How Odd Lots' Joe Weisenthal Turned Curiosity Into a Career, and a Hit Podcast

Summary

Podcast Summary:

Channels with Peter Kafka
Episode Title: How Odd Lots' Joe Weisenthal Turned Curiosity Into a Career, and a Hit Podcast
Date: February 11, 2026
Host: Peter Kafka (Vox Media)
Guests: Joe Weisenthal (Co-host, Odd Lots; Bloomberg), Adam Balalo (Director, Deep Faking Sam Altman)

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Episode Overview

This episode examines the career trajectory of Joe Weisenthal, co-host of the hit finance podcast “Odd Lots,” delving into how his relentless curiosity, adaptability, and unique communication style propelled him from humble beginnings to a media brand in his own right. Weisenthal reflects on his journalism journey, the emergence and growth of “Odd Lots,” and why, despite opportunities to go independent, he remains committed to Bloomberg. The episode also features a discussion with filmmaker Adam Balalo about his new documentary “Deep Faking Sam Altman,” exploring how AI-driven media is shaking up the industry.

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1. Introduction to Joe Weisenthal and Odd Lots

• Joe’s unique persona: Peter Kafka introduces Weisenthal as a quintessential “Internet finance geek”—broadly curious, highly energized by the news, and an autodidact whose approach is perfectly matched to the social media era.

  “Joe really does seem like the kind of guy who could leave his big media job to do his own thing, but…he seems like he's very happy staying put.” (03:30–04:00)

• Odd Lots’ concept:
  • The podcast focuses on business, markets, and finance—but casts a wider net, driven by Joe and Tracy Alloway’s personal curiosities.
  • Features stories ranging from sovereign bond restructuring to “the history of rope as an important technology for civilization.”

  “The only thing that the podcast is about is in the broad sense, things that me and Tracy are interested in...There aren't many stories that can't sort of be shoehorned into one of those categories.” (05:34–06:02)

• Odd Lots’ appeal:
  • Emphasizes “smart, stupid questions”: breaking down jargon, explaining fundamentals, and welcoming non-experts.

  “There's almost no limit to how simple you can go in these conversations. And people appreciate it from afar.” (10:43–10:56)

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2. Joe’s Career Path and Approach

Early Years & Journalism Philosophy

• Background:
  • Started with blogging, data entry, and temp work after college.
  • Entered journalism at paidContent, then joined Business Insider as the financial crisis hit.
• Lessons from crisis reporting:
  • The 2008 meltdown flattened expertise hierarchies—“there’s no experts” when the system is melting down.

  “It's a leveling…where the most experienced person only knows marginally more than the least experienced person.” (20:45–21:00)

  • Embraced speed, iteration, and transparency in coverage rather than waiting for perfectly formed opinions.

  “We were doing talk radio in written text.” (30:01–30:09)

Building a Personal Brand in Digital Media

• Alignment of personality & platform:
  • “The market, Twitter, and the modern podcast are all built for your personality,” Kafka notes, emphasizing curiosity, contrarianism, and real-time learning. (10:56–11:51)
• Early Odd Lots:
  • Started as a low-audience side project in 2015; grew gradually, especially during the pandemic (2020–2021), enabled by Bloomberg’s hands-off approach.

  “For several years, Bloomberg didn't have a podcast team…there was no one paying attention to the fact that no one was listening, which was the biggest gift.” (36:03–36:44)

• Editorial freedom:
  • Bloomberg as a supportive home—offers access to resources and the right audience, allowing Odd Lots to stay true to its nerdy, technocratic, and wide-ranging flavor.

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3. The Odd Lots Mentality: Curiosity, Clarity, and Accessibility

Approach to Content and Audience

• Demystifying finance for all:
  • Focus on explaining deeply technical or “esoteric” subjects plainly; acknowledging gaps in their own knowledge.

  “Our mission is to ask those simple questions…where the professional audience doesn't feel talked down to…[and] the non-professional audience also feels like those questions land at a level.” (44:57–46:07)

• Smart/stupid questions:
  • “We sometimes call them like the sort of smart, stupid question or the stupid smart question because they're just terms and things we use all the time.” (09:00–09:30)
• Podcast as learning in public:
  • Willingness to iterate, correct mistakes, and learn alongside listeners is a feature—not a flaw.

  “Our audience likes that…A normal journalist would say, why don't you just figure out the right thing and then publish that.” (28:59–29:27)

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4. Navigating Journalism Careers in 2026's Media Landscape

• Substack and specialization:
  • Joe sees opportunity for today’s young journalists to become “the X” (dominant voice on a niche topic) through sustained, focused efforts, similar to Substack success stories. (25:23–26:15)
• Why stay at Bloomberg?
  • Despite being an ideal candidate for the “solo brand” era, Joe isn’t tempted by Substack:

  “I don't really believe any of those numbers. I genuinely don't…I don't want to deal with renting studios, I don't want to run my own business.” (43:04–43:25)

  • The fit between Odd Lots and Bloomberg is “really natural,” offering financial support, editorial alignment, and access to the Bloomberg terminal and newsroom experts.

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5. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On enjoying the news cycle:

  “This is why we wake up in the morning. This is why we got into this…it's energizing…I find it easier to wake up in the morning during periods of high volatility.” (04:29–04:53)

• On building expertise in the open:

  “If I had, say, been a junior reporter at the Wall Street Journal…you’d be the fifth in line to say, cover the Fed…We were just thrown into the pool.” (20:14–21:00)

• On the value of Bloomberg:

  “It is really easy and nice to be within a large organization…whose whole mission fits with ours. Honestly, even just having access to Bloomberg terminals…it just fits really well editorially…” (43:31–44:30)

• On the show's appeal:

  “The learning along with the audience…is a big part of it.” (44:57–45:17)

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6. Odd Lots on Breaking News: The Tariff Example

(Timestamps: 47:16 – 55:43)

• Real-time chaos:
  • Odd Lots thrives in chaotic economic moments (e.g., Trump’s tariffs, 2025)—draws on trusted guest networks to make sense of unpredictability, focusing on how businesses actually adapt.

  “On any given day…we had people that we liked and knew, who we trusted, who we thought had good judgment…The thing that we did was found good people that could help make sense of the world.” (47:16–48:20)

• Pragmatic focus:
  • Moves discussion away from “is it good/bad?” to “how are you dealing with reality?”—talking to business leaders and supply chain operators for grounded perspectives.

  “So in a way, we're really in our comfort zone there because…there's all kinds of people…who can just answer, how is this working now?” (49:13–50:01)

• Takeaway for listeners:
  • The American economy’s durability resides in resilient, dynamic businesses that quickly adapt to shocks—even if long-term productivity suffers.

  “Businesses are incredibly resilient…well run American companies…find ways to improvise and pivot quickly.” (50:59–52:17)

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7. Joe’s Side Passion: Songwriting

(Timestamps: 56:01–57:56)

• Double life as aspiring country songwriter:
  • Still dreams of having a song recorded by a Nashville artist.

  “I would, like, sacrifice my entire journalism career just to have one of my songs be played by a recording artist.” (56:01–57:43)

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8. Bonus Segment: Adam Balalo on Deep Faking Sam Altman

(Timestamps: 58:01–70:09)

• Film concept:
  • Attempts to make a convincing AI-generated Sam Altman; journey becomes a reflection on humanity, technology, and artistry.

  “It ended up really being a story about humans and our experience with AI…more about humans than it is about AI…more about humans than it is about Sam Altman, who may or may not be a human.” (59:23–60:04)

• Major insights:
  • AI tech isn’t perfect yet, but rapidly closing the gap—raising questions about the line between efficiency, art, and human experience in filmmaking.

  “What’s interesting about, about film and art is that it’s created by humans…there's something intangible about it that you can't put your finger on that makes it different and AI is not going to be able to replicate that.” (64:49–66:50)

• Industry anxieties:
  • Some filmmakers (and AI insiders) are deeply concerned about job displacement, while others see a “human/AI hybrid” workflow.

  “Your job's not going to be replaced by AI. It will be replaced by a human that…does AI…much better than you.” (67:11–68:07)

• Meta-documentary moment:
  • Balalo’s pursuit of Altman echoes Michael Moore’s Roger & Me—Altman ultimately ignores the film, likely a savvy media strategy. (68:09–69:22)

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9. Key Takeaways for Listeners

• Curiosity is a career: Joe Weisenthal’s story exemplifies how following personal fascinations—openly, accessibly, and relentlessly—can build a sustainable media identity and career.
• Embrace imperfection: Willingness to be wrong (in public), to iterate, and to demystify complex topics serves both expert and lay audiences.
• Media is still evolving: Even in an era where personal brands and independence are prized, alignment with legacy institutions (like Bloomberg) can remain the best fit for certain creators.
• AI & authenticity: Questions about how AI and synthetic media intersect with human creativity remain open and urgent, both in journalism and film.

