Adam Curry | No Agenda, Podcasting 2.0, & The Kraken

00:00 Embrace yourself, because you're about to dive into another free first hour episode of the Higher Side Chats. And we just want to let you know that whether your looking for a companion through your paranoid insomnia, entertaining yourself through one of life's mundane activities or trying to ward off the internal screams from all those sad smothered souls around the office THC is here and you should know that every episode of the higher side chats has an entire second hour for PLUS members Sign up at thehiresitechats.com and you'll get years of plus show archives, lifetime forum access a special invite to Greg Carlwood's monthly joint sessions MP3s of THC music bonus episodes tour videos and 10% off t-shirts grinders And whatever else ends up in The HireSite store It's $8 a month that you won't miss so become a Plus member and treat yourself in these troubled times always action packed and commercial free

00:51 Which means you'll unfortunately never hear my voice again. Serenity now, Irisite Chatters! How the hell are you out there? Drinking a little drink, smoking a little smoke and trying to keep this ship afloat on the rough and choppy waters of the vast conspiracy. From sunny San Diego I'm Greg Carlwood And i think it's becoming more and more clear that things are just not going back to the way they were

01:49 For the foreseeable future, our physical space will be full of masks socially distanced settings and COVID restrictions. And the online world will continue to be dominated by the same corporate behemoths we love to hate pushing any and all alternative voices outside of the circle as best they can But the inspiration is with those being proactive rather than reactive The bold and brave counterculture leaders who won't sit idly by As the shadowy puppet masters of the Capstone Cabal systematically snuff out the flame of freedom Those who are organizing right now to build better systems and communities, both physical and digital just outside the grasp of the nefarious few. Whether it's secret lists of local restaurants that dare serve food like some prohibition-era speakeasies or a confusing cornucopia of new decentralized platforms built on preserving free speech and privacy we will be alright because we're taking the party elsewhere

02:42 And for me, ladies and gentlemen nobody is paving the way to the promised land like today's powerhouse guest and alternative party planner Adam Curry. For the uninitiated Adam has been in broadcasting and pirate radio since the early 80s gained popularity as an MTV VJ when that was still a thing but most importantly pioneered the podcasting protocol in the early 2000s He's best known as the crackpot co-host of the ever popular No Agenda show, as well as the co-host of Mo Facts with Adam Curry and most recently The Podcasting 2.0 podcast with Dave Jones But that's not all folks Fed up with corporate takeover of the internet and poisoning of the podcasting well it seems the podfather himself now has a second child he is here to talk about in the new decentralized and superior PodcastIndex.org and so much more

03:31 He's making the future look quite bright for people like your humble host who are getting worried about the coming censorship storm. So let's do the damn thing, The great podcasting preserver and conspiracy crackpot of the drone star state Mr Media Assassin himself Adam the Podfather Curry Welcome to The Higher Side Yeah! I brought my horns, yeah! I love it. Best intro ever man thank you so much Greg. Thank you. I try i try yes well hey thanks for being here this really was my make-a-wish dream so uh you know tell the organization thanks I can't believe they pulled it off It was actually...I would say a um

04:16 A good example of how media tribes work, which is what I'm seeing the future or really what media is becoming and has been becoming for a long time. Where no agenda has a tribe that overlaps with other tribes like Joe Rogan but also Mo Fax and you know the higher side the audiences overlapped. And you said something people hear it goes around and then all of a sudden I get it from all angles And several reminders. And that's really the beauty of, I think podcasting for sure these interactive audiences that are a part of the product and they take ownership and they feel it and it worked. Yes well cheers to that!

05:02 some strange kind of magic that not only are you a pioneer of podcasting itself, but you're also a card carrying member of the conspiracy culture. And that really could not be more perfect for us here because you have the eyes to see what's going on and the technical knowledge to break us free from the chains my man it is a beautiful thing well it's The Breakfast Of Champions! You know? It's...you want those two things together Yes indeed and i guess let me just get this out of the way being the amazing planner that I am, i have you here recording the day before the inauguration rather than like a couple days after which it could be a day of chaos and last mover advantages or it could be a big

05:46 nothing burger, I guess we could at least speculate. What do you think? Is it going to be as exciting as the Q crowd thinks it will be? Will Epstein get marched out and tell us about everything behind the curtain and they'll arrest Joe Biden or will we be looking at a big nothing burger? Well when you look at the options to the extreme right, as you said there are I think the most recent Update is to what would happen is the crack and return out to be a number of edited videos that would. Be spread far and wide in this is the obvious reason why social media was taking down all kinds of accounts because we can't have that spread,

06:27 And these would be videos of prominent people who would be testifying about the corruption and heinous acts they have witnessed, and perhaps participated in. The cherry on top should be Jeffrey Epstein, that he would implicate a lot of people in their crimes and corruption to the extreme left where we have rogue members of either the military or Secret Service getting ready to assassinate Joe Biden. So, you know it's kind of those two extremes the truth may be somewhere in the middle or much like the January 6th scene at The Capitol there maybe multiple truths

07:12 Right right you play the recent clip of how it went down and obama's inauguration and other protesters there to. There were riots in cars on fire and tear gas and flash bangs and fighting i was all kinds of we don't remember that over your memories the, Trump claiming to have had more people attend his inauguration than Obama. And you can ask anybody and that's all they remember of that day, but not the protests that took place in these protests They always take place the Capitol has been well 19 thing was 68 my goodness Washington DC was burned to the ground parts of it. The riots that took place then we have a very poor understanding of history, sadly also a poor record of history. Yes, of course So when it comes to what will happen man I don't know but

08:04 The two things I would say is one, the Republic functions quite well regardless of who is president. Remember the states really run a lot and I believe people will retreat more into looking at local politics and how their state has run because governors have a lot of power witness the difference between us here in Texas and California when it comes to being allowed to walk freely with in essence the same virus or the variant or whatever And I think we're doing just fine certainly better compared to people being locked down, but also not just the American public. And this is happening all over the world governments are standing down like in the Netherlands there's huge division and oddly enough about masks it's not just a Democrat or Republican thing this is going on worldwide and luckily a lot of people because it lasted so long and in particular the media's role in the coronavirus pandemic

09:06 people see, I think they're starting to see what's really going on and that the media doesn't have the truth. Their officials don't have the truth and we're now in day 396 of the two week flattened curve you know so this is in general should be a very good thing no matter who was president And will see strengthening of independent media which is why one hand I'm not surprised that Associated Press called for More social moderation of podcasts and that this was some kind of loophole for free speech. Well darn tootin You bet it is

09:44 So we're going to see alternative platforms. People learn very quickly that any kind of centralized platform like Parler, even though they may have had the best of intentions is just vulnerable and there's some education that's needed which is sorely lacking in what the internet is how it functions what you can do with it and why people are not beholden to any particular platform This is the kind of stuff that I think will start to happen and education will change, and Americans will make choices and make changes. This is not necessarily the case all over the world but in America we're pioneers. We can weather a storm so no matter what happens there's gonna be a lot of changes coming in everybody's life and you can just forget a new normal. Yes well said cheers to all that! And I also just wanted to say how

10:38 Thardic No Agenda has been throughout 2020. rumbling around us but you guys are committed to having a good time i can't compliment that coverage enough I'm sure as you say we have a lot of crossover listeners but for those who are unfamiliar what would you say about your approach to covering something as delicate and heavy as covid in 2020 everything that came with it so what we typically do is deconstruct the media

