I Asked 3 Podcast Producers What Actually Grows A Show

My goal is always to have them go, whoa, like you really did your homework. It's interesting to create this like one piece of content that we're redistributing and trying to have all of these different audiences in mind. We constantly have guests that come back and they're just like, that conversation was nothing like I thought it would be, which is really powerful. Finally getting to see behind the, you know, behind the curtain of all of these creators is fascinating to me. It's so fun. Hello, my name is Emma Krebs. I am the podcast producer for the Dr. Hyman show, hosted by Dr. Mark Hyman. My name is Alex Michael. I head up guest outreach and commercial partnerships for How I Write, which is hosted by David Perel. I'm Mia Zimunic. I'm a researcher and story producer. I've worked on shows like Colin and Samir and Digital Spaghetti by Patreon. Mia, I wanted to turn to you about the research stage. What are you looking for in particular with the guests that you profile? And how do you make sure that your work is unique compared to other shows that that same guest has been on? Yeah, I mean, the, the, the uniqueness is a big challenge as we book bigger and bigger guests. I came into Colin and Samir's team at a time when they were like, right before they hit a million subscribers. And then everything after that was kind of like booking larger and larger guests that had already kind of like made the rounds in the interview podcast space. So it was definitely a challenge to come up with questions that they hadn't already been asked like 10 times, honestly, like Nardwar and what's the Hot Wings show? Sean Evans. I'm so glad. Sean Evans is Sean Evans and Nardwar are like my shrine of research stuff. So I'm like, okay, how would they do it? Like, I can't exactly. I think my theory is that Nardwar interviews people's like moms, like there's just information that you would not get from the internet. But I start by doing like a deep dive on their social media. I think a lot of people have not like cleaned out their Instagram feeds for a long time. So if it's someone really big, I'll like go really far back. Like when I was doing research on Amelia de Moldenberg, I went like very far back in her social media. And I read like her old interviews that she had done when it was just like a magazine and not like an interview show. I just try and spend as much time as possible going as far back as I can in order to just like, I don't know. I think I think you can kind of get the unique questions if you're willing to go deeper than everyone else. So if you're researching somebody like Amelia de Moldenberg, how much do you lean into the stuff that she's most well known for? And how much do you lean into those Nardwar like deep cuts? You definitely do. I want to hit on the questions that cover things that that person is known for just because like that will be helpful for like the montage that you come up with. And like that is where the audience relates to that guest. Sometimes the like super in-depth angles that we touch on don't even make it into the final cut. But like it's helpful for like facilitating the conversation in person. So like if we can bring up something that makes them really surprised, but it doesn't necessarily make it into the final edit. Like my goal is always to have them go, whoa, like you really did your homework. Is there a moment? Where that happened? Do you have one question that you like really got someone good? The only one I can remember is a very deep cut. And we interviewed Jesse from NELC on Colin and Samir. That was fun for me. Cause I just am not familiar with them, but as a researcher, I just like threw myself into, into their whole background. And he started his clothing line with this like very specific shade of green. And in the research doc, I was like, oh, like they probably won't mention this. I just threw in the fact that like. All of the buildings in the town where he grew up, where his dad used to like work, were that specific shade of green, like in this very small town in Canada. I can't remember the name of it now. I wish I could. Is it Hamilton? Like that's where my wife is from. I think he's from Hamilton. So there's a cross over there. Yeah. Or something like that. But there was like a very specific shade of green on the buildings. That was the exact shade of green that he like used for his sample pieces in his like streetwear brand. So I just threw that in the doc and he was like, oh, I never, I never noticed that. But I guess you guys are right. Try to get some little edge in there to set us apart. Yeah. Very cool. But it's, I mean, it's always unexpected. I just, yeah, the most fun part of research is just like going as far down the rabbit hole as I can. And I am never able to predict what we end up finding, but it's really fun to like go back in time, like in the time machine of someone's life. So Emma, my question to you is what does an episode look like from start to finish working with Mark? Mark Hyman? And what is your involvement? My experience with Mark starts from guest ideation and guest booking. So I manage a lot of that juggling his calendar with other team members. So we'll meet regularly to listen to who we've had inbound and who Mark is interested in. And then also who we are interested in approaching like myself and the rest of the podcast team. From there, once we've confirmed the guests, I handle all of the booking and everything like that. I'll go into our prep where I do all of the research on the guests. And so that is a very extensive. Thing for me to do. I create like a 10 to 15 page document for the host to read through. I also outline a proposed interview for Mark. And the thing about Mark is he is the expert. And so although I can put some suggestions and the kind of the angle we want to take the conversation, I really do leave it to him to kind of allow his own curiosity to lead the conversation, which also I feel like facilitates a better conversation. And so once we are in the recording stage, if I'm not there in person, then I do join virtually for the recording. The recording in itself. I also do a pre-interview with all of our guests myself. So I do that one on one with our guests to just answer any questions, fill in any gaps that I was able to not find within my own prep. And then also to just kind of get their insight on how a successful interview will be for them or hear about things that might not be publicly available. Maybe they're writing a book or maybe they've started some new research that isn't published yet. And I get kind of behind the scenes look, which I'll then include in our prep for Mark. And then, yeah, once we're in the recording, we'll hop on the record. And then if there's any things I feel like we missed or anything wasn't clear, I just really have the audience ear in mind during the actual recording. And so at the end, I