How YouTube Ate Podcasts and TV, With Rachel Martin, Ashley Carman, and Derek Thompson

Do you actually need to sit still by yourself and listen to your thoughts ever? Like is that good for you at all? Um, should you just always choose to like download other people's thoughts inside of your brain so you're never stuck with the sort of, you know, sub-vocal questions of your own consciousness? I feel ominous about this because I'm not sure that these are like familiar feelings. I feel like we're sort of being thrust into, again, a kind of like really unnatural experiment based on these technologies. And, you know, given the changes in, you know, mental health over the last few decades, it's not entirely clear to me. It's surrounding ourselves with the constant, bombarding ourselves with the constant thoughts for the people is particularly good for our sanity. Hello and welcome to Galaxy Brain. I'm Charlie Warzel. And if you're watching this on YouTube, welcome to my face. Apologies for my face, which is actually the subject of today's show. Why are you seeing my face? Or perhaps more appropriately, why did YouTube devour podcasting? So as a technology reporter, one thing that I absolutely love is just being an internet crash test dummy, right? But I think that there's no better way to understand a platform than to try to make things and share things on them. So part of my reporting has always been to try to lean in to writing the algorithmic waves myself and just watching what happens, right? That's a big reason why we launched Galaxy Brain as video podcast. There's all these questions that I have, like, you know, how do YouTube thumbnails and titles change the way that a video performs? What happens when you make something evergreen versus something newsy? How valuable is a celebrity to having your video go viral? And ultimately, who's watching these things, right? I feel like there's just no better way to really understand what is happening online and to do things online. And so that's just one very small reason why you're seeing my face, right? But it's not just me. There's just a lot of people in media and journalism who were previously scribes or just audio podcasters, right? Who've become YouTubers or TikTokers. And so you could say that this is just like pivoting to video, right? Back in the 2010s, there was this sort of infamous pivot to video, mostly caused by people responding to incentives on Facebook. And it was mostly disastrous for people. As a digital media survivor of the 2010s, I had to endure that. And I think that what's happening now, though, is different. I think it's much less responsive to the whims of these platforms. And I think it's a lot more driven by audiences. It's also a lot more popular. In late 2024, this research firm, Edison Research, said that, quote, YouTube has risen to the top as the most popular service used for podcast listening in the United States. 31% of weekly podcast listeners, age 13 and up, choose YouTube as the service that they use to listen to it. That's well surpassed Spotify, which is at 27%, and Apple Podcasts, which is at 15%. They also said that, quote, 84% of Gen Z monthly podcast listeners listen or watch podcasts with a video component. And so it's very popular to be a YouTuber with a podcast. This trend has been moving pretty steadily since about 2019. And that's when some popular podcasts started posting to YouTube and seeing some success with these short clippings. They were called YouTube Shorts. And this was getting a lot of traction in YouTube's algorithm. But it's booming now. This past October, Spotify announced that a bunch of their popular podcasts from The Ringer, like the Bill Simmons show, they're all going to be streaming on Netflix. And so essentially what you have is podcasts that are behaving like normal television. There's been a whole bunch of weird sort of externalities that have come out of this. Recently, Bloomberg reported on this outgrowth of this video podcasting boom. And one thing that's happened is the rise of clippers. So these are people that capture the best moments from various videos online, and they seed them across social media. Really big YouTubers like MrBeast have hired them to do work for them. And they pay about $50 for every 100,000 views. You've also got record labels that are employing clippers to take miscellaneous video footage and pair it with artist songs on places like TikTok. In this weird way, this is this convergence of all media into one big blob of short form video content. And I think that all of this is just changing consumption behaviors. I hear this from a bunch of people in my life who they come home and they turn on YouTube and they stream podcasts while they do other things. They do it from their TV. And so it seems like podcast has moved from not even a second screen experience, right? It's like a one and a half screen experience. And so I think that there's something here. I think that the shift tells us quite a bit about the way that people are moving away from the medium of text and towards basically anything that's similar to short form video content. Anything that can be clipped, edited, picked apart, put on social media to go viral. And I think that all this has a lot to do with our attention spans, but also the parasocial relationships that people are developing with people who used to be in their ears a whole bunch of hours a week, right? People are interested in seeing these creators inside and out, including their workspaces. And apologies, again. I think that this change has something to tell us about our culture and our technology. And I think it can maybe even help explain other anecdotal trends, like these concerns that people aren't reading as much as they used to. This is a big, sprawling, really interesting topic. And to tackle it, I've assembled what I think is a murderer's row of guests. People who work as video podcasters, analysts in the podcast space, and media thinkers that I've admired for quite a while. So today, we're going to figure out why you're seeing my face. My first guest is NPR's Rachel Martin, the host of the popular celebrity interview show called Wildcard. And by now, the video podcast broke. But first, a quick break. Something you've discovered. And some of us will stop at nothing to get it. The countdown is complete. Tron Aries now streaming on Disney Plus, rated PG-13. Rachel, welcome to Galaxy Brain. Thank you for being a guinea pig in this experiment of ours. Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here. So I wanted to do this thing, like an episode. And the title is kind of like, why are you seeing my face? Because it's a question I don't understand as a face for blogging throughout my career. It seems like journalists are just increasingly becoming YouTubers, and YouTubers are increasingly trying to become podcasters. And there's this sort of like everyone's meeting in the middle. Right. But you are somebody who has been working in the audio space for a really long time, has worked at that craft and had this really close, long term relationship with an audience through a specific medium. And you are also, you've moved into the video space, the YouTube space you are interacting with mega celebrities all the time on video. You're hosting a talk show. I guess, what has that experience been like for you, going from this very sort of intimate ear medium to this visual one? I have so much to say on this topic, Charlie. Good, good, good. So you can direct me in any particular path, conversationally. But I mean, I love audio, I should just say. I am, I still am completely in love with the intimacy of audio. That's why I went into it. I worked in television news for a couple of years, and intentionally left that job to go back to radio, because I think it's such a special medium. There's just nothing like it. And to not have any distractions from anything else, it's just you and that person and the sound of their voice. And anybody can insert themselves into that conversation, like, you know, a little fly on the wall. And it's such a beautiful, beautiful experience. And I spent decades doing this work. So now I do this thing, as you said, now I have a podcast, but podcasts now are not just audio experiences, they're video experiences. And I didn't do this reluctantly. I, when we came up with this idea, my team and I, I wanted it to have a visual component, because the conceit that we had for the show, it's with cards, these conversation cards, and it's more fun. It's interactive in a way that really lends itself to the medium of video. But it does, it changes the experience. It is no longer just me and the sound of that person's voice is the only input. There's lots of inputs now, but I have come, Charlie, to love the inputs. There's so many more things to play with in the sandbox of conversation. You know, so like, what? Yeah. What, what is one of the things that you have found that is kind of delightful in it? Cause there is the part of it that's like, okay, I have to look a certain way, be worried about how I'm addressing whatever the lights, the front, the back, like all that. Makeup on now. And I don't wear my pajamas. And I have to, you know, try after try, but maybe I should do that anyway. But I mean, now I get to see you smile right now. I get to see you be amused. I get to watch someone's body language as they think through something. And especially for our show, there's these big, deep questions. And they demand a lot of thoughtfulness. And I love watching someone absorb the question that I've asked. So there's just so, there's so much, there's so many more ingredients to the conversation. And I find it to be really exciting. It's just different for me. And I have more to play with it. It can feel chaotic sometimes. I'm like, Oh, if I were just listening to the sound of someone's voice, you know, I wouldn't be paying attention to their body language, or I wouldn't be paying attention to like, you know, some kind of tick that they had that they kept doing, or the way they were tapping their foot during a during an answer, because the question made them nervous. But now all those inputs shape how I respond as a listener. When you're working in audio, you're just you're listening so intently. But now my aperture is just so much wider, I can see how someone is responding to a question or thinking through it in such a richer way. And I honestly do feel like it leads to better conversations. I did not used to think this, you know, Terry grows fresh air, she had this rule, I think she still has it. She just does all her interviews remotely, because she doesn't want the distraction. And she believes it's far more intimate to just have a voice with a voice. But I'm also trying to get people to trust me. And I think that I think being able to see another person's face, you become more human to them. And, and then maybe you will trust me a little more with your stories. And I think that comes more readily when you see someone you're the person interviewing you, I think it helps to see them instead of just having this like authoritative voice of God kind of thing in your head. I think that's so important too, because it's funny, we've done probably like four different interviews for this show to so far. And almost every one of them has gotten back to this idea somehow of trust, right? Like I'm very interested in mediums and the attention economy and the way that, you know, the medium changes and it changes us too, right? And this idea of, or all I think in the media grappling with this notion that trust in these institutions is lower now. And this idea of finding ways to build it, but also finding ways to build it that aren't, you know, that aren't shallow or that aren't pandering or that aren't, you know, having to capitulate on your own values in some kind of way. And I think you're totally right that there is not only in an interview, you know, between you and the interviewee, but also in terms of an audience. Like have you noticed that has the relationship to the audience, the feedback you've gotten, has that relationship changed in terms? Do you feel like there's a different valence to it, a different kind of trust there? The trust is so broken that the further we can pull back the veil and the more people can trust the curators of their news and information and their podcasts, even though mine is not a news podcast anymore. I think it's necessary. I think that's the way forward. And so it feels uncomfortable for a lot of people, especially in news spaces and journalists in general, like, I'm not the story. I don't want to put myself in it. I think that ship has sailed. I think that people need to understand and trust the storyteller in a way that we never had to prove before. And I think putting yourself out there literally in your face is one step towards that. Yeah, I think sometimes there are times when I have done in my career, like Q&As with people, right? And they're always cleaned up in the sense of, you know, just my rambling is a little less rambly. Their answers are maybe a little more succinct. We get to the meat and potatoes of it and everyone looks like the most concise professional version of themselves, right? Phenomenal. But at the same time, it's not real, right? And I think about sometimes with, you know, what I'm excited about for a medium like this, what I think is exciting to watch is watching us as the people who are doing the news gathering or whatever you're calling it, the interviewing, the presentation, struggling with these feelings and struggling with our own things in not in a way where we're failing, but in trying to grasp it. And I think that that is, it's such a more human thing. One thing I'm curious about is have you had, have you noticed people forming parasocial, like more interesting parasocial relationships with you? Like, have you kind of gotten that sense of, oh, wow, this person thinks they kind of know all of me, even though they know offside of me? Yeah. I mean, again, I end up revealing really personal things on my show. Like, you know, my relationship with grief and my parents died and my relationship with my siblings and my insecurities, it's, it's ripe for that kind of parasocial relationship. So I sort of knew that that was going to be baked in to the sauce here. But that's what we want. I mean, I don't, I don't want people like showing up at my house and thinking, you know, that we're best friends. But the whole point in growing audience and really how you do it is for your audience to feel like they do know you in a way that differentiates the relationship from other podcast shows or curators of their news and information. So I like it. I dig it. I'm into it. And I try to get into the comments and try to respond to people and reply to their emails because it's a lonely world. And this is a way that people can feel connected to each other. And our show in particular was designed with that in mind. Okay, so talking to Rachel, I kept thinking back to 2024 and the way that podcasts were playing this really