11:19 And that's relatively easy because both John and John C. Dvorak and I, we do the show together for 14 years or running in our 14th year. We have an extensive media background and really cover the entire spectrum particularly with John's knowledge and experience in publishing as a columnist so the publishing world and newspapers and print like The Times and The Post on how newsrooms work and editorial staff etc. So to point out the fallacies or the pure propaganda that is usually put through this old school messaging system, is not that hard. What gets fun is when you just look down really only one or two layers deeper and you can recover the truth quite easily because everything's recorded somewhere these days and you could turn it in instead of outrage we laugh at them because its funny sometimes how pathetic the attempts are

12:15 I think we also have kind of an old school radio guy approach to, hey, Lois Hanging Fruit is always the best joke. That's always the best punchline and because we've never taken advertising and have built an audience of producers and we address them as such cause they have responsibility for the product everyone's in on the joke what i'm interested in well move one step further than that ask you a question so when the coronavirus started then I was paying attention very early I decided that really the only thing where you can find truth is in math numbers. You know, one plus one is two. So when you're talking models etc., even though I'm not at all good at math or a mathematician but I can identify trends and see those things quite easily

13:07 And I understand models because I've been studying climate change models for, oh my gosh almost since the beginning of the show trying to understand what the P or N variables are and how that skews the results. Since we were also at a certain point locked down not that made my life that much difference I watched everything, every briefing starting with the early ones with Fauci and Birx. And I knew these people and I don't have them in high regard because they were the same people who showed up in the HIV AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s. You know, I saw a lot of friends die and a lot of promises from Fauci and Birx et al., then they attended a lot of big Hollywood parties so I was already like ready to...and I guess I'd done enough research certainly when it comes to PCR

13:52 The inventor, Carey Mullis. Very familiar with him because all of this dates back to HIV So I decided to really look closely at the numbers and I was able to call bull crap very quickly. And they also switched, they went from one model to the next and then you know because we started off with three and a half million or 3.2 million people will die. And Osterholm, the doctor he was preaching that in March that I know because I met him when I did my first Joe Rogan appearance he was on right after me. Now this guy is on the team for the Biden COVID response team So, put together our knowledge and experience of media and how the largest advertisers are the pharmaceutical companies. They're number one followed by the telecoms companies. And then of course in a political year you have there's a lot of money flowing as well. These things are never discussed! This is very unique to United States I believe it's only United States and New Zealand who can advertise pharmaceutical products directly to the consumer

14:53 So it's easy to poke holes in it and the mainstream media will not do it because that's their bread and butter. But what I'd like to know is, what is about our coverage that was soothing to you? Is it just because we crack a joke about trying to put everything into perspective or is it the actual Dissection of the numbers or the worldwide coverage would work for you. I'm curious Well, maybe i'm just partly jealous that you have a co-host because i'm out here by myself and sometimes it feels quite isolating And scary but really? I think it is just Digesting the same news i'm looking at but in between it You are cracking jokes and you're just like look at these fools and this isn't you know as serious as they're saying It is

15:40 Like you mentioned pcr tests yes you need to have a good knowledge of that too. Tamper down any fear or anxiety i mean cuz that is the name of the game there pumping us with so much fear that for you to just, Intellectually piss all over it i mean that is so cathartic get it just takes the. The seriousness out of the issue and i mean obviously we have something going on out there in a lot of people i don't wanna make light of any, deaths or economic hardships of course but were talking about just the way you process what's coming from the big machine and

16:17 That is the part that has just been so cathartic obviously the conspiracy world has dealt with the alex jones approach for a long time which you know sometimes hypes up the fear and anxiety and so just to have that light hearted tone it really is like almost like an armor against the fear that they're trying to inject yeah okay when i think the way we do that maybe subconsciously or not purposely. Is, Now we've been around a long, I'm 56. John is at least 10 years older than I am. Not really sure it doesn't matter but we have a lot of experience and a lot of experience so you know when you hear climate change we say oh that's these guys who used to say were gonna have global cooling back in the 70s they're also part of the population bomb gang So you see these people come back recognize their faces You know the backstory to them And also things really

17:13 rarely go as fast as you think they will and I've discovered this myself with, I've never become a billionaire because everything I was involved in or dreamt up or created was usually 10 years too early. So when you talk about risk for us it's inherent nature because of the aforementioned reasons but when you say look you have 99% chance of surviving this you really only have a 97% chance you will survive your next automobile trip. You know, so and by the way that becomes a little lower that number when you have beer. So when you look at in that perspective and also the number of people who die or severely injured in automobile accidents on annual basis then you can start putting stuff into perspective.

18:05 Along with that, this lockdown and the obvious trauma-based programming of forced muzzle wearing. It's pretty obvious what is going on here. At least to us I think it is very obvious We don't dwell on it is move on ok so how else are they gonna screw you that's easier to do right that's the magic. That's the magic cuz it's easy to dwell on it not appreciate your saying that of course of course and, no i dont wanna rehash the whole year of covid because so many

18:42 Guests would be able to do that but wouldn't be able to talk about podcasting 2.0 which you know let's look at where we're going not where we've been and To set this up a little bit when it comes to podcasting 1.0 many people know that its spin kind of pegged to Apple since the early days, but for those who are unfamiliar with your story You were pretty responsible for that right? You actually walked Steve Jobs through how it worked before he presented in an apple keynote is that right That's not quite the story. It's a nice variation, so Dave Weiner and I created the core concept of the enclosure tag in the RSS feed which is the main mechanism taking an established protocol and then having a way to attach a file to it so a program on the other end could save you which at the time in 2000

19:36 What's the experience of very slow download speeds if you want to see a video you clicked and waited, new watch the wheels spin wallet downloaded then open an external player there was no youtube or anything like that there was no streaming. And the bandwidth was just way too low, but we had always on computers because we had cable modems and this was just starting to happen. So the bandwidth wasn't there but you didn't have to dial in on your phone modem and that was already quite an upgrade for the world so I understood this problem and I wanted this fixed and I convinced Dave Weiner to look at it and he eventually understood it

20:17 Baked it in and we were using that technology for a couple years until I saw the iPod. The first one, the kind of white ceramic with the big clicky wheel on it and everything right? And the LCD screen. And I looked at that and went oh this is not a digital Walkman This is not a jukebox This is a radio receiver It even looks like one And it did remind me of my old Sony solid state transistor radio that I used to listen to basketball games under my pillow as a kid when i'd fall asleep. So I set about integrating a feed, an RSS feed with the file and MP3 file attachment so that this little program would be checking to see if anything had updated i.e was there new programming that I wanted? If it identified it would download it then it would trigger the update to my iPod because at the time we had no iPhones or anything you still have to sync your iPod to your Mac

21:14 And then you could pick up your iPod and go wherever you wanted, and you had your programming there. As a radio guy which I've done since i was 15... 14-15, I knew this was revolutionary! This is like TiVo for radio, I don't know it's like.. Also what notifies you? There's no waiting for download to solve so many problems So we started making a podcast that didn't have the name at the time and I called it the daily source code because what i needed was software developers who work in source code they needed a daily episode to be able to test RSS feeds again, cause I was kind of the only thing out there that was publishing on a regular basis. And they were building the apps, applications, radios, software... This went very fast and lot people caught on NPR was doing it thanks to Tony Khan at WGBH in Boston

22:05 Drag and PR into it very smart very smart guy. And yeah then the BBC was interviewing me about a big new york times the Washington post became a whole thing, I was maintaining a directory and then i got a call if I wanted to meet with Steve Jobs. And, I said you know maybe next Thursday let me see if I have time for him Steve Johnson um and he asked me to meet him at the D3 conference in California and I sat with them for an hour and it was an amazing meeting. I've been impressed by a lot of people I met and Quincy Jones very high on the list but Steve Jobs kind of topped that