don't really interrupt in the conversation. I wait until the end and we'll do any pickups after they've recorded. We'll go back on questions, clarify anything, etc. Then once we move into post-production, I work with our editor. He'll do a first cut. I'll review. I'll give him any notes. And we work on that edit together. Although I'm not physically in the timeline, I'm just kind of leading the cuts. If we want to restructure, which we do sometimes, once we've reviewed that and we finalized our edit, I'll begin writing our trailer, which we also use for our intro across both audio and video. And so I physically write a paper edit and then I will outsource that to our agency, which will then assemble that. I'll work with them on different rounds of revision. Also sometimes have to send that to our guests for review, which I'm currently managing, which is really frustrating at times when you have some more high profile individuals. Wait, they get a say in the final cut? Let me clarify. We have a podcast guest release. And so normally we send that out to our guests and normally they don't have a say. But for some higher profile guests, such as like a David Beckham or Chris Paul, there is some additional approvals that need to happen. And so that's not our preference, but we just kind of have to manage it with each guest. And it's pretty challenging to remain on production timelines when there's so many people that need to review so many different assets. So yeah, I handle all of that. Like all of our communication. Any operations, anything operational, I am managing. Once we've developed our trailer, I'll move into ideating our title and thumbnail. And so then I'll lead that, I'll either like get our designers to do it. Sometimes like today I've had to like make it myself. That's kind of most of it. How far in advance are you working on like the thing that you worked on today? When will that actually get published? The thumbnail I'm working on today we're publishing tomorrow, but we actually do batch record. So I've never worked on a show where we batch record so far in advance. I've never done a show where we batch record before, which is really great because we have a lot of leverage there. Since we've started doing the two episodes per week, which we started it in January, that's been a little bit trickier. And then considering how busy my host is, like our talent, it's really hard to book with him. So yeah, we do batch record quite often. So you might be looking into three or four months down the line already with some stuff that you're filming. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Like my prep I'm doing for a record that's like beginning of May that I've started like last month, but obviously that won't go out until June that episode. Alex. How does that cross over with the work that you do around booking the guest and giving them a pre-interview and those kinds of early prep work? There's a sliver of crossover. I'm still kind of wondering like when Emma sleeps, that's I'm just blown. That's just awesome. How much you, how much you handle and how involved you are. I think that's super cool. Yeah. I mean the way that we talk about it is like most of, most of my work is everything that happens before the interview. And then I sort of hand it off to obviously David handling the interview himself. And then we've got our, our post-production team. So I'm a lot more on the front end. So in terms of the overlap pretty heavily in the, in the guest ideation and outreach, that's where a pretty big chunk of my energy is spent. We don't do a pre-interview, which I'm actually interested to, to hear more about. I think that's a really interesting idea and how you navigate, especially with like a higher profile guests, like demands on their time versus, you know, so, so I think that's super interesting, but we don't do anything like that. Emma, do you want to follow up on the pre-interview? Cause I'm also curious. Yeah. So most of the time I get one. Um, sometimes it is. It's a quick turnaround of say something came up last minute and we're recording in a couple of days. I might not always get the opportunity to do, do a pre-interview someone like David Beckham. I'll meet with like his team. For example, I won't meet with David himself and considering that episode, there was many people involved in bringing that to life. So it might not necessarily be the talent exactly, but maybe it's their assistant or someone who's doing research with them, but it's really good. Um, so with it, I think I said before, I kind of look for any gaps that I couldn't find in my prep. So I've usually completed most of my prep by the time I meet with them. example that came up last week was we are having a guest on who mainly discusses fertility and we're going to be recording with her next month. And we've noticed that our audience has not really been responding strongly to fertility. So I wanted to take the conversation in a different direction, but I was still trying to figure out where that would be. So when I met with the guest, I did just kind of say like, hey, if I'm honest, I want to move away from fertility, but your book is about fertility. How can we like find common ground here? And so I was able to work with her to find a really interesting strategy where she was also excited by and would be really proud to have that conversation and still be like, it's a success to me and my brand and my mission. So that was really valuable then in regards to the time booking though. Yeah, I would just say sometimes you can't always get with the talent themselves, but also maybe with someone for their team. And I always say it's going to be 10, 15 minutes. And I feel like when you're respectful of people's time, they sometimes will give you more if you need it. That makes sense. My show is so small, but I find that a pre-interview has been helpful for just kind of like qualifying how someone comes across on camera as well. If they don't have a ton of podcasting experience, there's been a couple instances where I've interviewed somebody and then I'd been like, well, I don't know if, or it's been a pre-interview and I'm like, I don't know if this is the right way of like helping you, you know, share your message. Like maybe we can do some text-based posts with you instead or something like that. It's also good for kind of aligning with the things they want to talk about that might prompt them to share the episode with their own audiences and also the stuff that they absolutely don't want to talk about that would piss them off when they come into the recording. So it's been helpful. And I just do it through WhatsApp. I just asked for a WhatsApp voice note and it seems to be sufficient. They do it on their own time. Obviously this is a much smaller podcast, so we have a lot less stakes than the stuff that you work with, but I do find it pretty helpful. Okay. My next question is about each of the