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Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• "I think that's probably true…I'd have to be posting and I'd have to be doing newsletters and I have to be writing."
  — Joe Weisenthal on his irrepressible need to communicate (05:00)
• "It's a leveling…where the most experienced person only knows marginally more than the least experienced person."
  — Joe Weisenthal, on the 2008 financial crisis and opportunity for young journalists (20:45)
• "The learning along with the audience…is a big part of it."
  — Joe Weisenthal (44:57)
• "I genuinely can't overstate the importance of how well we fit within [Bloomberg]."
  — Joe Weisenthal (44:00)
• "I would sacrifice my entire journalism career just to have one of my songs be played by a recording artist."
  — Joe Weisenthal (57:43)
• "It's more about humans than it is about AI…more about humans than it is about Sam Altman, who may or may not be a human."
  — Adam Balalo, on his documentary (59:23–60:04)
• "What's interesting about, about film and art is that it's created by humans…there's something intangible about it that you can't put your finger on that makes it different and AI is not going to be able to replicate that."
  — Adam Balalo (64:49–66:50)

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10. Important Segments (Timestamps)

• Introduction and framing — 03:32–06:41
• Odd Lots’ mindset and curiosity — 07:26–11:54
• Building a personal media brand — 14:06–21:00
• Business Insider/early digital journalism lessons — 20:14–24:44
• Substack and solo vs. big company — 25:23–26:15, 41:28–44:30
• How Odd Lots handles news chaos — 47:16–55:43
• Joe's country songwriting side passion — 56:01–57:56
• Segment on Deep Faking Sam Altman — 58:01–70:09

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Final Thoughts

This conversation is a must-listen for anyone curious about the evolution of media, the rise of personality-driven journalism, and how a love of asking “How does this actually work?” can not only serve audiences but fuel a deeply fulfilling career. Joe Weisenthal embodies a modern, accessible, always-on curiosity—while also offering a counterintuitive endorsement of institutional support even in the age of personal brands.

Transcript

[Joe Weisenthal]

AI can Fix Healthcare. I'm Henry Blodgett and this week on my show Solutions, I had a fascinating conversation with Dr. Bob Wachter, author of A Giant How AI is Transforming Healthcare and what It Means for our future. Dr. Wachter was not expecting to be an AI optimist. What convinced him? Follow Solutions with Henry Blodgett wherever you get your podcasts to hear more when you think of someone with adhd, who comes to mind? Is it a woman in her 30s? Just this constant feeling of being too much, you know, too kinetic, too loud, all of the too anything and just really feeling like people got some kind of social rulebook that I never got. The changing face of adhd. That's this week on Explain It To Me New episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts

[Heather McMahon]

this week on Net Worth and Chill, I'm taking you inside my sold out New York City book tour stop for my brand new book well Endowed. I sat down with the hilarious Heather McMahon for a night of laughs, real money talk and honest financial truths. We're getting into everything the book covers from how to actually build wealth, how to protect it, and how to stop leaving money on the table. Whether you've already grabbed your copy of well Endowed or you're still on the fence, this episode will show you exactly why everyone's talking about it. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com YourRichBFF.

[Peter Kafka]

From the Vox Media Podcast network. This is Channels with Peter Kafka. That's me. Thanks to everyone who said they enjoyed last week's newsy episodes. That's plural episodes where we talked about the new boss at Disney and the devastating cuts at the Washington Post. We don't always do stuff pegged to the news on this show, but really glad we can when we want to. Today I'm talking to Joe Wiesenthal, who in some ways is like a lot of the creators I've talked to over the past few years who are running one person media operations based around their personal brand. In Joe's case, that brand would be Guy who's broadly interested in business and markets and finance and has lots of ideas and opinions and wants to talk about them in real time all the time. The difference is that Joe isn't on his own. After making a name for himself at Business Insider, he spent the last decade at Bloomberg and for the last five years has spent most of his time on Odd Lots, the nerdy and excellent show he co hosts with Tracy Alloway. And as we discussed, Joe really does seem like the kind of guy who could leave his big media job to do his own thing, but unless he's BSing me, he seems like he's very happy staying put, which is maybe a lesson for both creators and companies that employ them. There is a way to let people build big brands around themselves and keep them working for you. Also, Joe is someone I've known a tiny bit for a long time and am always marveled at his approach to communicating, which in another time may not have worked well at all, but turns out to be perfect for the Internet social media era. So we've talked about how we turn that mindset into a career. Oh, and if you listen through, Joe has some thoughts about tariffs you can use at your next cocktail party. If it's that kind of cocktail party and you want to sound smart. But wait, that is not all. In this episode, I've also included a brief chat with Adam Balalo, the director of Deep Faking, Sam Altman, which is a sort of documentary about making a fake Sam Altman and AI that is about as timely as you can get. This one comes to us via Vox Media Studio, which, as you can guess, is related to the Vox Media podcast network. So there's your disclosure right there. Okay, here's me and Bloomberg's Joe Wiesenthal. I'm here with Joe Wiesenthal. He was just explaining all the various titles he has had over his long career. Today we call him Joe Weisenthal, Internet's favorite finance geek. I would say he's the co host of Odd Lots, Ed Bloomberg, and he publishes the Odd Lots newsletter. Welcome to Channels.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Nice to see you, Peter. How are you doing?

[Peter Kafka]

I'm old and tired.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Likewise. Yeah, I feel that. Likewise.

[Peter Kafka]

It's February. It's been a long month.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It's been a long month. It's been a busy search of the year.

[Peter Kafka]

Yeah, but you love this stuff. You thrive on the news cycle more than maybe anyone I know in journalism.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It is really energizing. I've always loathed it or disliked it when I see journalists complain about the news or, I don't know, we like

[Peter Kafka]

to complain about everything.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I know, I know, I get it. But it's like, this is why we're here. This is. This is why we wake up in the morning. This is why we got into this. And so I do find it. I do find it energizing. I. I find it easier to wake up in the morning during periods of high volatility and so forth.

[Peter Kafka]

And to be clear, you're A genuine weirdo like you would be doing this stuff, I think, even if you weren't getting paid to do it.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I think that's true. I think that's probably true. You know, I sometimes talk like, oh, you know, 10 more years, then maybe I'll do like a retirement job and just teach. Teach journalism somewhere or something like that. And then I think to myself, but. But I'd have to be posting and I'd have to be doing newsletters and I have to be writing.

[Peter Kafka]

Checking your Twitter.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, checking Twitter, et cetera. So I think I'll just keep.

[Peter Kafka]

This is not supposed to be a healthy way to live life. You seem like you're relatively healthy. We can talk more about your work lifestyle. But give people a sense. If they haven't heard Odd Lots, what they get in an episode of Odd Lots, it's you and your co host, Tracy Alloway.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, that's right. We have a really nice sort of wide berth. And at Bloomberg, they've really given us extraordinary editorial freedom. And I would say the only thing that the podcast is about is in the broad sense things that me and Tracy are interested in. Now. It's. We say, then we say it's about business, finance and economics or markets, finance and economics, whatever that is. But there aren't many stories that can't sort of be shoehorned into one of those categories.

[Peter Kafka]

Spoken like a true business reporter.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, exactly. Everything sort of falls into that. But, you know, on the podcast, we recently did an episode about Trump's nomination of Kevin Warsh to lead the central bank. We had a recent episode coming out about data centers from this analyst. He's good. Wasn't he who said that the utilities are overbuilding? But then, you know, we did a great episode a couple weeks ago with this legend of the sovereign bond restructuring world talking about Venezuela and their defaulted bonds. We have an episode coming out about the history of rope as an important technology for civilization.

[Peter Kafka]

And who do you think is listening to you? Because it's obviously, if you're trading, it's not like people are going to. Are going to invest based on what you're talking about. You're not. Sometimes you're on the news, but often you're not because you're doing the history of rope.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Peter Kafka]

So what is your audience? What do they want from you?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, it's a good question. You know, I've always thought, just zooming out in general, you know, thinking about business journalism. You know, you mentioned people aren't probably going to invest based on an episode Right. And I actually think that by and large this applies to all business media, that we should have a certain amount of humility, that the people who are especially the professionals, by and large, they're never going to like read an article and then it's like, oh, look, this company had good big opportunity in rope.

