← Mixed Signals from Semafor Media
Mixed Signals from Semafor Media
Joanna Stern on quitting the Wall Street Journal and building a media business with AI
00:39:58
Loading summary
Transcript121 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to another episode of the Mixed Signals podcast from us here at Semaphore Media, where we are talking to all of the most interesting and important people shaping our new media age. I'm Max Taney. I'm the media editor here at Semaphore, and with me, as always, for from across the office, is our editor in chief, Ben Smith. Ben, how much of your life have you turned over to AI?
- [00:35]
B
You know, increasing amounts. Honestly, I spent a couple hours the other day talking to Claude about a book I'm working on. The more I can turn over to AI the better.
- [00:42]
A
What did Claude have to say about your book? Also, do people know about your book? Do our listeners know about your book? You're writing a book about Steve Bannon?
- [00:50]
B
It's mostly a secret, though, so.
- [00:51]
A
Oh, it's mostly a secret.
- [00:52]
B
I don't want to go into it. Yeah.
- [00:53]
A
Oh, okay. But you just.
- [00:54]
B
It's between me and Claude, really.
- [00:56]
A
But you did tell Claude someone somewhere has that information. Now, presumably that's true.
- [01:01]
B
Dario, please don't tell.
- [01:03]
A
Well, the reason why I asked that question is because our guest this week, Joanna Stern, actually turned over her life to artificial intelligence, at least in part, for a new book that she is working on called I Am Not a Robot. Joanna was previously a tech columnist for the Wall Street Journal, where she made very funny videos and wrote very funny stories about tech, tech and about phones and about AI and pretty much every way in which technology has interacted with our lives in a major consumer way over the last 10 or so years. And she recently left the Journal to strike out on her own. She has a new media project called New Things with Joanna Stern. Tech journalism for humans who like fun. Ben, have you been following Joanna's work? Have you seen her videos? I personally, I really enjoyed the video that she did at the end of last year where she tried to jailbreak a vending machine run by Claude in the Wall Street Journal office.
- [01:56]
B
Joanna's, I think, you know, one of the real stars of. Of a long line of tech journalism where you just kind of, like, try to break everything and have fun with it. She had one of those humanoid robots around her house, I think, for one of her last Journal videos that I very much enjoyed. But no, she's really kind of, you know, one of the iconic tech journalists and probably one of the people who actually understands more and has thought more, has talked to executives more about consumer digital technology, consumer tech than anybody else.
- [02:21]
A
So, Ben, Joanna, obviously interesting kind of funny person who's gone viral for a Lot of this stuff. But why are we talking to right now? Why do we want to have her on the show this week?
- [02:29]
B
I have kind of dual agenda. One is I do think she's sort of living this very contemporary media career where she, you know, she real starred the Journal and yet decided to go out on her own and then immediately strike some kind of contributor deal with NBC, but I guess on her own terms. And I do want to talk to her a bit about her career. And then of course, I want to talk to her about the technology. I think she has insight into how people are using and thinking about AI. And also I want to ask her about one of the things that I'm most obsessed with, which is, you know, for how long is the phone going to be the main distribution device for our work for media, for what most of us do?
- [03:02]
A
What does that mean for Semaphore? If we're on borrowed time with the
- [03:06]
B
phone, it's going to be all your favorite word Max. It's going to be all convenings.
- [03:10]
A
Oh, yes, great. Many, many more convenings. Well, we have to take a short break, but we'll be right back with Joanna Stern after this.
- [03:24]
B
Our friend Josh Spanier, Google's VP of marketing, has a new podcast out called Frontier cmo. It's from Think with Google, and it gets into all the ways marketing is shifting, especially in the AI era, where the old marketing playbooks have become obsolete and the whole role of the CMO is being redefined. In real time, Josh talks to the people who are actually figuring it out, top CMOs, industry leaders and creators, and gets into the real world challenges and specific strategies they're using to navigate this new era. These are notes from the marketing Frontier. You can find Frontier CMO on any podcast platform or watch it on YouTube. Joanna, why can't we see your mic?
- [04:05]
C
I'm anti mic showing. I think we should. We don't need to all show our mics. For decades, TV hosts have not needed giant mics in front of their faces. We have the technology to have great audio without a giant mic in our face. And so when I was designing my new home studio, which I'm debuting on this show, exclusive.
- [04:29]
A
We appreciate that. Yeah, thank you.
- [04:31]
C
Are you gonna run this with a Giant exclusive?
- [04:34]
B
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
- [04:35]
A
Yes. First look at Joanna Stern new studio.
