498. The Future of Podcast Hosting Is Changing Fast with Sam Sethi

0:05 Good morning podcasters. Today is Friday, April 17th, 2026, and today video and podcasting just got more complicated. Sam Sethi joins us to unpack Apple's changes, hosting, ownership, and what it all means for the future of podcasting. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, bottom right, no top, right hand side of the screen and share it. However, Clubhouse lets you. And if you're catching us via podcast, YouTube, 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. The Podcasting Morning Chat is powered by Ironic Media, helping podcasters launch, Polish and grow great shows, and by Content Creators Accountant, helping creators build real business behind their content.

1:20 Good morning again podcasting morning chat. Thank you so much for being here. I am your host Mark Ronik currently on stage with me. My Co hosts the team if you will. We have Dr. Fey, Jonathan Howard, Ralph Estep, Sid Meadows, Alex Baelish, Matt Bliss and Nick Naalbek. A full house indeed. We also have a special guest here today, Sam Sethi from True Fans, True Fans dot FM. We will say hello to him momentarily. I wanted to 1st just remind everybody of a couple of things before we get into the heart of all of this. And of course, by the way, we do intend to leave some time for our Friday wins from this past week.

2:03 So if you haven't already written that down or thought about it, now's your chance to think about that for the next 30 or so minutes. But first, I do want to remind you today is the last day to win Ralph E Steps Rd. caster duo, the lightly used Rd. caster duo. He's had it for around 9 months. And by the way, you can also win a free monetization session, strategy session with Ralph if you win the road caster duo. So the duo, I've said it a million times, it's awesome piece of gear. If you really want to upgrade your studio, your podcast equipment, it helps because it makes you sound better. It works really well with multiple audio sources. It gives you hands on control over live production. It's all a built into one compact unit. And that compact unit is compact. It is lightweight it and I think Ralph, he was just holding it up.

3:01 By the way, Ralph, did you want to hold that thing up? And this thing is beautiful. It weighs less than a pound or so and it's just a great piece of gear is what I started my podcast journey with. I've upgraded to the Road Pro caster, the Road Caster Pro 2, but now this is a great piece of equipment. It's got multiple inputs and all the values there. It's great. Yeah, Yep. I love the road caster products. So if you want to win that along with the free monetization strategy session where Ralph will help you find opportunities to make more money with your podcast or maybe start making money with your podcast, he'll sit down and break all of that down with you. So to do that, just go to podcastingmorningchat.com/duo DUO and you can have multiple chances to win this duo. And like I said, today's your last day. I think it's 11:45 PM Eastern.

3:56 The cut off happens and that's it. No more chances. So go check that out. All right, let's dig into today's show because like I said, I want to leave some time for wins from the week as well. I will since Ralph, as we say in the industry, got us a good get, I'll have him introduce our guest and start with questions. And by the way, this questions for Sam is open to everyone. You're welcome to put it in whatever chat you're in or of course, if you're on Clubhouse, you can come up on stage and join us here. And if you want to, if you're watching by video and you're saying I want to do that, just go to podcastingmorningchat.com/join us and you can find all the ways you can join us with that.

4:41 Ralph, take it away. Well, good morning, everybody. I am super excited because one of my podcasting mentors is joining us today. His name is Sam Sethi. Now, Sam is the CEO of True Fans and he's also the host and producer of the Pod Newsweek review to James Cridland. Now, I checked out Sam's bio on LinkedIn. He also is the chief evangelist of the Podcast Standard Project, which he's been working in for a couple years. The Podcast Standards Project's a grassroot industry coalition dedicated to creating standards and practices and improve the open podcasting ecosystems for both listeners and creators. And we're going to dig into a little bit more of that and also as the Chief Executive Officer of True Fans.

5:23 So, Sam, thank you so much and I really appreciate you joining us today. Oh, no, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm looking forward to this. So yeah, let's rock A roll. Sam, I'm going to jump right into it. So for podcasters who may not know true fans yet, what is it and what problem are you really trying to solve with your product? OK, so True Fans is a marketplace. It helps creators connect with their fans. The idea is to build a portal, not just a podcast app. So the idea is to have audio, video, events, blogs, merch, A1 point destination of where your fans can connect with you and they can support you. Now it's called a marketplace because fans can pay you in multiple ways.

6:07 They can pay you with micro payments. They can be both in a Fiat currency, so dollars, EUR pounds, or in micro payments from Bitcoin known as Satoshi's sats. But equally creators can pay fans. It might be that you want to incentivize some of your fans to share comments or to share your content and you could as a marketing budget. So look, hey, look, if you share this new episode that I'm launching with some people, I will pay you a micro payment. So the flow of monies, because it's digital, can go both ways. So it's a marketplace because yes, you can support your favorite creator. You can have a monthly subscription, you can stream SAT, you can buy merch, but equally, creators can incentivise their favorite fans.

6:55 And if you are the one super fan, the one who's done the most, you actually get a percentage of other people's payments. He might. That's great to say. Yeah, my super fan gets 1% or 2% of all the sats I receive as well. So it adds gamification to the model. Now, Sam, I know just recently you're launched A hosting model and you're doing it a lot differently than most of the other people in the industry. And I just love the idea and I wanted you to talk a little bit about it because I really think it's a benefit to independent podcasters, but it is completely different than other people are doing it. Yeah. So thank you. Yes, we launched our hosting platform Audio Video and live is coming soon. So when you've got a traditional host, you pay a fixed fee per month, $19.00, whatever.

7:42 And whether you get 1 listener or 1000 listeners, that's that's pretty much where you are. I looked at it much more like a mobile phone model and I wanted to create a variable model of pricing. So if you come to true fans and you host with us, you upload your content, we will then stream it. We don't download it like traditional hosts. So every host that I know of so far will download the actual full episode, whether it's small, big, or gigantic. And then you play it back. We break up the audio or video into six second packets and we can stream those packets to any app. So Apple, Spotify, YouTube or whatever.