[Peter Kafka]

I'm going to get long on rope.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, they know about these companies, etc. So I sort of think, you know, I want to be humble basically, and I just want to be interesting. And so interesting can be something that maybe helps them inform, you know, helps them see a perspective or sometimes inform their view on a possible investment, etc. But it's also just things that the people who are of this mindset might like to listen to.

[Peter Kafka]

Yeah. Talk more about that mindset because I think it's both them and you and they sync up pretty well. And it's. I have some ideas about what it is, but you tell me what you think that mindset is.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You know, first of all, I think it took us a while to find our, our voice for the podcast. It took us actually several years. We can get into that because I think that part is interesting and figuring out what we do best and why we exist and why anyone listens to us. It was really around the pandemic that like listeners really started picking up in a real way such that became our full time job. But I think there is this interest in sort of on a real nuts and bolts level, understanding how the world works or how the world of business works. So for example, you know, we did a lot of episodes during the pandemic and right afterwards about supply chain stress. Right now I think that there are some, you know, even here. So you could imagine someone who is maybe a buyer or supply chain manager for Walmart, et cetera. Even in this space, you have an expert. I imagine there are lots of aspects that they don't think about that much. So for example, you think about, okay, the ships are coming into the port. Well, who unloads the goods from the ships and put them on the trucks, or who unloads the goods from the trucks, et cetera. And I think there's just a lot of things in the business world that tend to get abstracted over. Another example I think about all the time is quantitative easing and the Fed buying bonds or selling bonds or whatever. And lots of people in finance have opinions about this. Probably one of the most controversial or sort of, yeah, Topics of the last 15 years or so since the financial crisis. But then if you think about this Big pool of people who have weighed in on quantitative easing, et cetera. And then you shrink down that pool to the number of people that know which bonds the Fed actually selects to buy. I think it shrinks quite a bit. So you have this big abstract idea. Lots of people say, okay, the Fed is swapping bonds for liquidity, etc. Well, how do they do that? How do they make that decision? How do each month. How do they sort of know which securities to go out and purchase? I think actually you find very few people have actually thought about some of these questions. And so what we want to do is we can. What we've found, I guess, is that with a lot of topics we can appeal to both the professionals and sort of non professionals who are just interested by asking some of these very basic questions about. How does this work? Oh, no, how does this work? What does this term mean? What does this term mean? Yeah, and I don't know, there's. I. We sometimes call them like the sort of smart, stupid question or the stupid smart question because they're just terms and things we use all the time. And I think.

[Peter Kafka]

Wait, explain that to me. Or is that really true?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Exactly. Or what is this term? What are we actually talking about here? And there's almost no limit to how simple you can go in these conversations. And people appreciate it from afar.

[Peter Kafka]

I kind of think that Twitter and then very much the podcast are like things built for your personality in particular, where, like, you're kind of an autodidact. Right. Self didact. Right. You've taught yourself a lot, you're curious about a lot of different things, you have a lot of opinions, you're happy to let them out into the world. You're not unhappy if those opinions turn out to be wrong. And you're just more interested in like, what's the new thing, what's the next thing? Oh, if this, then what? That. And I think that really syncs up well with one. Just a whole cohort of people that I'm familiar with in tech. Yeah, they all think that way. And oftentimes you'll get. They'll get criticized for like, well, you're the payments processor guy. Why are you opining about macroeconomics or whatever it is? Those guys all love it. They're really into that. And then more broadly, I think the Internet rewards curiosity. That is, you're all over the place, but you're also kind of in a lane.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Peter Kafka]

Business stuff, I think.

[Joe Weisenthal]

So. You know, the one real sort of overlap between being on Twitter from the early days and podcasting and Twitter has definitely gotten worse on this dimension. But you probably remember it, especially in the first half of the 2010s, how these experts on various topics would show up and no one had heard of this guy, right? And they would start posting about how this thing that a bunch of people were interested in, how it worked, and it's like, oh, who's this guy? He's free. Yeah. And it's free. And you know, this is not someone that we had seen on TV before, and this is not someone who was getting quoted in the newspaper before, but this guy's in it and he's explaining how his work works. Right. And so, you know, it's 50%, a little bit of a joke at this point, but also 50% real. You know, almost always we talk about our. We always refer the perfect guest. And now we have the perfect guest to talk about civil war. That's sort of become just a little bit of a tongue in cheek joke that we repeat every time. But it's also real in the sense that the main thing that we're trying to accomplish with, with every episode is finding the perfect guest. Because there's no. People sometimes ask us, like, what are you interested in talking about? And I could rattle off a ton of things. Or do you ever worry about running out of topics? The answer is always no. There's an infinite number of topics to talk about. That's not a problem. It's always about who is that perfect guest who is deeply knowledgeable and can enthusiastically explain it in clear English, which is what we're always going for. And I do think that is the overlap between the sort of Twitter mentality of who is this person who he had never seen before? And again, I think that sort of faded from Twitter for a bunch of obvious reasons. But that has been, I would say, the sort of one of the driving.

[Peter Kafka]

I mean, there's a ton of people on Twitter now, but those tend to be usually grifters.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, yeah, there's tons of them who claim to be experts. It's also sad. You know, you come across people that have, you know, some niche interest, but everyone's been so poisoned by politics. You read that, you read their. It's like, no, I want to see you post about your field and your industry and not, you know, retweeting conspiracy theories and stuff like that.

[Peter Kafka]

So now that we've set this up, we've explained who you are, let's talk a little bit about how you got here. I probably, probably bumped into you I definitely was reading you 2005, 2006 just to say how old we are when you were@paid content.org. yeah, terrible name. Very influential. Early.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Can we talk business?

[Peter Kafka]

Business. Well, that was a very valuable lesson I learned. Which is the name does not matter at all. I guess it doesn't once you establish what your thing is. Yeah, just is. Do people identify the name with what you're making?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, no. We were like for. So for a little while we were competitors because I was able to pay content covering mostly the earnings reports of publicly traded media companies of various sorts and also funding rounds for digital startups. And that's more. That's a big part of what you were covering. You were at Silicon Alley Insider at the time and we were kind of covering the same thing. And then I've told this before, but, you know, I ran into your boss at the time, Henry Blodgett, that was at a party at Gracie Mansion during Tech Week and he knew my stuff because I guess competing.

[Peter Kafka]

Oh, that's good. In my memory, I was like advocating for you internally, but I've got no idea. It was a long time ago. But. But what was your. So you're in New York, you're working at a digital trade pub covering media. What did you want to be doing? What was your plan coming out of college?

[Joe Weisenthal]

I truly, I truly say this without any, you know, false modesty or anything like that. I had no idea. And I've never thought that way. When I graduated, I worked. I was a substitute teacher for a while.

[Peter Kafka]

You grew up in Michigan, went to school in Texas. Austin.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I lived in Michigan, moved to New York because there were a few other steps. I lived in Illinois for a while, lived in Vermont for a while. I went to college in. In Austin, though. And then a bunch of friends were moving to New York.

[Peter Kafka]

Just moved to New York, sort of

[Joe Weisenthal]

burnt out of Austin and not going anywhere. And a friend of mine, he had a. He had a family portfolio management company. And I said, I just need a job, like, get me out of Austin, can I? And I did some data entry for him. I. It was called an analyst, but it was like glorified data entry. That was. I moved here in 2004 and then blogs were a thing and I thought that was really cool. I just thought it was awesome that people were posting online and it seemed fun. And so I started one with actually a colleague. And it worked out well, kind of because, you know, I was in a. Working at this small investment company, but I really did not have any Real skills that I could say, transfer to Wall street or something. And the company that I was working for, they left their New York City office after one year and I sort of had to decide what to do. And I stayed in New York, but I kept the blog going because I was like, well, this will just keep me in practice and writing and stuff like that and make me pay attention to the news and all this stuff. And eventually it led to a few writing.

[Peter Kafka]

Did you have a finance slash business head slash ambition? Is this stuff that you were inherently interested in?

[Joe Weisenthal]

I got, yeah. I mean, I got. I did. I wouldn't say I had an ambition. I was interested in it. You know, in high school was during the dot com bubble. And that was just really exciting. It was just. It seemed really fun. One year, one summer in college, in the very peak, like summer of 99, my friend and I day traded together and we made a bunch of money. And I actually didn't lose it all. I just lost a good chunk of it. And so it was always something. This is actually something I learned later on. It was always something I was interested in, but I had no idea how I would take an interest and turn that into a career. I didn't know anyone in finance. None of my family. You know, I didn't grow up in New York. None of my family was in the space. I didn't know anyone who had like gone to work on Wall street or anything like that. So I didn't have any path groove. The only thing that I knew about Wall street is that there were people who appeared on CNBC who were stock analysts. And so I thought that was kind of the only job on Wall street was being a stock analyst. But I didn't really know anything about how they got there or anything like that. And so it was just. I never operationalized that interest or thought, oh, I could take this interest and that could be a career that I could have.

