've gotten Bad Bunny. They've gotten Taylor Swift. They've gotten Hayley Williams, A$AP Rocky, like Addison Rae.

55:55Jon Pareles:I mean, these are huge major celebrities. You pretty much can't get bigger. Olivia Rodrigo told them that it was her first podcast interview that she had ever done coming on with those guys. And so I think it really does speak to how seriously some of the musicians take the show and also how much trust they've gotten by being astute, smart music critics who haven't taken cheap shots. I think that's clearly paying off for the times here.

56:19Annie Zaleski:When I'm feeling really optimistic, I have a theory that basically a lot of these new media forms are just going to tend toward becoming good journalism just because it's more interesting. Like I think you see this with Dwarkesh Patel, the great Silicon Valley interviewer, who's asking tougher and tougher questions of people like Jensen Wong just because it's interesting. It's what he wants to do. It's what his audience wants to do. As you become expert in something and as you get great bookings, it's just obvious that you should ask them good questions, not dumb questions, and that you shouldn't be on the take in some way.

56:48Annie Zaleski:And so I think like there is – you see this also sometimes in the Pentagon in Pete Hegseth's briefings where he's stacked the place with the absolutely most sympathetic people from sometimes religious or conservative outlets you might not have heard of. And they're all beating him up on what's going on with the war because once you're in that seat, not always, but there's a kind of pull, sort of almost a gravitational pull toward doing decent journalism. Awesome.

57:12Jon Pareles:I'm sure the PopCast guys will love being compared to the sycophantic members of the press corps, who I guess are becoming less sycophantic. Yeah, because they're following in the footsteps of the PopCast guys.

57:22Annie Zaleski:No, but it's interesting to see that, like, I think sometimes journalistic institutions kind of, like, lack the courage of our convictions and go into these new media spaces and do stuff that is dumber or less journalistic or less tough. But actually, I think, you know, if you actually believe in this stuff, that you might think that an audience actually wants you to ask more interesting questions rather than more boring ones.

57:42Jon Pareles:I think that is definitely the positive read on the shift from print into video. Clearly, they're reaching out just a much more massive audience and they're doing it. If you watch the show or you even watch the, you know, short form videos, super, super high quality. The negative lens, of course, the negative view to take on it is the idea that really nobody is reading this stuff in print at all anymore. And these are two of the Times' top journalists for years who've written hundreds and hundreds of stories and profiles and reviews who basically are writing nothing anymore, and they are just purely churning these types of videos out.

58:17Jon Pareles:They said they'll go back to it at some point and that this is just their focus at the moment. But I think it's clearly a reaction to the fact that people are reading this stuff less and less. It's the reason why The Times laid off a lot of its critics to a lot of criticism from other people in the industry. It's just not where the eyeballs and the audience and the attention is anymore.

58:36Annie Zaleski:Yeah, that's a good note for members of our audience. If you haven't yet learned to read, don't bother.

58:44Jon Pareles:Well, that is it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Mixed Signals podcast from us here at Semaphore Media. Our show is produced by Manny Fidel and Josh Billinson, with special thanks to Anna Pizzino, Jules Zern, Rachel Oppenheim, Tori Kaur, Garrett Wiley, and Daniel Haift. Our engineer is Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Steve Bone. If you like Mixed Signals, please follow us wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to leave us a five-star review. Nothing less than that, though. And if you want more, you can always sign up for Semaphore's media newsletter, which out every Sunday night.