8:25 What that gives us is 1 big benefit for creators is we can measure how many people actually played your podcast and secondly, how long they played your podcast. So we can give you listen time metrics and watch time metrics for the video. And that means that you can work out, yeah, this episode was listened to 60% of the time. It was listened to across 12 apps. And that's real detailed metrics rather than I've got 1000 downloads, which actually doesn't mean anything anymore because a download is not a play. And we know that you have auto downloads through apps like Apple. So that metric was always given by hosts in the past because that's the only metric they could give you. But now we can give you play counts, listen, time counts, watch time and also consumption.

9:17 And that's the other critical part in an episode we can show you based on your chapters where people dropped, where they skipped forward. So you can then say, oh, you know that topic we covered about X or Y, No one wanted to hear about that. They all skipped forward. Note to self, do not put that topic in a future episode. So there's some of the things that we've done related to our hosting. The last thing I'd say is we also refund you. What do I mean? So we will save $15.00 a month for audio hosting, but if we find that you've only consumed $7.00 worth of content in terms of streaming data served, we give you back the $8.

10:00 That's fair. We think because you haven't consumed that, no one's actually used that money. So ours is a variable pricing model as opposed to a fixed pricing model. Ours is a streaming model as opposed to a download model. I'll stop there, but there are some of the differences that we've put. In So Sam, let me follow up on that just for a second. So do you think that creators are going to be surprised with their statistics in your model? Do you think that's going to sort of be a shock to the system? I think people are very comfortable with large numbers. Like if you say I've got 1000 downloads, that sounds brilliant, doesn't it? So everyone likes that. If you say of that 1000 downloads, only 70 were real plays, that's going to shock people.

10:43 But I think we need to move to that model because, you know, it's the emperor's new clothes. Otherwise, we're just kidding ourselves. So I think you'll find advertisers again are going to start to demand how many of those actual downloads are real plays that my advert was served. And if you can't give that metric back to your advertiser or your host read advertiser, then they're probably going to go, well, I'm going to find another place where I can go. So the industry is maturing and I think this is a first step towards that. And I think advertisers will like that, but I also think creators will like it because we put a lot of work into our podcast, right? It's good to know that there's actual people listening.

11:25 One of the things that scared or surprised me is when we started streaming the data, we found how many bots were actually streaming. Apple does about 120 hours of every podcast episode, 6 times the length of most average podcast to create transcripts and chapters. Spotify's the same, and then you suddenly find clawed or open AI or TikTok or or whatever. Why are you streaming my episodes as well? Well, they are, and they're doing it as bots. So as you pay for the amount of data that's streamed, we've created a model that you can choose to block certain bots from streaming. You can hide that block bot data as well.

12:07 So I want to see how many downloads I got. OK, OK, Now I want to see those downloads without bots. That's a different number. I want to see that downloads without or play account without bot plays. So again, we give you all of that data. Yeah. That's very cool. And that to me, it makes it now a little more obvious to me why you're embracing the whole Apple HLS model. It sounds very similar in that regard because there, that's how that's working too. It's being delivered in those small pieces. So that makes a lot of sense. And I guess are you guys now already offering that as a solution, the video option to Apple? No, we will have that in a week's time.

12:48 We've got the API access, we've been given it, and that's great. And we have to go through some hoops and hurdles with Apple. They want to see our documentation. But once that's cleared, we're ready to roll. The one thing we did though, prior to Apple's API with HLS is we supported HLS in something called the alternative enclosure, which is your secondary in your RSS feed. You have a primary enclosure, which is where your audio video lives, and then you can have an alternative enclosure where you could put other audio versions or other video versions. So we already have been supporting HLS for about a year. Prior to Apple coming out with HLS, we actually used MP Fours and we broke those up into six second packets like HLS and we were streaming those as well. So what we will do is we will support Apple, we will deliver via their APIHLS video, but we will take the same master playlist, the HLS playlist and automatically put that into the alternative enclosure so that other apps like true founds found in Pod Verse can also get that video. It's not going to be exclusive to Apple. No, that's interesting.

14:00 So that's somewhat unique compared to what I'm hearing other hosting platforms because they're most of them what I'm hearing is they're saying this is exclusively going just to Apple, but I guess because of the foundation that you've built again, you're able to offer it to more platforms. Very, very cool. OK. And this, we've been talking a lot about this whole thing, this Apple HLS and adding video to it, and it's getting a ton of attention. That's why we're talking so much about it. But a lot of the talk has been from us and from other people, somewhat negative people are not sure what to make of it, what to think of it. So my question to you is what do you think Apple is getting right with this move? Apple first and foremost supporting their own technology, which is HLS, is great.

14:46 Apple worked out what Spotify couldn't work out, which was they pushed the cost of creating the HLS back onto the host. There's zero cost on Apple for doing this. Whereas Spotify, in order to serve video, are taking you to upload the video, They're hosting the video, they're managing the video, they're checking that it's not pornographic, They're checking there's all sorts of things aren't in it, right? That's all beholden to Spotify before it publishes Apple. Wait, you know what? We're going to Chuck that back to you hosts. You check that this works, you convert it to HLS, you host the storage of it, you serve it to us and we'll take a little cut.

15:30 You know, right at the end of the day, we're going to take a little bit of money. So actually they've turned video into a profit centre rather than a cost. OK, cool. All right, So then again, where a lot of podcasters are talking about this, if a podcaster says, OK, but what does this mean for my actual production workflow every week? Now if I'm going to add in this video, what do you think that they should be thinking about first? So video is a massive increase in workflow, right? Yes, you can just do, you know, Riverside like we're doing today, talking heads and put it out. But a lot of video now, if you look at the YouTube sort of high end is TV production quality.

