← Mixed Signals from Semafor Media
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- [00:00]
A
So one of the things that I've enjoyed in making this show about media has been trying to figure out how you create an advertising product that's about advertising. We've been interviewing Josh Spanier, Google's VP of marketing and a pretty major player in his own right in the ad business. We've gotten, I would say, shockingly good feedback from you all. People don't seem to be skipping them, which is, I am told, something that often happens with advertising and podcasts. We've gotten a little feedback that I'm not asking Josh hard enough questions. So if anybody has any ideas for sort of, you know, big picture questions, particularly about the marketing industry, please send them our way. You can email them to me at ben.smithama4.com.
- [00:40]
B
How long is that flight?
- [00:41]
C
It was a couple hours of actual flight time, but you're going 1g2g 0g2g 1g 31 times. They call it the vomit Comet, which is accurate.
- [00:58]
B
Did you vomit?
- [00:59]
C
I did.
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B
Do you do that on screen? See, that's good. That's like good video. I mean, is it. Do people get grossed out by that?
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C
Yeah, I'm not. It is not actually on camera, but I do reference it on camera. And one of the astronauts who is flying with me was incredibly kind and he was like, oh, just a tactical chunder.
- [01:19]
B
Wow.
- [01:19]
A
Oh, God.
- [01:26]
B
Welcome to Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media, where we are tracking the wild changes in this media age. I'm Max Tawny, the media editor here at Semaphore, and with me, as always, is our co anchor, my boss, Ben Smith.
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A
It is good to be here with you, Max.
- [01:43]
B
I guess. Ben, you're the editor in chief of Semaphore. I should also say that.
- [01:46]
A
Thanks for acknowledging that.
- [01:47]
B
Yeah, exactly. I want to make sure I get all the titles straight. But this week on the show, we are talking to tech journalist and showrunner, Cleo Abram. We'll talk to Cleo about racking up 6 million subscribers on YouTube, why she's a tech and science optimist when so many in the media are not. And the secret to getting people to care about complex scientific topics like geothermal energy and advanced robotics.
- [02:12]
A
Yeah, Cleo is like, she's gotta be like the most optimistic person in journalism and also really one of the most successful kind of individual solo journalists around. I suppose those things are probably not sure about the cause or effect, but those things are definitely related.
- [02:26]
B
Ben, you don't think you're one of the most optimistic journalists in journalism?
- [02:30]
A
I'm optimistic about Journalism. Yeah, I think you have to be to start something. Right.
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B
Well, so is Cleo, so let's talk to her about it right after the break.
- [02:36]
A
Cleo's more optimistic than. She's more optimistic than anyone.
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B
That's true.
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A
There's new content waiting for you on Think with Google that you won't want to miss. Thank is the destination for marketers to access things like first of its kind research on AI adoption with the Boston Consulting Group. Insights on four key consumer behaviors, streaming, scrolling, searching and shopping. And deep dives at emerging technology and strategies that drive real growth. Get all of that and more by heading to thinkwithgoogle.com.
- [03:18]
B
Ben we have been working together for about two and a half years since the start of Semaphore. I think I've gotten a sense of what you're interested in in a professional capacity. We spend a lot of time talking about media, obviously talk a lot about politics. I, you know, I, I know a little bit of things that you seem to know more about than the average individual, like British politics. You seem to be a little bit of an Anglophile. I've picked that up over the years. So when we were preparing for this show, I realized that I had a little bit of a gap in my knowledge about you, which is, are you interested in tech and science? Like, do you care about tech and science at all?
- [03:57]
A
Wow, that feels like. I don't really know where we're going with this. I. Yeah, yes. I mean, I am interested in it, but I'm, I'm like, I'm not going to do my own research. I would say I'm, I mean, aside from AI, which I'm playing with all the time these days, but I don't even. Is that even tech? I think that's media at this point.
- [04:15]
B
Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's, it is tech and I mean, it's obvious. I have noticed that you're more, you're somewhat interested in that. You, you do vibe coding, as they say, which is not something that I, you know, I still 100% understand.
- [04:27]
A
Yeah, you've got to take a weekend and do it.
- [04:29]
B
Yeah, I know, that's true. Well, we've got a newsletter to publish every Sunday night. Just a little plug for that. But the reason I ask is because this week's guest is a person who knows a lot about science and technology and is also someone who you know a little bit and have been interested in for a while. It's Cleo abram. She's a YouTube host. She was formerly at Vox and was a producer and kind of media business person there. Now she's producing a show for YouTube about science and technology called Huge if True. Seems like it's going pretty well. She's got millions of subscribers. Ben, tell us a little bit more though, about who Cleo is and why we wanted to bring her on today.
