447. Joe Rogan Refused Validation and Proved a Point

0:04 Good morning podcasting Morning Chat. Today is Wednesday, February 4th, 2026, and today it's our podcast news and comment episode. And some of today's stories include a sudden Apple role change, a new AI voice crackdown, and a hosting platform betting on true fans over big downloads. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, bottom left hand side of the screen and share it. However, Clubhouse lets you. And if you're catching us via podcast, YouTube, LinkedIn, etcetera, please share this with a fellow podcaster. And now give us about 30 seconds and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here.

1:20 Good morning again, podcasting, Morning chat. Thanks so much for being here. I am your host Mark Ronick and currently on stage with me. We've got a full house here. Today. We have producer Ashley Feller, Ralph E Steps, Sid Meadows, BC Babbles, Dr. Fay, Jonathan Howard, Nick Naulback and Alex Baelish, and a good morning to Jessica, Susie and Tim, who have joined us bright and early this morning. By the way, if you want to learn about all those people I just mentioned a moment ago, please go to podcastingmorningchat.com, click the About section. You'll find that link toward the top of the page and you'll see a list of all these fine people and information about them, including how to get in touch with them.

2:07 Today we are covering all the news around the world of podcasting and I think we should just dive right in. So the way we like to do it is start with a little data for you. Over the last week, 601,690 podcasts published at least one new episode. That's up 4.7% over the last 30 days, 2.3 million and Change published at least one new episode, and that's up 7.1% from the last month. And we've got Dr. here who's going to give us the top five on Spotify and the top five on Apple. So without further ado, Dr. the Floor is yours. Good morning.

2:56 OK, so at #5 this is Spotify at #5 it's the Daily at #4 it's Crime Junkie at #3 Q the Tippity. It's good. Hang with Amy Poehler at #2. It's this past weekend with Theo von and #1 is the Joe Rogan Experience. All right, and that is why we do. Get enough of them. That's why we do these top fives, because the number ones seem to hold on to that spot. So let's check in on Apple. That feels very much like the chart that I read last Wednesday, to be honest. It might be exactly the same. You might be right. #5 on Apple is good hang with our girl Amy Poehler #4 is the Dan Bongino show, he's back #3 is the Joe Rogan experience. Number 2 is Crime Junkie and the number one spot. No, that was.

3:57 Perfect timing, perfect timing. The daily is number one. It was perfect timing. I think you don't think it was good timing because there's probably like a moment delay, but it was actually perfectly timed with the timpani there. Dr. So good, good on you. Thank. You. Let's talk about some events around the world of podcasting, things that you may be interested in. First, you made me remember this podcast. Fon is scaling fast again this year and turning into a real global podcasting moment. Organizers say This annual charity driven event now has more than 2000 participating podcasts around the world, with create creators releasing special episodes during Podcast On Week, which happens to be the week of March 14th, 2026, to spotlight causes and nonprofits that they care about.

4:55 The initiative has expanded into multiple languages and regions, helping podcasters use their mic for social impact rather than just entertainment. If you want to learn more or get involved, head over to Podcast Thon. There's only one T in thatandthats.org. podcastthon.org. Registration is free and open. Now, as part of that worldwide wave of charitable audio and video, the PMC has signed on to do it again. Last year, we did it to remember and help the area, Western North Carolina area after Hurricane Lean drove through here and devastated a lot of the area. And by the way, just a little heads up, everything's going great here in the Asheville area. I was going to ask you.

5:48 Yeah, sure, there's still certain buildings, certain areas that still need a lot of work, but certainly the main attraction areas, the where a lot of tourism happens that has been vastly cleaned up and it we are open for business. So if you've thought about coming to Asheville and you're hesitating 'cause you're worried about the devastation of that hurricane, don't. We're back. So please come and hey, if you want to great Airbnb just 20 minutes outside of the city. We'll put a link in the show notes. You can come stay at our Airbnb. My wife and I have. 1. There's a there's my promo for today. You're still under snow though, right? We do have a little bit, but it's already a lot of it's melted because it's it's warmed up pretty decently here. We're actually supposed to get 60° weather in the next few days, so it's just bizarre weather. OK.

6:42 And anyway, Dr. you have more to share. So this is important. Our Canadian podcasters, please listen up. The CBC podcast just opened its doors for a new original series, and this is a real opportunity. OK, so from February 2nd, which was a couple days ago through April 1st, the CBC podcasts is accepting pitches from ambitious new shows to run under some of their biggest umbrella feeds like Uncover the Con, Split Screen. And personally, now those are the names of the shows. I'm not just spewing out words randomly, but those are the names of the shows. They're open to indie creators, production partners, in house teams and Co productions with media companies. They're looking for strong narrative ideas with clear story arcs and real audience pool.

7:41 Bottom line, this is a chance to partner with a public broadcaster that reaches millions of listeners and has a proven track record of impactful audio storytelling at serious scale. So we will provide a link in the show notes. So basically this would be like belonging to a network. So that is a very exciting kind of thing. For Canadians. To. Be specific. I was looking for Dave Campbell, who often joins us in the audience. He's not here yet, but we'll make sure he knows about it if he doesn't already also. Simona. Yeah.