16:15 You've got lighting, you've got multicam, you've got all sorts of different things going on. Post production editing of that video then becomes 10X harder than audio because you've then got cuts and you've got slicing and, and, and those things make it harder. So if you are going to go down the video Rd. that's great. And a lot of people go down the video Rd. because it's a deeper parasocial relationship. Parasocial relationships are creators know nothing about their fans in general, but fans know very much about their creators. What's the name of your dog? Where do you go walking? Where do you live? Because we reveal that bit of information every week in our podcast. When you have a video, that parasocial relationship is one step further because we can see facial counts, what you're wearing, what your hair color looks like. So there is a a value in the video itself, but there is also a cost in that A lot of people have said what they're going to now do is just upload video to Apple and Spotify and to places like true fans.

17:21 And then let us abstract the audio from it. They're not going to do a separate audio and separate video. They're now going to have one single workflow, which is I record the video, I upload it to all these platforms or to one host, like true fans that distribute it to these platforms. And those platform apps can then just take the audio, which is all that Spotify does. It doesn't use the audio. If you serve it, it takes the video and takes the audio out of the video to make their audio element I'm. Sorry, I have two questions for you related to that. So question number one is I'm a Captivate user and they had their meet up the other day and they started talking about price. And what they're doing, Sam, is they're charging $12.00 per month per show, not per episode, but per show. And they're giving you 1000 downloads and, you know, 720P. And during that call, a lot of people were sort of taken back by like they're like, wait a minute, $12.00. That's going to get expensive, number one. Number two, you're only putting up 720P and they're capping it at 90 minutes.

18:30 Now, one of the things you mentioned earlier is you're already offering this. Is that already baked into your hosting model? Is there no additional cost? And second question is, what kind of resolution are you pushing on true fans? OK, let's answer that directly, $30.00 a month for video. No, that's the top end you'll ever pay, right? If you are then streaming data and you get to let's say half of the data stream, we give you one terabyte of streaming data for the video. So you're measuring apples and oranges. They're talking about downloads still, right? This is the problem. We, we're in an old world. They're still numbering downloads.

19:11 And the problem they've got is if you've got a video and it's 1 gig in size, well, of course they're going to cap it at 1000 downloads, which is 1 terabyte, right? They're saying fundamentally we have to download the full 1 GB before you can play it. We're saying of that one GB, you might only stream 100 Meg of that, right? And then you might stream another 200 Meg and another 200 Meg. So we've given you one terabyte, which is fundamentally the same as Captivate, but in the same way we don't charge you additionally for each podcast. It's unlimited uploads, 4K if you want it, 720 K.

19:52 So because it's an HLS style, we can do 327201080P4K Now in your creators dashboard you might say I do not want to serve 4K because I'll go through my data so fast, but please serve up 3/27/20 or 1080P based on the user's bandwidth. Great, that's what we'll do for you. If you then say no, I want to go to 4K and if I go beyond my one terabyte, I can buy another TB's worth of data from you. Great, crack on. So if you go beyond your limit, that's only because you're being successful. Hopefully, therefore you go. I'm very happy to pay another TB of data. Please add it to my account.

20:36 That's it. Of course, if you go under we refund you I think. Jinade here on Clubhouse has a question and then I know Matt Bliss also has a question. And by the way, good morning to BC Babbles. I didn't mention him when I introduced everybody, so just wanted to call that out and say hello to BC. But yeah, let's go to Jinade. Jinade, what was your question? Good morning. Everyone, this is an excellent conversation Sam, really awesome to meet you. So the question was, Apple created DHLS technology back in 2009. Everybody from Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, Dailymotion, you name it, they've all been using HLS to deliver video on our computers.

21:19 Why did it take Apple so long to support HLS for their own podcast I. Have no idea. So one of the things that Ralph mentioned that I was the chief evangelist for the Podcast Standards project and a whole bunch of hosts got together a couple of years ago in LA and then in Vegas, and we were banging the drum for video because we saw YouTube coming. We knew that video was going to become a big part of podcasting. And every podcast host said, look, we can't serve MP4, it's too expensive. We have to break it into packets. And so HLS was proposed a couple of years back and we said to Apple, come on, can you support him? We don't know why they've taken so long.

21:59 The big question I have with Apple though is way that Apple's done HLS support today is through a proprietary API and not through RSS, and it's only available on Apple channels. What we want Apple to do is to support within the Apple Podcast app is HLS in the primary enclosure and Spotify to support HLS in the primary enclosure. They don't do that. That's the next iteration of where HLS needs to go to so that any host can then say, I'm going to provide HLS to Apple through their API, but I'm going to provide it in the primary enclosure so that any app can get it. And of course, then bandwidth doesn't become a problem because you're streaming in short packets and the playlist will work out. Yes, you've got a slow connection. Let's serve 320.