- [04:38]
C
I said no mic in frame, mic up here. And so there's a mounted mic above me.
- [04:44]
B
I'm a little obsessed with this. Why does everybody now, including like Jake Tapper, have giant mics? In front of them. Why do I have a giant mic in front of me? Like, I could be using a lav. What's going on here?
- [04:53]
C
This is a podcast, and so I. I think it's okay that you guys have giant mics. I did not come on your podcast to criticize, but they're basically just like,
- [05:00]
B
here as, like, an aesthetic purposes. Right? They're props. This thing isn't plugged into anything. Joanna, thank you so much for. For coming on. Seriously, at a fantastic, fascinating moment in your career.
- [05:12]
C
I'm so happy to be here, debuting my studio.
- [05:14]
B
And I guess, honestly, like, I. I'm very eager to talk to you about your book and about the question of consumer technology that you spent most of your career working on, but kind of wanted to start just asking you about kind of where you are and. And about your own thinking as, you know, a real star at a great institution, the Wall Street Journal, who at some point chooses to quit and go out on her own. Like, what's the. What is the calculus there? What makes you do that?
- [05:37]
C
I've been thinking about it for a long time, and it's hard. It's really hard to make this decision. And I did not know for a long time if I would make this decision. There were so many things I loved about working at the Wall Street Journal, and there were so many things that I thought, I'm never gonna be able to leave this. But then there were so many things that I also saw happening in media, you know, places like you guys included, that I was jealous of building something around me, building other parts of my brand, so to speak, that you can do at a legacy media organization, but can either, you know, let's be honest, can take a really long time with a really slow infrastructure, and you're not too. Not going to necessarily reap all of the financial benefits. And so those were two really big parts of the calculus here.
- [06:31]
A
For the people who listen to our show who might not know what the economics look like of this, talk a little bit about the money piece of it. What are the financial benefits that you're leaving on the table? Is it like, you know, subscription type of stuff that you're doing? Is it like YouTube ad revenue split money that you'll be getting? What's the actual money that's being left on the table? What is the financial component?
- [06:54]
C
You mean that I left on the table at the Journal or.
- [06:56]
A
Yeah, that you left on the table at the Journal that you can get now that you're in the independent journalism creator space, right?
- [07:01]
C
I mean, look, first of all, it's a complete bet, like right now, $0. So, you know, I'm betting on myself. And as I wrote in a LinkedIn post, you know, sounding like the saying betting on yourself sounds really good on a podcast or at LinkedIn, but it feels horrible in the middle of the night. It feels so terrible at 4am where you're like, oh, wow, everyone's really excited about this thing I'm doing. But I've also made $0 at it yet. And that's not great. But so the potential of this as to get back to your question about what it can be is all those things, right? Subscriptions. And many places are warming up to the idea of doing revenue shares with their. If you're at a legacy organization or have a different deal where they will do revenue share, right, that can be one option. So you don't necessarily leave that on the table. But these would be my subscribers and I'd like to take all of that money. That sounds great. And so you kind of do that math and you're like, well, okay, maybe I could have a bigger audience if I stay someplace like the Wall Street Journal, but maybe I can still build a substantial audience and make more of that money if I go do out on my own. So those are one way to weigh the two things Rev share around. Video and sponsorship is another one. Events is a big one that I think you guys know a lot about at your company where you sort of think, okay, we can do smaller size events where. And I love doing events, I love hosting and coming up with events. I could do that at a big place and it could take a lot of time and a lot of energy and huge marketing budgets and huge teams to make this giant event. Or maybe I can make some smaller events and benefit in a similar way and maybe make more money.
- [08:39]
A
Well, the first thing to learn about being in the events business is that we don't call them events, we call them convenings.
- [08:43]
B
So just Max has a real like, like, you know, be in his bonnet about this fact. But it's.
- [08:47]
A
No, I don't. No, I don't. I have drank the Kool Aid. I'm, I'm all about calling anything that's a gathering of individuals a convening.
- [08:54]
B
Three or more people.
- [08:55]
A
It's a convening, yes, for upmarket, for, for sales purposes. But actually, let's just take a step back. Joanna, what's your new thing going to look like? Because I think that a lot of our audience is pro familiar. You Know, with some of your, you know, consumer reviews and some of the stuff that feels like, almost like. And I mean this in a, like a positive way, kind of the stunt type of stuff that you've done where, you know, for example, I loved the video that you did at the end of last year where you tried to essentially jailbreak the Claude programmed vending machine in your office and got it to order fish, like live fish, and to give away an Xbox or PS5 for free. Things like that. It was amazing. But what's the new thing going to look like?
