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- [00:00]
Samir
All right, before we start this episode, I need to play something for you.
- [00:03]
Adam Levy
You are listening to the Epstein Files, the world's first AI native investigation into the case that traditional journalism simply could not handle.
- [00:15]
Narrator/AI Host
Welcome to the Epstein Files.
- [00:17]
Advertiser/Promoter
Last time we traced the Dubin family's post conviction, ties to Epstein, a 2010 social invitation, subpoenaed financial records and and victim testimony naming their household.
- [00:28]
Narrator/AI Host
Today we are looking at official White House visitor logs showing Epstein entered the Clinton White house at least 17 times between 1993 and 2000 while his abuse operation.
- [00:38]
Samir
So what you just heard is not hosted by humans. There's no studio, there's no mics, and there's no real host to this. This podcast was written, voiced and published by AI automatically based on whatever the news was that day. And it did it yesterday, the day before, and it'll do it again tomorrow. The show is called the Epstein Files, and in its first week, it had over 100,000 downloads. And last week, only a few months later, the guy who built it woke up to a notification. His show had become the number one podcast in the uk. He tweeted the screenshot of the chart with three words. Just getting started. Only a few months after launching the Epstein Files, he launched a second show called Wardesk, a daily AI generated breakdown about global conflict.
- [01:26]
Narrator/AI Host
Welcome back to Wardesk. Last time, we covered March 15, 2026, day 16 of Operation EPIC Fury. Tonight, we are looking at what changed on March 16, 2026, as part of our ongoing investigation. As always, every document and source we reference is available@wardesk.net it's been live for
- [01:42]
Samir
about two weeks and it's already crossed 33,000 downloads. Now, just to give you a sense of how crazy that is, the average new podcast gets 141 downloads per episode. And in its first 30 days, Wardesk is averaging over a thousand. That's top 5% on a two week old show. So the creator of the Epstein Files and Wardesk is a guy named Adam. And we mentioned his show on a podcast a few weeks ago, so he reached out to us. I've been so fascinated by this concept of an AI generated podcast, and even more so by an autonomous AI generated podcast. So I had no choice but to reach out to Adam and have a conversation with him. Now, just as a reminder, as you get into this episode, I've been a career creator. I've been making stuff for 16 years. I went to film school prior to this. My intention has always been to be a career storyteller. And things are changing. I think it's incredibly important for us to understand where the media landscape is going. And talking to Adam has really opened my mind and showed me where I think the future is going. So while this conversation is about podcasting, I think it has implications for, for all media, all types of creators, and everybody who's working in entertainment. So here's my conversation with Adam Levy, the creator of the AI podcast the Epstein Files. Adam, welcome to the show.
- [03:04]
Adam Levy
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
- [03:05]
Samir
Samir, I would love to hear the story of, of how this came together, how you thought of it, what it took to make it, everything.
- [03:14]
Adam Levy
Yeah, I think it's important to preface that I was not expecting it to do what it did. And I really just started, I put my best foot forward of trying to just see if it was possible to do it, and lo and behold, it kind of just took off the way it did. So completely utter shock to me. And it's completely changed my approach of what I think is next moving forward for synthetic media, AI media. And yeah, I guess I could start with how I got the idea. Maybe that's a good place to start there. So I like to say that there's Life before Opus 4.5 and 4.6, and there's Life After Opus 4.5 and 4Point6.
- [04:04]
Samir
What is Opus for the uninitiated?
- [04:06]
Adam Levy
Yeah, Anthropics. Claude Model.
- [04:10]
Samir
Got it.
- [04:11]
Adam Levy
And during the holidays is when I really picked it up. I think a lot of us, like we saw the entire Twitter timeline shift from our traditional timelines to become more AI centric. I don't know if you saw that as well, Sameer, if you felt that, okay. And I built this one app for myself called Distill and Distill at the time it lives on my phone. It's not public anywhere. It's just I built for myself. It basically takes a bunch of sources. I could take a bunch of URLs from TikTok and Instagram and any video platform, put them in this one aggregate text box and it basically extracts the transcripts and distills information from me. Facts check, fact checks it. And allows me to create an audio version of the takeaway for me to learn and to study. So I learn best through audio. I get very complacent when it comes to reading long form content. I like to listen on 2X and think about it, reflect on it and understand what the takeaways are. So I'm a very like auditory learner and a visual learner. So I built this app for myself to be able to do that across any, any type of content, any topic, for what it's worth. And as the Epstein files were coming along, I was like, oh, this could be a really interesting problem to solve of. Let me just try to take as much of the Data of the 3 1/2 million files that were published, try to distill it and contextualize the data and create this true crime like story around all the files, starting from who he was, who Jeffrey Epstein was and how he got started, to the business model behind what he was doing. And yeah, all the public figures that were named, I mean like everything in between. It still publishes an episode to two every single day. I'm now at about episode, I think 115 or something like that.