22:42 He was very interested in how we use the Mac to produce stuff and what kind of applications. And even at some point I was talking about Audio Hijack Pro, and this is kind of in the beginning and Eddie Q was still there later We were alone and Eddie Q says yeah Yeah The RIAA is called they say we want it gotta shut that off so people are hijacking music through audio hijack pro go figure It's in the name And I said, yeah that's too bad because that's one of the ways we record right now and you don't really have a lot of tools. Steve Jobs immediately went, tell him to F off hold them off We need to keep these guys going as long as we can. I'm like oh Steve jobs in our camp nice! Then he said look Adam i want to put podcasting into iTunes and like your kind of your blessing for that Yeah sure now He fully well knew that he had it all teed up and ready to go and I said here's the index take that two

23:37 So simultaneously I had help podcasting spring forward in a massive way by also handing Apple the index to start. On the other hand, I kind of regret that to some degree and no disparaging note at all to Apple they've been great stewards of podcasting but they became the default and de facto place where you get listed, you know? And that's a very powerful position and they've used that quite wisely as far as i know until they de-platformed Alex Jones. So to go back to Steve Jobs, he later presented podcasting in iTunes at that D3 conference and he knew exactly what he was doing and he played a very funny bit where I was actually swearing about my Mac acting up And...he knew without all of it's great show man so introduce that the perfect way and this on YouTube if you look for it

24:30 What apple decided in a coordinated effort to the first time we saw it across silicon valley twitter. YouTube facebook and also apple and google of course will play at the time they platform alex jones podcast, And I found that to be troubling. It's just like, now I understand why they may do it for political reasons, political business reasons, political consumer reasons so I cannot hold them to account for that but the next thing that happened was Joe Rogan basically left the free and open podcast system

25:10 to Spotify, which I'm super happy for him. Joe and I become kind of friends he's moved to Austin. Uh, been on the show twice now with varying levels of success and fun. Um, hopefully it'll be on again sometime in the future we can update them on podcasting 2.0 but that meant that every single app developer who had a podcast app All of them because of the nature of our assess feeds and how many there are and keeping everything up to speed they were all using apples index which apple offer for free that when api so you can create a podcast app not have all the heavy lifting underneath.

25:50 So when Apple in effect delisted Alex Jones and when Joe Rogan closed down his feed because he went exclusive to Spotify, that occurred across pretty much the entire independent podcast app ecosystem. And also now we have two people that a guy's app doesn't work for anymore even though Alex Jones' feed is still there not Joe Rogan's a different story And they've also as app developers have never been any of the value flow that no where have they been a part of the money if there's an advertiser on the podcast the app doesn't get that most people use an app that's free.

26:28 They like extra features some people will pay ninety nine cents for an extra feature but you can't really make a living on that so what if we don't. Encourage the independent software developers to create great podcast experiences and there's a lot more room therefore experience, then we'll be left with Apple, Spotify, Google and Amazon. And then you can be deplatformed and you'll be out of existence. One of these days one of these companies is going to give it another go and just like Google tried to break and kill RSS by removing their Google Reader they will try to come up with a different publishing format for podcasts so little over four months ago I called my buddy Dave Jones We've been developing software together for 10 years that no one wants except us

27:15 And i said dave i think finally we're gonna do one that will be important to people and we're going to set up an independent podcast index and we set it up a podcast index dot org. And so we replicate all that heavy lifting the apple does for the independent podcast apps with a couple of exceptions one, Anybody can be in there we are just hosting a list of feeds we do not care speeches speech these feeds will not kill you. Adjusting the database anybody can access them all for free and imperpetuity, add infact we make the entire index available in multiple formats should we either disappear go away or should someone want to compete instead of better index

27:58 They're welcome to it and we also take no commercial money no advertising would you purely based on value for value which is what i call the system that we employ and its very simple. If you get any kind of value out of what we're doing here and that's the entire development platform, the index, the availability for any developer to use it. We have a podcast campaign that goes with it then just put that into a number and send it to us. And for some people $5 is a lot of value. It's a lot of money for some 50 is easy many say I think it's worth 500 and believe or not someone will send you 5000. So that's how we keep the index running

28:41 We have now i guess about fifteen independent app developers some who've been around for a while podcast addict android play pod just switch to the index we have pod friends as lot of pot names obviously hyper catcher, podcast guru a lot of apps on every single platform and they're not only using the immutable index. But we also discovered that we had a unique opportunity to move podcast features forward, that had been stagnant for about 10 years. Can I keep going here? You need to throw a rock at me if you want me to stop because i will keep going. Yes, well obviously I want to get into the retooling part because that is very exciting but to back up a little bit as you mentioned the value for value model people who know you know you're very committed to that where listeners of no agenda or people who are seeing value in podcasting 2.0 they contribute their time talents or treasure it's a well-worded phrase right on and

29:42 I've also heard you commonly say that advertising is censorship and i totally agree. I've been really committed to not going down that road here but in the early days of this show we did the whole donation based plea, not exactly the same as value for value but After a while, I created a model that I hadn't really seen anyone use or even heard anyone use before or after. You might find it interesting but i called it the money bomb and I would take all the donations for a given month usually around a grand or two and I would keep half and I would gift the other half back to a random listener and it was pretty great while it lasted! It made a difference for a lot of listeners who donated five dollars then ended up getting a grand dropped in their lap

30:25 But you know it was also kind of an international raffle and probably broke several laws so i was gonna say sounds like you're running illegal lottery there yeah sorry i put it to bed of course but it was fun while lasted. I did wanna ask you about just models for podcasting and really just how advertising has been the dominant one and it is so attached to censorship, how does that make you feel to see podcasting where it is today, largely supported by big advertisers that I don't think either one of us are a fan of. Well let's put a couple things into perspective One the large majority of people doing a podcast really don't care about getting paid i'm talking 90 plus People just doing a podcast for their friends for themselves could be something internal for a group or any club

31:21 I really appreciate that in fact one of the benefits of the index is you don't have to go through approval process through apple anymore you can just. Submit it to the index and it gets put right in so a college professor can create a podcast of his lectures, any student could put together a custom app that is only for his lectures no that's the ecosystem i want to create because a podcast in my mind is more of a protocol and how things work, and not necessarily about the type of content that's encased in it. So I find that of equal importance, and this is now really a publishing platform that we're enriching—and of course we'll talk about how we tie money into that—that can be used for many different things. And then the basic... We saw this happen with blogging

32:14 Where do you want blogs for started everyone's like oh my gosh i am gonna make money and makes money in this blog and of course only five or ten people really made any money on their blog and then it came to display advertising imperfect timing with google adwords adsense. And everybody had widgets and things, and we're going to make money this way. Advertising is sponsoring the free web. Boy did we make a big mistake with all that because especially on the web pre-app it became unwieldy! You couldn't really you can surf a page anymore and then the incessant blocking between. Yes to the business model of release still had yet to be defined when it comes to creative works so for reference things and

33:06 That was a mainly for historical reference accuracy to access certain types of information i think people have no problem like medical databases and. Any of the medical publishers that you may have to pay for or any scientific papers so all these things, That's really not a problem but when it comes to creative efforts like podcasting people kind of slipped into the same well you know just have some ads in there and we make some money offset hosting what really does screws up a lot of your life without delivering a big benefit. We only hear about the successes and oh my gosh joe rogan thirty million a year

33:45 Yeah, that could happen but that is not the future and funny enough everybody has a future which I hope i can explain. Yes! So the other aspect of advertising is that even if it's just you not being able to say something about a competitor to an advertiser's product or service is censorship. It's self-censoring and you even agree to it, in fact, you probably agree to a lot more like no disparagement clause but immorality clause and all kinds of stuff when you're signing these types of agreements with advertisers or the representatives, you're really in a weak position and you've weakened your own position because an advertiser can interpret those words very simply and pull your funding

34:34 And this is always the risk that people take, because internet money can be really fun in the beginning and then you start to rely on it. And it can be a real problem if you're not prepared and have some kind of fallback or diversified your income streams. Absolutely! So the more advertising, the more censorship you will apply. I am a firm believer that pretty much all Deplatforming is related to advertising. It is the mechanism, to the degree where you see virtue signaling from large American corporations against outgoing President Donald Trump and his quote-unquote allies

35:20 And that is a virtue signal out of fear they will be targeted for not speaking out against the evil. This is how far it's come, so this is very powerful weapon and we have ourselves to blame when we run an advertising and we've always had influence in advertising in our media and more aware but now that its interface all the time and we understand the mechanisms Right advertising as a model just does not work it is problematic for podcasting and what let me say i'm not against advertising when it comes to creative products right that's going to be influenced by that.