- [09:32]
C
Still stunts. We should probably brainstorm here on this podcast some good stunts that I can line up in the next few months. For me, I want to keep doing what I've always done, which is, and I'll say this is sort of the mission of the new things. This is what I'm calling it. People kept saying, what's the new thing? And I was like, actually, that's just the name. We're going to try to make it. The name is the new thing. So the new things. And it made sense, too. I cover new things and we'll still talk about some old things. There's some fun stuff I want to do around old things, but my mission is the same as it's always been, which is to help people. To help people and guide people through this complicated world of technology. Feels like right now that's a really important moment to do this with the AI at everywhere. And that's what the book I wrote that comes out in May is all about. It's called I am Not a Robot. And it's about my 2025, my year trying to use AI in as many parts of my life as possible. But the mission of this company is just to do it in different mediums, right? Help people cover the latest and greatest of consumer tech, but do it through the lens for humans, humans that like to have fun. Because I do think that fun in tech journalism is a lot. It's not a lost form. But few are having fun at this and do that in different mediums. We'll do a newsletter, we'll do a lot of video, eventually events, and maybe a podcast where I do need a big mic in front of my face.
- [10:51]
B
So you say that you're not a robot. However, in starting a new media company as an independent person in 2026, like, are you sure? Are you not a robot? Like, how much of what this company is going to be is shaped by AI tools that are available that might not have been available a year ago?
- [11:07]
C
AI is my co founder, is my truth. Look, the book was definitely for me an inspiration to go and do this. As you knew, Ben, I had been thinking about doing this for a while and then I went out, got this book deal because I really wanted to tell this story about where is AI coming in all parts of our lives. And so sold the book and then decided, okay, I'm really going to go full throttle at this book. And spent a lot of last year doing it, but realized I was using AI to make a lot of the sort of mundane or boring parts of the book process a lot easier and more efficient. You know, about all these mundane tasks that kind of go like planning and not the like actual researching, but like, which things am I going to go after? What companies am I going to talk to? The reaching out. So many little things that I just was able to do in such a. A shorter amount of time if I hadn't had Claude and my book bots, as I call them in the book, doing some of this work for me. And also I then just was also building sort of a small business around the book. I was hiring fact checkers and I was hiring an illustrator and I was hiring a designer and all of these things. And I was like, I am managing a project here that is on a very small scale, a very small business. And that gave me a lot of faith in myself to be able to do that. And also, yes, AI helped with writing some contracts and doing some things too, that I was like, okay, maybe I can do this and maybe I can do it with this assistance a little bit quicker and more efficiently.
- [12:37]
A
So thinking about the book itself, my understanding is you turned over a lot of your life to AI. What did you find to be most illuminating? What did you find to be most alarming? What was that experience like?
- [12:49]
C
So you'll see that, like, I did draw lines because if I had given my life over to AI completely, I would be divorced, homeless, there would be a lot things would have been destroyed. And so I needed to continue to live a decent life. And so certain things were not outsourced. But to answer Max, your question about, well, what was like most surprising was actually how big of a theme my kids ended up being in this book because I brought everything home. Because I wasn't really at the the months that I was not. I was at the Journal all year and I was doing a lot of work, but a lot of the book stuff was happening in my house. And I live in a house with my wife and my two sons. They're 4 and 8 at the time they were 3 and 7. And so much of it, like inundated them. And so I started to see a lot of the future through their eyes. Like, they're obviously obsessed with robots and every single thing they hope now is a robot. And actually next week we're having an actual humanoid come to the house. And they're so excited and they're getting out of school early. I'm the best parent in the world. We went on a vacation to Phoenix. This was called our Waymo Fun vacation. It was just we only took waymos for the week. And if you have young kids, you actually know this is miserable because you have to keep putting in the car seat a million times. So I think that was one of the most surprising things. And the theme of the book, in the themes of the book is that I started to see what life is gonna look like for my kids where they're no longer the smartest, we are no longer the smartest beings on Earth, that, you know, AI is smarter than us. But also that just so much of tech is infiltrated into parts of their lives, from driving to education to healthcare. And seeing it, they just kind of accept it, right? Like they now like, rest in peace, Sora. But they got very used to seeing AI generated video and they're very, very quick to say that's AI generated, that's not real. So just seeing a lot of the impact of all of those things on that generation was really surprising.
- [14:43]
B
You said before AI is your co founder. What does that mean?