- [05:08]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, Cleo is interesting for two reasons. One just she is one of the most sophisticated journalists about silicon chips and fusion reactors and a lot of the stuff that we're thinking about as we look toward the uncertain future. And she's also built a very unusual kind of career in media. She was on the business side at Vox and then started making videos and went to YouTube and I think basically ignored the conventional wisdom about YouTube, which is that you should produce cheap, quick stuff and lots of it, and instead produces at this point basically roughly monthly something really, really deeply researched and high quality on a complicated technical subject. And she calls them optimistic explainers. She's gotten huge interviews with Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Wang, the Nvidia CEO, who I think really like, honestly speaking to someone who is optimistic about technology. She calls herself a creator. I don't know if she considers herself a journalist, but we can ask her that. Whether she does or not. I really do think she's basically one of the most influential tech journalists there is at this point and also built a very unusual kind of career in business that to me at least is kind of hopeful for doing really, really high quality journalism out there in independent creator land, which still is pretty unusual.
- [06:21]
B
That's really interesting. I mean, the idea that, you know, she's become just over the course of a few years, you know, one of the most important journalists and tech in the kind of tech and science adjacent space. That's pretty remarkable to hear you say and to kind of consider, given the fact that obviously we live in, as we've talked about a lot on the show, a fragmented media ecosystem where it's really, really hard to break out. And to start, there is so much already crowding the kind of marketplace. It's fascinating to see her rapid growth, but we've actually got Clio waiting for us, so why don't we bring her on now and ask her about how she did it.
- [07:02]
A
Cleo, thank you so much for joining us.
- [07:04]
C
Thanks for having me. You know, I've been listening to your work for a long time.
- [07:08]
A
Scary. Also, longtime fan. I was saying that I don't want to do my own research around science and Technology, but I do want someone to explain it to me. And that, that is basically you from my perspective. But I guess I wonder, before we get into the science, we wanted to ask you about your own origin story and about your, I think, pretty unusual decision to leave Vox Media, where you're a producer, and try to do quite high quality journalism on. On YouTube. And I just wonder if you'd sort of talk us through that decision a little bit.
- [07:35]
C
I think a lot of that origin story centers around two things, one of which is the impulse to try to explain things well in a way that lots of people can understand. I basically believe that there is nothing that affects all of our lives that people can't understand. I'm not saying I'm going to ever understand quantum physics in a deep way like an expert, but I do think I can understand the implications of a quantum computer. And then the second thing is this desire to use that skill in a way that helps people make sense of the world, specifically now with this angle, to help them make it better. So there's a lot that I learned while I was at vox, vox, not fox. And I took that and am using it in huge, if true, in a way that maybe is also borrowing from some of the great YouTubers that I've admired my whole life to now make something that does those two things in a new kind of way.
- [08:39]
A
Yeah, there was just an article titled why the best journalists on YouTube are all former Vox Vox employees by Simon Owens. And you know, it's true of our beloved old colleague Joe Posner, we've both worked with, but what is the answer to that? Why do you think people like you, Johnny Harris, what was going on at VOX a few years ago that birthed this kind of subculture?
- [09:01]
C
Well, VOX was just incredibly generous about letting us learn. VOX was this incredible greenhouse while I was there of people that were smart and creative, genuinely trying to explain things in a way that was several levels deeper than a lot of the sort of headline news that I was seeing at the time. And as a result, you learn some of those thorny skills of explanation in a way that allows you then to make a really great, rich, visually interesting video. It was also a place where a lot of people were collaborating constantly, but also given enough freedom and independence to make their own things. And so you see these individuals learn how to be individuals, I think, in a really healthy way that has now allowed a lot of us to go and start our own things. So I think that was the recipe.
- [09:58]
B
Do you see it kind of seeping into other stuff that's out there. Do you see, like, Vox DNA in other stuff on YouTube or particularly, I guess, visually?
- [10:08]
C
Well, I think Vox itself was tapping into its own media moment. I think Vox is also an example of some of the larger trends that we might talk about. One is an emphasis on really great visuals. Vox itself was tapping into that trend in information gathering. And then there was also the trend toward individuals and personal connection to why should I care about a story while I'm gonna follow? Maybe it's me as I learn about something. Maybe it's Johnny Harris, maybe it's Joss Fong. And then I think Vox was, though, a media company, also part of this, the very beginning of this trend toward what we're now calling independent media. It was, in effect, a bunch of journalists working to explain something that all happened to be working together. And that had a lot of really wonderful benefits. But it was tapping into what I see now as much the same trend that I'm still tapping into with my own YouTube channel.
- [11:05]
B
One of the kind of remarkable things to me was that you only launched this a few years ago, now being up close to 6 million followers. How quickly did you know your show was going to be a hit? And obviously, all of these things kind of start from zero. Can you talk a little bit about the first, like, few weeks? Was it terrifying? And just kind of explain when you thought, okay, we've got something here.