35:57 Even if it's not a creative product, any type of advertising will influence it. So I guess the important thing is what is this creative product that you're getting that can be compromised and please be aware that its compromised? Yes yes That's the bottom line now anyone can just because someone doesn't have advertising doesn't mean they are correct but I feel a helluva lot freer thats for sure Yes, yes. And if you set out to make a show that's specifically going to be about controversial positions it does make it more difficult and so without advertising there is really only a couple of things that work I mean in my case when I wound down the money bomb thing I tried to go back to donation based volunteerism but

36:39 But the problem I found is, I started to get a handful of donors dominating the monthly donations. And those donations started to come with guest requests attached and they'd drop off if I didn't comply and it started to feel a little icky and it wasn't working either so I went with the first hour free second hour paid model which has been a godsend and provided an ad-free stable income got me out sinking ship that was GameStop store management, and it was basically Patreon before there was a Patreon. But it's really the only other thing that works besides what you do, as far as I can tell. Of course this kind of leads into podcasting 2.0 and why it's so important. Everyone who is hearing us is obviously a podcast listener, so they have a little bit of a vested interest in where this medium is going but I'm sure so many of our colleagues will be listening to these people who are trying to make or keep a career in a space where we're talking about controversial material

37:42 Well paint a picture for the next five to ten years because they seem to be coming for people in our position and so many fellow hosts would probably love to hear your best advice for armoring up and protecting our shows at our places on the internet as we go forward. So it's a little bit of history just explain how we move forward over thirteen years ago when john c devorak and i started no agenda, we recognized fairly quickly into the program that this was going to be a lot of work, actual work. And we said to the however many people were listening at the time, we said, We'd like to do this. We want to continue with this. We might even move to a second show a week because there's a lot of news to handle but you're gonna have to pay for it because we can't take advertising Greg would just talk about that why? But

38:34 We also decided to try something a little different by not devaluing our product to a tip. And at the time that was a very popular thing, Tip Jar hit me on the tip jar because we had PayPal tip jar guilty and yeah well we don't work for tips so I'm not ashamed to say it and this is the important part You have to be proud of your work, stand behind it and not be ashamed to say I want you to support it. Now the difference is by not saying here's how much... And for me this is the same as when and I kind of disliked No! I very much disliked what Apple did when they unbundled all the albums turned into tracks and priced them at 99 cents

39:15 So when I went to purchase, i want to hold your hand by the Beatles. I think one of the greatest love songs ever written. This is so insulting! The energy that went into making this it's so much more valuable to me if it had said $99 dollars I would have paid for it. As I said earlier, when you ask people to value the program for themselves and send us whatever that's worth to them. You get an incredible... Not everyone is a cheapskate! And by the way someone sending $500 they may feel that they are cheapskating because they got so much more of it So you don't know other people. And it's beautiful when you find out the range and people will send you notes now, we said this is not an exchange, you know, we'll read your note me I'm not going to give you a tote bag We're not gonna jump through hoops or you know, of course, we wound up doing all kinds of things But that started to sustain us as we grew and we've grown very steadily about 20% year over year for the past 13 somewhat years

40:19 And we have two families who are sustained by it, who kids went to school. Everybody's happy. We live a comfortable life. We work very hard and we really have less worry than we ever used to have about the donations dropping off and that's two fold one is we addressed our audience as producers and we added to the financial part there's other things you can do And that's the time, talent and treasure. I have to attribute that to my wife Tina the keeper who has been a fundraising nonprofit professional for most of her career and most recently Ronald McDonald house charities central Texas. Can you use those three T's? Yeah it's time people spending time to write your report everybody has an expertise in something is my job to weed out who's full of crap or try and authenticate and over time you develop

41:14 a virtual army of thousands of producers. We even give them credits, executive producer associate producer and we are creating this thing together so when a call goes out if donations have been low and were honest about it would give everyone the numbers right in the show thank you for this thank you for that So you can add it up and see how we're doing and we're not hiding anything It turns out it works And I believe this to be the valuation, the price finding mechanism of media. Really postmodern media with podcasting being a leading driver of that. So knowing that this is a successful way to run your media business and there's an additional benefit that you don't really have to be looking at statistics we don't i have no idea exactly how many people listen to the show

42:05 And even statistics, you know you can't trust them at all. It's probably a million to between 800 thousand and 1.4 million but we don't care! Can we pay the mortgage? Yes okay great show and if not then you know we get adjusted now we do have... You have to remind people, you have to continuously ask them So my dream has always been instead of lumping it into kind of an upfront payment or, hey I'd love the past two months here's 50 bucks. Why not do it in exact equal value for value exchange? And that would be when you're consuming the product and this case I'm talking about podcasts and listening but it will work perfectly for video

42:49 I determine what that show is worth to me. And when I really think about it, and from my informal survey many people would say if i suggested to you $1 an hour for any podcast that you listen to You probably say yeah that's fine That's a pretty good number So if you break that up into micro payments using digital money and you stream that in real time, you in essence have created a value loop where I am receiving value coming from you and MP3 ones and zeros. And simultaneously every minute I'm sending you the value I attribute to it in real time back to you when I stop listening my payment stops. I pick it up, It picks up again do I like something really? I like it a lot. I want to up that $2 three dollars now or 30 dollars an hour

43:42 And if you look at the numbers, and this is what we've built with podcasting 2.0 and you'll see this start to roll out across multiple podcast apps in the next few weeks to a few months. And that is I should backtrack in a moment and explain a little bit about all the features podcasting 2.0 is bringing because it's more than just this The numbers in the United States are as follows. Now remember, we wanted to build an ecosystem of all kinds of individuals and companies and everybody's welcome to play but we have to make sure the application developers who are creating independent experiences is not just an app not everyone's creating the same app apps have vastly different functions these days

44:30 And newpodcastapps.com, that is where you can already see a whole list of apps that you can download for which platforms and web apps are taking off as well so there's 100 million people in the United States who listen to podcasts every day this is the interactive advertising bureau statistics it's probably a little more but let's say 100 million they listen on average to one hour of podcasts a day. So that's 100 million hours being listened on a daily basis now when it comes to converting those people, to implementing a value for value system i.e filling up their wallet in their favorite podcast app and start to send values in this manner I think its possible for us to get 1% of those 100 million and I say that based

45:24 13 and a half years of value for value based business. I say it based upon the number of PayPal buttons that websites use, Patreon there's a lot of different systems so i think we could say this million people a day would be willing to do this now you value that at one dollar now you got a million dollars a day flowing through podcasting And the way that podcast index functions in this is we are the royalty agency for the next generation of media creators. So instead of going through, and I'll use music as an example because it will work for this as well. We just have to finish podcasting first to prove it

46:12 Ask happy am i a harry fox agency c sack boomer stemmer all of these public rights organization performing rights organizations where your product is use listen to consume broadcast. They go track down where it came from, they collect the money. They wash it up and give the money to the wrong people and 48 months later a penny drips out of the other end It's shit system! It is a shit-shit-shit system And everybody knows that That why you get publishing deal but you don't get the publishing The record company gets the publishing and you have to go in debt That why your enslaved to this system