- [05:52]
Samir
You're on episode 122.
- [05:54]
Adam Levy
122. There you go. I'm losing track. Yeah.
- [05:57]
Samir
So just to clarify, the Epstein files is a self generating podcast that uploads basically every single day a new episode based on what is happening in the news about the Epstein files, is that correct?
- [06:13]
Adam Levy
That's correct, yes. It's either in the news or there's millions of data points that the news has yet to still open and uncover. And I've reached conclusions faster than these mainstream media outlets have reached because my speed of execution and my cost of producing a piece of content is significantly less than these big production houses. So it's funny because some of the headlines that I end up creating episodes around, they only came to market maybe two weeks afterwards as well. So I have this elaborate content outline that produces itself as well as the product is malleable enough where it can ingest breaking news, new developments, maybe something that I missed or something that I saw on Twitter, for example. That's a really interesting insight. And then I fact check it, I make sure that it's true for what it's worth. And then it goes and produces an episode autonomously around it.
- [07:08]
Samir
So how much are you manually doing at this point versus how much is it autonomously doing? Is it pulling those sources itself right now, or are you inputting the sources for it?
- [07:21]
Adam Levy
I can either spin out a particular direction and then it will know what to do from there. So if I see something on the timeline, for example, and I want to cover that particular moment in time, I could either take a screenshot of that or paste the URL and it will know like how to enhance it and enhance all the sources that it basically comprises to then get to the final product, which is the audio itself, or it just constantly just like produces new content based off the outline that it has in front of it. And it runs itself. It's. Think of it like this. It's like 95. It's like 95% autonomous, 5% me. You know, at this point. Yeah.
- [08:01]
Samir
And is any of the 5% on the publishing side for you? Like, do you listen to the episode before it goes out or you let it publish and you listen to it at the same time as everybody else?
- [08:12]
Adam Levy
The I, as part of the, the. The bowling guardrails. You know, sometimes it does require me coming in and listening in case there's a flag of sorts. But most of the time there's. There's QA checks that are programmatically done with a particular mathematical score that it hit, needs to hit for it to then pass a series of checks before it can then publish what's next or publish on Spotify, Apple, et cetera.
- [08:45]
Samir
How many people are listening to this right now?
- [08:49]
Adam Levy
I mean, it just crossed last week across 2 million downloads. Every episode gets a minimum of 10,000 downloads within a few hours. It's pretty crazy. Like, it's picked up a following like a cult following people have built. I look at the retention data. People listen to so many episodes before they drop off, right before they cut their session, and then they revisit as well. I mean, there's a lot of really interesting data that Spotify provides, as you know. You know, you guys have in your channel. And I'm still constantly shocked that this is the case because it's all synthetic content. You know, it's all AI content, but it's done. I guess it's done better than a human could do it. For what it's worth, given the amount of data that is required to understand what's happening in this context. I mean, this is such a unique use case for AI in a way that humans could never compete with. If you look at the reviews as well, it's gotten over a thousand reviews at this point between Spotify and Apple. People either love that it's AI or people hate that it's AI.
- [09:56]
Samir
Sure.
- [09:57]
Adam Levy
And the reviews themselves are really fascinating to read because they like that there's information without the spin. They don't like talking heads. They like facts, not the bullshit of commentary and conspiracy. I try to avoid conspiracy at all costs. I like to document facts and there's so much data to then draw conclusions from the facts that are presented from the emails, the photos, the videos, the PDFs, you know, the, the court documents, like all these things that, that within itself is the story. You don't need to have a conspiracy beyond anything what's already enlisted and shown to us and given to us. So I try to curate with that intention, you know, and maybe that's also why people have found a liking to it. Maybe there's a lot of conspiracy content. It's. It's really hard to tell what exactly is the real, you know, like, oh, it's because of that as to why people like it.