- [11:30]
C
Yes to all of that. I mean, to take a step back, and this gets back to Ben's question about why do this? I was really itching to make this specific thing, so I was very motivated by my own feeling that I wasn't getting this from my media diet. And when I say this, I mean specifically the optimistic explanations. I mean, I was a journalist working at a media company and feeling constantly like my own media diet was unbelievably pessimistic. And so, really, for me, those first couple weeks and the desire to launch this show was, can I make something that I want to watch? And if I can make something that I want to watch, do other people want to watch it, too? It did take a little while to get started. When I was launching it, I was really going after the people that wanted specifically this thing. And so that took some time for either the audience itself to figure out or the algorithm to understand what we were trying to do. And so I would say that in the first six months, I felt like, oh, there's really something here. I could see that there were human beings that really liked what we were making, but it was. It always has been a grind. Starting something new is. Wasn't snapping our fingers. And off it goes. There were a couple videos where I felt like, oh, I can see how this really could work, if it ends up working. Even in those first few months, like, the response to a video that we made about geothermal was just. So I was worried about that video because I thought, you know, like, oh, I'm launching a new show. One of my first episodes is about enhanced geothermal. Like, is this not cool enough for people? Like, are they gonna be as into this as I am? There's a certain vulnerability in making something that is yours and that is so mixed in with your personal interest. And you're on camera telling people about that. It really is like, hey, I'm gonna offer you something. Like, do you want it?
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B
Yeah.
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C
And so that one meant a lot to me because the answer, again, was yes. And so, like, we were explaining enhanced geothermal, and it did. I forget what it did at the very beginning. It was maybe 100,000 views or something. But, like, that was. That was a lot on my own show. And so that was kind of the seed for me that grew into what it is now.
- [13:47]
A
And you've been. I mean, you've obviously been doing it through this moment of real technological change in our business. And I'm curious, like, how you've seen the tech affect your own work, I guess, particularly the rise of these AI tools, and then whether your optimism extends to our business, the sort of technology, of media.
- [14:04]
C
My optimism extends absolutely to media. I mean, I do think that we're in a moment that is really hard in a lot of ways, and I don't have any desire to sugarcoat that. And at the same time, there's a huge opportunity here. I mean, I hope that there are some people listening to this and thinking, like, what is there idea that they might want to contribute to people's media diet? And there's never been a better opportunity to do that. So that makes me really optimistic and makes me really excited. We don't use that many AI tools yet. A lot of what we make are very scientific visuals. AI tools are getting a lot better at making things with high scientific accuracy and specificity. But when I have a design for something, it's usually based on, like, a diagram that is of the Large Hadron Collider at cern. Like, we're actually animating that step by step to make sure it's scientifically accurate. And that's just hard to generate right now. And we also have very specific opinions. When we say we, I also mean my co producer and animator, Justin has ideas about what exactly that should look like in our style. And that's hard to generate. That's not something that we're going to be generating anytime soon in terms of things like backgrounds or assets, or brainstorming partnership on ideas, titles and thumbnails, things like that. Totally. We brainstorm with AI tools all the time. So I think some of those tools have been interesting to us, but it hasn't fundamentally changed how we make anything right now. I think the biggest changes have been platform shifts. We launched within the timeframe that Shorts also launched. For our first year, roughly, we didn't have short form video. And that's been a big change. And frankly, I love that. I love the creative challenge of trying to explain something in less than 60 seconds in a way that respects the audience's time. You're really busy, you've got a lot going on. Let me see if I can explain, I don't know how a Formula One car works in 60 seconds to you.
- [16:06]
A
You know, it's funny because I asked ChatGPT to generate a list of questions for you, as I often do for an interview, and usually they're garbage, and in this case they were mostly garbage. And the only one that I. That I kept was, I'm just going to read the ChatGPT version of it, which was, you balance TikTok brevity with YouTube depth. How do you decide which ideas live where? And how do formats change your reporting workflow? Which is like almost a human question. And. But here you are talking about it in this context.
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B
Wait a second. Can I ask, did AI, did chatgpt know who Clio was or did you Describe Clio to ChatGPT?
- [16:40]
A
Oh, no, ChatGPT knows more about Clio than, like, Clio knows about Clio.
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B
All right, fair enough. I was just curious. I was curious how familiar ChatGPT was with Clio.
- [16:49]
A
Profoundly familiar.
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B
Yeah.
- [16:50]
A
Clearly scraped a lot of YouTube, whether it's supposed to or not. But the real version of that question is, I mean, your brand, your YouTube videos are really very smart and very. I think there was this vox line that I always loved that Joe told me about. You want to read an Ezra Klein line? You should not overestimate how much your audience knows and you shouldn't underestimate their intelligence.
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C
I love that line and I think.