8:21 And Simona, thank you very much. Yeah, but Simona hasn't been around. That's why I didn't think about it and all. You know, with all due respect, I haven't seen her in a while here at the podcasting morning chat. So I didn't think of her. My bad. She's probably listening. And now the another thing that I want to talk to you about is the podcasters directory.com. I say this every week, at least I have for the past several weeks. So Are you ready to boost your networking game and meet like minded professionals in an engaging virtual event designed for creators like you to connect, collaborate and expand your professional network? Now this has changed kind of morphist over the past couple weeks.

9:02 They're not doing the topics, you know, dedicated to that special day. It's just anybody and everyone who's involved with podcasting or wants to be involved in podcasting. So that means authors, speakers, podcasters, subject matter experts. It's weekly on Thursdays, 1:00 PM Pacific Time, 4:00 PM Eastern Time, and if you use the letters PMC, our initials PMC, you'll get in for free. Very cool. Awesome. Thank you, Dr. and let me see here, what do we have? Oh, I know what we have next and I wasn't prepared for it, but. Quick tip, smart move. Yeah, content creators business fight.

9:49 Take it away, Ralph. That never gets old. Nope. So quick heads up for creators this morning. Especially if you use Patreon. If you're listening, if you use Patreon, listen up. This is important. So Apple has reimposed a billing rule that will affect how some craters are getting paid. Let me talk about what's happening. Apple is now requiring Patreon creators who are still using the older billing setups. If you're using the older billing setups, you got to switch to the subscription based billing no later than November 1st, 2026 if you want your memberships to work normally inside the iPhone and the iPad app. Now you might be saying, Rob, why does this matter? Here's why this matters. I'm a money guy. Apple's in app purchase system takes a cut. That cut is close to 30%.

10:31 That's if they pay for the subscription inside the iOS app. So where your fans subscribe matters more than ever whether they do it inside the app versus on the web. And if you do nothing, Patreon says they're going to automatically convert your page so it stays active in the App Store. But what that means is that decision gets made for you. Nothing's changing today. Don't panic. This is an early warning you've got till November. But if you sell memberships or subscriptions through Patreon and your audience includes iPhone users, guess what most people's audiences probably do? Now is the time to review your billing model and plan intentionally before November comes. These things happen. Platforms change rules. Smart businesses don't ignore them. They prepare. And that's your business bite for this morning, Mark. Thank you, Ralph.

11:14 Appreciate that. I feel like we're really moving through all this very smoothly this morning. Let's keep it going and share some what we call news bites. And before we get to that, I think Sid wants to chime in on something. Go ahead, Sid. Good. Morning, everybody. Hey Ralph, Do you know if that additional fee effects other community platforms that are using Apple Pay as an option? I would have to assume so because this is a overall thing that Apple is doing. They're trying to make sure that you're doing your subscriptions through them so they can get their 30% cut. Sid, in the note in the news item that I have, it was just specifically speaking about Patreon, but I know in the Apple ecosystem they want their cuts.

12:01 So I would just have to assume that that is the way all of these are going. Now the way you get around that is if your people subscribe through the web app instead of through the iOS app, they can avoid that. So that's kind of the work around Sid all. Right so let me ask you the question. So follow up question. So my community is housed on Kajabi and Kajabi has something called Kajabi payments. And so I'm using Kajabi payments over Stripe. And with using Kajabi payments, you can enable or disable Google Pay and Apple Pay. So by using Kajabi, and it's maybe, I mean I'm obviously going to have to go to Kajabi and ask this question, but by using Kajabi payments, am I still going to be charged the 30% by Apple?

12:45 I would have to assume if you're using Apple Pay then Apple Pay is going to want their platform fees, but I don't know specifically what Kajabi. I would reach out to Kajabi directly on that. I think right now this is targeted specifically toward Patreon, but if you think about it, if there are targeting Patreon, other platforms are probably they're coming after those other platforms next. So yeah, it's something to certainly think about. And it's kind of a crappy move by Apple. They're really making it difficult. Nick wanted to chime in. Go ahead, Nick. I might have missed this at the top of the article that Ralph just you know the segment, but is it specifically related to Apple Pay for Apple apps? I think it's Apple the App Store, not Apple Pay. Yes.

13:33 Right. It's the App Store. If you're getting your subscription through the App Store to Patreon, that's exactly what I'm talking about today. They are going to impose their fee because apparently there's been an A sort of a grandfather clause thing where you could do a workaround for that, but they're shutting that workaround down at this point. So there is, you have to subscribe through the app. So you have to have an app, right. That's a lot of clearance. Thank you, Nick. That's a great question. So in your example, Sid, like if you have your community is downloading that app and that's where they're subscribing from, that's where Apple's going to try to take their hit. Yep. Thank you, Nick. Appreciate that. All right. I think we've exhausted the conversation, so we'll keep things moving. Thank you, Ralph, for that business bite. We'll hear more from Ralph shortly. Getting into the news, Bites Waves Audio just dropped a new tool called Voice Regen, and it's built to solve one of the biggest pain points for creators, lousy audio quality. So think similarly for those of you who use Authonic or Adobe Podcasts.