important role in the media strategy around the presidential election. Recently at New York Magazine, the reporter Nick Quas wrote that we're quote, still living in the long tail of last year's podcast election when audio and video shows became full-fledged political battlegrounds for messaging. He makes a good argument, I think. Former podcasters are now running government agencies and the biggest political and cultural fights are taking place in long protracted discussions on niche podcasts held by influencers and former media personalities, especially on the right. You've got Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly who've taken their big platforms from cable news and moved them to podcast land. And Qua argues that from the left's growing power to the right's fractures, podcasting is where arguments are shaped, tested, and turned into movements. Almost all of these are video podcasts. And so Rachel's point, I think, is about the way that this format's really ripe for these parasocial relationships. I think that that is absolutely key to all of this. Because in this moment of waning trust, podcasters are showing more of themselves to people for longer, sometimes hours a day, five days a week. And people are starting to feel like they know these hosts and importantly, they trust them. But that doesn't explain everything, right? Some of this is structural, some of this is responding to business incentives. And that's why I asked Ashley Carmen, who covers the business of podcasting for Bloomberg, how we got it. Ashley, welcome to Galaxy Brain. Thank you for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me. So you cover the podcast space, the media space for Bloomberg, and have done so much great reporting, kind of contextualizing the different shifts in the areas we're in, pivoting the video, not pivoting the video. YouTuber starting podcasts, podcasters, starting YouTube pages. Can you kind of describe to me a little bit the arc of how we got here? I think we sort of have kicking off with the serial age. But how do you see it in terms of the arc of where podcasts have gone in the last seven to 10 years in a speedrun kind of fashion? Yeah, we can definitely do this speedrun style. So yeah, starting with the serial era, I think this was kind of the moment that people generally realized that podcasts could become a mainstream format. If you already were a public radio fan, you've probably been listening to long form audio at this point for some time. But serial really captured the audiences in the podcast format. And so this was this moment where it became water cooler talk. Seemingly, everyone you knew was obsessed with serial. It was parodied on SNL. So it really became a cultural moment. And that's when I think some agents started to pay attention to the space. That's when other companies started to pay attention to the space. And Spotify, soon thereafter, started to dip a toe into their own kind of podcast experiments. In 2019, that's really when we started to see major deals. And that's when podcasting kind of popped from a like, Oh my God, there's a business happening here. And the biggest tech platforms in the world care about this. So everyone got into the space, including Spotify, Amazon, Siri 6M, of course, was a satellite radio company, but they started doing big, big podcast deals. Audible, you know, was already doing audio books, but they started to do their own podcast endeavors as well. Also under the Amazon umbrella. And really, you just saw this focus from a probably audio service focus that then started to care about on demand podcasts. And then, you know, I think there's that meme that's like the trough of disillusionment. And like, that kind of happens. Starting around 2022, you had all these tech platforms flood into the space expecting to make significant returns on the investments they had in podcasting. And for context, Spotify spent over a billion dollars on podcasts, so they expected some seriously high returns. And it just didn't pan out really. I think there's a few reasons for that we can dive into. But just podcasting as a whole, like the revenue side of it didn't pan out in the way they thought. And so there were a ton of layoffs. Spotify kind of got out of the podcast business. They're still in it, but like they weren't making these big splashy deals anymore. But then where there started to be green shoots was YouTube. And it was kind of the sleeping giant, which I feel like has happened with YouTube basically in every creative industry where all of a sudden YouTube itself also realized during COVID, hey, people are watching podcasts on our service. And maybe we should kind of like focus on that. And they started to put money into it. They started to put product efforts into it. And really in the span of like three years, they became the top podcast platform in the US according to Edison Research. So now, podcasting is in this place where it's really synonymous with the creator economy. And so you have YouTubers who are starting podcasters, podcasters who are becoming YouTubers. And it's really just becoming this sort of influencer world where the biggest stars are doing live tours. They're releasing books, they have merch lines, they're kind of building 360 businesses around themselves. And even the audio brands that maybe don't have that one-star talent and they're not a top 50 show themselves are also trying to find audiences on video because the algorithms there are just so strong. So that's kind of how we got to this point. So is part of the YouTube thing? I think YouTube's so interesting, right? Because it is, as you put it, it's this like sleeping giant that like, it's been massive for so long. It's been this like, you know, big revenue creators through ads for so many different people. It's also this like massive, massive cultural ecosystem that people are spending on fadmul amounts of time there. And yet, if you're like an executive or someone who's not of that world, it might not be something that like you know to go to, right? And so I feel like YouTube kind of comes for everyone there. But my question to you is, is the reason that like for this pivot that just like, you don't need a ton of overhead, you don't need like, you know, these like, this big investment and YouTube sort of gives you this access to this massive audience where you can then sell a lot of ads and then make a lot of money. Like, is that the reason for the YouTube pivot? I actually think that that's in the cons category because audio is so much cheaper to make. You don't have to hire video editors. You don't have to learn to edit video. I mean, part of being in video is doing clips. People are spending money on clippers. I mean, these are, that's like a whole economy in itself. So it's actually more expensive to have a video operation. But the thing that video offers is these algorithms. And I think when Spotify first got into the space, podcasters like traditional podcasters in the audio world were really excited because Spotify was the one behind Discover Weekly. So people thought, well, they're going to be able to do what they did for music, but for podcasts, they're actually going to make it so it's easier to discover shows. And it won't just be word of mouth. That didn't really end up panning out. And what people found instead was that if we have video clips on TikTok or Reels Now, or if we're just on YouTube, those services are amazing at showing you the content you want to see. And that includes podcasts, whether you