creators that you work for and that you have worked for. What have you learned about greatness about the people you work for? What do you admire about them? We'll start with Alex and David. There's quite a bit to admire about David and the way he goes about things. The first is that like everything that he does and every, everything that we do with respect to the show just has like this insane sort of uncompromising quality bar. And that's not just with, you know, the big stuff with the guests, with the, you know, with, with the aesthetics with post-production, but it's just all the little things. And you just like when you're constantly exposed to somebody who has such an uncompromising quality bar in every little aspect of what they do, there's just like this, I mean, it's the rising tide thing. Like everything just sort of elevates. The other thing I think is just David's got like a super high degree of openness and spontaneity, which number one makes him a really, really good interviewer because he just creates this container where these conversations can just go anywhere. And we constantly have guests that come back and they're just like, that conversation was nothing like I thought it would be. And it's because he just has this, this frame of openness and curiosity, which is really powerful. You know, that doesn't just come through in the interviews themselves. It comes through in how we do things and how we think about commercial partnerships and how we think about what kind of interviews we're going to do and the guests and the formats. There's just a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of this blank canvas sense that permeates. Is there a catch 22 to both of those characteristics? Like if his attention to detail and interest in perfect quality is so high, does that shoot yourselves in the foot ever? Do you fall behind in pipeline? I think the answer is yes. Inevitably, like with, with respect to the quality bar thing, yeah, that's why it's helpful to have a team and a team of people who aren't scared to speak their mind and say like, Hey, this, this just doesn't make sense in this context, or like, this is not the direction we need to go. So I think that's, yeah, that's just the power. Of, of having a team and having people around that, that he trusts and we all trust each other to say like, you know, let's maybe consider doing this a different way with respect to the conversations themselves. I mean, it's the nice thing about having this format where you can have this beautiful thing called post-production where if it goes a direction that just doesn't make any sense, like we can, we can work with that in post, but you know, better to keep that sense of openness and curiosity and then try to wrangle it back in and to just have sort of a, at least in our experience, a really rigid way of going about things. Emma, what have you learned about Dr. Mark Hyman? One thing I really admire about Mark is that his podcast is one of 110 things that he does. He's a doctor. He is very involved in like policy and like many other things. He's multiple businesses. And so I really respect how, when he enters the interview, like he can really engage and really turn it on. He is 66. He's been publishing to his YouTube channel for about 18 years, I think. So he's very experienced in, interviews and being in the public eye, I guess I would say. Just no matter what he genuinely believes in his mission and like really just genuinely wants to help people regardless of what's going on externally, the noise, whatever it may be, like his heart and his mission is very genuine. And so that is something else that I'm like really proud to be a part of, especially with someone like spearheading this kind of business, this company that gives me a lot of comfort and a lot of peace to work alongside that. How does he, and in turn, his team straddle the line between leaning into what's really trendy and popular and staying true to the core mission that you said he's really passionate about? So he is a doctor of functional medicine. And so I think that remains true. And that theme remains true throughout the podcast, regardless of what topic we're talking about or what guests we're having on. So whenever we do have a guest idea or maybe a topic idea for his one solo episodes, we always try to look at it through the functional medicine lens. So it could be I'll keep using like David Beckham's personal journey, like we'll really go into his nutrition and stuff like that. Or maybe we're talking about GLP-1s. If we're going to have an expert on it, we really have to be diligent about them aligning with Mark. They can disagree on some things, but foundationally, we try to remain within that functional medicine lens. Although that can be really broad, right? We can talk about allergies. We can talk about endometriosis, many topics, you know, the new public food policy. What is it? The food guidelines in America. This is way over my head. Oh, it's like Canadian. My Canadianism is coming out. Yeah. So, okay. There's the podcast god, Diary of a CEO. And one thing that I've observed in the last little while is they don't often interview CEOs as much anymore. And so I'm like, it sounds like Mark is saying true to talking about like the things that he is the expert in, the things that are core to his values, which is cool. Mia, I want to ask you about, well, I mean, everybody, everyone that you've worked for is someone that I profoundly respect. Colin, Samir, and Jack Conte as well. These are some of the most interesting people that I've worked with. And I want to ask in the entire space, let's pick Jack for this question. What is something that you admire about him about greatness? Yeah. I mean, Jack definitely came to mind first, just in terms of what Emma mentioned, where he is the CEO of a tech company and his time is so sought after and everyone needs his input on everything. And yeah, I think in terms of greatness, I wonder if compartmentalizing is the right word, but it's almost like he is there to do that specific thing. And I think it's and be the podcast host and he's able to just shut off the like tech CEO brain and be a full three-dimensional creative in conversations with these other creators. Like he, there is no part of him that is holding back or where his brain is thinking about like his millions of Slack messages, probably like he's able to fully be present, which I think is a lot harder than it looks. And yeah, I think in terms of greatness, like he's very disciplined with his time. Like a lot shorter of a document than other creators I've worked with just to respect his time and be like, here is only what you need, like the three bullet points that are most important. But yeah, I think he's able to be present in the room with creators for the hour or two that we have him. Jack Conte is the kind of person that he just seems to be excellent at everything he does. He's so