14:37 Similar to that, this AI powered web service lets you upload your audio or video and instantly get a polished, broadcast ready voice track with background noise removed, room echo minimized, volume smooth, present presence boosted and all without expert editing skills or extra gear. It even includes a built in teleprompter to help with delivery and retakes. There's a free starter tier for quick fixes and short form, with paid creator and Pro tiers for heavier use, making professional sounding audio more accessible for podcasters, video creators, and storytellers who know strong sound matters just as much as strong visuals.

15:25 If not, in my opinion, more matters more than strong visuals. Also in the news, Spotify says listeners are clearly into sharing what they're hearing. Since adding a messaging feature last year, nearly 1,000,000 users have sent hundreds of millions of messages about what they're streaming. Now, they're leaning into that behavior with two new features. One lets you opt in and show what you're listening to in real time inside messages. The other, called Request to Jam, makes it easier to turn that moment into a shared listening session with friends or family. Both features are rolling out now for users 16 and older, with wider availability coming soon later this month. I tried that request to Jam thing actually this past weekend when I was doing that volunteer retreat and we were making dinner as a group and somebody said, Mark, we need music and somebody because that's for whatever reason, they go to me to be the DJ often times.

16:34 And I happily obliged. But somebody else there really wanted to participate in the music choices as well. So he set up one of those jams and it's really easy to use. You can add podcasts, you can add music, etcetera, and share it with multiple people. It's a cool little feature. Ralph, you want to take the next story? Absolutely. Let's talk about Substack. Because Substack goes to the TV. So if you thought Substack was just newsletters, think again. Substack just launched ATV app for Apple TV and Google TV, which means that creators can now put video and live streams right into the living room, the same place people binge Netflix and YouTube.

17:14 Now he might be saying Ralph. Why does this matter? Here's why it matters to podcasters. Substack isn't building another podcast app, they're building a creator channel model. That's really what's talking about here. One subscription, multiple formats, bright video live, and even steadily adding more audio style features as well, like narrated pose. So it's easy to imagine it's becoming a bundled audio video ecosystem over time. So the real headline is this. We may be moving from subscribe to a show to subscribe to a creator, and if that becomes normal, it changes everything. It's going to change how people discover you, how you monetize, and even what a podcast means. So here's my question for the room. Are we heading towards channels replacing individual shows where your subscriptions followed the creator, not the podcast feed? I thought it was really amazing information. Yeah, absolutely.

18:02 Thank you, Ralph. And by the way, good morning to Austin Sambaza and Jeff, who've joined us in the audience. Nick, go ahead. Did you want to respond to Ralph's story? Yeah, I wanted to answer your question, Ralph, with a question of my own. And I love the idea. I know we've talked a lot on this podcast about like the all in one platform, the all in one place where you just manage one thing, then everything can get taken care of from that one spot. But as creators, are we setting ourselves up for trouble should something happen, some stack determines that we violate their terms of service? Like a kind of a Facebook situation here where all of your content is housed in this one area. And in the snap of my finger, it's literally all gone. I absolutely agree.

18:50 It's a catch 22 because you want to drive people to your channel. I get it. But you're right. If you're putting all your eggs in that basket, then if something happens to that base, I'll give you a perfect example. Like for me, I'm on YouTube and Rumble. That way, if YouTube decides, hey, we don't like YouTube anymore or we don't like Ralph anymore, I can pivot and go to Rumble. I like the idea of building my own channel, but you're putting all your eggs in one basket when you do that. O my caution is go down that road with sub stack. I think that's great, but I also think having yourself in multiple places. The other thing is put stuff on your own website. Point people to your domain and it's funny, I've talked to Dave Jackson at Pod Page about this. It would be cool if we could get Pod Page to support video and things like that where you could host the video right on your own website so that rather than going to YouTube or Rumble or sub stack people go to your branded site. I'm with you there.

19:46 I think it's, I don't want to say silly. I can't think of a better word, but all right, it's silly to just depend on these third party platforms, right? But at the same time, it's also silly to ignore them all together. So I think it's really about finding the balance. Sure, take advantage of sub stack, especially if it's working well for you. At the same time, you want to make sure you're capturing these e-mail addresses from these. People who are subscribing so that, yeah, if for some reason Substack goes away, or if you remember the episode we had a couple months back with Lucy Werner, she accidentally deleted her whole account that was making her lots of money. I don't know, I can't remember the exact figure, but she was making a steady income using Substack, but she accidentally deleted the whole thing when she thought she was only deleting the podcast section.