want, whatever you would have thought of them as podcasts to begin with in the first place is a whole different question. But that's why they really started to turn to video. But is there, is there more to that? Because I think actually, like from the lay person, there's this, you know, people pivoted from all their bespoke podcast apps. And a lot of people are listening to their podcasts now on something like Spotify. And I think there's a sense that actually, like it did work out, maybe not from an industry standpoint. But like, can you walk me through a little like, just beyond the discovery mechanism, what were some of the other reasons that it just, it didn't go the way that they thought it would? Well, audio can be cheap to make. But if you're doing narrative series that require reporters essentially going on assignment for weeks, months at a time, it's very well thought out and a long project, that's expensive to make. And one of the studios that Spotify was working with and acquired was Gimlet Studios, and they were known for these really gorgeous long form shows. I think at some point they were kind of dubbed like the HBO of podcasting. And that's where the economics, I think, became more difficult. So you had these chat shows that I think now are what's known in the business and everyone when they think of a podcast probably thinks of a chat show. But there is this whole other strain of podcasting that, again, coming out of the public radio world was kind of what podcasting was. I mean, this is serial. It's narrative. It takes a long time. It's gorgeously edited. It requires on the ground reporting. And that's not cheap to make. So I think people were looking maybe at a different format that didn't end up panning out. And those shows still exist, but it's just not going to be the biggest moneymaker in the world, comparatively at least. I think when we think about this move towards video, especially in this space, and also sort of like the move where like, I've noticed the thing a lot of people have pointed out on TikTok where like folks sort of set up their situation to make it look like they're conducting like a podcast, like they have a podcast, they don't even have one. The fake podcast. That to me is wild and like such a fascinating little like growth hack or whatever. But I'm curious, this is obviously people say, right, like the pivot to video. And that is very, there's a lot of baggage with that phrase, right? Like I worked at Buzzfeed in the, you know, the 2010s. Like I know about these dreaded everyone moves and pivots to video. And, you know, then the platforms change what they care about, how they want to do things, and everyone's left holding the bag. This feels different to me, right? This feels to me a little more sustainable. How does it feel to you? Does this feel like a trend or a fad? Or is this like an actual sort of like more of a reliable shift in consumer behavior and the way that we're making things? So there's two sides of this. The YouTube side of our people, people love to get into the debate of like, are people watching or are they just having it on in the background? Like, are they really watching the video? And like, we could talk about that. But generally speaking, are people using YouTube to consume podcasts? Just generally, I think that's here to stay. I think that's a thing. Yes. Do I think podcasters are influencers and can drive purchasing decisions and belong within that broader creator economy? Yes. Now, where I would say it's a little murkier is, and we haven't really talked about this part of the pivot to video, but there's been a pivot to video in the sense that either traditional media, like a Fox News, for example, or CNN, as well as streamers like a Netflix or a to be are looking at podcasts as programming that they can put on their airwaves, basically. And so I think the question for that is, do people want to watch a podcast on Netflix? Or do people want to stick around on Hulu and watch the companion podcast dancing with the stars? Those are the questions where I think that user behavior is still a little bit, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. But that's that's again, like, it's so nascent. This is just starting out truly within the past year, within the past months, even. You spoke earlier about, say, we can get into this about whether people are watching these things like second screen, first screen, like I am a little curious in the what you're hearing about the cultural bit of this, right? To me, it feels like this some of some of this video podcasting boom has to do a little bit with like the the intensity of the parasocial relationship between a lot of these creators or podcasters or journalists or whoever, right? The idea of like, hey, I want to see what their room looks like. I need to know what they look like, how they say these things, what their, you know, gestures are and facial features and all that all that jazz. I'm curious, like, is this pivot some of it? Just because like you said that the YouTube algorithm is really good for this, there's a lot of money to be made there. I guess how important is the video is the video component of this? Like, are you getting the sense that people are really watching and engaging with it in that way? Or is it kind of like, it is just the second screen content for the most part? And it just so happens to be on this bigger platform? I do think video is important. And because, again, going back to kind of the beginning of podcasting, journalists, maybe guests you didn't know about, podcasting is now sort of a substitute for daytime TV and late night TV. And so you have celebrities not only hosting these shows, but coming on as guests quite frequently as part of the PR strategy to go on podcasts now. So I think that Ashley is just dead on here. This idea that podcasts have essentially become a replacement for daytime TV and also late night. On video, you've got these celebrities and these interesting public figures and documentaries and news, and it's all mashed up into usually lower production value versions of cable news and late night formats. And a lot like regular TV, the shows just autoplay one after another. There's always something on next, except this time it's ostensibly tailored to your interests. And so I think that the daytime TV cable replacement is borne out by a lot of the data too. YouTube just keeps growing. That is in part because some of the biggest consumers of daytime TV are going to Netflix to watch this content on their TV during the day. Nielsen data from this year shows that adults 65 and up nearly doubled their YouTube viewing on TV over the last two years. This is the group of people who are traditionally at home, have a lot of time on their hands, and they've discovered YouTube and are going to it. But this TVfication of podcasts I don't think is a unique phenomenon. In fact, I think that the gravitational pull of media seems to be pushing everything into this similar short-form video. It's this idea that my former colleague and podcaster Derek Thompson has written about recently. His take is that everything is television now and that that might actually have a lot to say about our fragmented and even lonely culture. I brought him on to talk about it. Derek Thompson, welcome to Galaxy Brain. Great to be here, man. Thank you. So you wrote a piece not too long ago that in very classic Derek form takes like a bunch of different disparate thoughts and puts them into sort of a grand theory of culture and attention. That theory