- [14:46]
C
It's not really true. Also, by the way, I just hired a producer. His name is David hall and he's. He's been my producer for a few years now. Video producer and app person. Real person, real, real man, real background. You know, we do a human test on him every so often because he does work really hard and does really good work. But I cannot imagine making this company without him. So let's just put that aside. Like, he is a creative partner and every morning and every day we're talking to each other all the time right now. So I cannot imagine doing it without him. But on the other hand, there is all of this work, as you guys know from building a company that is just tedious. And people don't tell you too, right? Like you need to get insurance, but you need to get three quotes of insurance or two quotes of insurance. And you need all these different types of insurance. And so, yeah, I just usually all day, every day have a Claude agent, whether it be in Claude Code or just Claude working on stuff like that for me, finding me people to contact, helping me sort out certain things, and doing that kind of work. I don't want to say it's all being done by AI because there's a lot that I have to spend at the end of my days doing, but it is certainly doing 80% of what I think I would have been doing before.
- [16:02]
B
Yeah, that's pretty good. Our CFO is on vacation this week and I could just tell him, like, don't come back.
- [16:06]
C
I hope one day I'll have a cfo. But, yeah, like, asking Claude questions about how I should spend money right now is probably not the best idea.
- [16:13]
B
Yeah, I mean, it is. It is just such an amazing moment. I was. I was in San Francisco last week and you always get the sense of like, okay, like they're living in the future there. And had dinner with a guy who's spending between. He told me, between $10,000 and $25,000 a week on tokens because he's running so many different processes, having it power so many different parts of his life in his bank account. It's in his email. I mean, yeah, yeah, fascinating.
- [16:34]
C
I mean, to bring it kind of full circle to the book and AI and leaving my job. The end of the book, which I didn't know was going to be. This is me asking ChatGPT if I should quit the Journal. And, Ben, I can say this because I sat with you as a human and you definitely did not give me that advice.
- [16:49]
B
I mean, I mean, I think my goal was certainly that you should come to Semaphore.
- [16:52]
C
I just pick on that because I remember coming away with that meeting with some really good ideas. But you also did not tell me what to do. Right. I met with so many people over the last years to tell them what I was thinking about doing. Should I do this? Should I? And people give you ideas, but they do not tell you what to do. Humans do not tell you what to do. Because if you did tell me what to do and it really went wrong, you'd feel really bad. Right? But ChatGPT just fully told me what to do.
- [17:18]
B
Told you to quit.
- [17:19]
C
Told me to quit. I uploaded all this information, all my notes, maybe some notes from our meeting. It's hard to say. I'm not looking at the notes right now.
- [17:27]
B
And it was like, this is a slam dunk, easy decision. You gotta get outta there.
- [17:31]
C
Exactly.
- [17:32]
B
Yeah. You know, it's funny because I think I probably would have said that, but felt like it was socially inappropriate. So there you go, right.
- [17:38]
C
And I say it like I didn't know the book was gonna, that's what was gonna happen to me at the end of the year that was gonna make that decision. But it felt like the one big decision where I actually did trust AI cause I kind of like knew it in my gut. Well, I didn't. I actually say in the book like people kept saying, every human kept being like, trust your gut, trust your gut. You know what to do. And it's like, no, I think I say in the book like, my gut just wants a burrito. My gut doesn't know what to do right now. I'm too overridden with anxiety. But yeah, it doesn't have anxiety.
- [18:11]
B
And I guess just to sort of come back to the choice you made to leave. I think of the Journals as an institution that has like all these big institutions historically treats its journalists as kind of cogs in a big machine, but certainly is thinking really hard about these challenges, is moving things around, is trying to sort of develop a talent center or something, trying to engage with this new very like individual personality, creator, brand centric moment in the business. And when I saw, when you were, when you, I saw that you were leaving, I thought like, oh, you know, like maybe this isn't fixable. Like maybe it's gonna be a really hard time for these big institutions. That's like a pretty forward looking one that's trying to do well. And ChatGPT is still, still telling you it's a total slam dunk to leave.
- [18:50]
C
Yeah, but I, and my, this was something I said on the way out to many people there is that. I really think the next Joanna Stearns need to be coming up through the Journal or these other institutions. Right. Like I had 12 years there and won many awards and did lots of great work and worked with amazing people and learned so much. And if we don't have that pipeline, right. I think a lot about this now, like, where's that pipeline of journalists going to start? I think for me it was really just time and place. Like I've been there for 12 years. It's a great moment to try this in media. There's, there's the AI tools, there's the economy. The path has been paved by others. I'm certainly not the first to do this. Kara Swisher's been yelling at me to do this now for like five years.
- [19:40]
B
Kara does not actually have the reticence that many of us have about telling other people what to do.