20:39 So yeah, anything could happen and you want to make sure you're prepared and can still find ways to communicate with your different audiences on these different platforms. That's the catch 22 because you want to be on these platforms for discovery. You want to be on the Tik Toks and the different platforms, but then you got to play in their world and you got to follow their rules when you play in their world. So it's a catch 22. I get it. But I like what you said, But I I think it all comes down to building your brand, building the recognition and bringing people to you, getting their e-mail address and building your people around. Thank you. Thank you. And we also have BC who wants to chime in. Go for it BC Good morning. Good morning. As a subset user, it's one of those dichotomies that I got to wrestle with because I love the interface so far.

21:22 It's a great way to kind of push your thought leadership and help you establish your authority. Plus, it's the only podcasting host I don't pay for, which is, which is also great. But at the same time, it's for things like this, which makes me happy that I preemptively chose to make sure that I don't post from the same place I produce. So I record all my stuff, most of it through Riverside, but it gets pushed out through Substack, YouTube, Spotify, whatever. And it's for things like this where I'm like, that's a really good choice I made early on. Because if I didn't, and to Ralph's point, if it was all housed in one spot and suddenly no one likes BC Babbles anymore, I'm kind of screwed. Who could stop loving BC babbles?

22:03 Come on. With this mug, right? Yeah, I know. Thank you BC All right, let's keep it moving. I skipped a story Dr. because I knew you must have been making some eggs at the time. So well, now you're here. But earlier I skipped a story story #4 If you wanted to take that one. OK, sure. So New York cracks down on fake voices in podcasts. OK, here's the story. New York lawmakers have introduced a bill that would require podcasts to clearly label AI generated content. The proposal targets shows that use artificial intelligence to create voices, hosts or scripted audio, aiming to increase transparency for listeners. Now, if it's passed, New York would become one of the first states to mandate AI disclosures specifically for podcasting and audio content.

23:00 The bill reflects growing concern about synthetic media, audience trust and the blurred line between human and machine created voices in digital audio. So just to translate everything for the creators, the government wants you to tell people when the robot is talking. Yeah, good way to sum that up. I do not like this. First of all, I'm more of a libertarian. I'm not going to go political, but I believe we should not be mandated by the government what we can say and what we can do. Here's my concern. My production team uses descript. One of the things that you can do in descript is regeneration of individual words. So if I'm recording a show and I blurb a word, I would much rather let the AI voice Ralph fix that so the audience can understand.

23:46 What Ralph is trying to say. And so I'm sorry, DRI didn't mean to interrupt you. What? Did you? No, I'm sorry, I was saying I didn't even think about that because on the surface I thought this sounded like a good idea. But now after listening to you, I did not even think about the little clone voice thing that you can do. We've Mark and I have used that for a client and it been better in. Fact, I think I shared once on this show that example with the podcast Dementia Discussions. Yet she we needed a quick little intro or at least one line for her intro and we had AI replicate her voice. But even more So what Ralph is saying, because Riverside does this too.

24:26 You can go in and literally change a word by just typing. You know, if they said one word, they meant to say another. You can go in and edit the transcript, change the word and it will replace it audibly with that same voice. They're recreating the voice to fix that word. And yeah, maybe they're, who knows, Ralph, maybe there will be exceptions. Hopefully that will be something pointed out that maybe there's some leeway, who knows, But. That's the problem you just said. What I was going to say, Nick, there's a lot of Gray area there for sure. Yes, go ahead. Yeah. Do do we get into AI police at that point? You know, who's the AI policeman? What's a percentage that's allowable? I'm sorry, but I think that violates free speech. I don't disagree that there's a lot of AI slop going out there, but the truth is I don't know my my younger children, I've won. It's 24 and 28.

25:18 They hear something or see something to AI and their AI radar goes off right away. They know right away this is AI. People aren't stupid. Ralph, that's not the problem. Your son and daughter that are older aren't the problem. It's the YouTube Kids that's the problem and it's the younger stuff where these kids aren't savvy enough because they don't know any better. We're getting into a world now where AI is the rule rather than the exception because they didn't have that previous non AI experience. I'm with you. I don't know where the line is.

25:59 I think that the problem is Gray is like the size of the whole entire country right now with the way it's going. There is going to be lots of AI talk today, lots of different ways that it's affecting podcasting. So more to come on that BC did you want to add something? Yeah, this might might be a dumb question honestly, but if this is just one state, I'm curious about how they plan to implement this. Like if it's, but we're talking about podcasting, which is a, which is technically and immediately a national, international medium. How does this actually function when it's just one state in one country that's implementing this kind of law? Yeah, that's a good question. And yeah, is it only applied to New Yorkers and that right, like if, but what if I'm making content here in North Carolina and it's being distributed to New York? Am I in trouble with New York now? Like, there is definitely a lot of Gray area here. This is kind of like something like with adult sites now, adult sites, if you are putting your adult sites on iPhone apps or on computer screens, you've got to set up some kind of infrastructure that understands what the IP address is for the locality where you're putting your stuff. And that's my concern is all of a sudden, am I going to have to have a podcast host that says, OK, B CS in New York, if B CS listening to this bang, he's got to get a A disclosure on his screen that says some of this is AI related content. That's the concern that I have

27:29 as well. I think over time there's going to be a, a much broader attempt to regulate some of this AI, whether it's worldwide, nationwide, etcetera. So I think this is kind of a natural progression, you know, a state or two or three adopt something and then other states start to follow suit. And then that's where the national government starts to pay attention and that's how it spreads. We talked about just about a year and a half ago or a year ago, I don't even know. It's been so long with the timelines about the Actors Guild, so it's not surprising that New York or Chicago or LA is going to start this. It is a real problem of taking people's voices, and I don't know what the answer is to what you're saying, Ralph, but it's the wild, Wild West.