is that everything is television. I'm just curious at the outset, what got you starting on this? Because this feels like this is one of those that comes about after it's been like kind of ruminating in the back of the brain and you're just like gathering examples and data for a long time. What's the spark, the genesis for this? I think he pretty much nailed it. Charlie, so much as if you and I do more or less the same thing for a living. I think you read this article and understood its termination precisely. I mean, it really did start with, I host a podcast with the Ringer podcast network, which is owned by Spotify called Plain English, and the Ringer is moving a lot of their podcasts to video. And first, they were moving it to YouTube and now they recently signed a contract with Netflix that some of their podcasts are being moved to Netflix. And so they came to me and they said we want to make Plain English essentially a YouTube show slash eventually maybe a Netflix show. And I got into podcasting precisely because it wasn't television. I like listening to podcasts, not watching them. I listen to podcasts when I go on a walk with my dog. I listen to podcasts when I'm making coffee. I listen to podcasts when I'm commuting to work. I love that I can do something else that only occupies one sensory stream and doesn't command all of the sensory streams. I don't need to touch it. I don't need to taste it. I just need to listen to it. And so my initial response was like, no, I don't want to do that. Plain English is a podcast. I don't want it to be television. And then they suggested that I look at some of the data and the data very clearly showed that video podcasts including on Spotify are growing something like 20 times faster than non-video podcasts. And to the extent that I, Derek, am in the business of trying to get the software of my ideas running on the hardware of other people's brains as efficiently as possible, it makes no freaking sense for me to not make this show a television show. And so I was like thinking about that and being like kind of mad about it because I'm eventually just going to, you know, make it a video show. And then I read this FTC report where Metta in a case that was ultimately successful against the FTC, the FTC says Metta you're a monopoly and Metta says no we're not. And in one filing to prove that Metta was not a monopoly in this lawsuit, they said, look, we're not a social media monopoly because we're not a social media company. The vast, vast majority of the videos that people watch aren't from their friends at all. They are from random strangers that are essentially making videos that are basically like short-form television. So here Metta is with her back against the wall telling the U.S. government we're not a social media company, we're television. And I was like, oh, this is a story. And now I just need to find a third thing. And then that third thing was Sora 2 and Vibes, the Facebook equivalent of Sora 2, which is an AI platform. Essentially, you have these people who are working on like the ultimate creation. Like they're trying to invent God. They're trying to invent a silicon brain that is smarter than any human brain at everything. And on the way to inventing God, they're like, oh, let's essentially build a TikTok, but for AI-generated videos, which is essentially just more short-form video on our phones, it's more TV. And so, TicTacTo, I put those things together and I was like, I'm just going to write that everything is becoming television. And hopefully, having arrived at that theory, backfill it with a lot of other research that I'll do. So that's what I did. I said everything is television and the rest of the article sort of flowed from there. I sympathize with that completely. I feel like, I had a conversation with somebody, a political science professor who I was talking to a couple years ago who actually scared the crap out of me because they were like, listen, man, I hang out with young people and no one's ever going to read again. Truly, it was one of the reasons I left The New York Times. I was just so rattled by this thing. I was like, I need to start a sub stack now. Just be someplace different, of course, retreating into words. But one of the things that they were mentioning to me, and it wasn't really like everything was television, but it was like, go take a look at how kids are expressing themselves or like kids, younger people are expressing themselves on TicTac. And it was like, every single one of them is doing like a John Stuart or a Tucker Carlson or a John Oliver style impression, like delivering a monologue to camera. And there's like a screen grab of a tweet or something that they're talking about that's like right there. And now you have obviously influencers with the fake cable news kairans underneath their YouTube videos and stuff, but it felt too like, not only was the form changing in terms of short form video movement and popularity, but it was also like, people were legitimately like, aping the style. Yeah, it's like they grew up. It's a little bit like, I have a two year old and one of the first games that she loved to play is I'm a monster and she's prey. So I pretend to be a monster and she pretends to run away from me. And I have all sorts of like stupid evolutionary psychology reasons about like why parents have it somehow ingrained in them to pretend to be monsters to teach our children to run away from danger. That's not what this is about though. It's about eventually she turned two and now she likes to be the monster and I'm the prey. And so like this is essentially what's happening, but with television, it's like these people who grew up basking in the glow of John Oliver and you know, the Daily Show are like, okay, well now like I'm starting to like welcome my two feet and I'm just going to like make that is the exact same thing, but using TikTok. And so this is how I think the post literate world sort of feeds on itself, right? People who are brought up in television want to express themselves in television, which means the next micro generation grows up watching those people express themselves in television and think, oh, you know, image and video and straight to camera charisma is just the way you communicate big ideas. And so that's why, you know, a big part of me wonders whether like the era of reading like the literate world might have just been like this little tiny like this bubble that like existed in human history. And like we're just going right back to just we're all like oral apes and television is just going to be everything. Do you get that sense? Do you feel like it will continue to like contract into like a smaller, more granular form? We talk so much about short form video content being like a primary way people are expressing themselves a primary way people who are younger especially want to consume media. And yet also like these podcasts are like usually like pretty long too, right? Like the form seems to be pretty elastic in that way. Do you feel like time matters much in all this? So I think that culture is always strange. And it's always back lashing on itself, which means you often have barbell effects. For example, in music in the 2010s, I remember as streaming was taking off vinyl was taking off as well. Now it wasn't taking off the same way it took off in like the 1940s, 1950s, but vinyl sales were growing a lot. And so sometimes what you have is one trend becomes so obvious that there becomes a cultural backlash to it. And then that feeds another