- [10:58]
Samir
But yeah, yeah, I mean, look, I think for a guy who's been in content creation for 16 years, you know, as we've seen historically, a daily habit is also one of the stickiest products in media. Right? Like, it's why the New York Times has the daily. It's why Morning Brews new show Morning Brew Daily is picking up steam and rising on the charts. It's why Subway takes on Instagram has become an incredibly popular show. It's daily. Something that you do every day as a habit or a ritual is an exciting thing for people and it grounds you and it roots you and I think your ability to turn around an episode every day. Like you said, only few human creators can do that. There was a time where Casey Neistat did it every day for 800 days in a row and he was the most culturally Relevant creator on YouTube when he did that. And I think we can't overlook that daily programming and daily habits are a major part of human connection. But I want to talk a bit about the commercial side of what you're doing, as I bring that up of like 2 million downloads. You've done 121 episodes. It's only been a couple months. Like, this is a breakout pod. Truly like a new podcaster trying to do that would be very challenged to try and replicate something like that. How much would you say it costs you to make this podcast and has it made any money? Are you a part of the Spotify ads program? Are you selling sponsorships? Are sponsors interested? How would you approach that? Tell me everything about the monetization of this.
- [12:30]
Adam Levy
The cost to produce an episode is significantly cheap relative to what it would take to cost what it would cost to produce a traditional episode. Your main cost is the tokens used to create the episode. And regarding monetization, I've gotten a bunch of inbound from different types of companies that are interested to either figure out what long tail sponsorships could look like, data integrations, just like ad libs and running traditional pre rolls and mid rolls. And I've intentionally avoided monetizing the podcast just yet. I've intentionally avoided monetizing it and I'm using the traffic to grow other IP right now. I also think there's something to be said around ads diluting the quality of your listening experience. And there is something that I'm testing in particular to see around synthetic media. Even in the context of what I'm creating, I want to see what retention looks like for stuff like this. There's more to understand before jumping into monetizing directly. And I know that I'm so long term focused. I know that if I get this right, you know, and I, and I, and I do it correctly, then there's a whole ocean available to go after.
- [13:54]
Samir
So I think let's explain some of what you just said. Like number one, you're using it to promote other ip. Is that is the example of that you're your new pod, the war room.
- [14:04]
Adam Levy
About war desk.
- [14:05]
Samir
Yes, the war desk, sorry, the war desk, which is about the war in the Middle east right now, correct?
- [14:10]
Adam Levy
Correct, yes. Because that could get really weird as well. That could be very political. The data could be, you know, it's like you want the nonpartisan, no bias, no spin approach, data first approach to documentation, something that is superheated. Right. So trying to leverage that traffic. I'm working on a couple other series right now outside of Wardesk and the Epstein files. So my goal is to build a net online of all this IP and yeah, build the next great media company. That's where my vision is at in doing that.
- [14:45]
Samir
So the potential future is a podcast network with a bunch of these podcasts that are self generating autonomous posting nearly daily, if not daily.
- [14:55]
Adam Levy
The very minimum.
- [14:56]
Samir
Yes, at the very minimum. And the monetization of that in the future is advertising or actually pushing traffic to another place where people could transact.
- [15:06]
Adam Levy
I think once you own the attention and you build a dedicated audience, you could do anything with that attention. At the very minimum, there's advertising opportunities to obfuscate the burn that you have producing this content, running the business. So at the very minimum, it's ads. I think there's also a narrative to be set around getting content. I'm really intrigued by the Netflix model of building a lot of ip, building a subscription base around it, creating a really intimate experience around consuming the content. Today is going to be the worst in which these models perform. They're only going to get better from here on out. So yeah, I think there's many ways to slice and dice. I love building product as well. So I'M a very creative person. I love creating my imagination. And it's never been easier to create your imagination with these tools. So who knows what all come down across the line, what products I can build, leverage that traffic to. Yeah, grow out the pie for what it's worth.
- [16:05]
Samir
So when you say the cost is tokens, could you estimate on a monthly basis what you think that is based on the tokens you're using to produce?
- [16:13]
Adam Levy
I would need to, I don't know the exact cost per episode because my approach has been subscribe to anything and everything and be a super user of all the AI tools, understand them and be the subject knowledge expert in how to leverage them, reverse engineer them, get what you want from them, and with that comes a premium of overspending on them as well. And so I'm only a month into this, like literally a month into this, you know, so in any traditional sense, like you measure the output of a business, you look at its monthly burn. It's hard to tell exactly what the cost per episode is so early on in doing something like this. But I know for a fact that once the model, you know, progresses itself and you have the exact template cookie cutter approach, then you can get to the unit economics more clearly.