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A
You really kind of live up to that. But also, your short videos are about F1. They're about poop. Like they're sillier. Like, how do you think about these different platforms? I didn't make that up, did I? There was one about poop.
- [17:21]
C
I thought, they're only about poop. I think insofar as they're about like a really cool sanitation system or like leaving poop on the moon. So should it be a long form or a short form? The question is, how long does it take me to explain this thing? If it's a hour long conversation with Jennifer Doudna on all of the implications of crispr, that's gonna be a long form video. If it's just super specifically, how does CRISPR actually work? I think I can do that with an animation in 60 seconds.
- [17:51]
B
What's your relationship like with the word journalist versus creator? Do you distinguish between those things? Are you a news influencer? There's just all different types. We're all kind of in this soup. We all used to be journalists. Now we can kind of break it out slightly. We were talking to Colin and Samir. We know you went on their show. They hate being referred to as journalists.
- [18:10]
A
They were so insulted. Oh, my God. I was trying to compliment them. And they were like, do not call us that.
- [18:15]
C
I've talked to them direct about this. We had a discussion about this word on their podcast as well. I call myself a journalist. I'm proud to call myself a journalist. I also call myself a creator, and I'm proud to call myself a creator too.
- [18:26]
A
Just don't call yourself like a newsfluencer or something like that.
- [18:29]
B
A news influencer.
- [18:31]
A
That nauseates me.
- [18:32]
B
Yeah, that one's difficult.
- [18:33]
C
I do think there are good news creator, very good news creators. A journalist, I think, has additional responsibility that I'm excited to take on. So I think that journalist holds the rigor to a high standard. It implies a process that I want to be sure that people understand that I uphold. And when I don't uphold it successfully, I issue corrections, which is also part of the process. So my question to everybody who is disseminating information that other people learn from is what are your ethics? How do you deal with advertisers? How do you issue corrections? What are your standards for interviews? And how do you treat interviewees and experts? And I think a lot of people, to be fair, have questions about that within journalism right now. So it is not that journalism just gets you off the hook. You call yourself a journalist and they understand your ethics guidelines.
- [19:26]
A
I mean, often I think in creator world, it's. They want to take undisclosed money from things that they Promote and talk up and then not feel like they're violating some ethical precepts.
- [19:34]
C
Sometimes, but not always. I think it's more that people are dissatisfied with what journalism means right now. I think people distancing themself from an industry that they don't think has served them.
- [19:47]
A
Oh, also, everybody hates us. For sure, they don't like the word. Oh, obviously they don't like the word because everybody hates us. But also, I do think that in creator world, there is. I mean, you're all. Everybody's running their own tiny business. And so this sense that you have, like these very high walls between the business side and the HR side make no sense in a world where, like, it's you, the wall is in your heart. Right. Like, and I think you're. I mean, I'm curious. You are somebody who, very unusually, I think it's a big part of why you're successful, started on the business side of a media company, moved to the editorial side. I think deeply understand both. I mean, how do you think about. How do you balance that?
- [20:20]
C
I make very clear disclosures to our audience and I make a couple promises to them about how we take advertising. The first is that you're always going to know if something is paid. It's very, very clear. In our videos, it has a big ad ticker that. That literally says ad, and the timer ticks down during the section of the video that is sponsored. And advertisers do not know anything about the topic. When they buy an ad. They see the placement of their ad within a video, but they have no control over the video itself. The second thing is, I am voicing my ads. The thing that I will say to the audience is, you should obviously understand that this is an ad. But I wrote this. I believe everything that I am saying right now. Beyond that, I do think there are really interesting questions right now within media about how to deal with advertisers. And I don't think that it is nearly as simple as there's fewer people that work at this company. So the wall is lower. Like, I've seen media companies right now that I respect responding to advertiser RFPs with the topic of the editorial video that they are would in theory be working on. So they are. An advertiser is coming in and they're saying, we'll make this journalism for you. Technically, you won't have any control over the story, but you will greenlight the topic and then you will put your ad in the topic. So I think this is a really rich conversation. And I think it's coming to a head now because you have so many people that are in charge of making their own decisions about this stuff. It's not just a couple media companies anymore.
- [22:03]
B
So it seems like you're averaging like one video every four weeks or something like that. You know, it's not. The posting cadence is pretty infrequent compared to many other people who are creating stuff for YouTube. Can you talk a little bit about the decision to post more infrequently and also how you make the finances work.
- [22:22]
C
Our videos are very highly produced and I love the dance that we have to do in order to make that happen. It's background, expert interviews, goes to a field shoot, adds incredible animations with our team, adds long form video editing that makes you feel like you're there, adds a fact checking process, and all of that together takes at least a month, if not more. I mean, some of our videos we've been working on for six to nine months. And so the production quality is just very, very demanding because that's the quality that I want to release for our audience. And also I try not to do it for its own sake. It's quality that I think leads to a better explanation. And so we invest a lot in our long form videos that are that tightly crafted.