sort of coexisting trend. So one could tell a story like if I was going to like report out a sort of second everything is television part two essay, one could tell a story that says, well, everything is becoming television with TikTok and with reels and with AI and with YouTube podcasts. But also, Substack is big. And more people are reading like, you know, if you look at like the people reading the New York Times and the Atlantic, like there's lots of folks who and maybe even like a growing number of people who are reading text. I just think that there's something to this notion that television and by television here, I'm really relying on like Raymond Williams, who wrote a 1974 book called television technology and cultural form, where he said like television to him and continuous flow of episodic video. And so in a way, based on that 1974 definition, TikTok and reels are even more television than television, right, continuous flow of episodic video. I do think there's something to this idea that there's an attractor state in media, such that many different enterprises and many different motivations become television. So Facebook began as a student directory, it became television. AI started trying to create superintelligence, they became television. I wanted to just make a radio show, I became television. Charlie just wants to write words in paragraphs, make like leave him alone, just let the man write words in paragraphs. What are we doing right now? We're talking on Riverside where I can see your face and you can see my face because I'm assuming this is a podcast that will eventually have some video component and maybe more people will watch it as TV that listen to it as a podcast. So there is something to this idea that television is an attractor state and no matter where you begin in your media journey, A, I want to make a student directory, B, I just want to make a superintelligence, C, I just want to make radio for the internet, you end up in TV because that's just where the eyeballs flow. So I'm always willing to hear a backlash argument and be there for the idea that like not everything becomes one thing in a messy culture, but man, it really does seem like everything wants to become television. To this point, you talked about the format of it and the idea of all of this flow, all of this volume of television that we have or of video based media. And something that I really liked that you wrote was that television is not really meant to absorb our attention as much as maybe like scratch away at it or I think you said dab away at it. The idea that there is this sort of, I mean, this is the idea of the second screen, right? This is the idea of sort of creating things that make someone feel comfortable or that there's something on in the room that there's presence or whatnot. And I think that's really interesting. I had before you, I was talking to Ashley Karman who writes about all of this stuff and reports on the podcasting industry for Bloomberg. Her take away from all of this is like, yeah, podcasts are becoming daytime TV now, right? Like you don't really turn on Ellen, you don't have this thing. You just like throw on whatever and Derek's there or it is just sort of like, we don't have to pay these people, we don't have to get these nice sets and have the studio audience clapping and do all that stuff and all that overhead we can just have Face4Radio Charlie talking to you and have it on in the background and YouTube serves the greatest function that it can serve there is the recommendation engine and the autoplay, right? And I just wonder, I mean, how do you think we make media in that world to be part of like an autoplay, you know, carousel? It feels very disjointed and almost a little bit sad. Yeah. There's so many thoughts that I had as you were saying that I want to make sure that I like find a way to sort of put them all on. I don't ask concise questions. I'm trying to like put all those gemstones on one necklace essentially. Okay, so people sometimes talk about like lean forward media versus lean back media. And maybe that's the wrong dichotomy. Like lean forward versus lean back, I think speaks this idea that like, when I'm reading a hard novel, I'm leaning forward. And when I'm watching stupid television, leaning back. But now that there's so much television, and by television, I mean, there's TV on our phones, there's TV on an iPad, there's TV on our actual TV, you know, way, we don't really pay that close attention to a lot of the television that's playing around us. We kind of soak in it, right? It's like you turn on the, you turn on Netflix. And I mean, I don't know, my wife's gonna listen to this, but I hope I'm not burning her too bad. Sometimes what'll happen with my wife and I is we'll talk about a show we really want to watch, a movie we really want to watch, and we'll turn it on. And then we'll immediately recognize that one of the other one has picked up their phone, just look at their phone within like three minutes. It's like, I thought you really wanted to watch this. And it's like, I do, but watch doesn't mean watch, right? Watch means like have it on. And I wonder whether like what's what's happening to media is people almost don't know how to be alone without it. We need something to be churning on in the background. We need something to be sort of like swimming in, media-wise. Otherwise we feel almost too alone with ourselves. I mean, I'll sometimes feel this about podcast, like we're walking down the street. And I'll be like, wow, I'm just like listening to myself think, maybe I should put on Bill Simmons. And it's easier now, I think, especially when you're sitting down at home or at work or in a bedroom, you just put on lots of media and just like have it like basking around you surrounding you. And that does create a weird world where like no one's fully watching any particular thing. And Netflix has clearly responded to this. I thought it was amazing. In my reporting, there was an essay that was written by Will Tavelin, who reported that screenwriters working for Netflix have sometimes heard a note from company executives for their television shows that the characters have to announce what they're doing so that viewers of the program who just like have it on the background can follow along because otherwise like complex plots are just too much because no one's paying attention on a second to second basis. And so I just think like there's something to this idea that as everything becomes television and no one can fully pay attention to any one thing for a really, really long period of time, it all just becomes different kinds of wallpaper for us. And that's a very strange, I think, phenomenon. Do you think it's, this is just like a very sort of personal, your journalistic philosophy type thing. How much do you try to lean out of that? Because I think like what you said before is like the very outset of this that software of your ideas into the hardware of other people in the world. Right. And so I'm just like, I'm curious how you think about that because there's a way in which it's like, it's so disenchanting to hear. It's like, it's all wallpaper and like, you know, the, I guess like the media version of trying to announce what the plot is, is like just bashing people over the head with like very blunt sort of, maybe dumbed down ideas. I'm just curious like how much do you think about having to chase that idea and sort of embrace this notion of like, I'm going to get the audience wherever I can, however I can versus