46:52 So in podcasting, that's not so much slavery as there is just suck. The ads suck they make you suck the whole thing sucks. Amen! So this gets fixed in a manner that puts a digital agreement in place. So you can say by default 1% of every payment now we're talking digital money. You can break that down to one millionth of a percent So we can do this for a long time. 1% goes to the app you were using, 1% goes to the podcast index to keep it all running and then 98% goes to the podcast producer who in turn can say alright I have a co-host will each take 40%, we're gonna give 5% to the guy who does the artwork

47:46 every single episode or maybe even just for this episode and we're gonna give 5% to my mom who Invested a grand in us to get all the equipment to get started. So now every payment is split up in those five different payments in real time Yes. This is the future of creative product and it's direct from the creator to the consumer and the return is direct from the consumer, to the creator and instantaneous. It's all verifiable these types of technologies have an open log ledger by definition which is public then we think it's going to change a lot of things

48:27 I agree. This is so, so exciting! I've really loved listening to Podcasting 2.0 and following along with these developments and trying to wrap my head around this cutting-edge stuff. It sounds a little like what people might be familiar with Twitch where as you watch you contribute in real time and it's baked into the platform you know right now i take payments and I give a fraction of that to PayPal or Stripe because I have to but I would much rather contribute to the app developer themselves because That is such an important part of what I do that people have an app that's very convenient to plug in my feed too, especially because I do the paid model. There are apps out there that thankfully support password-protected feeds and they're a godsend to me so i would definitely rather have them take

49:25 a part of the payment, the contribution and cut out Visa MasterCard PayPal and Stripe. It'd be a beautiful, beautiful thing I'm very excited about this Well you hit it right on the head actually And when you see functionality like with Twitch contributing in real time So we have that We call that a boost and you can configure that independently so You could say alright i want to do like a 50 cent boost but you can make it literally anything you want. You hit it in real time, that money goes down the same split path to all the different recipients. But what's cool about it and now I'm moving ahead a little bit but since this is all blockchain based technology when you boost on one app when your listening to the show in a completely different app as a completely different person we can make that boost show up

50:21 at the exact moment when someone did it on the other app with the amount, etc. So now you have connected a podcast experience between two different people on completely different platforms who know nothing about each other And the next step is chat, community chat. Different types of interactions all based on micro payments and we're talking in dollar fiat money or kuck bucks less than a 10th of a penny and it could be even less there's many ways to utilize that as spam protection

51:02 which is why you've always heard people like Bill Gates say, well if only we could charge for email. Well no one's gonna spend a penny or dime or put down their credit card for that crap but in the coming era and today's generation I'm old AF right now it's very comfortable with QR codes for payments and using an app and the speed at to which things can be accomplished Once they see the enormous benefits of dealing in, and I'm going to say specifically Bitcoin. It sounds scary but it's not already you can get an app called Strike. It's Venmo for bitcoin and you don't even know it other than its connected directly to your card or your bank account

51:50 and it functions just like Venmo, only the capabilities of that digital side of it is what allows us to do these types of micropayments. So your life will not change very much in order to participate in this Right i mean this is awesome it would be so great to see advertisers cut out of podcasting i mean just as a listener its very annoying, to me and now i would love to see us change the model it's like we needed to see this happen we need to get so dirty that we could understand the need to improve it and not. As were you know going into the second hour before we do i wanted to maybe give us a little more about

52:31 the other aspects of retooling, maybe that don't have anything to do with money but would improve the overall experience for listeners? Things that you're talking about like transcripts and soundbites. What other things are gonna be added to this new platform?" I appreciate you asking that. So historically podcasting has consisted of these elements one is that central index which we eventually planned to completely decentralize but were functioning as that now but thats always been Apple and apple had a large usage of their podcast app still the largest date although others are catching up so in order to add a feature. Podcasting as a whole the protocol itself you can't go to one company everyone kind of has to agree, do you have the companies that are podcast hosting companies who perform two important functions with three really want is

53:28 the hosting of your files and making that as cost effective as possible. Two is the creation of your podcast feed, which is that RSS feed we've been talking about and making use of the features that are available there. And then of course there's some statistical analysis they like so if you add something to what a podcast can do such as chapters There are some podcast apps that have chapters that are baked into the MP3 file itself, but most don't have that functionality. Most people for a variety of reasons don't want to go through that step also you can really change it once someone is downloaded

54:10 the file I can't adapt it or add something to it. So there was always a big need and desire for having that external to a file, and you can create those extra little bits in the RSS feed on the host publishing side but if the largest podcast app being Apple doesn't implement it then it'll be of no use so thats a waste resources for these smallish type medium-sized companies that do podcast hosting And so then everyone tried to put together groups and steering committees and commissions, boards of governors. For ten years nothing happened! Nothing! So in us reclaiming the open nature of podcasting with PodcastIndex.org we sprouted a whole bunch of new apps because

54:59 people are using these apps and they like the features there seeing so it's still a little bit of chicken and egg we had enough people who were willing to change their feeds and create them enough hosting companies would add that app developers would create the experience do we now have. A whole plethora extra features we have transcripts which turns out is actually kind of cool way too if you just want what did that person just say go back look at the transcript be can also search it so You open up the podcast and where, where was it in the show that they said talked about that. So you can just search a transcript in your app and boom, there you go. You can find it click on it starts playing from that moment

55:41 We also with chapters you can do chapter images so at a certain time you can say I'm talking about my studio with you and if you take a look your screen you'll see. A shot of the studio and even a link that will take it to web page of the details what i have in my studio beautiful now we even have some hollywood people who want to use this because now you can do something interesting presentations We have some fundamental other pieces that are good for promotion like things called the clips, sound bites which can be crowd created.

56:21 We have the funding tag, which allows a podcast app to pop up a button in a good place so that the listener sees it. And that'll link directly to your donation page and of course we can always do a lightning Bitcoin QR payment or just tap and connect to your app all these different tags it makes it a much richer experience because now they're known variables We get location which is coming in the next version you'll see some more interesting things of how do i find a podcast that were created this particular spot or. That talk about this particular village and a lot of that is about discovery we have people search person search

57:09 And it works surprisingly well if you're looking for one person, whether it's a guest or maybe mentioned in the show note or host or co-host. It'll show up the episodes with that name in it is quite magical to these are all and even NPR has been begging Apple for many years apparently they want to have seasons so you can organize your podcast in an app by seasons which is currently possible but apple only allows Season one season two season three and they want to have it open ended so they can write you know twenty twenty seasoned the goat in the schoolhouse. No sick all of these things are what the users want and that's how podcasting has always grown because it's not a platform it's a protocol,

57:51 Everybody kind of gets on board and then we start supporting it. And before you know it, just like how I got on this show a listener here something listen to another podcast writes an email to that podcast host and stuff grows and expands and people start using new podcasts apps dot com wow what is sales pitch man? I really love it's very exciting because I've been doing my show for 10 years Nope, I did the classic stupid thing of pausing it to clear my throat and then not unpausing it.

58:31 I'll clear my throat too. Here we go! The real irony is, I was just saying how i've been doing this for 10 years and clearly still making the same mistakes but the point was that it hasn't really evolved beyond just getting bigger like the technology doesn't seem to have changed too much so this is super exciting to have this level change. I really like what you mentioned about the chapters and image to go along with that because for what I do When i interview people it's usually pretty information dense and you always avoided moving to a video show because its hard operate without youtube but, it would be nice to have a slide feature cuz some guests come here with their complex research and they have these slide images in my throw them in the show notes but to have them. Ride along with the show would be pretty slick then that's just one thing and show you where this is going and

59:23 and have always wanted to see this happen. You know, when you create a Word document and you send it to somebody they open it in Word so its very powerful that you can create and edit on both ends of that system now sometimes people will print it as a PDF but thats kind of fuck you! you cant alter this So with one the apps Hypercatcher which I think is iOS only at the moment Hypercatcher allows you to create a suggested chapter. So in the app, you're listening and like oh this would be cool. You stop...