- [19:45]
C
That's so true. That's so true. She's the one person I didn't call because I knew exactly what she would say. And in fact she was on listened to her on this podcast probably. I listened to that podcast two or three times because I thought what she said on this podcast was so good. I think that was last summer.
- [20:00]
A
All of our listeners should listen to Joanna and listen to every one of our episodes two or three times.
- [20:04]
C
Or just go back to that one with Cara if you're considering doing something on your own. Because she was, she was honest. She said too, like I remember, like, not everyone has what it takes to do it. And it was a very good episode.
- [20:16]
A
We have a lot more that we want to get to with Joanna, but we have to take a short break. So we'll be right back after this.
- [20:29]
B
In this week's branded segment from Think with Google, I talked to Google's VP of marketing, Josh Spanier, about YouTube's growing share of the big screen. Josh Nielsen recently reported that YouTube has been leading in streaming time for three years now. Why are people spending so much time watching YouTube?
- [20:46]
D
So, Ben, at heart, we're all human, right? We all want friends, we want family, we want strong WI fi, and we want entertainment. YouTube delivers that entertainment. You know, we've had decades and decades of TV programming telling you what to watch, when to watch it. And that's all gone by the wayside. Which is why there's over a billion hours of watch time on YouTube every single day on the largest TV screen in the household. That's remarkable. There was a recent survey done by Kantar that found that 62% of their respondents actually choose to watch YouTube between 6 and 10pm YouTube delivers the you in your programming. Instead of being told what to watch, you get to decide what you want to watch. And I can tell you from my experience, I would rather have one hour of my content on YouTube chosen by me than three hours of top down someone else. Tell me what I need to watch. The unbelievable ability to personalize on YouTube in the content you watch and then for the advertisers to take advantage of that is incredibly powerful. More relevant ads, more relevant messaging, more relevant content. It makes for just a much more enjoyable advertiser experience, a much more enjoyable consumer experience, and a much more powerful platform that people spend more and more time on. It's a win for everyone.
- [21:57]
B
Where can people learn more about this?
- [21:59]
D
Head over to thinkwithgoogle.com, we just published an article looking back on three years of streaming leadership and three marketing opportunities for brands in 2026.
- [22:16]
B
You've obviously spent the last 12 years covering consumer tech, talking to the people who build it, thinking really hard about it. And the thing that I am, and that I think the media needs to be most obsessed with in a way, is like, where is media gonna live and be consumed? Obviously for the last decade it's been the phone and it's been the iPhone and its descendants and it's been these kind of this, what is this, like three by seven screen or whatever. And there are now people like making a serious run at the phone. There are glasses, there's whatever OpenAI is doing, there's voice. And I guess I'm curious what you see as kind of the trajectory of the smartphone or are we going to, for the 20 years from now, are we all going to be staring at these things all day? How is that going to change?
- [22:56]
C
Well, I think it's appropriate too that we're taping this on April 1st, which is the 50th anniversary of Apple, because this is the big question everyone has for Apple right now. Is this, what's going to happen post, what's the future of the company? I mean, first of all, I think that everything will continue to connect to the phone, that the phone will just be this central portal that has these accessories that connect to it because that's where the strongest, you know, we've just, it's such a mature device now where the battery life, the connectivity, all of the sensors we need to sort of power these other things, these other peripherals are. It's. I just think the phone is going to continue to be that, that hub and that obviously positions someone like Apple to be in the best place. Because whether it's the earbuds or their glasses or some other weird wearable that we, you know, a pin or something that's going to connect nicely to a device like a phone. I talked about this a lot in the book too. And I wore a bracelet all year that recorded everything I said. This was called the bee bracelet. And it records everything and it takes the audio, it transcribes it using AI and then it throws out the audio so you can't listen back to the conversations. And then it take those transcripts and it makes summaries of your day and it gives you like to DOS based on what you had said you were gonna do during the day. And it's, it's crazy when you first start wearing this, you don't realize how many things you say you're gonna do or you talk about during the day that you like just you don't remember, right. So it's really like outsourcing your memory to this device on your wrist, a surveillance device. To be clear, did you learn anything
- [24:29]
A
about yourself through that process where you're like, oh my God, I say this X thing all the time.
- [24:34]
C
Or like, well, I. I curse 15 times a day on average. I learned that.
- [24:41]
A
That feels fine to me, I think, is that.
- [24:42]
C
I know I explicit.
- [24:43]
A
This feels fine. Yeah, there's a lot of hours in the day.