like that sort of hard, like the work that usually comes through in the text, right, which is like footnotes and citing and block quotes and, you know, like real kind of granular data. How do you party parse that yourself? Yeah. I mean, you're scratching at like a huge existential question, which is like, why do I do what I do? Like, why do we do what we do? And I asked myself this from time to time. Sometimes it's like, it's almost like a, like a facial wrinkle that you find for the first time at 39, like you don't want to look too closely at it. But I think my answer is something like this. I'm not trying to optimize my audience for size. If that was my goal, if my number one goal was to have the biggest possible audience, I would just lie. I would lie constantly. I would lie about conspiracy theories. I would lie about important figures. I would take tremendous and liberal advantage of the First Amendment and just lie constantly without any concept of a personal integrity. I really enjoy like, what do I actually enjoy about the job? I really enjoy writing pieces like everything is television. I enjoy figuring stuff out. I enjoy having theories about the world. I enjoy having those theories interrogated. I enjoyed learning where I was wrong and then writing a new theory. I love coming up with ideas like abundance where not only is it fun to write the original essay, but also it's fun to talk to people about it when it catches on with other people. And so that's where I'm basically thinking, all right, I want to talk about, I want to have conversations with people on my podcast that are turned into essays that deal with culture and science and technology and politics. And I think the best way to have those conversations in a way that reaches the people who would be most likely to be interested in those ideas is to make my podcast a television show. But this question of like, why do I do what I do is like, I'm always coming back to it because I don't know, I think it's like, I think it's a good big important question and more people I think would be better served by consistently checking back in with themselves about like, what exactly am I trying to do in this life? I wanted to sort of end here and talk about the, you know, your essay ends on kind of a slightly ominous note, right? Like this idea of you've done a lot of writing and reporting on the antisocial century and the notion that people are alone and struggling in a lot of ways. And also like the technology is sort of enabling that disconnect, right? This idea of like, you know, things in the background all the time, shortened attention spans, less ability to engage with these ideas, less ability to engage with one's own ideas, or just like, you know, to be able to put something on that can serve as like a buffer from reality in whatever way, even if that means like going out and seeing friends or doing whatever. I think it's very easy to get like pretty, you know, sort of staring off into the void on a lot of these things. But I'm curious if anything's changed since you've written that, like, do you feel like, like, if we don't find, you know, ways to put guardrails a little bit around this societal tendency to move towards that, like, you know, down the funnel to the sort of like the easiest, most frictionless thing in terms of media consumption, in terms of whatever, that that we're headed towards this, this dangerous place? Or, you know, how are you thinking about that now? Is it still kind of this ominous feeling that you have? Or has stuff changed? I feel pretty ominous about the future. And it's partly because I'm not sure that we're made to broadcast, like as a species. And there's something actually like very hard and discomfiting and unusual about speaking to 1,000 people at once, or 100,000 people at once, or a million people at once, or many millions of people at once, as many podcasters are. That's a very strange thing. It surely doesn't seem like it's something that's natural to our mammalian history. There's several studies that suggest that the tenor of our conversations changes significantly when we move from one to one interactions to one to one thousand interactions. If I recall, there was a study that was done asking people to write notes to one person versus writing a note that would be read by a thousand people. And the note to that one person asked a lot about that other person. But the note to the thousand people just reflected on themselves. Because how can you possibly have a personal conversation with a thousand people that wants? You can't. And so the idea from this study, which I think was done by Jonah Berger at Orton, was that when we broadcast, because we can't look outside of ourselves, all of who we're broadcasting to, we look inside of ourselves and just talk about ourselves. Which suggests that a world in which our children are raised and we raise ourselves around broadcast media is a world where we're more fixated on ourselves rather than focus on other people. And that's a place where maybe everything is television and the antisocial centuries sort of come together. There's a weird way I think in that like our aloneness, as I said in that essay, or our alone time is less alone than it used to be. And our time with other people is more alone than it used to be. That is, when you're alone by yourself on a couch, you don't actually have to be fully alone. You can pull out your phone and be on social media and immediately, boom, get into a fight with someone about politics. Right? So your alone time can be weirdly synthetically social. But also when you're surrounded by other people, if you go to a party, you can choose to be alone whenever you want. You can stand at the corner and pull out your phone and then boom, suddenly you're alone. And so like, I think that these technologies are changing us in ways that are both talked about all the time, right? Rise of anxiety, rise of narcissism. And they're changing us in ways that I think might be like underconsidered and under theorized. They're changing like so much about like what it means to be a person and what it means to be able to like sit still with oneself. And therefore like raises questions about like, do you actually need to sit still by yourself and listen to your thoughts ever? Like, is that good for you at all? Should you just always choose to like download other people's thoughts inside of your brain so you're never stuck with the sort of, you know, subvocal questions of your own consciousness? I feel honest about this because I'm not sure that these are like familiar feelings. I feel like we're sort of being thrust into again, a kind of like really unnatural experiment based on these technologies. And you know, given the changes in, you know, mental health over the last few decades, it's not entirely clear to me. It's surrounding ourselves with the constant bombarding ourselves with the constant thoughts for the people is particularly good for for our sanity. So I don't feel great about it. But also, in the biggest picture, I am like dispositionally an optimist. And I would hope that, you know, if you look at the history of something like the printing press, well, clearly the printing press contributed to like, enormous warfare throughout Europe over the the rise of Protestantism and the and the wars within Christianity for decades, even centuries. But also, like, I'm very glad that books exist. So I hope that we don't have like wars that kill tens of millions of people over short form video. But also, I think that maybe one lesson of the printing press is that like, really destabilizing technologies have a period of destabilization. But ultimately, we find some way to use them so that we can can get the most out of them. And, you know, maybe the same way that we're mourning the printing press, or the fruits of the printing press right now, which is to say reading on pulp, you know, who knows, maybe 100 years from now, we're going to be mourning straight to camera video, because there'll be some other media technology. And we're like, my God, those are the golden ages. And Derek and Charlie didn't even know it. I think I think the part of all of this that stands out to me is that bit that you said, just about like, how natural it is to broadcast, right? And, you know, you cite a stat that I've seen before in the piece, I'm going to get it wrong. But it's the, you know, the rule, the ratio of how much people consume the 99 one rule, right? 