22:49 You've got a fast connection, let's go to 4K. It's not quite there. We are in a halfway house today between the old world of downloads, MP4 videos and proprietary HLS to the world we all want, which is open standards around HLS in the primary enclosure. I think, Matt. Bliss has a question. Go for it, Matt. Thank you. Yeah, I've got so many thoughts on what you just said there, Sam. But I kind of wanted to. Start to skew towards the question where like, I presume too that this is the midpoint where I think conspiratorially Apple has waited until YouTube said yay podcasting and then has decided to make this available. And then once Apple goes yay video podcasting, maybe Spotify finally comes to the table and it becomes a thing. But the bigger question I wanted to ask you, being part of a platform and addressing the Captivate messaging that's come out that has been ultimately confusing, presumably because they're trying to remove or obfuscate the technical language to make it understandable for people. Something I find I rail against a lot as a tech nerd, geek, whatever we're calling ourself these days, is that people don't know as much about technology as they used to, so it becomes harder to explain when something like this comes out. Have you found that explaining how True Fans works? And in the emergence of HLS and streaming and this kind of thing coming out, do you have a hard time making the sell on True Fans for it being a thing completely people? A either don't believe we refund

24:22 money or B that you can stream and not download and see only when they see their metrics with listen time and watch time analysis and true play count does the penny drop. And then when they get to the end of their first month and then they find money back in their wallet and they're like, sorry, I've got money back as well. Yeah, look, we have to do something pretty crazy in order to change the market in order to become a player within the market. If all I did was copy buzz route and captivate and do downloads and MP fours and 7:20 K and and tell you that you've got unlimited uploads but limited downloads, well, guess what? No one would have looked at true fans because we wouldn't have been anything different to look at. We had to go to this, what I think is actually the right place in the future, but we had to do the hard yards first. So I think it's going to take time for the other hosts to catch us.

25:16 I genuinely do because what we've done is quite unique. Look, there's some smart, smart people in those companies. I know most of them and let's just say we've got a window of opportunity, but they will catch us because they'll work out. The economic model doesn't work. In the one they've currently got, which is based on delivering video, a full video download, they'll find that the metric numbers $12.00 a month is, is a guess from Captivate, by the way, because it's a safety net. They don't know whether that's high or low. We'll see whether the money price they charge goes up because they suddenly find that they're losing money or it comes down because they want to be competitive people. Time will tell on that one.

25:57 Real quick, I just want to shift gears for a quick second. We'll get right back to this interview. Want to just let you know about next week, Monday we have money Mondays. I'm going to give Ralph a chance to tease what that's about, and I'll just jump ahead for a second. Tuesday is episode #500 of this very show, and we're going to celebrate that on Tuesday. I have some surprises lined up, including some very old school members of this community coming back and joining us to look back at the years that we've been doing the Podcasting Morning chat. Really the years beyond just the podcast 'cause we were doing this a couple years before we actually officially went into the podcast space.

26:41 So join us next week Podcasting Morning chat.com/join us and Ralph tell us about Monday. Yeah, so Monday as the. Money guy, I'm going to bring you one you do not want to miss. I'm going to talk about when a creator earns their first real money and you get that first check, you get that first payment, what should you do with it? Should you reinvest it? Should you spend it or do you spend a little time building structure? So Monday we're going to talk about the first $1000 problem that every creator faces. So make sure you tune in on Monday for our Money Monday segment. OK. So let's get back to it. Matt, did you have a follow up question, I think Captivate?

27:22 Of all the companies that we've referenced so far as potential podcast hosts are the ones who are likely to come back and say, look, we've seen how this is going, 6 bucks a month covers everything you need and we're delivering 1080. I think they would probably do it, but yeah, I think you're right. I think once, once there's a global understanding and people stop bet hedging and start actually showing the users, the podcasters, what they can actually deliver, it's going to be a different world. Hopefully one with a good common language as well. Yeah, I think all the other. Hosts are looking at around, I mean, there's a WhatsApp group where all the hosts are in and you know, everyone's looking at everyone else pointing the finger. If you look at Flight Cast, which is Stephen Bartlett's company that does video, it's $200 a month, right? That's for video.

28:09 If you look at some of the other companies like Speakeasy, that's just come out, which is Fox Media, Fox News, which was Red Seat Ventures bought, you know, they're coming out with, we're not going to tell you it's invite only, right? So everyone's hedging their bets about what they can do. I know the cost it costs us to serve video, and I know what I think the numbers will be. So I've gone really hard on $30.00 a month. That might come up. Well, it won't go up. It might come down, but it'll never go up. We know that we're safe at that number. Yeah. And you know. Nick in the chat says here what's frustrating about this is this seems like a breakthrough moment in podcasting and it might go under appreciated. What do you think about that, Sam?

28:50 Hopefully not Nick, you know we raised some funding. Recently we haven't put in place any marketing yet. We haven't really shouted about what we're doing, and that's me being slightly cautious because we were onboarding people. We're testing it. We're making sure that everything is smooth with everything that we do, You know, there's always going to be a bleeding edge moment where we find the glitch. So we're just being slightly safe. But if we can get to the next stage where we start to get case studies and a shout about those and people start to see real numbers and real value, then hopefully, yeah, we can move people over to true fans much quicker. I'm going to hand. The baton to Ralph for a second, because I know he has a question about AI, and I think that's going to be actually a really nice transition into my final question to you about your thoughts on the future of podcasting.

29:39 And I think I'll be able to thread that needle once Ralph asks his question and you give him an answer. Go for it, Ralph. Yeah, Sam. So I. Was tuning in this week, as I always do, to the weekly review show, and there was a long discussion about AI. And the thing that I really keyed in when I was pumping iron when I was listening to this morning was I keyed in on this thought of host responsibility. And that's a big one. You know, I hear what Dave Jones is doing and Adam Curry with the podcasting, you know, index and all that. And I'm just wondering from your perspective as a host, where do you stand and how are you going to manage this? Because the numbers coming out this week are scary. You got more fake AI generated pockets. You know, James played one, It was crazy. He played a Spanish speaking podcast, which in the middle basically starts speaking in English and says this does not compute in the middle of something that was released. So how are you going to battle that Sam from the host perspective?