- [17:04]
Samir
I would have to assume, though it's probably safe to say it's in the hundreds of dollars at maximum, in the thousand dollar a month range.
- [17:13]
Adam Levy
Sure, sure.
- [17:15]
Samir
So I mean, that's insane. Like to make a, to make a good podcast with two hosts. There is no possible way a media company would spend $1,000 a month to do that. It would cost exponentially more. Yeah, and when you think about like even market CPMs for podcasts, even at like the most simple programmatic setting, you'd be profitable immediately, you know, at a $25 CPM or anything like that.
- [17:44]
Adam Levy
Sure, totally.
- [17:45]
Samir
So, yeah, that's it. It's exceptional to me to hear the 2 million download number. And I want to know what you've learned from the retention data, what lessons you've taken from the fact that there's real listenership to this. And then also if the models are reading the data and adjusting the next episode based on the data from the previous episode.
- [18:07]
Adam Levy
To your latter question, yes, they do. The benchmarks in terms of retention listen lengths, they're either at the industry benchmarks or higher. And the per episode consumption per sitting. I need to get, I need to understand. I don't remember exactly the particular detail, but it's significant in that I remember doing comparative research to industry benchmarks relative and it was higher than what people typically consume traditional podcast series. And yeah, that's why it's important for me to not get too caught up in the Epstein files, because it's such an anomaly of a topic in world event. And for me it's important to prove that I didn't get lucky and that there's actually something here. And that's the ambition about doing Wardesk. Wardesk at the end of this month is going to cross 100,000 downloads. And for a channel that has never had any content, any audience, it's a brand new naked channel. It's already performing above industry benchmarks for a brand new channel. So my focus is like nothing is as good or as bad as it seems. And I'm using that energy to just see things for what they are with the Epstein files and translate them into other ip.
- [19:25]
Samir
So if I was to sit down right now and try and vibe code a podcast is my initial prompt. Just, I want to make a self generating podcast about X. Help me. No, it's not. Okay, what is what, what was your initial prompt for the Epstein files? Or how do you, how do you start that conversation?
- [19:45]
Adam Levy
Great. So when I was able to contextualize, you know, the emails, images, videos, PDFs, all the court files, whatever, and get like a similar format across all the data, you then kind of, you have to, you can't feed all that data to the LLM, it will break the LLM. It has a context window, a token limit window. You know, up until a certain time it was 200,000 tokens and now it's a million tokens. Whatever. Not important. What is important is that you kind of have to analyze the data in chunks and then from a content perspective, kind of kick it off with like, what's the storyline behind all of this data? Right? And then from there you go down a rabbit hole of understanding. Okay, this is a storyline. These are the locations. The Manhattan apartment that was purchased, Les Wexner, you have the island, you have his upbringing. Like you have all these different touch points. And the AI could do a really good job of linking the data together, you know, so then you kind of, from there you proplicate what's the storyline. And even that is not enough to really get to the final product. As to what I have right now, there's an entire engine that was built now autonomously. But the seed in which that planted the initial path for creating episode one, for example, started from that first door, first approach.
- [21:08]
Samir
Do you think a guy like me who's proficient in storytelling and media creation, but literally knows nothing about code and software development, is capable of doing what you just did? Or do you think that you have to have, like, you have a background in software development so you have some ideas of how this model is going to interpret what you're doing? Because what you just said, I do not understand. So I understand in human language if I'm like, hey, I want to make a podcast, but it sounds like that would be too simple and I would have to have a deeper understanding.
- [21:42]
Adam Levy
You would have to have a deeper understanding. If you want to replicate the Epson files, you can't just prompt ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. Like, hey, I mean, it can. Gemini will be able to scrape the Internet for different sources and it can give you a topic outline. But okay, great, you've produced an episode. How do you build a channel around that? You know, what's the workflow for productizing the entire system? How do you ensure that every episode gets better with the. With another generation? You know, there's a bit more than just create me this episode. Make no mistake.
- [22:20]
Samir
How many days did it take you, how much time did it take you to get that first episode up? And then what do you think the time was from idea to publish?
