Category: Podcasts

Podcast notes – Bill Simmons (Grantland, Ringer) on Peter Kafka’s Recode Media

Guest: Bill Simmons
Host: Peter Kafka

Bill sold Ringer for $250M to Spotify just before pandemic
HBO helped a bit, but he was primary investor
Gimlet had sold for $200M a year earlier

When he launched Grantland in 2007, felt podcasting could be a big thing
ESPN didn’t recognize that, was a source of tension

For first few years, podcasting just felt like fun, was trying new things, taking chances
Podcasting as listening-on-demand
Started getting more fans on street saying “I love the podcast”
Random jogger with headphones pointed to him, “I’m listening to you”
Listening on commutes, at work, while exercising

Initially there wasn’t much competition – just Marc Maron – easier to get celebrities, was like a first date with guests
Now in 2022, all celebs have already been on podcasts, know what it is now
Guests are less interesting now – they’ve already been on many podcasts
Now it’s more about reactive content – about what’s going on in the world, analysis and commentary

Major change is speed at which people react and consume media

The Ringer – trying to figure out how it differs from Grantland – realized it was the speed of reaction, and coverage across multiple channels (blog, video, audio)

Rewatchables is their most successful podcast library – have done 250 movies now

Grantland was sports + pop culture, lots of people didn’t understand how they could combine

What do people care about? “We need to be there”

Netflix’s mistake – binge model doesn’t work for all shows – like Stranger Things (could have gotten 8 weeks of content and commentary, instead of 1 week)
Netflix has so few water cooler hits – would be great to stretch out the this for multiple weeks, give people time to digest each episode

2008, didn’t know repercussions for anything (for social media content) – now it’s just the price of having a platform

Third decade as a national media personality
Prefers when things are quiet, being ahead of curve, talking about stuff he’s really interested in

Spent a lot of time on Ringer film content
Didn’t like doing TV that much – like his former HBO show – podcasts have replaced that format
Players now have their own pods (eg, Draymond)

Last successful new Late Night show was James Corden
But think about how many successful new podcasts have launched in the same timeframe

Spotify built $Billion compound in LA
Adding more video content to audio now
Video very important to Spotify now

Son likes to watch YT clips of Bill’s podcast
Young people just staring at phone, have to win their attention in 2 seconds
Will next gen listen to podcasts? Kinda scary

Sabermetrics really hurt baseball – misses the narrative and story focus
eg, Jeter v Ichiro, do more eye tests, debate it all day, instead of just talking on stats

Football is fun because of the randomness – season to season, teams and individual players, high variance, easier to debate
Tougher with other sports

Went to Spotify in part because of the data on listening behaviors, content, can spot opportunities, eg, Derek Thompson (great writer) – wanted to work with him for awhile

Assessing talent for writing vs podcasting is different skillsets
Grantland had 9 out of 10 of the biggest podcasts at ESPN – value of cross-promo, a combined sensibility / package

Spotify helped with infrastructure, let them focus on what they’re good at, Spotify strong position to be audio leader
For first 2 years of joining Spotify, they were all remote and doing everything on Zoom
Similar vibe to when he joined ESPN, felt like they had momentum, were growing, market leadership, lots of potential (clarified that ESPN didn’t fire him, but didn’t renew his contract)

Runs global sports for Spotify, developing a comprehensive global strategy
Basketball, F1, Soccer – thinking about it globally, leveraging Spotify’s huge audience and tech and resources

Spotify video player will eventually have live content too
Can you watch Euro League championships on Spotify? Day 1 of Coachella?