1:00:03 You say, we don't have to stop. We just hit the add chapter suggestion you type in what the suggested title would be you can type in a URL and then there's that image that can be added and it goes into a back end which is the hypercatcher studio and there you can moderate and you can approve all these different chapter submissions so you could really do that as a community And it's very surprising. I mean, we have one guy who is called No Agenda Quotes He has been posting quotes from the show for years and years and years and years... ...and now he is just showing up and adding those into the show Whatever you like as a quote, he now tags with that quote as a chapter marker This is really- That's the beginning of people interacting with each other connected to the podcast

1:00:53 So the best implementation of this is something called sphinx chat which is still in beta testing although it's very ready for prime time but there's a lot of back and stuff that to do before they go full blown in the app store. And they have a concept of a tribe so you have a podcast try, It's messaging, it's actually sending money back and forth. It's boosting its streaming payments all in one and is really fun because now you have this kind of 24 hour chat room where people can contribute value just by the fact that you are paying maybe very little but your pain to say something so instead of like pay-to-play your play to pay and it creates just more value for the entire community

1:01:40 Yeah it's really great and i know you are kind of soliciting all kinds of different developers to make many new apps that would serve, all different types of needs and obviously this is not about me but for people who do have my model where i offer. paywalled content and longer shows for those who do contribute, it would be beautiful if there was some app out there that was developed where a listener could create a paid account and automatically be served up the paid feed all seamlessly in the app. And obviously, this isn't just me because a lot of people have adopted the Patreon model but are going to need to get away from Patreon as a company. So if there's developers out there that might want to serve that need I think people in my position would gladly share that revenue with them so help a brother out! People who might be listening. Yeah, that's a very important point and thank you for bringing that up and i'm going to bring this up on the next Podcasting 2.0 podcast

1:02:43 That's an excellent point, actually. It is extremely easy to add the Patreon functionality a paywall so under the hood paywall where you want to listen to hour two of the podcast and you could either pre-authorize that or just say, hey I wanna listen to it. And they'll say okay that's whatever X is or its automatically deducted from your ongoing relationship but it just triggers right away and the whole process is seamless. You could do obviously an offer like if

1:03:25 do it month to month, it will be cheaper than per episode. But regardless putting an actual paywall in place a lot of work has been done on that. That's amazing! I personally believe that if you do it in the full value for value exchange where people set their own value and you just do everything open I think you'll make more, but I would not advise you to try that if it could ruin you because sounded like you're very happy with the Patreon model. But I pledge to you that I will make sure this is implemented somehow in the API. It'll take a little bit longer because we have a lot of developers to get up to speed and probably around the end of this month my co-founder Dave Jones will be doing

1:04:12 dare I say a webinar, for all of our devs that are currently hanging out to help them implement the upgrades to our API and Ellen Pays API which we're using initially. Then there's a couple other ways and we're trying to make this as broad as possible so we have all kinds of different implementations but iCommit that we will get a Patreon version of it implemented for those who want it. Wow! That should be very easy and PodcasterWallet.com is going to be the place for podcasters to go you can't do anything now because our beta test has closed off but you can see what it is, and its really verification of your feed so every feed has a FeedOwner email in it if you could receive or reply to email

1:05:04 from that address or even receive because we give you a QR code for verification. Then you can start messing around with your value block and your splits and where you want payments to go, so it's going to be very easy. We're talking about this today and it's just gonna be a few more weeks but very very soon. And of course I'll give you super heads up cause I want you to be one of the first use it. Yes! i appreciate it is so exciting and i totally respect the value for value model you're probably right cuz right now i charge, eight dollars for five two hour shows a month which is less than a dollar an hour clearly so i'm getting jim tier making some good points what's beautiful though is that i know we both know.

1:05:48 that the people who are on the other end of this conversation, a lot of them will be willing to try it. And I love that and it's not a one way street you know podcast index dot social we have little social network there anyone can join just register We have developers, we have journalists, we have company owners also just podcasters, podcast listeners everyone is free to contribute to the conversation There's no algorithm, so it's not like Twitter. It's like you can have an argument but it's just gonna scroll off. You're just gonna go away and it's not going to be interesting? So it's very very high signal-to-noise And we appreciate anyone coming in! As you pointed out this is exactly what I need We need this kind of feedback Patreon function...you got it! We're gonna put that in. It's on the list Amazing man Music to my ears as were starting to wrap this thing up Just to

1:06:46 put a nice little bow on this podcasting package. What can people do to help this Podcasting 2.0 project along? What can listeners do, what can hosts do because I think we all want the same thing here! Well, the best thing that people can do if you're just interested and want to check it out is go to newpodcastapps.com and you can see different hosting companies but a lot of different apps and experiences they're not all just traditional apps and what features they support not all of them support all the features but you can certainly enjoy at the most basic level those that have our search

1:07:25 including the people search, which really is a great way to find specific episodes that you'd be interested in. So supporting that and you don't have to switch to a new app necessarily but just check it out see if there's any features there I particularly like Hypercatcher Podfriend which is a web app and then we have I want to say Podcast Addict is really integrating a lot they're pretty big on the Android side but there are more being added every single day. Playapod just switched to the index for all of their searches, and they did that purely to help the core mission which is preserving podcasting as a platform for free speech. And the best thing you can do is when we're a little bit more down the line but it's never too early to start, if you see some features that you like and knowing with the payment the value-for-value was coming

1:08:19 Consider asking your favorite podcast if they can add these into the content so chapters will be a good one and. If they say hey my hosting provider doesn't provide for that then on that same new podcast apps dot com you can find it to point him to hosting provider we have some big ones like bus route. No there'll be happy to help you migrate and add those features That's how the marketing has always worked in podcasting. And I need to always remind myself, in the early days before integrated into Apple and iTunes

1:08:56 To subscribe to a podcast, we would tell our listeners go to my webpage find the little orange XML button. You got it? Okay now right click on that and then do copy link Now go back to your podcast application okay now click the plus button now paste that URL in there and then click OK And millions of people did it. So, people who are in the podcast ecosystem whether you're producing, whether you're a developer or whether you're an audience member, you were already wired to be able to do these things and to be adventurous and discover the next generation of media.

1:09:38 Wow. Just like that, I love it man! I'm pretty happy with that myself. Yes well hey i'm definitely throwing you guys at least 500 bucks when we get off this call because oh my goodness too important and very kind of you yeah you got it money is uh the fuel that gets this machine going and gets it here faster than uh the big machine wants to shut us all down so I appreciate you well as you've already witnessed yourself With your own business model the days of free are over and when you stop giving away or accepting stuff for free knowing that there's stuff attached to it you actually create more freedom for yourself.