[Peter Kafka]

And so you're bouncing around in New York randomish.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I did. I was doing temp work, like going into offices, helping change the light bulbs and stuff like that.

[Peter Kafka]

So I can't remember if you and I worked in the same office for. At all.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I think for like a month, maybe, maybe two weeks. I think actually maybe before my start date at what was became Business Insider. I think you had already announced that you were leaving.

[Peter Kafka]

Yeah.

[Joe Weisenthal]

So maybe it was.

[Peter Kafka]

We barely overlapped. But the idea was you were going to run or work for a site. I think it was called Clusterstock.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Okay. Talk about bad names.

[Peter Kafka]

Yeah. Again, if it worked, it would have been a good name. But the idea was you were going to be Henry Bly. We were covering technology and the Internet at what was then called Silicon Alley Insider. You were going to work on the new business blog, cover earnings, et cetera. I left. And then within a few years, you became this thing, the stalwart. And like, your Twitter handle seemed to be as important as your. As what you were publishing and your ethos and the ethos of what was then called Business Insider all sort of merged, it seemed like. Which is like, we're going to say a bunch of shit. Some of it's going to turn out to be right, some of it won't. We're just going to keep going. You will always find something interesting that we have to say. We are not bullshitting you.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Peter Kafka]

But we are also consciously entertaining you.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, I think. I think that's right. You put it well, because there was a lot of alignment of things that came together at the right place at the right time. You know, one was just the velocity of social media and trying to, like, build a site that more or less matched that velocity. There was just so much news, you know. So one thing that I've a lesson. Another lesson that I've taken away and I've tried to impart this on people. You know, I started in October 2008 at Business Insider, which was right when Lehman Brothers collapsed. And the nice thing about a crisis, I think, is that very quickly you realize there's no experts. Right. No one has really been a lot.

[Peter Kafka]

You know, there's people no one's built for. The entire Western financial system might be melting down. Yeah.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I mean, people have read the history and obviously there are senior journalists who understand regulations way better, but no one had seen that.

[Peter Kafka]

I remember sitting in the office and Henry was sitting next to us. I remember if you were there or not, he goes, gentlemen, you may never see this again. Goldman Sachs was. It looked like it was going to zero.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Peter Kafka]

Sort of ticking down minute by minute. And it looked like Goldman Sachs might go out.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Peter Kafka]

And he was sort of fascinated by it, but also just sort of sitting back going, whoa. Like, no one knows what that means.

[Joe Weisenthal]

No one had seen it at all. And so at that moment, I think it's really. It's a leveling. Right. It's a leveling in terms of the most experienced person only knows marginally more than the least experienced person. And I also think I was very lucky to be at Business Insider. You know, we were just, at that time, there was almost no editing layer and we were just posting whatever straight to the web. And I always think to myself, you know, if I had, say, been a junior reporter at the Wall Street Journal, which would be a great role at that time in my life, you know, you'd be like the fifth in line to say, cover the Fed or something like that or cover whatever. And we were just thrown into the, thrown into the pool in those years and twitches, you know, there's this buffet of news and we're just posting it as it happened. Another thing I sort of learned at that time that was very helpful. I didn't have any like real journalism training other than just posting, but I started getting on the mailing lists of the Wall street analysts, the sell side analysts who would do reports. And it clicked to me very early on that they were roughly in the same. Yes. Business as we are. Right. That they're just. And it's, it's only it stayed the same. Which is they send out an email report, right. A sell side analyst, they have a new call on Tesla or whatever. The person receiving that has a hundred different things that they could be opening. Right. Their inbox is filled, they have tweets, they have headlines, they whatever. Their job is to grab attention.

[Peter Kafka]

Yep.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Their job is to create something. You know, they, they're in the clickbait game too.

[Peter Kafka]

This was the reason Henry Blodgett is who he is is because he said Amazon's got to go for 400 back when it was 100 or 50 or whatever it was. And that became news that this guy at this like kind of pretty obscure bank had made this call that made his name. A whole bunch of other things happened after that. But I remember talking to him when we were at Silicon Valley Insider saying that's kind of the core lesson I've learned. And it's also, by the way, how most media works. That's why on talk radio no one says let's all agree about the same thing. It's, let's have conflict about the about and that no one's going to reward you for sort of a down the middle considered opinion that says, well, maybe this could happen or maybe that could happen. You're going to get rewarded for saying this is great, this is terrible, this is going to happen. This is not going to happen.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah. And so I learned from that. These analysts, they were writing, you know, they've been doing this for years before blogs, right. And they're trying to get the attention of their clients, but they're also writing In a way that, you know, I learned to write a little bit from reading them because I figured, well, the way they're writing is the way the Wall street community must implicitly want to read, otherwise they wouldn't be doing this. They're also very chart heavy. So this was another. When I say the alignment of sort of opportunity, which is, you think about legacy media at the time, it was a big deal. Thinking back to those years that say, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal would even put a chart in a story, right? That was sort of a rarity, the use of graphics. But the sell side reports were always filled with charts, et cetera. And so we do things like aggressively screenshot charts from the analysts and just post them. And Pete, there was a lot of anxiety at first about that and. But most of the banks liked it. A few complained and they filed takedown notices and stuff.

[Peter Kafka]

But I usually ask permission. But they're usually happy to have their chart published. They don't want the entire report published?

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, no, no, they don't want the entire report published. But most of the time they were pretty happy. And the analysts, of course, loved it when they had their reports, or at least part of it, or spotlighted, et cetera. But because we blog or whatever it was at the time, we could just do that in a way that took several years, I would say, for the legacy media entities at the time to familiarize themselves with that. So again, another one of these sort of leveling things going on at the time, where someone just sort of junior or new edit could quickly catch up or in some ways supersede what the people who had been at it, do

[Peter Kafka]

you think that exists now? There's a leveling now. And so as you look across all the industries you cover and you go, oh, if I'm. If I'm new Young Joe in 2026 and I'm coming in basically knowing nothing, where would I want to be? Where my lack of knowledge would not be a hindrance?

[Joe Weisenthal]

You know, I think it's a little different. I mean, one of the things that I ask myself sometimes is when I look around the landscape, is there any place where, oh, they're doing something really cool and I'm not, you know, or I wish I were there. And by and large, answer is not really. I mean, there's all kinds of media properties that I admire, et cetera, but there's not really, you know, I even

[Peter Kafka]

meant beyond outside of media. Like whether it's like.

[Joe Weisenthal]

So the one thing I was gonna. The one thing I'll say more specifically, I do think, especially in the age of like substacks specifically, that there still are opportunities for someone to just sort of become the X. To use a Henry Blodgett word on some axe.

[Peter Kafka]

It's the old Wall street term.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, yeah.

[Peter Kafka]

For the dominant analyst, the one who just sort of.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You know what, I'm gonn Lane, I'm going to own this topic and I do think, you know, someone could do it in the people do do it and they're like, you know what, I'm just going to talk all the time about semiconductors. I'm just going to post all the data as it is. Or you know, the person who becomes the. They just, you know, we're just going to focus on Wall street purchases of single family homes or something like that. So I think, I think there are opportunities to carve out lands for someone sufficiently motivated still.

[Peter Kafka]

I do want to come back to substack, but is it 2012 with the. The Times Magazine, you.

[Joe Weisenthal]

That was 2012.

[Peter Kafka]

Joe Weisenthal versus the Internet.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Was that the title?

[Peter Kafka]

The photos you, you're awake and in bed, which is obviously staged cuz your wife is foe sleeping next to you.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Clearly people thought though that that was a real photo.

[Peter Kafka]

People should grow up and understand how the world works. But it's an amazing article because one, it's just a great profile of you in a moment of time. And it's also very clearly a New York Times writer going, what the is going on in the world? Not just you. And he's, he's describing as a weird character who gets up at 4 in the morning, basically twee types all day long, never puts your phone aside until you pass out and you barely see your wife. And yeah, really. And there were other articles like that. Not about you saying like bloggers in the dark, bloggers are dying doing this. But it was also just like how can this thing be a product? How can this be a business? Just kind of marveling at it. Like also this guy's like obsessed with speed and he's obsessed with getting the jobs number out before anybody else. But anyone who actually cares about that jobs number has a Bloomberg terminal and they get that jobs terminal before Joe even tweets it. So like to, to what end do you ever go back and look at that time and go, oh, what I was doing back then made sense at the time, but it's fundamentally wrong. Or actually what I was doing back then made sense and it's what I still want to be doing. Maybe Less. You're not quite as frenetic as you were. Right. You're not blogging.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You're doing children now, so there's no way.