30:36 So I think. The first thing is hosts have a responsibility, right? I think we have a responsibility not to give our user base, our customers a poor experience. And AI slop is a poor experience. Now not all AI generated podcasts are poor experiences. We mentioned of course, you know, Caloroga Shark Media does a really good job using AI voices. There are examples where somebody might be Indian or Chinese or from another language whose English isn't very good, but the content they have to deliver is good. So an AI voice there would be really useful. Conversely, James has given James in Japanese and James in Indonesian, right? Again, useful for language barrier breakdowns. But for us, we're very specific about companies like Conception Point AI.

31:24 We do not host them. We do not allow them to be hosted on us. I'm surprised that Spree could take such a large revenue cut. Yeah, I mean, Sharon Taylor's a lovely lady, and she is their chief revenue officer. I did ask her a question when I interviewed her recently, and we agreed to take that answer out because it wasn't fair. It wasn't the reason I'd initially interviewed her. I think Spreaker will wait until there's a backlash against it a bit more. But 8000 AI slot videos in the year alone from inception Point AI is just not good. 300 new podcasts a day. They're delivering. So Dave Jones is going to block them.

32:05 So then the problem goes to Apple and Spotify. You decide what you want to do with those. Dave's created a wonderful API and a new website which you can go to which will show you how many new podcasts have been produced each day, How many are AI, how many are spam based? How many are, we'll use that API to block the ones we want to block out as well. So look, I think the fight back is on, but it's a game of whack a mole, right? When we think we've caught the bad guys, another bad guy pops up. When we think that, you know, for example, the person who's taking cover art and plagiarizing it, switching it slightly so that you think it's the diary of ACEO or you think it's the rest is politics.

32:47 So you click on it and then you hear an AI generated audio underneath it. But they're monetizing through the ad dynamic ad insertion that they get. That's, again, something that we have to address. I think the challenge in all of these things is where there's money, people will always try and find a loophole, right? And I just think hosts have to have a moral backbone and say there's certain money that is not good money and that good, not good money can go elsewhere. Thank you. Sam and all right, I know Matt, you have a follow up question that this is going to be just so everyone knows final question before mine. And because I do want to get to our next segment. And also we have a a special guest in our audience. It is Richard, the host of Salvage the podcast that we broke down yesterday.

33:38 And so I want to make sure we hear from him this morning as well. But first, Matt, go ahead, take it away clean, quick and. Probably relevant considering the social media stuff that's happening at the moment. Section 230, I believe in the US is about platforms not being responsible for actions taken when adequate moderation is put in place. Do you think podcast hosts may fall under that if AI generated content should be in a position where that moderation becomes a problem? Yeah, hosts are going to look. For Safe Harbour, they will want that protection, but I also think now most hosts, and we will be doing it very shortly, are offering free transcripts of podcast episodes. And I think AI can be used to help us rather than hinder us in this case where we can look at what's in the transcript and that may be our protection as well. I mean, for example, I was saying to James, if Apple has a transcript of every podcast and they know their swear words in the transcript, will they turn on the explicit tag automatically?

34:39 If we know that the transcript has maybe over 50% of AI voiced content, will we turn on because true fans has an AI tag where you can then like the explicit tag, it go into user settings and say if this has AI over 50 percent, 60% you have a slider. Do not show this episode to me. Just as you can block explicit content. So transcripts are going to be, I think, the saving grace for hosts because we're all producing them now and we should then use AI to protect us as well as fight against the AI slop. I just want to interject something. Sam that you just said, it's kind of funny if you think about it. We're going to use AI to fight back against AII think that's brilliant.

35:23 I. Love it, I love it. We're going to let them battle themselves out the duking out of the AI bots, indeed. So then my final question, Sam, and by the way, true fans dot FM, we're sharing it here on Clubhouse. It'll be in the show notes as well, but just saying it out loud to true fans dot FM. If you have gotten curious, I know I'm way more curious about true fans now. Very intrigued and especially with the way that the statistical information that you're providing your customers. I think you know what do they say chef's kiss. You know that that it is just beautiful to hear that how much you really care about getting us the kind of analytics we need in order to be successful.

36:07 Since we're talking about all this AI and how it's infiltrating podcasting, in some ways, very good things, some ways not so much as we've been talking about. So what does the industry look like to you in three years from now with the AI trends and all the video trends, all these different trends, where are we in three years from now? I think. AI will be a part of our conversation. I don't think it will get worse. It'll only get better, right? I think there's a really cool tool out of Switzerland called Snipped. Kevin already uses AI to do things that I'm working on right now. So for example, he will allow the AI to take comments, take notes while you're listening.

36:51 So there's a really good podcast you're listening to. It has a technical section in it and you want to remember it. You're out on a dog walk, so you don't have paper and pen. Tap your headphones and Snip will allow you to then take a note of, well, it puts a marker at that point, right? But in my head, the things that I want to be able to do is have a voice interface a bit like Spotify's DJX, which, you know, could allow me to say, right? I'm listening to this podcast. Ah, hold on, Kevin, because we're going to call our AI characters Kevin and Kelly after Kevin Kelly, the editor who came up with the concept of a 1000 true fans. So I'd say, hey, Kevin, take a note here and then blah, blah, blah and say what I want or hey, they just mentioned this term.

37:34 I don't understand. Can you explain it to me? And then it goes away, tells me what it is and then continues with the podcast. So there's lots of things there where I think AI can be an assistant and I call AI assisted intelligence and that's it's role to me. It's not overbearing on me, but it's available. I have Ray Ban Meta sunglasses and and I like using those when I walk around and tell me what I can see, give me some more information. So I see that within the podcast, obviously we've seen AI being used for analytics. I think with a voice medium or a video medium, having a voice interface is more logical than sometimes typing out stuff. So people being able to leave comments through just voice.