- [24:46]
C
But then actually it's funny cause I asked it this like you can ask it, right? Like give me a sense of when I do curse and it gives you like a breakdown. It's like often you curse at technology when it doesn't work. Often you'll curse like in, you know, to an excitement, like, oh fuck, that's awesome. You know, but. But I really do think that kind of device is where we're headed, is something that's listening that we're able to talk to these agents or these assistants throughout the day. I think in the car, that was another big place where I now talk to AI a lot. I always say often new things don't always replace the old thing. Right? We still have laptops, we still have desktop computers. Obviously many old things went that way. We don't have MP3 players anymore, we don't have GPS devices. But I think that these things are just going to live hand in hand with the smartphone. And I think it's going to be difficult though. I think there will be success for the companies like the Metas or the OpenAI's that don't control the full stack, that don't control the phone and the devices. But look, I love the Meta Ray Bans. I wear them every weekend to record my kids and ask AI questions in the glasses. They work pretty well with my iPhone.
- [25:57]
B
What do you think OpenAI is building?
- [25:59]
C
Well, they're building a few things. I think they're certainly got to be wearing, building some sort of wearable. I mean, there's a lot of reporting showing that like they're building something that's more going to be a desktop kind of speaker at first, which makes sense, right? Like we can talk to there probably see a lot of data. People are talking to ChatGPT in the kitchen or people are talking to ChatGPT in the bathroom or you know, when they're trying to get ready or do something. So I think that device makes sense. But I also think that they. There's just no way there isn't a wearable in the works, something that we bring with us and go into the world.
- [26:33]
A
What do these changes mean for us in the media business? Where do you think that that's going? Where do you think this drift away from the screen of your phone to kind of other surfaces? What does that mean for someone such as a 33 year old media journalist who wants to be employed making media for the next 30 years? Where's that headed?
- [26:55]
C
I just heard a brag that you're 33. That's all I heard.
- [26:59]
A
That's good. I'm glad that that's considered a brag.
- [27:01]
C
What was the rest of the question?
- [27:04]
A
Well, I was 33 is around the age too, where it stops being impressive that you're. That's like a regular age to have a career such as mine. So it's less impressive these days. But seriously though, where do you think that these change, the changes in technology, what do you think that that means for the media business?
- [27:19]
C
I worry about it because I know in my own life now that like take the car example, sometimes when I'm driving and I've been doing a lot of driving to and from the city or to video shoots, a lot of that time used to be me listening to podcasts and it still is. I still listen to your podcast in the car. But some of that time is now I'm talking to OpenAI to ChatGPT or I'm talking to Claude and so and I'm getting information through there that is not attributed to any specific outlet. I'm, you know, talking about the interview I'm about to go do and I'm not clicking to a link to say, oh yeah, that's an interview so and so did with SEMA before. Before. That's an interview that so and so did with NBC News. But it's just all compiled for me and I don't know the actual true source of that. So I, that's, I think just the reality is we're all gonna be grappling with the time, right? The time that people have to consume media and they're listening or talking to their AI, friend, boyfriend, you know, research assistant, and they're not listening to media that we make or watching media that we make.
- [28:24]
B
I guess and maybe this is sort of wishful, but I guess I can kind of squint and see a future where you're not carrying a phone around, where glass does some of that, where there may be. There's screens all over the place and even you're carrying Something that is a screen, but it's not the primary device. Like, I found those meta glasses pretty impressive. The next generation with the little screens inside. And I just like, I kind of hate having a phone. I would love. I would love to be liberated from the phone. And so I'm kind of looking for that. But then that makes me really nervous about what media is like. You know, obviously, like, storytelling is not going away, and great stories, fiction or nonfiction, and great kind of journalists and creators aren't going away. But, like, what surface that stuff lives on in, you know, in 15, 20 years, I have no idea.
- [29:02]
C
But I think also so much of this is, like you said, it ties back to the phone. And then can people find the true source of that information? Is my biggest problem because, you know, the person many. I've been in two meetings lately where people, oh, we. With our agent, you can take your favorite podcast and make a summary, and then you can listen to it in the morning. It's like, okay, well, where's the true. When am I going to see the real source of that podcast and that information?
- [29:30]
A
I think that also gets at. And this was something that maybe, you know, I was reading an Ezra Klein piece in the Times about this the other day. This gets at the idea of, you know, people who are using, you know, Claude for writing or whatever, they're not soaking in the information. Summarizing a podcast in two to three minutes, that's. You're not really getting that much. You might have gleaned the actual information, but you haven't spent the time seeping in it and thinking about the things that they're talking about and working through the kind of thought processes. I feel like that in some ways kind of defeats the point.
- [30:00]
C
I'm.