[Peter Kafka]

And you do a podcast a few times a week. Right. And a newsletter a few times a week.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I definitely don't go back and think anything I was doing was fundamentally wrong. I mean, there are things, you know, in retrospect, retrospective, maybe I was comment. You know, there are certainly articles I wrote that don't hold up or I wish I had known more. But by and large I thought it was. I still think it was the right. It was the right approach.

[Peter Kafka]

That cadence that just sort of always on the.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I just want to, you know, this is going to sound so obnoxious.

[Peter Kafka]

Great.

[Joe Weisenthal]

But. And look, getting profiled it in 202012 in the new York Times, it was incredible, et cetera. The only thing that. But I thought this at the time and I was really proud of the work we were doing at Business Insider. I thought it was good. I don't think it was just. I sort of resented a little bit this idea that we were just high velocity clickbait. We certainly wanted clicks and we certainly put spin on the ball and you're certainly high velocity. We're certainly high velocity. But I truly think, you know, I truly thought and still think that all of us in that environment, I was proud of the capital J journalism that we were doing. I thought it was good. I thought it was informative. I thought we were bringing voices.

[Peter Kafka]

I think what he's poking at is like where you would go, I can't remember what the example was with jobs report or some report where you go calamity and then you write a new thing five minutes later because you've thought about it five more minutes ago. Eh, maybe not. And then an hour later. Actually, the thing I said an hour ago was wrong. Which on the one hand you can say, well, that's just someone learning as they go. I think you said something to that effect. Our audience likes that. And then on a normal journalist would say, why don't you just figure out the right thing and then publish that.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I think, you know, look, if, I mean, look, there's. That's not wrong either. I think if you look at the market itself, I mean the market, say the first, within the first hour or the first 15 minutes of a report is always whiplash. I think if you look at CNBC or, or any financial tv, Bloomberg, there's a, a range of opinions. It takes.

[Peter Kafka]

The numbers came out. They beat their. They beat Their estimates, but the stock's down. Why is that? They throw out an initial idea and then it gets massaged. And then eventually there's a conventional wisdom, minutes to an hour later, different.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It's just that we were sort of doing talk radio. I mean, yeah, we were doing talk radio in the written text.

[Peter Kafka]

And then you go from there to Bloomberg, which at the time confused me a little bit because Bloomberg was very staid, had very staid reputation. You are not a staid person. And you also additionally confusing to me was you were going on tv. You did not seem like someone who one wanted to be on TV or that would be successful on tv. And I was confused about was that the. Did you go so you could go on tv?

[Joe Weisenthal]

So I'll tell you the story, which is I think so. I went to Bloomberg in October 2014. I think they had first reached out to me sometime in 2013 about a TV thing. You know, I think this sort of the. The gap between at the time Bloomberg sort of stayed approach and me. I mean, that was part of the appeal for them, right? They wanted, we're gonna get this weirdo in. We're gonna get this digital person who gets the Internet and all that stuff and very. And has a big social media presence. I think that was part of the. Part of the appeal for them, for sure. The original pitch was tv. And to your point, like, I didn't have any aspirations for tv. I like the Internet and I didn't watch very much tv, by and large. You know, we had it on in the office, but I didn't. I never thought that was the medium of the future. We had, you know, we had some chats, and then eventually the sort of the offer was do TV and have this role doing digital within the newsroom and help them figure out getting the Internet and stuff like that. And the other thing that was going on at the time was Business Insider by 2014 had gotten very broad. So, you know, it started off with you, Silicon Alley, Insider, and then Clusterstock. But then, you know, there was, by that point, there was sports, there was lifestyle, there was career advice, et cetera. And throughout summer of 2014, I sort of had this decision to make, which is if I was going to stay in the market's lane, which is what I really love, my role at Business Insider would get more and more narrow because the site was expanding so far horizontally. Or if I wanted to sort of stay in a place of prominence at Business Insider, I would have to start broadening my interests, which I didn't really want to do. So there were already some structural things at BI by that point that made it a slightly less natural home for me.

[Peter Kafka]

Were you concerned at all about business items prospects in retrospect? Henry said, well, there are multiple times where we nearly couldn't hit payroll by 2014.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Not really. I thought it was great. It just. It was becoming a publication that was different from the one that I joined. It was also, you know, I loved posting directly to the site, but by 2014, there was editing, there was editors and all that stuff. I hated editors, you know, so then I was already a little bit sort of thinking about what my next thing was, but there was nothing else obvious out there. And then the reason that the Bloomberg opportunity appealed to me was if another publication had just said, let's do digital stuff, I already have a great job in digital media, so I don't need to leave BI really. And if the TV alone thing, that wouldn't appeal to me because I didn't want to leave digital. But the opportunity for both, I was like, okay, if I don't say yes to this role, then what am I ever going to say yes to? Because you think, all right, if I don't say yes to this, then I'm really here for the long haul because no one else can put together that combination. And even though I didn't really aspire to do tv, I thought not many people get a chance to co host a TV show. So just for the life experience.

[Peter Kafka]

So what'd you learn about your TV during that experience? Or what did you learn about yourself doing tv?

[Joe Weisenthal]

I mean, I did have fun doing it. It was fun. Live TV is fun. From my perspective, TV is a lot of effort for a modest amount of journalistic output. I mean, you know, the combing your hair and putting on a tie and getting makeup done and all of these things. A lot of people are involved and then, you know, and then you have a conversation with someone that maybe lasts six or seven minutes or something like that, sometimes longer. You can do depth on tv.

[Peter Kafka]

But I will say the Bloomberg, the people who are on air at Bloomberg are very smart.

[Joe Weisenthal]

They're very smart.

[Peter Kafka]

They're not talking heads. They're not just people who can.

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, totally.

[Peter Kafka]

The strong Joe who can do it.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, yeah, totally. But it is a lot of time involved for what ends up being a fairly modest public footprint. The sort of light bulb moment for me when thinking about. I guess I think it was in 2021. So by that point we could back up at some point, talk about the Genesis of the podcast. But we had started the podcast in 2015 as a side side project. Both me and my co host Tracy had, you know, multiple other roles within the newsroom. But then the head of TV at the time had this very good suggestion, which he said, you know, on days when you have a podcast episode out where it works, you should invite the guest on TV for a segment and talk to them live and then say, and if you want to hear a full, you know, 45 minute conversation with that person, listen to the Outlaws podcast. Like, ah, it's a very good idea, very obvious. And that was really nice. But that was the moment I realized those weren't very sad. As you know, you have this really in depth conversation with someone right now

[Peter Kafka]

it's through the dumb, and then a

[Joe Weisenthal]

week later you do this really condensed version. And it's like, I just like doing the podcast so much more. I really like the time that you get to spend with the person. And that was sort of the beginning of. No, this is. The podcast is really what I wanted to do.

[Peter Kafka]

You were doing it in 2015. You said it didn't click. 2021. Six years of it not clicking.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Peter Kafka]

Why are you doing it for six years if it's not clicking? Why is Bloomberg letting you do it for six years?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Because for several years, Bloomberg didn't have a podcast team. And so there was no one paying attention to the fact that no one was listening, which was the biggest gift. It was incredible luck because we really didn't know what we were doing. I can't go back and listen to those old episodes. It's too pain. We did have a few. You know, I may be exaggerating a little bit. We actually put on a live show in, I want to say, November 2019, right before the pandemic and a bunch of people came out, people were actually starting to listen a little bit. By late 2018, 2019, we started getting momentum, but we really went years with just. It was crickets. And the only reason we survived is because.

[Peter Kafka]

Why were you doing it if there wasn't an audience?

[Joe Weisenthal]

I think it was fun. I think we really liked. It was a break. It was a different format. I mean, it's kind of easy. It's fun to talk to people. Oh, yeah. I know we're not supposed to say that.

[Peter Kafka]

This is very hard work, Joe. This is the hardest work there is,

[Joe Weisenthal]

but it was nice. I mean, especially, you know, you're in a studio, it's relaxing, there's not cameras all over you and stuff. Oh, the other thing too. So when we started, you know, I mentioned we have an episode coming out about the history of rope. Most of our episodes were like that in the beginning. So we're sort of consciously off the news. It's like, let's just do sort of curiosities and we'd talk about historical. We did multiple episodes, for example, in probably 2016, about the Florida real estate bubble of the 1920s. You know, there's not stuff that actually I think to answer the question specifically, the podcast allowed for a really good outlet to do to talk about things that were not in the news. And that was just really fun.