28:19 There's just too much. I don't even know how to put it, so I'll just leave it at that. Yeah, it is okay. We're good with this, I think. So with that then, BC the mic is still yours, you've got some entertainment news to share with us. It's no secret, you know, Dr. gets to talk about Joe Rogan at least once a week. So we know for a fact he's been he's been number one in the podcasting game for quite some time. But he caused some waves recently when he wasn't nominated for the Golden Globes, which just released a best podcast award for this year, I believe. And it turns out he didn't get nominated because he did not want to pay the $500 entry fee that the organization requires for a nomination to happen. And it's for an understandable reason. He's been in the game for a long time. He was a Fear Factor host and he was a comedian. And now he's been running the number one podcast for a long time and not finding the direct quote, but essentially his prime reason is like, look, I've been doing this for a long time and now you suddenly want to hold this kind of popularity contest and then decide if I'm number one kind of screw that, you know, I know I'm number one.

29:27 I'm not going to pay 500 bucks to give you the chance to, for whatever reasons, say that I'm not. And he did acknowledge that Amy Poehler did win the prize for this year with the good hang. I've seen the show, good hang I and I do enjoy it. He mentions he hasn't seen the show, but he was he's sure that if she won, it must be a pretty solid show, despite it being out for only six months. And I feel kind of forced for Rogan here. You know, it's, it's like, again, he's been put in the work, he's got the seniority here. So I understand to that degree, you know, why he wouldn't want to have to drop that kind of at the same time, you know, a lot of these organizations are nonprofits. So it's understandable why, if we're in the future, if he were to want to go the route of getting that kind of acknowledgement, should he change his mind in this particular aspect, That would have to be something he'd be willing to pay. OK, wait.

30:15 Let's all take a minute of silence to feel bad for Joe Rogan $500 to do this. Which really would be a drop in the bucket knowing what he makes with Spotify deal. And right, I do think it's important to call out the fact that look, all of the Hollywood awards you have to pay for and for most prestigious podcasting words you have to pay for. And this was not an exception for just just for podcasting at the Golden Globes. Every category, if you wanted to be nominated, you had to pay a fee for your application.

30:55 That's just part of this game. We just need that clarity there because I don't want some listeners to think, oh, that's weird. Why are they charging podcasts to be nominated for the Globes? They aren't. They're charging. Everybody. I know Dr. is going to start a GoFundMe for next year before Joe Rogan and his and his little podcast need the $500 like throw up Joe Rogan, I'm sorry. He does make a point. Mark. It does, no point. Here's the point. He is number 1. He is, but well, why does he need to pay to be told he's #1? No, no, no, no, no, no, no no, no no no.

31:38 He is a podcaster just like everybody else. Grow up, pay the damn money, and be done with it. This is the most ridiculously moronic. So passionate. Because you know why? You know why? Just because he's #1 doesn't make him the best. Because he's number 1. He shouldn't be given the award. So stop being a little bitch and pay the money. This is ridiculous. Hey ladies and gentlemen, it's spicy week here on the Podcasting Monday chat. Sorry he's got more money. His sponsor could have paid for it. For gosh sake, just do it, I'll say. I'll say this and then I'll go to Jonathan. Joe Rogan already is the winner. He got $100 million contract.

32:22 He's always number one on Spotify. In my opinion, he is the winner. And that $500 could have been tax deductible, damn it. As the business guy on the show, this was probably either the best marketing decision or the worst. It could have been the best marketing decision because now he gets more publicity because he can go out there and say this. Either way, he wins because he got publicity because he didn't go in it and he saved $500 as the business. Guy. Saved $500. That's a good idea. It was a publicity stunt. It was totally a publicity stunt. Alex. Then he won. It wasn't a publicity stunt and he did win, but that's not the point. The point is he wants to be ultra opposite of the Golden Globes and that's what this was about. This had nothing to do with the award. Exactly.

33:12 A publicity stunt. You hit the nail on the head. Tim in the chat says I want what Alex is drinking and let's go to Jonathan so Jonathan can chime in here. I know he's been waiting patiently. Go ahead, Jonathan. I'm just going to say that it was a genius move on his part and very smart marketing. And you know what he is #1 his podcast is always #1 so he can say he's #1 there's nothing wrong with that. I don't know, Alex. I think you're off a little bit on this one. All I was saying is that everybody knows he's number one, but why should we waive the rules for him? Well, I don't think he wants the rules wave for him. I think he was just saying I'm not going to pay the 500 bucks, so I'm not going to win the award. I think it's more than that.