creative, top 1% creative, and then he's also top 1% business person. When he's coming into film or to record an episode of Digital Spaghetti or whatever else he's working on, how does he react to the team around him? Is he open to feedback from the team? Is he open to ideas? Or does he just have everything going on in his head? He's he's super open to ideas. I mean, we we give him the like pre interview sheet and like research kind of one pager, you know, sometimes he like deviates from that if he's excited by a certain topic. And sometimes there's questions that we've written in that he doesn't necessarily ask. But he's always game for pickups at the end. And he's always like open to our ideas as well. And that just makes it a lot more fun to work with him. And as a researcher, a big help with Jack is that obviously our show covers other YouTube creators, and he is just naturally a fan of that space. So almost always like when we pitch him guests, or when we are trying to cover a certain topic, like he's already familiar with it and excited about it. And that just makes our job a lot easier. I think I'm glad to hear that this this show for me, like recording this show is probably like the most fun I have all week because everybody that I speak to, they work for people who I just admire so so much. And you know, coming in and having to see behind the, you know, behind the curtain of all of these creators is fascinating to me. It's so fun. I'd be so curious to hear about the process from going from your research to creating that one page. Like what? What are you putting on that? How are you distilling it down and selecting what you're telling? Yeah, no, for sure. I think that's a good question, because it is generally the same for most episodes of digital spaghetti. So with Jack, since he's sitting down with a creator, and going through generally one video, there are some other creators where like, there are maybe a short form creator. So we would have like five to 10 videos or something like that. We try to give him three video options and just see which one he gravitates towards most or which one we think like would have the richest conversation will usually like highlight and be like, we like this one because of this. He can choose of those three, whichever one he's most excited about, and kind of like a short bio about them, which is helpful, even if he's heard of them just kind of like where they got their start and where they might be moving to in the future. And then kind of like an angle that we as the team, you know, are going to be able to like, you know, be able to, you know, be able to like, you know, be able to like, you know, like, you know, be able to like, you know, be able to like, you know, be able to like, you know, be able to like, you know, be able to like, you know, be able to like, you know, be able to like, you know, be able to like, you know, be able to like, yeah, we try to make it as short as possible. There is always like a backup research doc. But since we have our own pre-interview call with the creators but we also have kind of a pre-interview just like internal team call with jack my job is definitely to just have the knowledge in my head in case he like has follow-up questions and not necessarily just like send him a 20-page research doc like i just have to do my homework if in case he has questions for me so you meet with jack beforehand and you kind of brief him on like this is the guest and you're yeah that would be such a valuable time to have i think i want to pivot to video because this is a semi-new thing for the podcasting world podcasts you know when it comes to mind is like a audio experience but youtube and now spotify video now apple as well has made video podcasting extremely important how do you think about video podcasting on your teams video is all we do we never really released audio for like spotify and apple it was something that i was really interested in when i was a kid and i was something we thought about but it was more like our show was so youtube focused that as long as we were discoverable like on youtube for other creators and kind of like that community we never really worried about like audio downloads so for us it it's kind of everything obviously colin and smear are completely different they are very much like a two-pronged show but we always laughed when people would call us a podcast because we just think of ourselves as like a youtube interview show that terminology has always kind of been like assigned to us well because your show's so visual yeah and people bring out like kind of props and stuff and we we have little like lower third graphics that are kind of educational so we were always kind of struggling with the idea of making it audio only i think that's why we ended up just focusing only on video i'm not super surprised to hear that from you know the digital spaghetti team do any of you consume podcasts through video normally for me it's audio like i might discover something through video but if i really like the content i'll probably switch to audio and then start listening to it while i'm on a run or while i'm driving a car or something like that that's how i do it too like i usually discover a show through like shorts or clips or youtube and then if i really love it that is like saved for the long drives or like the workouts or whatever i'm doing both i also listen to a lot of long form that i don't think they have an rss feed which is like i just discovered a channel called the dr daf show or dr dar show um it's kind of like jubilee style they've really taken a lot of inspiration from jubilee where they're like 45 minute videos of like panels or like round tables or you know whatever they're doing and i just discovered a channel called the dr daf show is it the middle middle ground or whatever kind of that ideation and so i don't know if they have rss feeds i haven't actually looked so i do like i have video playing but i'm not watching it i'm it's just that that's where i'm finding it mia you mentioned shorts as a way of finding new content how thoughtful are each of you on your teams about shorts oh man didn't even get to finish the question please please sorry i'm very excited to talk about our team on digital spaghetti who does our shorts just because they're incredible so it's chase and his team at good bandit in new zealand if you've ever liked one of our animated digital spaghetti shorts it's likely that that his team has worked on it they are such wizards with shorts and they take care of everything and they really like give us incredible an incredible brand on our on our instagram and they use different art styles for each short it's yeah i could go on but good bandit in new zealand is is the way to go is that something that you're writing into the episode and saying hey we need to hit on this and you're doing that in advance or are you waiting for the the conversation to happen