- [23:11]
A
How much does a video cost?
- [23:13]
C
It really, really varies. I mean, the costs here are mostly teams. We do what we do with a team of four full time people, including me, and then travel and then it.
- [23:26]
A
Must be like 50,000 bucks a video if you roll it all in. Yeah, more. Less.
- [23:30]
C
No, less. Less.
- [23:31]
A
Including your time.
- [23:33]
C
I don't know how to. I don't know how to price my time. I'll ask you about that later.
- [23:37]
A
I think the price keeps going up, actually. That's my impression. We'll have lots more from Cleo Abram after the break. This week on our branded segment from Think with Google, I spoke with Google's VP of marketing, Josh Spanier, about why YouTube matters for marketers. One of the big stories we've been talking about on the podcast, I think one of the surprises for some of our readers last year was the success of YouTube, the extent to which it's continued to just play this absolutely central role. Jessica Lesson called it a juggernaut. What do you put its success down to?
- [24:17]
D
$70Bn. 7,0b billion dollars. That is the amount of money that YouTube in the last three years has paid out to creators, to people who have posted videos online on YouTube. Google has paid. YouTube has paid $70 billion. And it kind of speaks to look, follow the money. This is an incredibly vibrant, rich platform for people to make a Living. There's 3 million content creators on YouTube who are part of our monetization program. About half a million of those 3 million have had a channel for 10 years or more on YouTube. MrBeast Lilly Singh, Lisa Koshy. These are household names now and they are the new media entrepreneurs off the back of their brilliant content. But powered by the advertising and the revenue share that Google gives, that $70 billion is a big deal. And actually it's created a whole digital and financial ecosystem which is driving the industry. On top of that, obviously YouTube has evolved as a company and actually added more features and benefits. So as we've spoken about before on TVs in the living room, there's over a billion hours of watch time of YouTube every day globally. YouTube Shorts, our short form video product, has 2 billion people watching it. Every month, 70 billion videos a day are being watched. This sort of scale, this sort of audience is incredibly attractive to advertisers. It's incredibly powerful for creators because they can find their people. They can find the people who will love their content, whoever it is, and then we keep on expanding it. So podcast. 400 million hours of podcast listenership or viewership now on YouTube every day. It's a remarkable scale which allows a win in every direction. Creators get paid, advertisers find audiences, consumers find entertainment or fascinating content.
- [26:16]
A
There's huge numbers. What's the lesson for a marketer?
- [26:19]
D
Out of that there's multiple lessons. One of them is that if you get good at YouTube across YouTube's breadth of offerings, you can do the targeting, the analytics, the measurement, the performance at great pricing because of the scale, you can actually solve nearly all of your video requirements without having to then turn to a second and third and fourth platform. Of course you can do that. But get great at YouTube and you're set up for every part of the video funnel.
- [26:46]
A
Where can people find out more?
- [26:48]
D
You can head on over to think with Google and just search YouTube and getting the best out of YouTube on thinkwithgoogle.com sounds good.
- [26:54]
A
Thanks Josh.
- [27:09]
B
Is the goal to grow? I mean, you have four team members right now or do you want to just keep it nice and lean? We have this team before it works and that's it. Or do you want to kind of expand it and continue to maybe grow and eventually become, you know, essentially something like a traditional media company?
- [27:25]
C
Well, I don't think that those things are Necessarily paired. I think that we could grow in a really, really exciting, massive way and end up with a structure and a company that is pretty differently it's structured from how most media companies are structured right now.
- [27:39]
A
Well, hold on. Can you please elaborate? What are you doing here?
- [27:43]
C
Well, one of the things that we're doing is we're making one specific show. I think we're making a media company that is more structured like a production company. And I could see a future where that has a bunch of different products. We already sort of have three, if you think about. We have huge if true episodes, which are the 20 minute long, highly produced episodes that we've been talking about. We have the short form videos and then we also have a series called Huge Conversations, which are these long form interviews with the most important people influencing science and tech.
- [28:18]
A
Incredible gets. Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Wong, Jennifer Dudna. Very impressive.
- [28:22]
C
Exactly. And so those are three different creative products underneath the umbrella of huge if true. And the way that I think about building the show is we're building a branded house, not a house of brands. And we're watching the audience to see what ways might make sense. I mean, the reason why we launched huge Conversations is we were having these conversations and they were unbelievable. And I would end up using five minutes of the conversation in a highly produced technical episode. And people wanted to hear the rest, so we launched that.
- [28:52]
A
So I think these guys really like your. I mean, I think they like to go talk to somebody who's optimistic about technology, not somebody who's gonna grill them about how they're destroying the world. Right.