38:16 I think AI has a place. I don't think it has a place where it takes over, but I think it has a place where it assists us. But I think we will all want more human connection in a world where AI has much more of a role. So you don't think? AI will flood us out of podcasting. You know, much like a lot of people are worried about that with social media right now, that it's going to be really taken over. You're not seeing that for podcasting. No, look. AI will give me a factual podcast right? If I want informational details, I could have a factual podcast. But if I want humour, insight, conversation, a parasocial relationship, if I want human connection, then AIA.

38:59 Good example here. Notebook LM came out with two characters who we're taking PDFs or taking prompted scripts and talking about it. And then someone challenged them to a simple question. They have no friends, they have no children. They have no school run. They don't have a daily holiday, sorry, a holiday. They have none of the things us humans have. And when someone told them that they weren't human, they lost it. And I don't know if you noticed, but no. But claims gone down. He hasn't come back up into the same way AIS lost their heads, Right? I was going to say something else. And fundamentally, I listened to Yuri Naval Harari, who's an amazing author. You know, 21 rules for the 21st century.

39:41 And I've seen him live and he said, again, in a world of AI, human connection is what we have. I want to know, Mark, if we were friends, how did your kids do today at school? Hey, Ralph, how's your dog walk, blah, blah, blah. That is nothing that an AI can ever do. So I think human connections and podcasts are human connections. They shouldn't have that role in our lives other than factual if that's all you need. Yeah, I. Fully agree with you. I actually was on TikTok somebody commenting on one of my videos about poorly using AI and somebody was saying, oh man, the podcast industry is screwed. We're no no more. You know, it's getting flooded. And I had a very similar stance as you. I appreciate where you're coming from on that. And Sam, before I let you go, I know I've already said true fans dot FM, but if there was one thing that you would love for our audience to do today with true fans or, or if you have anything else you want to share about true fans, now's your chance.

40:39 Go for it. We've just launched a new. Feature that I think you'll love. It's called Co listen and chat. It's like the new Netflix and chill. So you can basically go to any you go to true fans. You find your favorite podcast and you start listening. Now if I follow you mark within true fans as a model and you go and listen to pod news weekly review. I get a notification, I click on that notification and I join you in exactly the same audio point that you are listening to. So now we're listening. Together. That's Co listening but we added now real time chat so now I can say hey mob that bloke Sam Sethi is talking rubbish again. What did he say there? And we can have a full blown conversation together as fans.

41:22 That is irrelevant of what the hosts are doing and that works equally well in a live podcast as well. But in the live podcast situation, the hosts also are part of the chat window as well. I love that that. Is a much needed feature in podcasting and it's why I continue to do the show here on Clubhouse, because we don't have that kind of interaction anywhere else. That's at least why I started over here on Clubhouse. So yeah, that I love the idea of creating that interaction in real time. Very cool. Sam, thank you so much, so much for being here today. It's a pleasure meeting you and getting to know you. I your name. I'm always hearing and of course, hearing it on the show with James, but it's cool to finally actually get to to talk to you today.

42:05 So thank you for being here, Sam. Pleasure and thanks for the invite, guys. Thanks, Ralph. You're welcome. One thing I'd like to give you though. For your 500th show, I will give a year's free hosting to one of your fans. Wow. Wow, that's fantastic. How would we? That's amazing, man. Thank you. You choose. And tell me who the fan is. They can then switch their podcast to true fans and we will just give them a year's hosting audio or video free for the year. Wow. Thank you. OK. And that's to 1 lucky listener you choose, OK, cool. And maybe what we'll do is we'll pick a runner up from the win Ralphs roadcaster duo. So we'll have a winner for that.

42:46 And then we'll find somebody else from that pool to win this year. Subscription. And I hope I pull my own name out, although I don't think I'm eligible. Thank you so much, Sam. And you're welcome to stick around if you'd like. And if you have to go, OK, cool. Well, what we're about to do is we each, those of us who choose, we each share something that went really well for us this week. We don't judge the size of that win. For some of us, maybe just getting out of bed every day this week was the win. So whatever that is, we just like to celebrate as a community. And the best place to start is with our guest on stage, Richard Wasson. And you can tell me if I've pronounced that correctly, Richard.

43:28 But Richard was is the host of Salvage, the show that we broke down yesterday in our evaluation series. A wonderful show. And we weren't just saying that. And we're not just saying that, 'cause you're here, Richard. We all, I think truly enjoyed it. I think everybody agreed it was a 5 out of five presentation. Good morning to you, Richard. What would you like to share with us this morning? Yeah. Good morning. Mark, and thank you so much. I'm really here just to say a huge thank you to everybody for their feedback. I think where I'm coming from is, and people may identify with this. Whenever you produce, you know, a bit of art or whatever you want to call it a thing, shall we say, and you show it to maybe some close friends and family, of course they're going to say it's OK. And really what I've been looking for is somebody to kind of just confirm that maybe I'm not totally bonkers with my idea.

44:21 I'm grateful that yesterday, I think kind of proved that it's not totally bonkers. So yeah, as you've noted, it's really early days. It's, you know, I've done a couple of iterations before, but I feel I've sort of landed on something. I think with this one that I'm going to, I'm definitely going to pursue. So interesting. Just really quickly, the AI chat previously I did experiment with AI voice and I did quite a lot of it, you know, in a sort of experimental podcast. And do you know what? It just did not feel right to me at all. And it was that parasocial point that was made there. And so that's why I've gone totally back to the human story. So just again, thank you so, so much. You've definitely got a fan.