33:53 I think it's a publicity thing because this all could have been handled under the table very quietly. No write up, no admission as to why. But yeah, I think Ralph is right one, because I think it was a publicity stunt and look how long we've talked about it just today and look how worked up, yeah. That part is, I'm really not. It's just, it's just funny about no, no, no, it's not that at all. It's a genius move. I never said it wasn't a genius move. It's just that guys like, just play for what it is. Oh please.

34:34 Anybody else feel like we need one of those bells like when you're at the boxing match timing? Yes, right. A good call. That's a good call, yeah. Palate cleanser This has been really Alex, so passionate. Passionate. I'm going to give BC the final word and then we're moving on. And two things real quick with this one, and to Alex's point, you know, if you look at other award ceremonies, look at like, you know, Lady Gaga had 7 nominations for the Grammys. Imagine how much that cost. But the other thing is, and I want to say this for a podcasters out there, we've talked about before, when you enter podcasting trying to emulate certain huge platforms like Joe Rogan's, keep in mind Joe Rogan is an anomaly among podcasters. He didn't start off podcasting like I mentioned before, he was fear factor. He was a comedian.

35:18 He already. Had a whole. Fandom waiting to follow him into the podcasting space. So don't take any of these antics quote UN quote as something to measure yourself as it doesn't help anyone to try to compare yourself to the anomalies of of the industry. So just keep that in mind going forward. Let's get into some other headlines now. Sometimes we don't do this right. In other words, news bites, We sometimes have their thinking they're going to be relatively quick conversations. That's why we call them news bites. But sometimes we get a story like the last one we had, although I guess that one's technically entertainment news, right? BC so that might stir up some more conversation. This part of the story or this part of the show is, are the headlines.

36:03 And this is where we think maybe there'll be a little more discussion. Just a guess. And with this next story, South by Southwest invites podcasting in. Welcome to the Now you have to listen to my Affliction here on my voice. Welcome to the big stage. Podcasting is stepping onto South by Southwest's Mainstage, with Podcast Movement Evolutions officially embedded in the March 13th through 15th festival in Austin. And I will call out the fact that this isn't necessarily breaking news. This has been out for a little bit, but we haven't really talked about it and quite frankly, I haven't seen a lot being talked about as far as this story goes.

36:46 The shift gives podcast creators, platforms, advertisers and media executives A dedicated space to debate things like measurement, ROI, accountability as budgets tighten, etcetera. Organizers aim to move podcasting into core media strategy conversations alongside film, TV, music, spotlighting its growing influence in advertising and broader media ecosystems. Now, the sponsors that we'll see there, they have major industry players like Acast, Amazon Music, NPR, and ESPN. Podcasting's presence at South by Southwest aims to shift the medium from emerging to strategic media channel status. But all of this to be said, I'm curious what you guys think. Does this make you more excited about an event like podcast Movement Evolutions, which used to stand on its own, used to pick a different city every year at around that same time? Or do you feel like it waters down the podcaster community feel?

37:53 Is this a good move for a podcast movement? I'm curious what you guys think. I'll share my thought. I kind of think it's it's a little lame, sure, and some bigger players might get more exposure to podcasting, but I feel like it gets lost among a huge event with lots of different industries there. Quite frankly, I'd rather see them not do it at all in my personal opinion, then do it at South by Southwest. Maybe I'm just being a little narrow minded here and I'm open to being to changing that mind. Jonathan, you wanted to share something? I think it just leans way more corporate than it ever was.

38:36 You know, that's the direction they're going in. That's the direction they're going in. But I I don't think it does much for independent podcasters. And that's really, I think thank you for clarifying that. I think that's really where I'm going with it. As far as independent podcasting goes, I think it doesn't do us any favors at all. Like you said, I think it just makes it more corporate. At least their particular event makes it more corporate. And I think podcast movements kind of been known for that anyway. But look, I think what makes this industry a success is the community side of it. I think that the this is a rare industry. I've never seen another industry be so helpful to one another than I have experienced with the podcast industry. And I think if we pull that community feel out of it, it's just not going to feel right for us indie podcasters. Mark, with the Netflix's getting into the game and now with the Golden Globes and all this other stuff where it's becoming a little bit, and not that it wasn't mainstream, but more publicized the way it's been.

39:42 Isn't that a natural progression in a sense that there's going to be that marriage between movie TV and this is just like another leg? Not right or wrong. We know Joe's not going, but. I'll let Ralph respond. Go ahead, Ralph. Yeah, Mark, I just want to be practical here for a second because you know what it costs to put on a conference. And that's part of the discussion here too, is that I totally agree with you, Mark. The idea having more independent podcasters that keep, to be blunt, that people can afford to attend the event, but at the same time the cost of putting on the events are not cheap. So I think that there is definitely a feeling of how do we make this thing fit into another container so that we can split the cost. We can share some of that.