- [29:01]
C
I think that the content that we get out is a much more precise exploration of how they are trying to influence the world. I mean, I think this is a common critique, Ben. I think people see our show and they think two things. They think one, people have come to an independent creator because they can sort of bully an independent creator around. Or two, people have come to an independent creator who specifically makes optimistic science shows because they think they'll get softball questions. Right. Those are the two critiques that we're talking about here.
- [29:33]
A
I mean, well, I don't know. That's a good pitch to get an interview. And then if you do a tough interview, God bless. Right.
- [29:37]
C
And that's not the way that I think about it. I mean, watch the inter.
- [29:40]
A
No, I do, actually. I don't think you're asking them softball questions. I think you're asking really interesting questions. But I do think they are. It's an environment that they like. They like that they're optimistic. These are people who are very optimistic about technology and they like the optimism.
- [29:53]
C
But the way that these interviews are actually structured, it is. Optimism is required. So the concept is, I'm going to take you on a journey to understand the world that this person is trying to build. And that's an optimistic exercise for them. They, to your point, get the opportunity to really flesh out what is it that they want to build. And then I sort of think about it like we're walking through a forest and we're, you know, I'm going to help you explain the glowing house that you see at the end of the path. But in the process of doing that, we're going to look down all of the darker paths and you're, you're going to tell me about how we're going to get over the fallen tree or not go down this path or not go down that path. And the reason why I think optimism is required to have these interviews well, is if you listen to a lot of the interviews that they give these days. There were a bunch of interviews released with Mark Zuckerberg at the same time that we released ours. I think the reason why ours performed better for the audience is that it, it allowed us to dig deeper into what was actually likely to happen, as opposed to saying, here's the laundry list of questions that I have for you. I'm going to ask them in an antagonistic way, which, by the way, I think is much more a performance on the part of the journalist than actually a desire to serve the audience. By getting a detailed answer to the question. I can ask the same question in a bunch of different ways. It's my choice that I don't ask it in a way that is going to immediately pull the string and trigger the PR response. They know exactly the list of questions that I could ask if I was trying to get their latest comment on a bunch of controversial things that they're not going to break new news with me in that way. They would already have planned to do that if they were going to do it. So, for example, just to be really specific here, if I'm talking to Mark Zuckerberg and we talk about the vision of a future where we're going to be more connected between other people. All of this digital technology is going to help us have real human connections. I mean, we're using IT technological service right now to have this conversation. Okay, so we talk about this glowing house at the end of the path. We talk about how VR and AR are gonna make me Feel like I'm sitting right there with my mom and we're playing Scrabble, which she's gonna beat me at every time. And, like, this is gonna be great. I'm gonna. And I do. It is all genuine. When we're talking about this, I am really saying, oh, I see how this could be the future. Between telegram to telephone to FaceTime to real teleportation, telepresence, feeling like I'm there with another person. I buy that. That is a future I want to be part of. Asterisk, huge, if true. What are the things that we need to overcome in order for that to be a good version of this future, not a bad version. One of the questions that I had for Mark, and you can see the audience spike in asking this question, was, okay, so we're working our way toward this optimistic vision of a future that you are trying to get to. Well, then it seems obvious to me that the vision, the most important thing that we have to overcome is the fact that over the last few decades, people have really been struggling to connect. And here's a bunch of data that says that that's true. And then my question to Zuckerberg is, why do you think that's happening? Not you did it, but why do you think that's happening? What I'm trying to get the person that I interview to grapple with is both the promise and the peril of their vision actually coming true.
- [33:21]
A
Well, I mean, one of the things that I think is so interesting about what you're doing, maybe to bring your sort of optimistic futurism back to our business. We're obviously feeling this convergence. YouTube sort of becoming television. You see places like CNN starting to think about, okay, how do we convert our journalists into something that feels more like creators? And I'm curious, like, if you look out into the sort of near future where you spend a lot of your time actually, you know, how do you see this business? Like, how do you see your relationship to big, well, capitalized media companies? To a plat like, is YouTube? Does YouTube remain permanently essentially a monopoly platform here? Like, how do you see this shaping up?
- [33:59]
C
So for the last, I would say, two years, I think YouTube has now been the most watched streaming platform on televisions.
- [34:08]
B
Yeah.
- [34:09]
C
Blows my mind.
- [34:09]
A
Incredible.