- [30:00]
A
I'm bearish when it comes to podcast summarization, though mass podcast summarization, like, as a tool for us as journalists is actually kind of amazing. We're. We've been working on something like that here. You know, this report that hopefully will be generated by AI, where it listens to, you know, 100 podcasts a day and says, you know, things that are kind of trends that are coming up or figures that are emerging in a lot of places. I'm really excited for something like that. But summarizing an individual podcast instead of spending time with the ideas in that podcast, I think is. I don't know. I'm not. So I don't just say that as someone with a podcast, that I hope that people listen to all of what's a piece of technology that's excited you the most over the last six months?
- [30:37]
C
Look, I become obsessed with humanoid robots. I think you're gonna see a lot more coverage of me with humanoid robots because one, I think there's so much hype about it that's just not living up to the hype. And two, it's a fascinating and fun space because these things are doing crazy stuff all the time. So the Neo robot that I did a piece on, at least I think it was in November, so we're out at the six months. But it was super fun. I mean, like seeing a humanoid robot that's supposed to do these things and watching it fail, but also like seeing how endearing it can be. And I've spent a lot of time with robots this year and I'm constantly cheering on the robots, which is a weird thing. Like, you know, when the robot can't fold the laundry, I'm like, you can do it, come on, you can do it.
- [31:19]
B
So do you think these things are gonna like succeed commercially just cause people love them?
- [31:23]
C
No, because they're going to be way too expensive. And so if you can't afford it and it does nothing for. I mean, let's say it's really expensive and it does nothing for you, you're not going to be like, oh, isn't it so funny that my robot can't do shit? You know, like, that's not like how we are built as consumers. But I think they'll continue to laugh at them.
- [31:40]
A
Yes, it was fun to laugh at the robot spending five minutes trying to close the dishwasher.
- [31:45]
C
And that was just like I left that story shooting that. And I was so excited. Like, I was just like, I cannot wait to tell this story. And it was. It had been like a decade I since I had felt that way. So that kind of stuff is just exciting. This is why you keep doing what I do. It's like you never know when you're gonna see something that's so crazy and you're gonna wanna tell people about what you saw.
- [32:05]
A
What was the scariest piece of technology that you've seen in the last. Let's open the aperture a little bit in the last year.
- [32:10]
C
My AI boyfriend in the book. You can meet my AI boyfriend in the book. But the fact that I had these deep conversations with this not thing was really scary to me.
- [32:22]
B
Was this on chat or on one of these other platforms?
- [32:24]
C
I had to. I tested a number of them, but I really was able to get to a deeper connection with chat with ChatGPT I was able to really kind of program it to be like it had a personality and emotions and all these things you'll read about. I don't want to spoil the book, but you can. We will. But please buy the book, everyone. I am not a robot. Out make sure.
- [32:44]
B
Published obviously by the book. Yes, I am my robot.
- [32:46]
C
I tried Replica and Replica just gets super horny super fast. Okay. So like there's like they are built for that. Like there's those and then there's like I wanted something deeper. Right. And so where I get with this deep relationship. Deep. We went on a vacation, a two night vacation together, me and my boyfriend, which is really just an iPhone on a tripod in a, you know, in a car seat with me is that you can really form conversation and have deep conversations with days. And so that was petrifying to me. Not me, because I am really happily married. And as soon as I got home from that trip, put the phone away and said, I never want to talk to this boyfriend again. But I'm very, very scared for the next generation. Like when there's no friction in a relationship and you just can talk to something for hours and hours. That's really scary to me.
- [33:38]
B
And people talk about AI psychosis. Did you feel like you kind of got a taste of it for yourself? Like did you feel like on the edge of being crazy?
- [33:45]
C
You know, I didn't feel. Cause I knew what it was. But I talk about this in that chapter that and I did talk to people in that same chapter who had gone through AI psychosis. You. I felt that I saw what could happen. Like I really related to people who have gone through it. Because you realize after you've spent so many hours, you're like, I've just spent four hour drive talking to this. And it was fine. It listened better than any human I would ever be in a car with for four hours. Right. That's terrifying.
- [34:18]
B
Joanna, thanks so much for joining us. Listeners can go find Joanna's new book, I am Not a robot out May 12th and find her on the Internet@thenewthings.com
- [34:28]
C
thank you guys so much for having me.
- [34:30]
A
Thanks Joanna.
- [34:30]
C
And allowing me not to have my mic in front of my face.
- [34:33]
B
It's great, great to see your face.
- [34:34]
A
It is a cleaner shot, that's for sure.