Spotify’s only been in content seriously since 2018 – lots of progress in a short time

Still has a few years left on his Spotify deal

150 employees in his Ringer universe now
Returning to a normal office / working situation
Feels like Grantland in 2014 – cool checkpoint – getting inbound, momentum, opportunities

Dream podcast guest is David Letterman
Only other time he had nervous energy was Larry Bird (even more than Obama)

Podcast notes – Mohnish Pabrai (Investor, Charlie Munger disciple) with William Green

Guest: Mohnish Pabrai
Host: William Green (Investors Podcast Network)

Won charity auction lunch in 2008 w/ Warren Buffett
Warren introduced him to Charlie Munger

2009 lunch w/ Charlie at California Club
Studied Mohnish’s US portfolio – led him to sell his Sears position

Became bridge partners w/ him and Rick Guerin when one of their group dropped out

Charlie uses the f-word a lot – which surprised Mohnish

Charlie’s an assembly line, devouring books and readings – reads 500 books a year – skims a lot
Broad interests – global warming, American history

Charlie doesn’t look back, entirely focused on problem at hand

Charlie and Buffett don’t talk as much as they used to – partly due to how long they’ve been together

Charlie understood earlier than Buffett about buying a good company even if it’s not undervalued / cheap (as opposed to Buffett’s more Graham-like investment approach)

One difference was Costco – Charlie wanted to take a bigger stake, Warren thought it was too expensive

Another difference was BYD – it took Charlie a long time to convince Warren because of his confidence in the founder

Charlie introduced Mohnish to Li Lu, wanted Mohnish to have a good partner / someone equal to talk to
Had regular lunches in Arcadia and Pasadena

Li Lu recommended Amore Pacific (Korean cosmetics) but Mohnish couldn’t understand it, but it went up 80x
Korea as state of art for Asian beauty products

Li Lu then recommended Maotai – most valuable liquor company in world
$1000/bottle

Mohnish recommended Micron to Li Lu

Charlie thought Li Lu was incredible person, 3 Columbia degrees at same time (law, MBA, and undergrad) – English was his second language

Li Lu invested float of his student loans and made $1M by the time he graduated!

Charlie met Li Lu at an event commemorating Tiananmen Square
Had weekly breakfast for awhile

Charlie will understand a business in 10 seconds that Mohnish has been studying for weeks

One of Charlie’s filters is “win win win” – everything must be win across the board

Mohnish tried copying Berkshire’s strategy in India – buy an insurance company, use the float for investment

Insurance is a difficult business to be in, Warren mentioned it this year at Berkshire meeting
Geico is unusual in being well run, but encountering problems now too
Bizarre business – sell product but don’t know real cost until 5 years later – models are often wrong

Berkshire’s core textile mill business and insurance businesses turned out not great – but investment portfolio more than made up for it

John Templeton: Best analysts are wrong 1/3 times

“Greed takes over” – important to have checklists and hear opposing viewpoints and partners to talk to help damp this down, damp down the animal spirits

Investment isn’t brain surgery – you’re gonna have a high error rate
Have humility to realize when you’re wrong, must be candid about it, and move on

Howard Marks – talks like a robot – doesn’t seem to get emotional – yet he’s super creative and based on gut
Bill Miller says he cries a lot

Charlie had a very tough period in 1970s, failed partnership, wound it down – a lot of the money was rolled into Berkshire
Decided in 1974 he no longer wanted to manage money

Warren and Charlie – beautiful souls with hard exterior

Value of his YPO membership – 8-12 member groups (Forum) – everything is confidential

Charlie gave Mohnish advice on his struggling marriage / divorce – predicted everything that happened
Recommended a movie to him that was quite accurate

Charlie has 8 kids
He and Warren understand people so well, people dynamics

“Show up early” – big lesson from Charlie, very uncourteous to be late
Li Lu would show up 10 mins early for breakfast w/ Charlie, but he was already there, then 15 mins, then 30 mins – eventually Charlie told him he came early to read his paper!

Charlie emphasized value of being ethical as a competitive advantage
“Enlightened self interest”
“Most things in life function on trust”
If you become trustworthy, you have a massive leg up in life, your reputation
You get there by having a consistent life, demonstrate repeatedly that you play ethically, are long-term, treat everyone around you well

McDonald’s said they had 3 stools that they rely on – franchisees, vendors, and employees

Stopped 3/5 of way

Podcast notes – Castos founder Craig Hewitt – host Rob Walling

Guest: Craig Hewitt – Castos founder (public and private podcast hosting tool, 13 employees)