- [34:10]
C
I mean, if you. If you could have told me when we launched huge of true not long before that, that the deal would be that I would own all of my own work, I would control my entire creative team and creative decision making, and I would publishing on the most watched streaming platform on television. I would say what an incredible future to have as it's a good deal as an opportunity. That's amazing. And so I think that there are really good reasons to explore streaming shows. I think that there are ways in which having upfront capital can allow you to make stuff that you couldn't make otherwise. Especially I have a dream of one day making huge, if true, near future fiction. I think that would be a really good fit for someone who A knows how to do that and I don't and B is able to finance it in a way that understands where it gets published, a subscription model and then gives you the upfront capital to make something that cost intense. With respect to actually what I do, I really don't see the end in sight for this at all. I see a future where this show and shows like it can continue to grow to be truly enormous, rivaling anything that I could have done at a media company. We could be an example of what the future of media might look like where you have a bunch of of different styles and a bunch of different teams making work that combines to a really rich media diet that has more flavors maybe than I had before.
- [35:36]
B
One thing that I'm really curious about, Cleo, is are there particular topics or areas that are just totally fascinating audiences right now? Are there just like certain videos that you know, oh my God, this is going to hit because it's about AI or because it's about whatever that kind of thing may be? What are things that your audience and people on YouTube cannot get enough of right now?
- [35:56]
C
Ooh, what a fun question. Off the top of my head, there are some very serious topics and there are some much lighter ones. So on the serious end, some of our highest performing videos have been the most technical. So the Large Hadron Collider at cern, or maybe our highest performing long form video is when Marques Brownlee and I went to go see a quantum computer. So that's one category of things that people are really interested in. The other category I found right now is in explanations of things that seem like questions you had when you were a kid, but actually are the cutting edge of science and technology right now. So, for example, I'm working on this story where I go in a zero G plane to explain what gravity is. And it turns out that what is gravity is one of the most controversial topics in theoretical physics right now. It's awesome. It's so complicated and so you can delight people by going in a zero G plane. It's delightful. Asterisk also a little bit nauseating. And also explain to someone what is the cutting edge of science by giving them that fun as well.
- [37:09]
A
It's interesting because I think the thing that almost everyone else in media is talking about 98% of the time is AI, which isn't really in either of those categories. Are people sick of having AI explained to them?
- [37:18]
C
I think for me, my interest is less in how does machine learning work these days? Because we have explained that we did several episodes about a year ago, but it's much more in what is the application here. So when we made an episode on AlphaFold, which is a huge deal for predicting protein structures, that was very exciting for people and for me, because it's a use of machine learning to do something that we hadn't been able to do before. Oh my God, how incredible. What does that mean the world might look like if we actually use it to even better predict what materials we could build or what medicines we might have? I actually think that a lot of our topics don't seem like AI, but have machine learning baked into them in some really interesting way. A sneak peek of an episode that we're working on is about asteroid detection and how we spot asteroids that might be coming for Earth. Turns out we're. We're pretty good at this and we're getting better. And there's a whole plan for what we would do if an asteroid were actually coming for Earth. But in order to spot them, we use a ton of machine learning and we also use humans that stay up at night and look at the systems and flag different things and send them. It's not fully automated, but it is informed by AI. So that's what I. Those are the AI topics that I get excited about. Now it's much more what is the specific application of this and why should I get excited about it? Or why should I be concerned and how could we fix it?
- [38:41]
B
It.
- [38:41]
A
It's so nice to like to get this note of optimism. It's kind of rare in our business and I realize my own taste probably runs to pessimism. I don't know if you've ever read that series the Last Policeman, when the asteroid does hit the Earth, but that's. I realize I tend to consume more of that, so it's good to learn why it's not hitting the Earth.
- [38:58]
C
I think a lot of people are like that and I think that has led to this media environment that we're now in. I mean, I think it's totally natural. If it bleeds, it leads. Has been a mantra in our business.
- [39:12]
A
For a long if it destroys the planet, it leads.
- [39:15]
C
Exactly. We all feel as journalists, that sense of if I made this headline a little scarier, do I think it would perform better? And I try to avoid that as much as possible. And there is a way to do it in a way that is genuine and also responds to people's genuine interests in a way that doesn't do that by just trying to grip them because they're scared. That impulse is something that has led both in News consumer and in newsmaker to a media ecosystem that is not offering a picture of the world as it really is. I mean, the world is scary and hard and there's a lot that we need to fix and the world is incredible and we're really lucky to be alive right now. And there are a lot of people that are working on making it better. And I just think that the more that we as journalists recognize our responsibility to show people both, the better I.
- [40:10]
A
Feel like I did that today at least. So thank you so much for joining us. Cleo.
- [40:14]
C
Thanks for having me.
- [40:26]
A
There's new content waiting for you on Think with Google that you won't want to miss. Think is the destination for marketers to access things like first of its kind research on AI adoption with the Boston Consulting Group, insights on four key consumer behaviors, streaming, scrolling, searching and shopping and deep dives on emerging technology and strategies that drive real growth. Get all of that and more by heading to thinkwithgoogle.com.
- [40:56]
B
So Ben, the question that I'm curious about is do you share her tech optimism, her childlike wonder about these topics about geothermal energy?