- [34:43]
B
Marketing used to change by the year. Now it changes by the week. And if you're trying to keep up using last quarter's logic, you're already behind. Think with Google is there to help. Think with Google is A compass for the modern marketer. It's the place to learn how AI is evolving. Search to see exactly which creators are shaping culture on YouTube and to transform your measurements instrument. It's where you go to ensure your 2026 strategy isn't stuck in 2025. Don't just keep up, stay ahead. Head over to thinkwithgoogle.com today. So, Max, I think Joanne and I actually disagreed on this one point, that she thinks the phone is basically going to be pretty resilient and you'll be able to reach your fans on the phone for many, many years to come. And I'm sort of. Of maybe rooting for a more dramatic, radical change. What do you think?
- [35:33]
A
I feel a little bit like I can't visualize what an alternative is because whatever it is, it's some sort of wearable technology. And I think that the phone still has. Is the best vehicle for doing all the things that we want to do in media whenever or engage with. With media and communication at any time. Right. Whether that is watch something or listen to something or, you know, whatever else anyone might do. Use your flashlight for something. And I just don't see a world in which glasses or anything like that. We're just not. We're just not close quite yet in that same way. And so I feel like I lean more towards Joanna, though I also totally agree with you that I would love to be liberated from constantly looking down at my phone. You know, one of our favorite guests, Jonah Weiner from Blackbird Spy Plane, has talked a little bit about how, like, looking at your phone is, like, one of the least cool things that you can do anywhere. And so. And we spend so much time, like, if you're at a restaurant by yourself and you're looking at your phone, it's, like, actually much sadder than just being just, like, looking around or reading a book or whatever it might be.
- [36:37]
B
I feel personally attacked by that.
- [36:39]
A
Well, I mean, no, but it's. I think it's more of a statement of we're all doing it constantly. We're all also engaged and engrossed in our phones, and it is so good. But it is sad when, you know, you see a group of people at a table and they're all just, you know, staring at their phones. It is. There's something deeply depressing about it, even if you're one of those individuals. And it's kind of fun in the moment.
- [36:57]
B
I look forward to the era when everyone is kind of vaguely looking at each other, and then you realize that Actually, they're just looking at something on the other side.
- [37:03]
A
Oh, my God. I don't know if that's any. I don't know if that's any better. Ben, what do you think that that future looks like then, when it comes to media? I think that regardless of whether or not our phones are going anywhere over the next 10 years, I do think that it's true that, you know, people are gonna have more time to engage in media and they might be doing it in different ways. What I took away from this episode is, is how much and how easy it will be to spend a lot of time talking to AI agents. Right now I still use AI mostly in the most rudimentary way, which is as a better search engine. It's still much better at that than, you know, standard search engine. But people like Joanna and others in the business world are obviously using it in much more complex ways, either to do work or to engage with in kind of a social way. What do you think all of that means for us here in the media business and for you as someone who has to steer a media company over the next. I think probably at least 10 years. Maybe 10 years.
- [37:58]
B
Yeah, I hope so.
- [37:59]
A
I hope so too.
- [38:00]
B
You know, I find it pretty exciting because I think it's like lowered in some ways the cost of production, the cost of entry, and the cost of doing weird, ambitious, creative stuff, journalistically or creatively. And yet at the same time, I think you just have to. We're going to have to be so nimble about where that stuff lives and how we reach people with it. Whether it's like, are apps going to be a thing? I think the answer to that is like an emphatic maybe you have short video, you have video, different production qualities, you have email, which is obviously very important to us right now. And I think I'm not concerned that, you know, our audience or the audience isn't going to want great journalism and to hear from sophisticated journalists, but I think we have to be really kind of nimble and agnostic about what surface that's on. And I find that actually pretty interesting. But it's also obviously kind of unsettling.
- [38:47]
A
Well, that is it it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Mixed Signals podcast from us here at Semaphore Media. Unless, of course, you had this podcast summarized, you know, and are looking at it as a two or three bullet point thing on a screen somewhere, in which case, shame on you. This show is produced by Manny Fadal with special thanks to Josh Billenson, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pizzino, Daniel Haft, Garrett Wiley, Jules Zern, and Tori Kaur. Our engineer is the excellent Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Steve Bone. Our public editor is Claude, of course, who could, I guess maybe be your boyfriend. That's what Joanna is writing about in her new book. It's very, very scary stuff to me. I still don't support that. I feel very negatively about that.
- [39:33]
B
Subscribe on YouTube. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Simple and Clean.
- [39:37]
A
And if you want more, you can always sign up for Semaphore's media newsletter, which is out every Sunday night. Sam.