Podcast stats are broken – different download numbers across different services

Both podcast analytics startups Chartable and Podtrac were recently acquired by Spotify
Spotify is a closed podcast ecosystem

Rob believes in competitive market, if open software is the best, it will win (eg, WordPress/Automattic)
Felt it was offensive when Spotify walled off their podcasts – “something that was once open is no longer”

“Open source creates community-based accountability”

Rob gets podcast data from Blueberry, Chartable, Castos

Why is podcast data hard?
-Castos benchmarks their analytics with Podtrac to make sure data is in range (~10% range)
-There’s a lot of bot traffic to remove
-Podcast analytics services only have visibility when the file is downloaded – can’t see how long they listen, how they interact with the file
-Spotify has that closed loop – takes file, distributes locally, have their own app, so 3rd party analytics can’t see Spotify user activity

20-40% podcast listening audience on Spotify – more international, more younger audience

Apple recently launched podcast analytics – helpful indicator but not very accurate

A lot of podcast apps are quite privacy focused – won’t share their user behavior / listening data back to publishers or analytics services

Podcasts will be built into all cars, planes – still quite early

Podcast notes – STEPN founder Yawn Rong on Blockcrunch

Guest: STEPN founder Yawn Rong

Move to earn game

**Now 700K DAUs, will break 1M DAUs in June

Yawn is based in Australia

Lifestyle app with game + social elements

Walking or running to earn tokens

Download Android or iOS app, setup wallet (biggest user hurdle), deposit crypto (currently support SOL or BNB)
Buy sneakers to start earning

Sneakers have different qualities, types, and attributes
Want it to be like RPG, level up your sneakers
Get healthier body thru the process

Entry price now is $600-800 for floor price common sneaker

Considered free to play, but having no barrier to entry has its own troubles
**Rather have higher barrier to entry, then reduce it (eg, thru a rental market)

Revenue comes from buying / minting NFT sneakers
Users refer friends
Move to earn / health & fitness is a broader audience than play to earn / current NFT gaming
Thus can grow for a very long time

**Need external energy to inject into system – like the sun providing energy to Earth

Saw Bored Apes’ success – importance of social value – people willing to show off, community

Partner with sneaker brands

Two tokens
GST – in-game token, infinite supply – minting to create new sneakers, onboard new users
GMT – governance, platform token for future things they’ll build, finite supply

Trying to discourage speculation – people hoarding GST to pump price
Implementing dynamic pricing for GST to reduce speculation, because retail users get burned, and don’t want sneaker mint costs to be too high

Started as gameFi – but saw that it’s speculative, death spiral – so pivoted away
**Lifestyle app has more social element – want a vibrant running community
Doing 5-10 offline events in Japan, Australia, Spain, US
Web3 wallet interaction is weak, but bringing people together offline is powerful
Then they’re willing to pay for social features in-app, impress friends & community

Now they’re making money
As app grows, they’ll make less – but they’ll have exercise habit, and have community / social connections
People new to crypto will be impressed with earning $10-50/day
Today that money is provided by STEPN, but in future more and more of the earnings will be provided by ecosystem partners (sneaker brands, health & lifestyle brands)

FTX auction – Taiwan buyer bot sneaker for 2500 SOL – donated to charity

**Sneaker is an advertising billboard
Can make celebrity sneakers, branded sneakers

**Use sneaker as social identity
Will release Panda Skin sneaker design
Will work like NFT PFP images (profile photos)

Most gamefi having trouble bootstrapping new users – because it’s still limited to just crypto natives
Games are difficult because you must create your own narrative and world
Axie design is difficult to change, lots of dependencies

Focused on product – hands-on with all bugs, user feedback, iterate quickly
**Simple lightweight frontend to move fast, focus on robust backend
Product & community orientation
Spent a lot of time to refine ideas, cut clutter, focus on system design — haven’t made significant changes since launch
Have experienced game producers on team
Still building according to their roadmap – have lots of modules they plan to add – new badge system, additional items
“Walk for an hour, make $500” – very simple message, don’t want that to change