40:26 And Mark, I don't know if you want to talk about that, but that's the cool thing about Empowered Podcasting is the idea. And honestly, I've said it on the show before, it was my first and only podcast event I've ever been to. And I thought that was super cool because it was very, it was very personal. It was very community based. But the stress of doing that without pushing the ticket price up to something that makes it almost impossible for the independent podcaster to pay for, that's the hard part. That's the bouncing part. It's real easy for us to say, wow, you know, they could cut the ticket prices. They could, they could do things like a small community. But Mark can speak to what it actually costs to put on an event like. This unfortunately, yes, I can speak to that.

41:07 It does cost a lot. But also, Mark, I think when I bought my podcast movement tickets and I got one level up from the basic, it was well over $1000. It was already corporate, honestly, because not many people afford that. But yeah. Yeah, that's a great point too. I was, I was watching Ralph drinking his coffee. I was waiting for him to spit it out when you said it cost over $1000. No, I looked at what pod fest cost like I was going to go and I look at the price of the tickets and I'm not a miser, but I'm like, that's a lot of money. And you know, how much do I get out of that based on the money? I'm the money guy. So I'm always looking at cost benefit, but also understand the cost to the event. You know, the cost of serving coffee, the cost of opening the rooms, the cost of doing all those things is a big number. So you're going to have a lot of this corporation of this because they're going to have to bring in more sponsors. They're going to have to bring in big names to get people to be involved in that.

42:02 And when you do that, those things, it costs money because if you want to have an A line presenter, they're going to want you to comp their room, they're going to want you to pay for their travel there. All these things cost money. So we just have to be aware. Of that, Dick said that the Sundance Film Festival, it was the same thing. It's for Indies, indie movies. So that's maybe where we're trying to head, where they're going to have to have something like a Sundance Film Festival. Yeah, good point, Good point. I'm going to put the story, the next story with UDR. I'm going to put that on the shelf for a second because I want to get to Nick with some AI news. And I know that sometimes this is around the time Nick has to jet.

42:44 So I just want to make sure Nick gets his time in and tell us a little bit about an AI tool that's making lots of news, not just podcasting news. Nick, take it away. There's a new tool floating out there and it's going by several different names, but it started as a tool called clawed bot. Then they had to make some strategic shifts because they are not affiliated with clawed AI that you know, so they made a change to multi bot. So you might see names of that. And more recently they made another shift to a name called Open Claw. Now, what this is, is essentially putting the AI brain inside of a tool that can serve as a legitimate assistant. Now, I'm going to preface all of this by saying this is a very early tool.

43:38 There are a lot of concerns, a lot of security issues involved with what this tool is and can do. But the reason I wanted to bring it up is because this is the exact direction AI is heading. This is one of the first really, truly agentic experiences where you can call on AI and AI can just go off on its own and do what it needs to do to get the job done. Now, how this works is you essentially after you've installed it, you've connected it to AI, done all this stuff, you basically can connect it to whatever messaging platform you communicate in.

44:19 So you could do Slack, you could do Discord, Telegram. I have it right now connected to that Rabbit R1 device and you literally just have a conversation with it and then AI get said it handles whatever task you throw at it. Where the security implications come into this is when it's installed. It has to an extent, depending on how you set it up, it can have pretty much full access to your computer. It can run code, it can get into your terminal, it can check your emails, it can it can order you other AIR models. Yeah, I could order you a pizza. This thing is so incredibly powerful, which is why everyone's kind of jumping on board or getting so hyped up about it. Nick, can I ask you if you wouldn't mind? I feel like if I cuz I know a little bit about it thanks to you and I feel like the average AI user or maybe somebody who doesn't use AIA lot might think, well this sounds just like ChatGPT for the most part I've seen, I've heard that ChatGPT can do a lot of these different things. So what's the difference?

45:28 So the big difference is how this tool handles the information that you provided. So with ChatGPT, you basically, you ask ChatGPT a question, ChatGPT finds the answer and gives you the answer. You can have a red blog post, you can have it do all that stuff. It's fine. It's cool. The next time you come in to ChatGPT, you have to reset up the prompt. You have to. And I know there's tools like GPTS and projects and things like that that can help kind of eliminate some of this. But you basically having to set up the whole situation again, you're having to explain, you're having to reiterate to ChatGPT how you want something done or how you want it written. And where Open Claw kind of takes it to the next level is you teach it one time and it saves that information into its stored memory essentially. And it's constantly updating these memory files based on how you explain what you want, how the questions do you ask even as much as like when you want pieces of information. Like a good example is a guy every morning he would come in and he would ask for like a summary of how his YouTube competitors are doing.