and then identifying moments that could be shorts yeah so it would be the latter we we just kind of go through like once the conversation is fully recorded we go through and highlight any lines that we think would be good shorts it's generally like when jack gets really excited about something or when he's like oh that's really interesting and then we just kind of hand it over and and they do like end-to-end shorts production and they also help us with ideation in terms of like short selection sometimes like chase will have an idea of what would work well and then they just do their like animation wizardry and and we have an awesome thing to to upload alex are you involved in any of this at all at how i write our post-production guy who the guy who heads up all of our post-production pipeline is named johnny um and see he works he works really deep and just kind of working with david to identify like clip and short opportunities and then we've got a team of editors who kind of like me as team kind of helps put them together but it's it's a pretty collaborative process it's interesting i'm still thinking about i'm still kind of stuck on your other question about about video and i'm still kind of stuck on your other question about about video and i'm still and it's interesting because we have a really similar philosophy to me which is like we kind of hesitate to call ourselves a podcast it's like oh yeah i guess we are a podcast technically but but the term interview show feels a lot more a lot more appropriate and i don't know it's so interesting i think it's like in a world where it's really easy to do 37 things at one time and it's so it's so natural to like listen to the podcast while you're driving or while you're running and just be consuming 10 different things like i actually only watch video podcasts now and it's just because it's such a like yeah it's just such an interesting thing to do and i'm it's just such a way to just immerse yourself in an experience and be like wow these are human beings who are having this like incredibly deep both verbal and non-verbal exchange and there's just like so much of this energetic thing that comes through video that i think you just can't get when you're like going for a run and like oh shit i'm gonna rewind this because i didn't pick that last thing up they said versus like wow did you see how his face changed when that question got asked he really lit up and i think it just adds a really human dimension to it that is really easy to skip over in this world emma how does the dr mark hyman show think about shorts and discovery just trying to to manage consistent views and stuff like that so we actually stopped publishing shorts to our youtube channel for a little bit to try and see if that would impact like a little bit of like a hole that we had and i feel like that really had a positive impact but we do still create short form content for other platforms and so i am usually spearheading the kind of like moments i'm not picking out timestamps or anything like that but say um devon was talking about how he went plant-based i would be like hey like around this time code i love this story of devon and then i will send that to our team that actually creates our trailers and they will then create the short form from there so that's kind of my own touch in it but it's all same like it's outsourced to um a different agency that we work with the other thing i'll say about video is we this week as of tomorrow we will actually be finally moving to publishing video on spotify which has been like a whole long journey for my team i know it's been a conversation since like before i joined the team back in july it's been a conversation they've been having for a long time so that'll also be clear that we won't be able to do um at least for now video on apple once that comes out because we are megaphone users so i do think there's like some interest there i'm really curious to see how that performs the other thing i'll say that's kind of like in my head as we're discussing video is just how different all of our audiences are whether it is our youtube audience whether it's our audio listening audience which is our strongest audience whether it's our social media audience like our instagram audience or whatever it is that we're talking about we're all different we're all different we definitely skew female and so it's interesting to create this like one piece of content that we're redistributing and trying to have all of these different audiences in mind while you also have your strategy and growth where you're trying to approach this new audience and so i think that's been something that's been really top of mind for us that we've really been trying to like navigate and wade through within our team i think the reason i bring this up is because putting my youtube strategist cap on now i'm thinking you know if we're getting the majority of the time we're going to be able to of our new viewers and new listeners from shorts it feels like a much more important part of the pipeline than i think a lot of creators realize when it comes to podcasts and i was speaking with another strategist college colleague recently and he works on a podcast also and he says that they build their podcast for the shorts so it's changed the way that they've asked questions it's made their questions a lot tighter so that they can work as a short they've gotten responses that are you know usually 60 to a 90 second response and they've gotten responses that are and then they cut them out really quickly and then the whole interview is less of a free-flowing conversation than hitting this beat then moving on to this beat and moving on to this beat and moving on to this beat it's actually barely a podcast at all it's more like a series of shorts stacked together to make something that's like 60 minutes in length and that that grinds my my gears a little bit like i i don't know how to respond to that because on one hand i get it we have very small audience on this show but the people who do reach out and say hey great job say it because they saw a short or something like that and they're like oh my god i don't know how to respond to that like that you know and then maybe we got them to to listen as a as a full-time listener so i get it but at the same time i'm like that kind of takes away the the purity of what a podcast is or used to be yeah that kind of reminds me more of like subway takes yeah shows that exist only as short form vertical which is not to say that like they're bad or anything but it's interesting that the show and correct me if i'm wrong but like it started as a full-length podcast and then they just kind of shortened it down to like vertical only they have a full-length podcast and i have never listened to it and i love subway takes so they're that's something i don't know what to take from that but i find that interesting i feel like there's room for