45:03 And me now I it's lunchtime here in, I'm actually in a place called Donica D not far from Belfast to Northern Ireland. So generally we'll won't be able to tune in too often because I have a day job as well. So thank you so much to everyone who provided feedback. Yeah. You're welcome, Richard. And my follow up question to you is, when are you getting a website? That was the big thing that we I took notes. I actually listened with my wife last night. She thought it was absolutely hilarious, all these people at the other side of the planet talking about me quite personally, which is good. Yes, there's a website on the way. There's lots of I've got all the notes taken of all the feedback. I'll be implementing a lot of it, and a website is one that's coming soon and other episodes coming very soon as well. And I'm really interested in true fans as well. I have to say that sounded really interesting. Awesome.

45:49 Very cool. Very, very cool. Well, Richard, I am so glad we were able to serve you and thank you for being brave and submitting that show, that episode for us to breakdown. Because I know there are a lot of people out there that hesitate because they're afraid to hear the feedback. But hopefully I, I think people by now are starting to learn that we do it in a very constructive and kind way. Even if there are things that need to be improved, we're going to call it out, but we're not going to be jerks about it either. So I'm glad you were here today. I'm glad that you found that helpful. And I do hope when you can keep coming back and joining us. I understand you have the day job, but when you can come join us.

46:30 And if you can't, just hopefully you'll keep listening on your favorite podcast platform, maybe on True Fans. Brilliant. Thank you so much. Cheers. You're welcome, Richard. Thank. You all right, Let's get to some more wins from the week. I'm going to start with our guests on stage. I'm going to go to you first. Janae live from Texas today from military creator Con, I believe. Janae, please share a win with us. Good morning, my win. For this week, I got to hug our good friend, said Meadows yesterday and have dinner with him. That was amazing. Of course, meeting all the other creators and podcasters that I've known and the industry that were also here.

47:12 Some I didn't know they were coming and some I knew they were coming. So that's my biggest win for the week. Thank you. You're welcome. That's. Awesome to hear that you and Sid had a chance to hang out. Janae, are you speaking there? Have you already spoken? Yes, so event actually. Starts today. Yesterday was a workshop kind of thing. So the main event starts today and I'm speaking tomorrow on Home Studios and how they are your signature. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah, you're welcome. Break a leg as they say and let us know how it goes. And I hope you and Sid got some pictures and if not, make sure you guys get them before before he leaves if it's not too late. Oh yes, they're already. On our empowered podcasting group, cool on the photos we took together. Thank you.

47:56 All right, so that's over on. Facebook and we have a link to our Facebook group in the show notes if anybody else wants to go check that out. Tim, I'm coming to you. Good morning. Please share any wins with us. Well, hey, Mark, Thank you. So much and this was a really great episode to learn more about true fans. I keep on hearing about it and I'm really impressed with what I hear. Awesome couple of wins for me past few days. Kidney stones have not been bothering me, which is great. I have my surgery next week, so you know, I'll try to be here, but I'll probably, I won't hold you to it, Tim. OK. All right, sounds. Good just had a interview last night with Doctor Murray Howe, who is Gordie Howe's son, who is a a Hall of Fame NHL star from the Detroit Red Wings.

48:49 So it's my client is constantly telling me, Tim, this is amazing how we can, you know, get in contact with these famous people. And I'm like, yeah, isn't it? Pay me more, I'll get you in contact with more famous people. So. So we have that going on. But yeah, thank you for doing this, as always, good Sir. Yeah, Thank you, Tim. Thanks. For coming up on Friday, win day. Appreciate you sharing and glad to hear you're feeling OK these days even though you still have to deal with the surgery part. But I'm glad you're feeling OK right now. All right, Yep, let's keep it going and I'll remind our audience here on clubhouse. You're welcome to come up and share any of your wins this week.

49:35 This isn't all about me and the the team. This is also about you as well. So come up and share. In the meantime, I'm going to go to Dr. She was very excited to be first from the team to share. So go for it. Dr. OK to begin with I. Don't think I'm being picked up by my regular mic, but can you hear me? I can hear you OK. Good SO. I'm going to start this out with a little bit of data first. Between the 12th of April and the 15th of April, I spent four days on TurboTax. My return was rejected 3 times. I talked to 11 TurboTax agents. I spent a total of 4 1/2 hours on hold. I broke down about five times in tears. I finally did an extension and pay the 5K that they said I owed.

50:25 And then to find out that Tennessee has a month of extension due because we had an ice storm back in January. But, and all that does not sound like a win, but, but here's the win. I know that I will never, ever talk to a TurboTax agent ever again. Ralph is celebrating. Oh, wow. All right, Dr. Well, I I'm what I appreciate most is you took a negative and made it a positive. So thank you for doing that. And I feel that pain and I feel that win as well.

51:05 Yeah. No more TurboTax. I'm sleeping. I'm sleeping at night. Too good? That's even better. Good to hear, and maybe Ralph has a future win to celebrate with a potential new client. Here I come, Ralph there. I hope BC is raising his hand too. Does that mean BC you're looking to find some help from Ralph? Yeah, I'm no TurboTax too. My last year I couldn't even pay the free free price work because my return was so little. So I'm done, OK. All right, cool. All right, We'll keep things moving. Congratulations to you, Dr. I'm going to go to Ralph because his hand is up. So go for it, Ralph. Yeah. So my big win of the week. Is Sam, I just want to thank you so much for being here today.

51:47 When I reached out to you on Facebook, it was so cool for you to put back in the text. I would love to join you guys and that was that was awesome. Sam. My other big win of the week is this is my third silver play button I got this week week for my financially confident Christian. I hit 100,000 subscribers, so that has been a huge win for me and it's made me decide to do something. I'm actually going to launch a live show of that show once a week on Clubhouse. I haven't got all the details figured out quite yet, but it's going to be a place for you to come and talk about what you're dealing with financially, the struggles you're having, and I'm going to give you one-on-one guidance in a community type forms. You can come, but there's no questions off. I'm going to come around you and put my arm around you and say, hey, let's talk about how we can fix this together. It's from a place of faith and it's from a place of deep concern.