[Peter Kafka]

We'll be right back with Joe Weisenthal, but first award from a sponsor. Yo, Harvey, Zoe Group selfie.

[Joe Weisenthal]

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[Joe Weisenthal]

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[Joe Weisenthal]

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[Kara Swisher]

Visit T mobile.com hi, this is Kara Swisher, and this week on my podcast on with Kara Swisher, I talked to California Governor Gavin Newsom. While he hasn't officially announced or run for president yet, he's telegraphing it all the time. It's exhausting. He's also got a new book out, which is what you do when you're running for president. It's called Young man in a Hurry. I recently interviewed him live in San Francisco. Have a listen.

[Joe Weisenthal]

The problem with the Democratic Party so often is we appear weak and we've

[Peter Kafka]

got to be stronger and we've got to be More assertive.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And so that's, you know, it's the spirit, I think, that is required of this moment.

[Kara Swisher]

I've known Gavin Newsom since he was mayor of San Francisco a million years ago, a million hair gels ago. And he's a really interesting and compelling party politician. He's done a lot of things in his career and this one, this run for presidency which is going to happen, is among the most interesting. You can find a full conversation wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube, obviously. Be sure to follow and subscribe to on with Kara Swisher for more.

[Joe Weisenthal]

After decapitation strikes against Iran's leadership, what can we expect next in the escalating war? The big question is, if there is

[Peter Kafka]

going to be a next strongman in Iran, what kind of strongman will that person likely be? I don't think that there's going to be another powerful cleric, supreme leader.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I'm John Finer. And I'm Jake Sullivan and we're the hosts of the Long Game, a weekly national security podcast. This week we sit down with Kareem Sagapour to discuss what to expect in this next phase of the war against Iran. The episode's out now. Search for and follow the Long Game wherever you get your podcasts.

[Peter Kafka]

And we're back. And so now you have this very successful thing. You guys had a big fancy 10 year party at 9 Orchard. Very fancy hotel, very expensive. You are, and you are the thing that all the media companies say they want, which is a brand.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Peter Kafka]

They want these people who are brands. They're looking in the world of substacks and going, oh, how do we get so and so? Who's got a substack to come work with us? Or how do we generate the next person who could be that person? But you seem like you would also be in really, really good fit for that substack lifestyle. You could take what you're doing and go start a substack or whatever. Your podcast, I'm sure could monetize really well if you took it out. However, you and Tracy have talked about it, why are you still at Bloomberg instead of going off being a solo practitioner? It seems like we're in a moment right now that is really built for your skills specifically.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I mean, the honest truth is that Bloomberg is just, you know, first of

[Peter Kafka]

all, they paid really well. We'll stipulate that it's a really natural

[Joe Weisenthal]

editorial home for us. I mean, you know, you mentioned and it's very real that lots of publications, they want to figure out a way where they could still be a public, the umbrella brand means something but also the individual sub brand is, also means something.

[Peter Kafka]

There's such, and they've been, they've historically they were very uneasy with that.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, totally.

[Peter Kafka]

What happens if we build up so and so then they go off and leave and then they, they've, they've taken all their brand equity and we're screwed. Now they, now they want the, the solo proprietor as a brand.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, the thing, it's a really good fit. I mean it's a, I mean one of the things that a lot of people listen to, you know, we have a lot of terminal users who are fans of the podcast. It's a really natural alignment of, you know, we, we do have this sort of broad mass appeal and we have a lot of listeners who are not in finance at all. But because we also have a really dedicated professional finance audience, like it's just a, it's a really natural home for us from an editorial perspective.

[Peter Kafka]

But I'm also assuming that you have run the numbers and, or the people have come to you and run the numbers and said if we just port what you're doing right now and you just own this podcast or you and Tracy own the pod, whatever it is, you can make 4x what you're making at Bloomberg, blah blah blah, whatever the numbers are, in theory, there should be a lot of opportunity available for you financially that, that could say, well, and the Bloomberg people can still listen to us because they already know where we are, etc. Presumably you've done those numbers.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I don't really believe any of those numbers. I genuinely don't. And you know, when you think about the various, you know, the costs involved and the number of people, you know, we have three full time producers working on the podcast and you start thinking about all of these headaches like I don't want to deal with that, I don't want to deal with, with renting Stu, you know, just like I really like it's you don't want to run your own business.

[Peter Kafka]

You like the comfort of having someone else run the business and you be the talent.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I suppose I do.

[Peter Kafka]

I mean that's not a bad thing.

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, I, it is really easy and nice to be within a large organization, a large organization that has a lot of resources and again, a large organization whose whole mission so fits with ours. You know, I could imagine like, like I do think I, I, I, I, I genuinely can't overstate the importance of how well we fit within that organization. Honestly, even just having access to Bloomberg terminals, which would be another whole thing. It just, it's a really nice home. There's. And then there's so much expertise within the organization about all these topics. Not all the time, but, you know, we often have people from Bloomberg contribute in some way or reporters or, you know, there's all the Bloomberg BNF people who know all about energy, et cetera. It just fits really well editorially and that makes life very easy and makes it very natural.

[Peter Kafka]

Good for you for knowing what you want.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, it's what I want.

[Peter Kafka]

And also having what you want.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, it's pretty great.

[Peter Kafka]

Pretty good.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Peter Kafka]

What do you think we've kind of talked about, but what do you think makes the show work for an average listener? Is it the broad knowledge that you and Tracy have? Because you can jump in, you can talk about energy, you can talk. Talk about the history of rope.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Peter Kafka]

Is it your lack of knowledge that sort of makes them feel like they're learning with you? What is the appeal?

[Joe Weisenthal]

I think, I mean, the lack of knowledge, you know, we're informed and you know, several of the things we've talked about we've been covering our entire adult lives and we know quite a bit about. But I think by and large it's that the learning along with the audience, I think really is a big part of the it. I think that's, that's a huge aspect of it. Just explain this and the fact that again, our sort of mission is to ask those simple questions, clarifying questions that somehow work where the professional audience doesn't feel talked down to because I think they appreciate as well. But also the sort of general public audience, the non professional audience also feels like those questions land at a level, I think one of the things that we tell our guests prior to the recording when we're sitting down, we always say we have the most sophisticated audience in the world. Feel free to go as deep and technical as you can. You know, imagine you're at a conference of your industry peers and that is the sort of register that you should be speaking at. But when you say an acronym or you refer to something we don't know what it is, we're going to stop explaining.

[Peter Kafka]

You don't need to explain yield curve to your audience. But if it's a more sophisticated or more esoteric term, and I think we

[Joe Weisenthal]

have a pretty good intuition for, like when we say wait, pause, what does that mean exactly? And that's the kind of thing that I think you can only sort of build up with practice. And that way you can get the sophisticated conversation without totally going over everyone's heads.

[Peter Kafka]

What happens when, when that level of sophistication comes up against. I'll just use shorthand, the Trump administration, but chaos, right? Where like, yeah, they're, you know, you go back to April of last year with tariff Day, and, you know, there's whatever Donald Trump said about the rationale for the tariffs, there's whatever math they did or didn't do to come up with the terrorists, there's the fact that then the tariffs move around day to day and then it comes up with new rationale. And so everything that you would learn that a normal rational person would learn to assess how markets work, how economics work, kind of goes out the window because there's just. What's the John Mulaney bit. There's the horse in the hospital running through the hospital, where everything that you, everything that you would normally bring to bear kind of doesn't work because you're working with some kind of unknowable psychology.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I think the answer is having good intuitions about guests and having talked to people for years and years that we just trust. And again, yeah, like April 2025, that was a wild time. Etc. But the good news, that's very exciting for you, I assume, right? I mean, we.

[Adam Balalo]

It.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And I remember the week before Liberation Day and everyone could. Felt it was coming. I remember we talked to the team. It's like, this is going to be a huge month for us. This is going to be a historic month for us. So, you know, lock in everyone, because we're going to work like crazy and we're going to get as many episodes out as possible and we're going to, yeah, we're not going to take any breaks for the whole month, but I think what we could do, and everyone had a million questions and no one really knew what was going on, et cetera. But on any given day, I think the one thing that we really had was we had people that we liked and knew, who we trusted, who we thought had good judgment, who were informed and understood things. And the thing that we did was found good people that could help make sense of the world.