both i don't know i feel like you can have the full length yeah the full-length conversation and then i don't know maybe i was gonna say maybe like pick out the best moments but if they want to make sure it's like optimized you could do it as a pickup at the end and be like oh you talked about this can you just say that in like a tighter way i guess yeah at the end we'll like throw in a quick fire for social media like purposes you know what i mean we can keep it in the conversation but like we definitely leverage that on like instagram or something like that too i think it opens up the conversation like what is a podcast then you know um and i think this whole conversation around video and everything like that i come from traditional like podcasting industry and so besides my youtube producer friends normally i am usually one of the few people that publish a podcast to youtube and a lot of the people i know that work in podcasting don't know anything about youtube or video to begin with and i do know that sometimes the podcast industry sometimes is not very pro video and I can understand, right? And I don't know about you guys, but I loved podcasts. The reason I got into them, I started working on them. I started my career by creating my own show. It was because you couldn't see the person, right? I liked that anonymous aspect to it. I love the intimacy of the audio, but I don't know. I also love YouTube, for example. And so it's weird to have the worlds combine. And then like we said, marketing and growth and discovery, YouTube is such a tool. So it's a weird dilemma to navigate sometimes. Are there discovery tools that are not YouTube and shorts that you and your teams lean into? There is, but there's not ones that we have used. But someone like a Katie Lohr who used to work at Bumper, she's freelance now. She has so many great ideas of like different ways to tap into new audiences and don't leverage video, right? Even just like things like newsletters and like really the beauty of podcasting is the niche, the nicheness to it, right? That's like one of the biggest strengths is one of the biggest beauties. And so I think that's one of the biggest strengths of podcasting. The more niche, the better. And so just finding a way to meet those niches where they're at. I'm not like a growth and strategy person. I couldn't really speak to it. I'm sure someone like Katie would have way better ideas than what I would say, but just finding those people where they are, right? So like, are they in different groups? Are they meeting in person somewhere? Like, how do you build the awareness around your brand or your show in those places, right? Showing up to the events or maybe like sending something that's related to it. It's interesting that we got to the topic of how podcasts, are able to like promote themselves without social media or YouTube, because I used to work for a company called Realm that does like scripted podcasts and kind of like audio fiction. And the discovery through that would be through like the actors that they were able to book. I was just thinking, I'm like, how, how are people able to promote their shows like without, and it would, it would be through Instagram, but the main driver would be like the pre-existing audience that this actor or actress already had. And they would be like, oh, I did this like fictional podcast, like sci-fi. thing, check it out here. So yeah, it's just an interesting channel to think of. Even for unscripted podcasts, it brings up the question, does chasing the biggest guest bring the best reward? Alex, you're laughing. It's yeah, that's like, that's something we grapple with a lot. It's like, I think there's a natural tendency to say like, cool, let's just get the really big guest. And like, that's going to grow our show. And that's how it's going to blow up. But I think about an example. I'm actually talking about strange distribution mechanisms. We had this writer named Adrian Tchaikovsky on the show. He's a sci-fi writer. He's wildly popular in a certain niche, but like hadn't really been interviewed much. And if I go on the street and say like, Hey, you know, have you read Adrian Tchaikovsky's latest book? People will just kind of look at you strangely. And that interview just blew up. I mean, it did so well. And one of the reasons we found out that it did really well was because somebody posted about it on Reddit in this big sci-fi community. People just kind of swarmed to it. So there's a lot of lessons there, but I think one of them is, is, you know, you could go for the really big name and it might do. Okay. But we've had plenty of, of huge name authors and their interviews have performed, you know, fine. And we've had some niche people like Adrian who just, you know, they're really good interviewers. They're really good at their craft. And you also happen to tap into a subculture who's just like, has an appetite for what that person is doing. And maybe they haven't been exposed as much. There's just like this perfect storm. So what's the lesson there? Like, how do you find more Adrian opportunities and fewer ones that turn into be stinker episodes? That's a question we keep trying to answer. There was a post, I don't know if y'all know this, the blogger Goran, but GWERN, but he, he had a post quite some time ago and it was about, it was actually analyzing Dwarkesh's podcast and like how he's been able to find these really high alpha guests, like Sarah Payne being a really good example who nobody really knew who Sarah Payne was. She was just this, you know, this lecturer. And now she's, he's done like a seven part series with her and it's, it's the highest, you know, viewed thing on his, on his channel. And it was just this really interesting philosophy about there are these like high alpha guests out there that have a lot of, really interesting things to say, but like they haven't really even interviewed on the topic or they haven't been interviewed the right way. And they're at a certain point in their career. And so there's this really interesting exercise we go about of like trying to find high alpha guests. We're like, yeah, of course everybody wants to interview in our world, you know, JK Rowling or Stephen King. And like, we'd love to do that, but what is the formula for the Adriens? And the more that we can try to codify that, it's just a really interesting exercise. Emma, you talked about David Beckham coming on the show. You've also had some less prominent names. What do you think about all this? Yeah, we have a lot of people leading research. So they are usually academics or researchers, scientists like that. No one knows who they are. They don't even have a social media presence. And so we navigate something like that. The leading researchers in Parkinson's, for example, we have these two men on and doctors, they're neuroscientists, I think, but it was one of our strongest episodes we've had since I've come