52:34 So that's my big two wins for this week. Well, Ralph, there is. Always a home here on Clubhouse in the Empowered Podcasting House, as we call it here on Clubhouse, where we could set up that show regularly. I'm happy to help you get that going however I can. So yeah, congratulations on both wins, Ralph, and that Silver Play button award as well. Very cool. It's awesome to see how hard you're working and how much it's paying off. So thank you to you. Would anybody else like to share? BC would like to share win. Go for it here at BC. Yes Sir. So this is more. Of a mindset when because one of my biggest pain points personally has been that while I've always been open to, and I even promote the idea of being open to the possibility of fluctuation of of pivoting, I find that I do that way too much. I try to pivot too much when something just doesn't seem to work out with my my preferred time frame. But I realized that the main underlying common denominator is that throughout all these things that I'm trying, I'm not feeding enough back into myself.

53:41 So I am choosing now to kind of push some of the work aside to make my own space and to feed into my own content that there's a lot that I like to talk about marketing pivots and and business development. I'm not doing that enough to establish myself, so I'm going to feed into myself from here on in and let that internal growth feed into everything else ideally, and let that be the new direction from which I approach my work. I love it. I love it. Mindset wins are some of my favorite wins. It's nice when we have that awareness and then we make an actual change around that awareness. So congratulations BC appreciate you sharing that. Matt, did you want to share?

54:28 Yeah, I'm glad. Someone else started with a non tangible, non numerical win because I was going to start with that potentially, but I kind of had a revelation this week that I think is a win as well. That's for the longest time. You guys know I'm a long talker. I explained about things that you don't necessarily understand or have heard about before. It's because this philosophical personality keeps trying to break out of It's this little tiny podcast box that I keep shoving it into. So the revelation I had is that in a majority of the content I participate in, I think a lot of the stuff that I want to talk about isn't necessarily relevant, which isn't a bad thing, just means I need to find the right bucket to put that in.

55:09 So I think it's a directional win. I think you should expect a more podcasting focused Matthew from that one instead of trying to bamboozle you with a ethical philosophy of the mind to reintegrate you with the source of the planet mind and group thinking, panpsychism and all this cool stuff. No, we'll stick to podcasting and I'll be creating a product, a product for that philosophy bent shortly. All right, very cool. And please keep bringing a little bit of that because that's we've come to know and love that about you. Yeah, yeah. We need to create that. Wheel, we'll do it. OK, cool.

55:51 We even have. A Jingle. Now for it. So we do. We've got to we will unveil we. Didn't play that officially on the show yet, so we will unveil that next week. But we've teased it, we've talked about it, so we'll play that Jingle next week. Would anybody else like to share a win before I share mine? Sid, go for it. Good morning, everybody. So I'm going to echo Janae's win. I did get to last night have dinner with those that were in town for Military Crater Con, which include Janae and Shay as well as Simona and Sean Douglas, her partner. But the best part was we got to meet baby Sunny and talk about an A beautiful, amazing little baby and so sweet and smiley and she slept a lot of the time.

56:37 But I did get to hold her and there's a picture of me and Janae and Shay in the Facebook on Facebook with us holding baby Sunny. So it was a really fun time to be able to just hang out and fellowship and chat shop and other things. So and I think they're all coming in August, so look forward to seeing them all again in August. So cool Sid. Yeah, congratulations. Awesome to connect with our community members. I'm so glad you got a chance to do that and got a chance to meet baby Sonny. That's Simona and Sean's newborn. So cool. Thank you, Sid. All right, although then I'm going to share my wins from this week. First we that you're you're hearing this first. We haven't told anybody else yet. Well, I think Dr. knows we found a keynote speaker for our conference in Powered Podcasting 3 and it's a content creator that I admire and respect a lot.

57:32 It's one that I often reference here on the show and it's somebody that I've interviewed before here on the show. It's Heather parody and I just, like I said, I admire her so much. I love the content she puts out and more importantly, I just love her messages that she shares. And I think she is the ideal fit for our community at Empowered Podcasting 3. And I couldn't be more proud that we're going to have her there. And this is really one of our first official keynote speakers. We had a closing keynote last year, but this is something a little different, a little more official, if you will. And I am just so proud and excited that she's agreed to do it.

58:17 And the best part is it took no time, no convincing. I literally sent her a text. I asked her if she would do it. She texted back a few hours later, I'm in. And then we just started talking about what that's going to look like. So thank you to Heather. And the other, when is that? We've signed on two more creators to our conferences, new creator partnership program. This is something that we designed for our community specifically to give community members an opportunity not to not only support what we're doing here, but also to give them their podcast, their product, their service, some real exposure to the community through the Empowered Podcasting Conference. So we've got two of them.

59:01 And I will say the bigger part of that win, even though I know we don't size our wins, but the more exciting part to me is that one of those partners is Sid Meadows. Sid has agreed to be one of our Creator Partnership program members, and they'll be more to come about that specifically because he's also doing something very generous that we'll share here soon. So those are my two wins from this week. And of course, I'll throw in a third one that Sam joined us today here on the podcasting morning chat. I love when we get to break the normal format and bring in somebody special that we can have a more intimate conversation with. So again, thank you, Sam for being here today.

59:43 Much appreciated. Thank you very much for having. Me and again, remember. Everybody money Monday with Ralph, he's going to talk about what do you do when you get that first monetization, when, when you get that first $1000 from your content? We're going to talk about things to think about there. And of course, Tuesday, celebrating show #500 and remember Monday we're going to announce who wins the road caster duo. So until Monday, make it a great weekend. Everybody take care.