[Peter Kafka]

I was following it not nearly as closely as you were, but it seemed like the commentary, it was essentially Donald Trump's crazy. This goes against every sort of like, basic understanding of how economics and trade works. And then anyone who defended it was just sort of a Trump flunky. And so kind of beyond, like, they had to say, Donald Trump knows what he's doing regardless of whether that was true or not. And so there was kind of pointless to talk to them. And then after you talk to the first couple people who say, Donald Trump doesn't know what he's doing, what else can you learn?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Well, so that's a good example of like, okay, it's one thing to say this, none of this makes sense. This is going to wreck the economy. Right. So maybe that's the April 8th conversation. But by the April 15th conversation, you know, we were talking to clothing retailers and just asking, well, what are you doing right now? How are you thinking about your orders for the next year? And then you could step out of the, you know, step out of the conversation. Is this good, bad or wise? This is just reality. So how are people dealing with that reality? So a lot of our really good episodes from the time were really just talking to various businesses who didn't actually have the luxury of debating whether this is good or bad or smart or whatever. They just had to live in the world, which is not that different from spring and summer 2020, you know, when the lockdowns happened, et cetera. A bunch of people didn't have the luxury of debating things. They just had to figure out, well, how am I going to keep my business open? How am I going to place orders? How am I going to do X? So in a way, we're really in our comfort zone there because we had sort of realized that there's all kinds of people, supply chain people, et cetera, who can just answer, how is this working now? Yeah, how is this working now?

[Peter Kafka]

Not is it a good thing?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah. And so we certainly had those conversations, is it good? Is it bad, etc. But our best ones at the time was like, let's talk to the shipping guy we Talked to in 2020 about what's happening at the ports. Let's talk to the retailer about how they're placing the orders, et cetera, because they didn't have any, you know, they, again, they don't have the luxury of debating it.

[Peter Kafka]

One of the things I wanted listeners to get out of this was one tidbit of information they could use at a cocktail party or whatever qualifies for a cocktail party in 2026. So let's, let's make it a terrorist question. Okay, April 2025, total chaos. All the smart people are saying, this is going to blow up the economy, trump tacos on a bunch of stuff. But still, a lot of those tariffs exist. The economy has not collapsed. What did all of the people who thought the tariff regime was Gonna collapse the economy get wrong in April 2025.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I would say a couple. I mean, so look, obviously they came down to a significant degree, so I think you have to start there. But I think, I think, and again, I would say it goes back to the lesson from 2020. Businesses are incredibly resilient, or many of them. American companies are incredibly dynamic and the ones that exist are extremely well run and they find ways to improvise and pivot quickly. I mean, you probably remember having the same questions in early 2020. It's like, how is any restaurant going to save, stay in business, etc. But then the restaurants are like, you know what we're going to shift to, to take out and we're going to put a Plexiglas. And they were open the next week, right. And they found a way to do it. And all of the big firms, you know, they were pretty surprisingly agile in retrospect, in the midst of what was the biggest global coordinated shock in history, the pandemic. And I think I've, I've come to think this over time that you know, people may underestimate the resilience of well, you know, well run American companies where the people are paid a lot of money to deal with, deal with these disruptions.

[Peter Kafka]

Given that we're going to have a disruption again, who knows when we're going to have one. How are you going to use that thinking? Because what you want to, you want to overlearn the old lessons.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You don't want to overlearn the lessons. That's right. It's really tough. And I do think the big lesson that probably people overlearned was sort of assuming after Covid that we would have some sort of long quasi recession or something like that, because that was the experience of 2008, 2009 and the slow growth after that. You know, it's really hard to know because the next big shock probably won't look like the last one in any respect. And I do think, okay, the resilience of American companies is a very important thing to internalize. There's nothing that can really, if you have a broad general economic downturn where spending really slows down sustained way dramatically, a lot of companies are going to go out of business regardless of how much elon the management team has and so forth. So, you know, there is a limit to how to how much creativity can save you. And I also, by the way, you know, I think it's important the story of the tariffs is not over by any stretch. And one of the things you know, after the initial shock, they're all that you probably remember is like, are the tariffs going to set off a wave of inflation? Was the big question. And my view at the time. And one of the things that I, I, I, I think has held up well is, and I, I did say this going back to last spring, which is that I didn't think the tariffs would be inflationary per se. The way I conceived of it is they would raise the cost of doing business, they would make business. It was like throwing some sand at the gears of business. And I think that is true. So it's not that they necessarily that consumer prices automatically go up in lockstep, but that doing business in America becomes harder. And you already, and you definitely some

[Peter Kafka]

of those costs do go to consumers,

[Joe Weisenthal]

and then some of them definitely do or some of the costs. And yet, like, you know, the manufacturing sector in the United States has really struggled in the last year for, I would say tariffs definitely a part of it. Because even if the idea is to help American manufacturing, any sort of reasonably complex business is going to have inputs and raw materials that they import. And you know, you see it, you know, we did, we were in Alaska last year and we talked to this guy who runs the biggest furniture chain you went to. No, we, like talked to this guy and he said, you know, so we're asking him how he dealt with the tariffs and he's like, well, we've shifted some of our imports from China to India, but even the Indian exporters, they don't necessarily want to make commitments for a year out. Maybe they only want to make commitments six months out because they don't know if the tariff schedule is going to change. So this is the kind of thing where he can live day to day or month to month with shifting imports from China to India, but the business is not going to be as efficient because they can't make orders as far in advance as they could. So I think there's a lot of little things like that where they don't amount to a big bang, but they have this sort of degrading effect on American productivity. And I don't think that story is over yet in terms of how it shakes out.

[Peter Kafka]

So we established at the beginning of this conversation that you're going to keep doing this no matter what, because you're just sort of of. So whether you're not, you're at Bloomberg or anywhere else, this is sort of what you're going to do. But I also know that you are a country music aficionado. Slash, aspiring songwriter, guitar player.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, tell us about that. I love I. All my life I've written music, like, or at least since high school. I love songwriting. I love playing music. I love performing it. A couple years ago, I think maybe it was 2022, I had a birthday party and I, like, put on some country music and. And my friend who is there is like, who doesn't like country, said, I'm gonna drink till I like country. And I was like, oh, that's a great. That's a great title for a song. And so I wrote one over the weekend, and I uploaded it to soundcloud. I played it into my phone, I uploaded it to SoundCloud, and someone from Nashville, like, reached out and, like, that's a really good song. Like, I could maybe sell this to an artist to get it recorded. And I was like, oh, my God, that's like, the dream. That's all I want. I would, like, sacrifice my entire journalism career just to have one of my songs be played by a recording artist. It didn't sell. The. A label put a hold on the song, and then they shopped it around to their artists, and none of them bit on it. But then I really got the bug to get back into music. And then some friends and I, we started a band called Light, Sweet, Crude. And we played, like, Crude. We played in 22. We played a few shows. We played shows in 2023, 2024, last year. I'll keep playing. You know, it's a sight.

[Peter Kafka]

That's not your music. I hear in the. In the nod lives people.

[Joe Weisenthal]

They're like, oh, do you. Do you write? No, we didn't write that, but.

[Peter Kafka]

And so is that a second slash third career for you, or is that just a hobby?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Unfortunately, I think it's just a hobby. I mean, it is a dream still to have a song that I wrote get recorded by someone. I love songwriting, and I don't think at my voice, I couldn't really be a successful. My singing voice isn't that strong. I can sing, but it's not really. It's not quite at the.

[Peter Kafka]

All right, channels. Listeners, if you are in position to help Joe achieve another one of his dreams, let me know.

[Joe Weisenthal]

This is the one. This is the one that if anyone out there please just find an artist who will perform one of my songs. That's all I want.

[Peter Kafka]

Done and done. Joe Weisenthal, thank you for your time.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Thanks. That was a blast.

[Peter Kafka]

Thanks again to Joe Weisenthal. He is a fun guy to talk to. Highly recommend in a minute. I'll be talking to director Adam Balalo. But first, a word from a sponsor. Are Democrats their own biggest problem? You know, a party becomes defined by who their central figure, who their quarterback becomes. Democrats haven't really anointed a effective quarterback

[Joe Weisenthal]

since Barack Obama, pretty much.

[Peter Kafka]

And this week, the Atlantic staff writer Mark Leibovich joins me to discuss the state of the Democratic Party and which races to keep an eye out for this midterm election. The episode is out now. Search and follow Stay tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts. Adam Balalo is a documentary filmmaker. He's made a bunch of great stuff, most recently the funny and odd telemarketers miniseries for HBO a couple years ago. Highly recommend you check that out. Now he's got a new movie out. It's called Deep Faking Sam Altman. It is one of those titles that tells you exactly what it's about. Adam creates a fake Sam Altman using the same tech that powers Sam Altman's enormously powerful open AI. Adam, I love a stunt that gets carried out all the way. Did you go into this project thinking this is going to be a stunt movie?