on. And like I said, they had a book, but they didn't really have big social platforms and it was so successful because of the topic and how they work. They were communicating their ideas and kind of, again, that perfect storm of they had the knowledge, they had the experience within their career, they were seeing the research firsthand, yet not many people were knowing of them. And then they were kind of having a moment within the podcast interview wellness space. But then we've had someone where it's more high profile. I think with that, I usually am really hesitant to have these really high profile people that are maybe just like more slight, like actors or something like that, that aren't as specific to our topic. The host of the show is a doctor, right? And so people are coming for health information. Our audience is mainly US as well too. And like considering the healthcare system there, like these people really need a lot of help because they don't have much opportunities. Let's just be frank. I'm Canadian. I can say this. And so, yeah, if I don't have much access in my community or whatever for my government, like I'm trying to seek out information. And so if you're going to have these high profile people, if they're not specific to your niche or your topic, whether it's like, maybe it's an actor who like wrote a book, right? For Alex's example, if I'm completely wrong in this, it's like, that's not maybe their, their expertise is in writing. Maybe they did write a book, which could be interesting conversation, but it's a hard thing. So when I think about approaching these higher profile people, I try to think like, are they going to be open to discussing something new? A lot of these higher profile people are very PR trained or like we talked about before, like they've had the conversation, they've done the podcast rounds. So I think if you can't have a unique angle and the other pieces that they have to be open to discussing it, Mark has a company called Function where you get your blood testing done. And we've had a lot of people who have done that. And so I think if you can't have a unique angle and the other pieces that they have to be open to discussing it, Mark has a company called Function where you get your blood testing done. And so I think if you can't have a unique angle and the other pieces that they have to be open to discussing it, Mark has a company called high profile people get their blood testing done, but they do not feel comfortable discussing their results, which could be such an opportunity for a really unique conversation of them being like, Hey, I never knew I had this marker, right. Or I recognize that like X, whatever, you know? And so I think if there's no unique angle that you can take with them, it's not going to be a strong conversation because they've had this conversation a hundred times, or there's a very big limit on where they're going to be able to discuss. Sounds like the common thread here is closer a guest aligns with the core value of your show, the higher likelihood of success you have with Alex's example, Adrian, not a big known name, but an excellent writer. And so appeals to the writing audience very, very well. And then with yours, Emma, it's more about people who are specialists at, you know, at their discipline in the healthcare world. And I think it sounds like it's really tempting to go out and chase the big names because they got the big followings. And it sounds like that actually might, I wouldn't say backfire, but yield lesser results than finding somebody who is excellent at the very specific thing that your podcast speaks about. I think that's right. And I think you can go even like a step deeper. And like, what we try to do is we try to model the exact characteristics of like the ideal, how I write guests. Some of it too, one of the things I didn't mention is like a lot of it actually has to do with, there's a certain kind of, of person that we found that like David just really has a deep rapport with. And so for us, that specific example is like somebody who thinks really, really deeply about like language. Because to Emma's point, you might have somebody who's written a book, but that's, you know, the book is maybe just a vehicle for an idea or it's kind of a vehicle for themselves, as opposed to like, we found that the people, the kind of guests that do really well are people who just like think really, really, really deeply about language are also very articulate about it. Also have like, so it's, so it's, it's about like, again, codifying what does that guest look like? And then try to find as many of these people as we can. And then. Right. Emma, at the very beginning of this show, you mentioned very briefly inbound guests. So people who are reaching out to be guests on the show, how do you think about whether or not they're a good fit? And how do you think about inbound as a whole? Inbound is, I feel very fortunate to be in the position where we have inbound more so than we can even keep up with amongst our team. We only have 52 slots to fill for our guest episodes a year. And so with maybe some partnerships that we have that like we are, have agreed to do a little bit more. So we have a lot of, you know, you know, we have, we have, we have a, you know, we have a number of people that we think would be a really good fit for the show that really leaves a small number of slots for, okay, now I'm going to look at my inbound to be completely honest. Like we have usually too many ideas for spots to fill. So for us, I think it's just kind of like looking at unique approaches. But we are, if I'm fully transparent, we don't often leverage the inbounds. Maybe say, for example, we wanted to just discuss ADHD and specifically, you know, specifically ADHD in women. And so we are really struggling to find a guest and like trying to find a, an expert. So if anyone has any ideas, please let me know. But with that, when we're trying to like approach a certain topic, I'll actually go into my inbox and I'll search whatever the keywords are. Maybe it's, I don't know, like something else, like another topic we want to discuss. And so I'll search it up and I'll kind of like see what my inbound was because I get so many, if I'm honest, I don't, I don't have the bandwidth to read them all or look at them all. And so that's been a time where like the ADHD, for example, we did have someone pitch and like they had a book coming out and they were actually a really good guest to discuss this conversation. So then I was able to like leverage that. So I'll be honest, this is the first time I've worked on a show that has had this much inbound before. This is a very unique experience and I don't think it's common for most podcasters, like if I'm completely frank. So I recognize that it's a good problem to have. Mia, everybody in the creator economy wants to be a guest on Colin and Samir. How did you navigate picking the right