1:10:24 Wise words well right on this has been a true honor and pleasure man i already owe. My career to you in a big way and as the world changes you might just be on the forefront of paving a path that saves my ass again ass save two point oh really appreciate it man, Adam curry the rebel with a cause making the future look a little bit brighter thanks again no agenda of course is the show everyone should check out mo facts as well and podcasting two point oh is it third show for the techie people who wanna really get under the hood what's happening any other links to leave him with. No man that's it not really appreciate the time very much appreciate your questions in your preparation really enjoyable and this was what i always hoped

1:11:11 Some podcast conference would ask me to do they never do they never asked Dvorak or myself To come and tell them how we do it Or how you can be successful and you pretty much did that from beginning to end, and it's really much appreciated This is one for my own archive. Ah too kind glad to hear that well Thanks again, and take care out there man all right beware of the kraken I'll talk to you Ha ha ha, conspiracy kraken be damned. We did it! I'm not sure exactly where i said it maybe it was on the joint session show in December but somebody asked me about dream guests and of course i mentioned adam because of that perfect overlap between the crackpot mindset and the technical knowledge to solve some of the issues we have in the podcasting space

1:12:02 So a big thanks to you in the tribe, as Adam might say for putting the bug in his ear and helping me make it happen. Listening back to it I was actually talking really fast so you heard a combination of me fanboying out a little bit which is rare these days but sometimes it's good and fun to be a little nervous coupled with a need to talk fucking fast because I wanted to make this a show that covered the background of podcasting for those who didn't know and Put a little respect on Adams name for his role in things So we had to lay that base with enough room left over to actually Talk about what those innovations are it's a lot especially With the higher side chats model because I wanted to cram all that into the first hour really

1:12:50 But these days we're hearing about so many new platforms and protocols and applications, it's nauseating. So it's important that our listeners know that this isn't just some John McAfee rant Adam can an is doing these things that will level up podcasting with some assistance of course And he flattered me a bit by letting me feel like improving my particular model as in the mix and I could have even had the slightest influence by making requests A trick I'm sure he picked up from Steve Jobs all those years ago, but i'm not complaining. I know it's fun to talk about the big conspiracy and demons and ghosts and underground cloning centers so this one might have been a bit practical and technical for some of you guys but if you like this show then we all have a vested interest in getting a handle on what's happening with podcastindex.org And making sure we're not only spreading the word but using apps that have made the upgrade

1:13:50 They say let the market decide and you guys are the market i was also really excited to hear on adams last episode of podcasting 2.0 that his next guest is Todd from blueberry and that is music to my ears because blueberry is a big part of the engine that makes the higher side chats run it's all coming together I can't believe it It's nice because Apple was obviously a big part of us getting where we are today, but now podcasting needs to pivot to a more open and decentralized system. Podcasting really is central to free speech. This whole thing came about in a way that busted up the monopoly on who gets to speak, who gets to generate an audience? Forget agents and managers and one-sided corporate contracts that leech off the skills of their hired talent. Podcasting allowed the free market to decide. And what do you know it turns out when people have other options Jimmy Fallon and Trevor Noah aren't so hot

1:14:53 Who would have guessed? But I'm a happy man today. Not only am i getting this out to you guys, but Gab actually verified me with the blue check mark! Of course you have to get Gab Pro to even be considered and I did that... ...but if we have to pay to play on Gab and that's the cost of not having our data harvested and not having bullshit Ford truck and MeUndies ads shoehorned in front of our content then it's my preferred choice You know, historically I have kind of isolated myself. I do my thing and just kinda wanna be left alone besides that Yes, I get guests and try to give them a good interview But outside of a small handful of folks, I really don't do the whole networking thing very well Maybe i'm a bit skeptical of people if you could believe it but its probably time to open up a bit

1:15:46 I mean, hey it was mentioning to you guys who i'd want to have on that made it happen. It was asking Gab to verify me that got it done and in another synchronicity a fellow named Mitch who is developing the Podverse app for both iOS and Android thank God he reached out to me in an email explaining that he was building his app using the new decentralized index had no idea I was interviewing Adam and already was aware of this But he said that right now they don't have password protected feed capabilities, but they've gotten requests that I guess involve THC+. And now they are testing and implementing that feature in their app using the higher side chats as the very show to test it and make sure it all works well.

1:16:37 So January has been very good to me so far and I'm gonna try to open up a bit more to the world at large. What Adam and John have done with No Agenda is fascinating, the community involvement, the sort of open sourcing of the brand name to projects like No Agenda Phone and No Agenda Meetups it's a beautiful thing! I don't know how many technically skilled listeners we have that would want to expand things in a similar way, in exchange for...I guess the only thing I have is free membership. But if there are some, I'd love to hear your guys' ideas! I've said this in a few wrap-ups now lately but it's more about you guys being able to find each other. The value of that given the road ahead seems pretty high

1:17:27 Meetups, even without me seem really valuable if you feel like your counterculture views isolate you a bit from other people in your life. That's something I definitely understand! Now imagine all of your fringe views are publicly available for people in your life to comb through and talk about amongst themselves. Welcome to my life...I'm out here ya know? But maybe if we have some meetups and I can't go, I'll at least Skype in or Zoom in or whatever it is you want me to do. It would be nice to say what's up? If that were to occur." And this interview got turned around pretty fast for THC only two days big thanks to our editor for making that happen! It was interesting to see how our inauguration thoughts played out

1:18:13 We were just having a little fun as Adam spelled out what the Q crowd was promoting and circulating. A complete takeover of the airwaves, and red-pilling of the masses featuring Jeffrey Epstein! Provocative ideas to consider but at the end of the day we got what was expected And I agree with Adam that The Republic is quite strong and can probably handle whoever's president Though I think we're on shakier ground than we've been on in a long time, as noted in a couple of the first THC episodes of 2021 obviously. But when adam asked me what i found so soothing about no agenda it is a delicate thing to articulate because as I said that they were taking things lightly and with the sense of humor all i could think in my head was oh god, sounds like im saying we're making light of the situation that is hurting alot of people and scaring even more. But isn't that its just about the tone

1:19:12 and really the transmutation of media stories that are designed to scare you and stress you out. It's an alchemical act, to flip reporting from the most sophisticated propaganda-and mind control machine the world has ever known, pull back the curtain on all it, show that the emperor has no clothes so to speak. Obviously people who listen know what I mean, so just do if you don't already! But it was fun to get to tell Adam about the money bomb. I am proud of that and happy that it happened, and enjoyed while it lasted And also wanted to articulate that one issue I had in trying to go the value for value route When you're poor and inexperienced and desperate for that support To have a few anonymous people carrying the bulk of your income felt very unstable... ...To me

1:20:07 It felt almost like a handler situation in a couple of cases. And no disrespect, those three or four people are actually pretty key to the history of The Higher Side Chats and the fact that I didn't just disappear into the ether like 95% of podcasts that start up do. I really really needed those donations at the time but again i get guarded and skeptical and I don't ever want to be in anyone's pocket What's the difference between GameStop being able to get me to dance for a paycheck and CherryPopper69 at Yahoo.com having pretty much the same influence? I don't know if i got that email address exactly right, but you get the point! The way I see it, the THC Plus model democratizes that income stream for me and makes sure that the trajectory of things is in my hands and the hands of the many rather than just a couple of deep pockets

1:21:02 It is what it is. We all find our way and I really couldn't be more grateful for how it turned out, but my nature is to be open and my model with THC kind of requires me to be protective of the second hour although throughout 2020 we've done some episodes that I considered so useful that I threw out a coupon code so that people could hear the whole thing And I'm going to do that today too. In the spirit of value for value, let's see what happens! If you put in the coupon code CURRY, you can get a free week of THC+. Once again, I kind of went back and forth because for a person in my position, the purpose of getting The Big Guests is to entice more listeners to become Plus Members but because this is such a special episode about podcasting itself

1:21:53 And Adam and I have so many colleagues that i'm sure will be checking this out for their own self-preservation. I think it's important that you can hear this whole episode without spending a dollar The future of podcasting is on the line, goddammit! Plus Adam is busy producing three of his own shows and working out this technical buildout So don't make him do all the rounds I tried to get you all the major bullet points and put them in one place. But let's play with this value for value thing, Adam sets the bar at a dollar an hour! How many free hours of THC have you enjoyed? I produce 10 hours of interviews a month plus a little more and a joint session episode and i ask for eight dollars so it really is a bargain by that standard but if you use the coupon code maybe let that membership go a little bit maybe get into the spirit of contribution if you haven't already