Moat is user-based
For new app, who’s paying that “earn” part of play to earn? It’s from other users. So you need users who want to hold the token, want to purchase tokens
Initial need is financial returns, but will stay for the community
How you kick off the “earn” is very important, initial missteps can cause a lot of problems

**Strongest advocates for STEPN are those who never exercised before – see the changes to body, energy, diet

GPS track to prevent just using a treadmill
Temporarily allow multiple phones
But anti-cheating is very important – otherwise hackers / bots can print money
Working continuously to improve

Chose walking and running because it’s the most broad accessible exercise
Even bicycle requires having access to a bike

Biggest milestone is getting 10s of millions of web2 users to web3, using STEPN app + STEPN wallet
STEPN as their first web3 experience, then provide more complex / deeper web3 experiences
Want to be web2>web3 gateway

Podcast notes – Charles Duhigg (Smarter, Faster, Better) on Jordan Harbinger

Guest Charles Duhigg – business journalist, author of Power of Habit, Smarter Faster Better

How to think is more important than What to think

Power of Contemplative routines – habits to give us space to think about right things
eg, on way to work, think about upcoming day

Jerry Robbins (sp?) wrote nightly letters to friends – a habit to think about what happened to him that day

Charles’s own: every evening he tells his wife everything that happened that day, describes those things in detail to her, pushes him to think more deeply
Jordan also does verbalization – explaining his day, his problems – with podcast guests, business partners, romantic partner

Laptop notes vs Longhand notes
Laptop 3x more info from lecture, copy verbatim
But longhand notes score much better on recall test later
“Disfluency” – act of thinking, encodes more deeply

Productive people have checkin systems – eg, Sunday afternoon, review what happened last week, plan for next week

Productive people perceive choices where others see just chores
eg, Marine Corps changed basic training to force recruits to make lots more choices – you figure out where the cleaning supplies are, you determine whether to throw something out or keep it
eg, when going through your emails, look for ways to exhibit agency, make a decision, turn chores into choices
eg, grading papers is a boring task, before doing it, one professor goes through  his mental mantra to internalize that grading papers > helps university > funds his research > helps to cure cancer

Brain is a tool we can choose to change and manipulate

Carol Dweck – internal locus of control, growth mindset – instead of complimenting a kid on how smart they are, compliment how hard they worked (effort is a choice, being smart isn’t)

Google’s quest to build a perfect team – the result? They found WHO was on the team didn’t matter as much as HOW the team interacted
Two behaviors always helped
1. equality in conversational turn taking – one person doesn’t consistently dominate, and others aren’t always silent
2. ostentatious listening behavior – show you that I’m listening, mirror back what others say
Creates atmosphere of psychological safety

Google – a tech company completely reliant on computers – has a rule where everyone must close computer before start a meeting – they know this is more effective

Visualize what’s coming in specificity / detail – what we expect to occur, what exactly we’ll do or say – which helps prepare us and mentally primes us for that behavior

Why are some people more creative on a fixed schedule?
It’s a product not of creative individual but a creative process – commit to the process, yielding ideas on a schedule
Disney movie Frozen – was on brink of disaster just months before release – “anyone can be creative if they have the right process” – take your own experiences and frame in new original ways
They held an offsite – took turns to share your favorite cliches / ideas – lots of women on the team – realized key themes were Princess + Sisterhood – sisterhood is complicated, relationships can be nuanced
the breakthru was realizing the movie’s heart was about the sisters’ relationship and helping each other

Most creative people collect ideas and fit them together – “creative brokerage”
Hamilton = Hip hop + Founding fathers

Wrote this book because he wanted to improve his own productivity
At that time, his book Power of Habit was doing better than he expected, he was also writing an award winning series of articles, but he felt miserable, too busy, stressed, felt overwhelmed by minutiae and process
How to find better balance while still accomplishing major goals?

Developed contemplative routines
-each evening, he tells his wife about his day, what he liked and disliked – looks forward to this chance to review with his wife
-on subway in morning, he visualizes how his day will unfold, which better prepares and primes him
–

More change than ever in world, people are anxious about it
Answer is to think more, focus on right goals, build mental models to focus better