people to be guests? You know, with Colin and Samir, luckily that was not one of my responsibilities. I was mostly, yeah, I was mostly heading up research. But they have a great producer, Marilyn, who she was the one who was kind of like the quarterback running the plans with who actually gets to be on. And it is, I mean, we internally do pitch guests to Colin and Samir. And like you said, Emma, it's like who is in the zeitgeist and who would make sense to kind of come on in terms of like bringing the most value. I don't want to know what Marilyn's inbox looks like. I'm sure it's very full of people. But yeah, I mean, I can kind of relate with Digital Spaghetti. A big part of the way that we prioritize it is mostly like through our own internal pitches. And then if we're maybe wanting to cover a topic or if there's like a certain like timely trend or event that's happening, we could kind of go back into our inbox. But generally, we were kind of prioritizing guests that we think would be the right fit at that time. Right. That makes sense. What's the best podcast out there and why? Is this like a we can't answer with our own show? Yeah. Why is it the best show out there? I'm so curious. I mean, I'll say this as a caveat. Like, I'm not actually a huge consumer of podcasts. When I got into this, I joined this team because How I Write was my favorite podcast. It was pretty much the only one I listened to. Nice. So I saw that they were hiring and I said, I would love to be a part of that. As far as the best podcasts out there, I just think let's just do it. Here's what's great about our show. One of the things that we talk about a lot is like because writing in and of itself could be conceived as a niche topic. But we talk a lot. We talk a lot about our interviews are like writing as a prism for life. And so it's really fascinating how many people we get commenting our audience who says, like, I don't write anything. I'm not a writer. I'm not particularly interested in writing. But I found myself listening to every episode because it's just such a window into like what it is to be a human being. And I think in terms of places to get that and using writing as a prism, there's nowhere that comes even close because the level of depth and nuance and curiosity and playfulness and just, again, that quality bar. It's just a really cool show. And you just get to do it. Yeah. These conversations that you leave, like feeling just like spiritually nourished, you know. Cool. Emma. I know I'm going to like end this call and be like, oh, my God, I just thought of 10 other ones. One that I've been enjoying recently, I said it before and I just confirmed the name is I don't even know. I wouldn't necessarily say it's a podcast either, which is kind of ironic that we've had this whole full circle moment. But it's the Dr. Daff show. I think she is elevating. Like, we have an opportunity with our shows who we're selecting on as a guest is an opportunity to platform that individual. And I think. I think that takes a level of responsibility as well, too. And so, again, it's something that I try to be aware of. There are limits beyond my control, too. And so I do think that the Dr. Daff show, she's really elevating voices, especially female voices that need to be heard right now. And so I really love it. I love the question she's asking. She's having really hard conversations and like going there within the conversations. And so I love seeing both sides. And that's exactly what the show is. I'm a Libra. I don't know if that's part of it. I never say that, but I just love I really love to see both sides and pick my own. Kind of like where I where I fit. And so that's the show that I think is doing a really good job right now. By hard questions, you mean things that are normally taboo or things that are. Yeah, normally taboo. Current like events and current challenges that I think our culture is going through. And then especially like through a female lens, like things that I am like personally grappling with or like questioning. And so it's interesting to hear people on both really extreme sides of the spectrum. And for me to be like, OK, I want to hear your perspective and I want to hear yours. Whereas like sometimes when you watch maybe like the Jubilee or something like that, they have kind of the same cast, I would say. And I totally recognize why some things are so niche that like you also have to find someone that's comfortable on camera and like has had this experience. So sometimes it could be hard to find these people. But I think that she is like kind of like throwing out a broader net, if that makes sense. Cool. Good answer. Mia, bring us home. You know, you said this was a softball question, but I'm struggling. I do. I guess I can. I can give a shout out to my friend. Valentin does this show. We're called Orbit for Creators. And I think it's been really cool. It's a smaller show, but it's been really cool to see someone who is a creator themselves interview other creators from a lens of like purposefully looking for kind of like smaller creators, if that makes sense. It just feels like it's kind of by creators for creators, which a lot of shows say he I've seen behind the scenes, like how dedicated he is to providing value and serving as a space for people who are really, really early on their journey, because I feel like the. The problem with a lot of podcasts as they get bigger and bigger is like it becomes less and less relatable when they start to have like these big CEOs on the show and these people who are super accomplished, like the people who are just starting out, right, like the people who are just starting out want to hear other people who are maybe like in the same struggle as they are. So his show came to mind. That sounds like an excellent show. I'm going to check that out. Something I would be interested in. I firmly believe that we are in the era of the thousand true fans right now. At least that's what. I'm telling myself because we are not a big, big podcast by any means, but we have a very small audience who seems to like it. And I think we can grow that just a bit further. And that's that. That will make me happy with this show. So I'm glad that you brought that up. OK, the three of you. Thank you so much for doing this as our first roundtable episode. I think it went well. I learned a lot from the three of you. It was nice to connect as well. So cool. I think mission accomplished. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thank you very much for watching this episode. If you liked it, please consider subscribing or leaving us a review on the audio platforms. Please go check us out. YouTube, Apple, Spotify and see who we've interviewed. Also, if you're someone who works for a channel that has over a million subscribers, we want to hear from you. So please consider reaching out and maybe you will be someone that we interview in the near future. See ya.