90% of the people consume 9% remakes, 1% actually create. And I think about that with just like, you know, the internet at large, like with lurkers, right? Like most people are lurkers, like most people have a great online experience because they lurk, they consume, they find stuff, they do participate in these ways, but not in this, in this public manner. And I think like when you, I have so many conversations about like the, you know, the, whether it was the social media revolution or the AI stuff or whatever, going back to this idea of, as you did, like the printing press and the, you know, the advent of these media technologies and how long it takes for us to sort of, you know, inoculate ourselves or develop the coping strategies or like, you know, the social mores around these types of technologies. And I think what makes sense to me, and I have no, no insight as to where this could possibly go, but is this idea around like, what is out of whack right now? Is this, this, this broadcast and consumption type thing, right? There are people, it's, it feels to me like it puts stresses onto people who aren't naturally fit for that, right? Or who just don't even want it and are forced into this, you know, be basically orienting themselves to the world in a different way, because that's the only way they know how to, you know, maybe be seen. And I think figuring out how to come into a better balance and with all of this and all these technologies, like that's my optimistic look as to like how, how these things can start to, you know, maybe level out a little bit more than they are and feel a little less like out of control or like, you know, everything is, is morphing into one medium or one style. I think the last thing I would say is, and this is incredibly hyper hypocritical to, to come from me and to, to be heard by you. I'm very happy to be in the media game, the attention game. But when I read that for five straight years, members of Generation Z have told pollsters that the thing they want more than anything when they grow up is to be an influencer, which is to say essentially be in the same attention game. I just think that's bad. I think that there's something about getting into this attention game and like learning its rules and realizing how catastrophe sells and realizing how conspiracy sells and realizing how negativity sells that creates an environment of catastrophe and conspiracy and negativity. A world of too much media means a world in which the grammar of media and the psychology of media takes over things that should theoretically be a little bit more inoculated for media. Like I'm not sure, for example, that like the right thing for our politics is for more politicians to be on TikTok. And so again, one reason why I'm a little bit, why I think the future of everything in television is somewhat ominous is that I don't think the values and the virtues that emerge from everyone trying to become a television star are the values and virtues that people would choose if they just had Tabula Rasa trying to create a society. Where do we start? Right, generosity, time for others, reflectiveness, inwardness. So there's lots of ways the future can go, but I absolutely feel like this is a trend that's going to make the future feel quite weird and berserk. And that is the music of the Galaxy Brain podcast, quite weird and berserk future. Derek, thank you so much for your reporting and all your time. Very happy to sing your theme song. This episode is brought to you by Focus Features. Would you let AI pilot your plane? Raise your child. Decide your future. On March 27th, Focus Features presents the AI doc or how I became an apocalypticist. Critics and audience at the Sundance and Southwest Film festivals call it the most urgent movie of our time. The AI doc or how I became an apocalypticist rated PG-13 only in theaters March 27th. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed sponsor jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate see. According to Indeed data, sponsor jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. As it turns out, the reason you're seeing my face is really complicated. Video seems to be eating the world, right? But it's bigger than just that. This thing that I am obsessed with on the show is how the media we make and the media we consume in aggregate actually just tells us a lot about who we are and what we want and how our technologies are shaping and influencing our behavior, our culture, and I think now especially our politics. We're living in this lonely, fragmented, hyperactive attention economy, right? And that has opened up just a ton of possibilities for people to make things, to tell stories, to understand the world and share those understandings with others. But I think that this fragmentation can and definitely is leading to this inwardness, this isolation, this polarization. And I think that we're even seeing in some cases this change from a more reflective and sort of deliberative society to one that's a lot more knee-jerk, a lot less interested in nuance. And I don't know where any of this is heading. But I think that Derek said it best when he said that we're kind of barreling towards this future that can feel weird and berserk, right? And I don't really know where we go from here, but I can promise you that what this show is going to try to do is it's going to try to chart this trajectory and just give you something to hold on to all the while. So that's it from us here. If you liked what you saw, if you want to continue to see my face on YouTube, do episodes of Galaxy Brain drop every Friday. You can subscribe on Apple or Spotify or wherever it is that you're getting these podcasts. And if you want to support this work and work of my colleagues, please consider subscribing to The Atlantic. You can do that at theatlantic.com slash listener. That's theatlantic.com slash listener. Thanks so much and I'll see you on the internet. This episode of Galaxy Brain was produced by Nathaniel Frum and edited by Claudine Abade. It was engineered by Dave Grine. Our theme music is by Rob Smersiak. Claudine Abade is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. We're leaving today and entering a world of Mickey Mouse waving, princess meeting and greeting, lightsaber clashing, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror dropping, Banshee flying, Space Mountain launching, Galaxy rewinding, what's the Galaxy rewinding fireworks igniting, world of other worlds for whatever you love. Infinite worlds await at the most magical place on earth Walt Disney World Resort.