46:39 So Open Claw stores this information and eventually keys in on the fact like, hey, this guy's asking me every day for these competitors. I'm just going to proactively generate a report for him in the morning with a summary of what his competitors are doing this morning. And it takes it upon itself to actually take that action and start doing things for you. So it's no longer waiting to or Mark to say, hey, give me this information and saying, hey, Mark asked for this information a lot. I'm just going to start giving it to him and then he doesn't even have to ask me for it anymore. And that's really the true power of where we're heading with some of this agentic stuff is it's not going to be a like A cause and effect. Like you need to trigger it in order to get a result. Like it's going to get to the point where these AI platforms know you, what you do, how you work, what you expect, and it will be able to just start doing instead of waiting. Wow so I think you can imagine as a content creator all the different possibilities that you could potentially use with something like what's it open claw now? Yeah, and Nick, do you think it could go as far as, you know, telling it here's my Riverside account, go in and edit my podcast episode or edit a short form clip for me, I. Would be very interested.

48:02 I think what we're seeing with like a lot of me, we've talked about MCPS in here a little bit, but essentially what those allow AI to do is run different tools on platforms. And a lot of companies are adopting these MCP like servers to allow AI to control the applications. I don't think Riverside has one right now, but if it did, you could essentially give open Claw that MCP server and it would have a list to say like download the transcript, generate magic clips, add the magic sound or magic audio to the video. Yeah. And then you could just tell AI, hey, go clean this up for me. And thence it knows every time Mark goes in there, he wants me to add the magic audio, he wants me to generate clips, He wants me to do this.

48:50 He'll just go and do those things without saying OK, yeah, what do you want me to do to it? I think we're still very early in this, like very early with how this is all going, but this is the direction that we're heading where, yeah, these become true assistants. Is it all voice it can you use voice activated or is it all typing in? So two things. One, I want to clarify, this is not clawed. It sounds similar. It's CLAW, not clawed like Anthropic, the company that was part of the reason they had to get their name changed because Anthropic came after them and said, hey, that's too close. Yeah, so it's a completely different platform. But yes, there are this speech and I think speech to text, but that's what like when I have that R1 device that is a voice input device. So I hold the button down and talk directly to it and it transcribes everything that I say and sends it to the, the AI model to do what it's going to do. So the, the big disclaimer and I, I mentioned this at the beginning, but I just want to reiterate again, like this is a very new, it is open source, it's all community driven. So there are a lot of security concerns with that people if they give access into emails and messages and things like that, it has full access.

50:05 So it is very prone to prompt injections to getting infiltrated and a bad actor can definitely come in. And if it is able to access your Open Claw account, that means that since Open Claw has access to all your stuff, they have access to all your stuff. Yeah. So it is a very big security concern right now. And most of the people that are actually running this are running them on completely separate devices where they're not logged into any of their specific accounts. It's very controlled for that reason. So if you are going to do it, you better make sure that you get in like understand the technical aspects of how it all works, the implications. I feel like we can do a whole episode on all of this stuff. Yeah, I'm waiting it out.

50:54 I am not jumping in yet because I want to wait and see what happens, especially with these security concerns. So I'm living through you, Nick, for at least the next little. While what I have set up and how I'm using it, I'm using it in a very limited scope. I haven't, like, given it the keys to the Kingdom and just opened it wide open because I'm afraid of that exact thing as well. I think this is the first time that we've introduced an AI tool where I'm not like, Oh my gosh, you have to use this right now. Yeah, I'm saying like, if you're very technical, go for it. But if you're not very technical, like, just pay attention because this is where it's headed. Billy in the chat says he's started watching Terminator movies again because he's prepping for the future.

51:40 Yeah, the bill is point. I was going to say I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist, but we want to call this like Skynet's larval form at this point. Like I'm a little concerned about that. But, but to give a point to those who are not going to jump on the, the open claw right away, I think I've found that you can quote UN quote train ChatGPT pretty well in the sense that, for instance, one of my recent conversations, I'm not ever having to like restart a conversation. I have trained at least one conversation to where if I have the captions or the transcript of a recording, all I have to do is throw it in and say apply what I, what I call it to the hybrid analysis. Then it will create an entire SEO breakdown that is customized for both Spotify and Apple Podcasts. So I have verbiage and breakdowns and descriptions and main points that work for both of those algorithms. So if you're not looking to hop into open Cloud right away, ChatGPT is still rather trainable at this point. Thank you BC All right, looking at the clock, looking at all the things, I think this is a good place to wrap up news and comment this morning.

52:50 Thank you all for your contributions. Whether you shared a story, whether you commented on the stories, thank you. That's what makes this show go round. And thanks for the spiciness as well. To Alex, that's two days in a row. We've had a little spice. Yesterday it came from Janae. Today Alex and I enjoy it. So thanks for bringing it. And tomorrow we're back. We're not doing a podcast evaluation tomorrow, but we will have one the following week. More to come on that, but tomorrow we're diving back into the mailbag. We keep getting a lot of positive feedback about that segment. So that's what we're going to do on Thursday. Answering your questions, whether you've sent them directly to the podcasting morning chat or maybe you've put them in a Facebook group, whether it's ours or another podcasting group, that's where we gather the information. Feel free to e-mail me if you want your question answered mark.marc@ironicmedia.com or just go to podcasting, morningchat.com.

53:48 You can find the contact us section and you can do it through there. So until tomorrow, make it a great day everybody. Take care.