- [41:08]
A
You know, basically I do like, I mean, it is like very cool. It's, you know, it's really interesting because I was flying back from D.C. last night and watched Mountainhead, that new HBO movie that is just the bleak it unrelentingly dark and bleak. Sort of like sort of succession meets Dr. Strangelove in which these kind of really deranged versions of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, you know, are the absolute worst versions of themselves while isolated as a luxurious, you know, mountaintop retreat while one of their applications destroys the whole world through out of control social media. But the tech is bad and the people making it are bad is the basic sort of theme, which is I think a thread of how the culture sees technologists and I think Elon Musk, you know, as the most important technologist in the world who has also gotten deeply, strangely engaged in politics and who is wrapped around this very dark social media platform, I think, sort of created that sense. And it was sort of a nice palate cleanser to talk to Cleo, who just, like, wants to, like, check out fusion. There's this incredible thing where she's. One of the shows she didn't talk about where she's trying to, like, make a small model fusion reactor turn on and do fusion, and it glows purple. And she's like, I mean, there's incredible stuff happening in technology. The people who work on technology are obviously themselves, like, fundamentally optimistic. In her interview with Jensen Wang, he has these plans that are 10 years out, and she's trying to. Getting him to talk about, like, okay, like, in year three, how does it feel? And he's kind of, like, exciting, you know, and so I guess I liked that. I mean, I think you get a real sense of why people like her show.
- [42:47]
B
Yeah, it reminds me of tech journalism from, you know, what, 10, 15, 20 years ago, when there was a tint of optimism baked into the ways in which all these things were gonna, you know, these technologies were gonna make our lives better. And in many ways, they did make our lives much easier and better. And obviously came with a lot of drawbacks and weird, unforeseen kind of circumstances, which she said she looks down. A lot of what she's trying to do is to look down some of those dark alleys with some of these people as well, and to kind of press them. But ultimately, it seems like she. And they are both incentivized towards making something that's fun and optimistic and a little bubbly, which she kind of is. So, I mean, it makes sense. Yeah.
- [43:30]
A
And it's part of the story of tech. It's a big part. Right. Is people who are obsessed with tinkering and making cool things. But another part, of course, is sales and commerce and salespeople who will say anything to sell you the thing. And she's less interested in that. And I think sometimes the business story of tech is. Is a very important part of that story too. And. And the technologist would rather talk about the science. But, you know, I don't think she's allergic to that. It's just not. It's just not what her show is about.
- [43:56]
B
One thing to her credit is that she says that at the top of a lot of her shows. I mean, she said that before her interview with Jensen Huang, where she said, look, I'm not going to ask you about what's going on, you know, the finances of your company. I'm not going to ask you about, you know, basically these things in the news that we see. But I think it's really interesting and does feel different that she both is aware that that is an area of interest for a lot of people, and yet she's like. The audience that I'm interested in is more focused on how these chips made video games so much better. Right. And how, like, the development of video games is the thing that's actually powering all of these developments that are happening across the rest of technological landscape and the cutting edge of technology. So I thought that's interesting as well.
- [44:38]
A
Yeah. And it's clearly a big audience for it. I'm also, you know, it's funny, like, when journalists talk about tech, very, very often they're basically talking about social media. There was a period when the tech beat was Facebook and Twitter and Google and like, you know, there's really not enough coverage. Geothermal energy, max. Like, we gotta. We gotta remedy that. No, but I mean, really, these things are incredibly cool and it's. And it's sort of outside the media conversation about quote, unquote, tech. It's actual technology.
- [45:04]
B
Yeah. Ben, thanks for inviting Cleo. It was such a fun guest.
- [45:07]
A
Yeah, she's a really interesting figure. It's gonna be interesting to watch where she goes and what she does over the next few years.
- [45:12]
B
Absol. Well, that's it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening to Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media. Our show is produced, as always, by Shina Ozaki, with special thanks to Josh Billinson, Britta Galanis, Chad Lewis, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pizzino, Garrett Wiley, Jules Zern, and Tori Kaur. A lot of people to thank, as always. Our engineer is Rick Kwan and our theme music is by Billy Libby. Our public editor is Joe Posner, who turned us on to Cleo, and we.
- [45:45]
A
Thank him for that and many other things. And if you like the show, please do subscribe on what your podcast platform of choice or Please subscribe on YouTube where we're now really producing this thing at a decent quality.
- [45:57]
B
That is true. We're coasting off the success of our Adam Friedland episode, and we're coasting off of the success of all of our fellow YouTubers who we're inviting on the show.
- [46:05]
A
My fellow YouTubers.
- [46:06]
B
Yes, exactly.
- [46:07]
A
That's right.
- [46:07]
B
We're among them now these days. But if you want more, you can always sign up for Semaphore's media newsletter, out every Sunday night. And we'll see you next week.