1:22:50 I wonder how many free listeners have ever even really sat down to consider what THC is worth to them. But whatever, i'm really talking to other podcasters here it's time we invest in our own futures by at least knowing what's going on and or contributing to podcastindex.org with time talent or treasure So, to the listeners. I would say send a link to this episode to your favorite shows and make sure the hosts know what's going on here Give them that coupon code curry Even if they aren't producing a show that is controversial in nature They should still endorse podcasting as a free and open platform Of course like most days i did have a few more questions we didn't get too And things we didn't get elaborate on Like I might of wanted

1:23:42 And one of those things that I cut was a more pointed question about the extremes of free speech, what some people would consider to be hate speech and what to do about it if anything. I cut it because Adam had already mentioned that nothing in an RSS feed can hurt you, and that's probably all that really needs to be said. So hypothetically, what if let's say A KKK cast starts up and joins the index. How should that be handled? I think the best option is to just ignore it, because to police it does not make these hypothetical showrunners any less racist. It only drives them underground which could be worse! Let's put everyone's ideas and perspectives out in the light and let the cream rise to the top and keep an eye on those sketchy areas

1:24:36 By the nature of what an MP3 file or RSS feed can contain, it can't hurt you. I agree with that because to go the other way means that some really dark nasty stuff gets associated with the kind of speech the establishment would want a silence They say our ideas are dangerous and hateful in the same way as that other shit actually is. It's the classic question of where to draw the line? Some things are obvious, but The Establishment uses that gray area to move the needle in their favor And now one of my episodes about the history of The Rothschilds funding the pillaging of Africa's resources and diamond mines gets taken off YouTube for hate speech and bullying

1:25:22 Yeah, we don't need Big Daddy to draw the lines for us. In the same way I don't really decide for you guys either The requirement to be a guest on this show is pretty broad They just have to have done some research that offers some alternative perspective or identifies some sort of corruption Or injustice or mystery if we want to fold in that paranormal side But the guests come from many different angles left right and center We're not just circling around one viewpoint here, and the archive is full of guests who have had some really controversial opinions. But for me if it's part of the conspiracy culture then I'm interested in what brings people to the conclusions that they have right or wrong

1:26:10 When it comes to 90% of the bad reviews THC has on iTunes, the comments are about a particular guest or a particular episode generally asking how could you endorse this kind of thing. But to be curious about what data points bring a person to a particular conclusion is not an endorsement! Flat Earth is a good less hot example than some other things I could cite but it became a big thing It sounded a bit weird that such an old idea that I thought was put to rest could rise up like it did a few years ago. So, I had some flat earth researchers on and they definitely made me think twice about a couple of things They have a few interesting data points It's not as simple as well why can't you just sail off the edge because their configuration addresses that in a pretty interesting way? I still don't think the earth is flat sorry to offend with that controversial view i know

1:27:08 But why can't we talk to each other? Why so serious?" In an era where the culture is moving towards everyone curating their own stream of information that reinforces their already established perspective, I want to remain committed to hearing a wide variety of people out. Even if after many years some people just don't get what i'm trying to do around here but who gives a shit The vast majority do And I gotta quit angling my wrap-ups to the minority. But, I'm all fired up! I'm just really happy today and proud of what we've built here and am happy to at least feel like i have a seat at the table. I was early to podcasting...I want to be early to podcasting 2.0 for Christ's sake Thanks for listening. I am going try keep these things moving at a high level

1:27:58 I hope you continue to find it valuable and contribute accordingly. Wink, wink nudge nudge Of course again in this case use the coupon code curry when you are signing up there is a nice little link that says got a coupon You click that link you put in the word curry You get a free week and you can comb through the many years of archives you can download any shows listen to them offline It's all good. In today's Plus Show with Adam, we rounded out the conversation with some talk about bringing back the free spirit of the early internet and early podcasting, some smartphone alternatives that don't suck and don't rely on the Apple or Google store, another pinch point for free speech and the apps that support it. We talked about the value of blockchain technology in this changing world of censorship

1:28:48 the great resetters plans for the internet and social crediting, the biosecurity state being built up around us. What Adam knows about the crossroads between the occult and music industry? Now that was a fun question to ask to an ex-MTV VJ! And we talked about some solutions for decentralizing our social communities and the value of protocols over platforms all good stuff jam packed as usual And just going over that list reminds me that we know Adam is a bit more aggressively pro when it comes to crypto than a lot of our previous guests. And some simple thinkers will hear crypto and equate it to digital dollars, and the moves being made there, and think digital equals bad

1:29:39 I get all that, but it's very parallel to the internet itself. This tool was built and it has a lot of powerful and positive uses It also has social media that manipulates your pleasure centers and gets you addicted to likes as well as marketing That is so finely tuned by behaviorists that it's hard not fall prey too And all other sorts of stuff we don't like We kind of have the choice to shepherd it where we want it to go Obviously the internet got away from us in recent years, but we are pushing back now. Crypto is really the same thing yes it's digital money you know it's pretty much like all fucking money at this point anyway I don't know the last time I handed someone a paper dollar actually

1:30:22 But yes, something like Fedcoin or the Amero and all this biometrically and behaviorally connected currency. It's coming but so is free an open instantaneous exchange between creators and consumers without any approval from a higher authority So it's this and that. My concern is mainly that crypto is in too early of a phase to rely on it as a main mechanism for income. Podcasting itself barely has wide penetration, if our income is going to rely on podcast listeners who also actively engage in crypto payment systems regularly then I look forward to slowly starving off the two dozen of you that fit that description

1:31:09 But these big payment processors aren't going to save us, so what do we do? I'm sure when the system is built right into the app it will start getting used a lot more. I guess i would say that if you don't like Adam's approach using crypto then build something better! Anyone can talk shit and most of us are just going to adapt to what the real visionaries and developers build anyway. So here we are! Wow, alright. Thanks for letting me unload all my related thoughts on all of these things in this wrap-up no better episode to do it on I am gonna take a break from this kind of talk and fatiguing you with my concerns about my quote unquote job And next week will be right back to Hollow Earth interplanetary pyramid portals and our Martian overlords so

1:32:02 Important and pressing issues as always. I love you, you love me... Let's make podcasting censorship free! Big thanks again to Adam Curry the man with the plan Follow his three shows No Agenda MoFax with Adam Curry And Podcasting 2.0 Keep an eye on newpodcastapps.com and spread the word! The podcasting revolution will not be televised, I'm getting out of here Your move corporate giants free speech suppressors and agents of the oligarchs You're fucking... From space it was falling Its light started calling It's making crop circles again

1:32:43 Just as I was looking up it showed me all the hidden stuff And now i'm all enlightened and zen Picking up the masses is hard Silver ship sir Now im not asleep Don't obey the elite Gotta be to the head Now I start to wonder, now we're not the sheep that they bred us to be. Got a beam to the head! Now we start to wonder... Now we start to wonder... See a new paradigm of corruption and crime since the visitors set me straight. I encourage you to go when you see the saucers glow one by one awake

1:33:45 The masses is hard Silver ships are by yard Now we're not asleep Donald Bailey's got a beam to the And we start to wonder No, we're not the sheep that meant us to be Beamed to the Now we start to wonder Now we start to wonder You'll see these things up in the sky Just as the system starts to die Balls made and an extra belly raised It's time we had a break Cause we're not the sheep that they put us to be Got a beam to the head, now we start to wonder Now we're not asleep cause we got THC

1:35:07 Now we start to wander, now we start to wander again.