[Adam Balalo]

No, definitely not. I went into this thinking this was going to be like potentially a traditional bio doc on Sam Altman or a larger doc about AI And Sam Altman being the entry point into the conversation, one of the two. And it ended up being neither of those. It ended up really being a story about humans and our experience with AI and how our lives are changing by the day almost because of AI So it's more about humans than it is about AI it's more about humans than it is about Sam Altman, who may or may not be a human.

[Peter Kafka]

Yeah. And does not appear in the movie, much like Roger Smith in Michael Moore's Roger and Me doesn't appear in that movie. You guys directly reference that in the studio. Were you thinking about Roger and me the whole time you were making that movie? Movie?

[Adam Balalo]

I definitely was. As Altman started to ignore me and I started the pursuit, immediately Roger and me came to mind because it was, you know, there was, there were similarities. I mean, obviously similarity between Altman and Roger Smith being they're both CEOs of massive corporations. Similarities between me and Michael Moring were both documentary filmmakers seeking an interview. But then there were even more similar similarities, like me being you in the WGA and being on the picket line. And part of what we were fighting during the strike was AI. I mean, that was. People don't, don't people forget that was one of the main points of contention.

[Peter Kafka]

It became one of the main points. It didn't start out that way as those negotiations were starting. And then it sort of leapt to the forefront. The fake Sam Altman that you guys make, and it takes a lot of work on your part. You guys fly to India, hire a firm, you hire an actor to be the sake, the fake, fake Sam Altman that you're going to deep fake. You spend all this time and effort making this, and then you realize it's not a very convincing Sam Altman. I'm sure. Well, you guys show in. In the movie. You guys say it's very disappointing because you've got this same Sam Altman, doesn't. Doesn't fake anybody out. But as a filmmaker, is that a good thing? That. That your tech, the tech and effort you put into this doesn't actually get rid of your job yet?

[Adam Balalo]

I mean, yeah, I didn't. I didn't think that was where you were going with the question, but. But I think on. On numerous levels, it was a good thing. My editor, Alex McKenzie, liked to say that every time I screwed up, it was good for the film because, you know, nobody wants to see somebody winning. You know what I mean? And. And every single step of the way, it's like I was falling on my face. Which obviously was funny. But also. Yeah, I mean, mean, I think,

[Joe Weisenthal]

to

[Adam Balalo]

answer your question, I don't think. I think the deep fake technology is going to advance so quickly and be. Become so perfect within by probably by the end of the year that the film, in a way, documents what I like to call a very quaint moment in the history of AI and by that, I mean it's a moment when AI was not yet perfect.

[Peter Kafka]

Right. So to the visible eye in ear, you can tell that's not Sam Altman.

[Adam Balalo]

Yeah.

[Peter Kafka]

When did you guys. It looked like you guys made this, what, 2024?

[Adam Balalo]

Yeah, it was 2024 into 2025. We were shooting and editing basically up until the premiere, right before the premiere at south south by Southwest in May of 2025.

[Peter Kafka]

So do you think if you made this movie today with the exact same conceit, that you would have a much more convincing Sam Altman, that it would. That it would convince Kara Swisher she was talking to the real Sam Altman.

[Adam Balalo]

I don't think it would convince her, but I think I would have a far more convincing deep fake. And as well, you know, I think one of my favorite parts of the movie is really when. When Sambots takes over and he starts making, you know, he starts making B roll himself. The stuff that's in the movie was largely created with Runway. And I think that even that app has like advanced so much since we made it. I think at some point in the very near future the B roll and archival that that AI generates will also be close to perfect. And, and that's kind of scary. Yeah.

[Peter Kafka]

This is one of the, this is sort of the core debate right now and we don't really know it's going to pan out, but is whether AI and associated tech is going to be stuff that's used to speed up movie making, whether it's going to reduce costs, all of that stuff, but it still is fundamentally a human led project or whether we are going to get to the point where you can basically type in a prompt whole movie or something close to that. Ben Affleck, I mean you probably saw that clip of him talking on Joe Rogan says, you know, that's, that's not going to happen. That's not how this tech's going to work. It's never going to be good enough. You seem to think that it, this stuff will be good enough sooner than later.

[Adam Balalo]

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it'll be good enough.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It pro.

[Adam Balalo]

You know, it probably already is. I, I think that the question is what you consider good enough. I think it will be able to create kind of a standard traditional documentary or news footage. Right. Maybe even entire, you know, short, short or feature length documentary. That will be good enough. Right? Good enough. But what's missing is, is the artistry. And the artistry really comes from the human touch. This is something that, that Benny Safdie and I talked about during our Q and A last week after one of the screenings is what makes our films, what makes us interested in filmmaking and what, what draws us to, to filmmaking really is, is the idea of like the happy accident, you know, and it's not. What, what's not. What's interesting about, about film and art is that it's created by humans, is that it's not perfect. That, that there's something intangible about it that you can't put your finger on that makes it different and AI is not going to be able to replicate that. It, it will be able to make, I think very dry and, and traditional documentary or, or even movies. Is this something people are going to want to watch? Possibly? Like I feel like it. There's, I see a lot of true crime docs on like, and I'm talking about like the Z grade stuff on, like, Pluto tv. No disrespect to Pluto or Tubi. Right. That it could create easily. Create. Like, why not? Like. But is it going to create something like, similar to, you know, a Michael Moore film, like Bowling for Columbine? I. I don't think so.

[Peter Kafka]

But, but that, but that. I mean, there's a middle ground, right, where you say, well, it's a human sort of steering the thing and coming up with ideas and maybe adding bits of, of of the unexpected. And then a bulk of the work that would be done by humans working for that human or with that human has been replaced by robots. That sounds like where you think we're going.

[Adam Balalo]

Yeah, possibly. I think. I mean, there's a, There's a number of schools of thought on this. You know, there are those who think, like, who say, well, your job's not going to be replaced by AI. It will be replaced by a human that can. Knows how to work with and do AI like, very, very well and much better than you. So that's one school of thought, obviously. The other school of thought is that, yes, your job will be replaced by AI, all of you. And I talked to some, you know, whistleblowers at OpenAI who truly believed that. So it was scary talking to them and hearing that because they're the ones who are, like, on the front line, like, creating this stuff. So I had to figure they probably know something I don't. And then obviously there's the more rosy school of thought that, like, none of this is going to happen and it's a giant bubble and it's just going to burst and we're, we're worrying overnight. Nothing.

[Peter Kafka]

Yeah, I don't believe the latter one.

[Adam Balalo]

No, no, neither do I.

[Peter Kafka]

It's, it's, it's, it's here. The. The movie ends with you walking up to San Almond's mansion in Russian Hill to drop off the digital Sam Altman, because you haven't talked to him the entire time he made the movie. Do you know if he looked at it, did you get any response back from him or his people?

[Adam Balalo]

We have yet to get any response, you know, either way, like, either. Like, he's basically. I think what. He's. He's done the smartest thing he could do, which is completely ignore the film. They ignore its existence because if he tried to shut it down, that'd probably be the best thing he could do for the film. I think. You know, we are just starting out our theatrical release. Like, it just premiered last week. Week in New York, and it's premiering this weekend in la. So. And we. We have yet to book any screenings in San Francisco, which is odd, but, like, at some point, I. Maybe we will. I don't know if they're just scared up there of booking it, but at some point, he's gonna have to address it. I think someone's gonna ask him in public or somebody, you know, he's gonna. He can't completely ignore it forever.

[Peter Kafka]

Do you have a deal to. To get this in people's homes via STR streaming?

[Adam Balalo]

Not yet. We're holding off. It was really important to me to do a theatrical and to take it around the country. And, you know, I think there's a lot of interest in AI at the moment and among the general public, I think there's a lot of anxiety. People want to talk about it. So it's been a great response in theaters, and I. And.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And.

[Adam Balalo]

And I've been trying to do as many Q and A's as possible, so I'm kind of just trying to do, like, almost like a roadshow type of thing and take it around as many places I can go and hold off on doing a streaming deal until. Until we feel it's time.

[Peter Kafka]

Okay, well, thanks for including me in your round of Q and A's. I appreciate it. And good luck with the screenings.

[Adam Balalo]

Yeah, thank you.

[Peter Kafka]

Thanks again to Adam Balalo and Joe Weisenthal and my producer, Charlotte Silver. Thanks to our advertisers and to you guys. See you soon.