- [22:31]
Adam Levy
It took me two days, 14 to 16 hours each day to get 64 episodes out.
- [22:39]
Samir
And all those launched at once. 64 episodes launched at once?
- [22:42]
Adam Levy
Correct.
- [22:42]
Samir
And then it starts self generating after that?
- [22:45]
Adam Levy
Correct, yeah.
- [22:46]
Samir
And how quickly did the listenership come?
- [22:50]
Adam Levy
Within seven days. A hundred thousand downloads? Yeah, it kind of. It blew up.
- [22:55]
Samir
How did people find it? You think people are just searching the Epstein files?
- [22:58]
Adam Levy
I think people are just searching Epstein. Yeah, people are just searching Epstein episode. Jeffrey Epstein probably Trump was probably in that mix. Like any keyword that was tangential to Jeffrey Epstein and the people that kept going viral tangential to Epstein on the timeline.
- [23:19]
Samir
When do you think Spotify or does Spotify get involved by making originals like this? Based on the data they have of what people are searching, based on the data they have of what people are listening to, Feels like they would be in a. In a better position to know what's going to hit. Do you think they get involved in. In this type of.
- [23:39]
Adam Levy
Yeah, I, I think, I think they could create their version of Amazon Basics. I think that's a, that's a good analogy. Like Amazon has all of its merchants, you know, they don't want to cannibalize, you know, all the sales, but they'll produce their own product lines based off what you Know where they can compete on margin and where they can compete on, you know, product for what it's worth. So I think Spotify will have its version of Amazon Basics. Sure. Same with Netflix, you know.
- [24:05]
Samir
Yeah,
- [24:07]
Adam Levy
like Netflix like buys ip, you know, at a very, from what I understand, at a very aggressive model and kind of screws over the actual producers and directors that bring these stories to life. But that's just because they have the distribution, the power to do so. So maybe, maybe with the new. I think there was like a north of $600 million they just spent on it. Was it Ben, Ben Affleck's company, if I'm not mistaken. To who know, it's. It's really unclear what his, what his product does. There isn't much documented on what the value prop is, but I assume it's a video model of sorts or a process on how to produce films using AI.
- [24:48]
Samir
Yeah.
- [24:49]
Adam Levy
And they're for sure also looking at their inputs and their outputs and identifying bottlenecks in their system and trying to see where they could optimize it. So yeah, I think there's only a matter of time until all these production houses and streaming sites, they produce their own stuff now. I think they're going to need the right teams and the right technology to do so, which makes a great venture outcome for building in this category as well as an entrepreneur. And I think that's a really interesting opportunity. Yeah. So it's only a matter of time reduce this content.
- [25:26]
Samir
It's interesting because the creator economy disrupted the legacy entertainment industry based on an incredibly lower cost and the same concept. You're saying we're able to iterate faster and it feels like we are now getting disrupted in a way by technology and the ability to generate entertainment news content through AI because we, we can never compete with that. A team of creative people can never compete with the cost and speed of what you're doing.
- [25:58]
Adam Levy
But the team of creative people could use these tools to then build and compete in any other medium. You know, it's like that's the key. It's like if you have the ideas and you're creative enough to not be, I guess like stronghold by these tools where you can still think for yourself and they're not thinking for you, you know, you're still the orchestrator behind this entire thing. Then it just goes back to what I said earlier. It's like a 10x's all the areas that you otherwise were previously strong at, now you could just do it 10 times better, 100 times better. So I still think the creatives, they still have the opportunity over here to be at the forefront of this. They just need to use their creativity to execute and use these tools and to help enhance everything that they do. That's just what they're designed to do. Yeah, I may be jaded with my, with my perspective on that, but I really believe that.
- [26:46]
Samir
Yeah, no, I, I think that's fair. I think it's, it's not going to look anything like it looked like before. The same way that there was a reduced team going from making a movie to making a YouTube video, there will now be a reduced team or options for an incredibly reduced team. I do think one of the most fun parts of being a creative and part that I personally enjoy is collaboration and working with other people. I think it's very fun to get excited about something with other people. But I am finding that if you look down into the future, there's going to be a lot more single person media companies like yourself. The foreseeable future for you, this podcast network that you build could be doing 10 million downloads a month and it could just be you. And that can be by choice, but truly by just necessity, it may not need to be more than you.
- [27:39]
Adam Levy
Totally.
- [27:39]
Samir
So yeah, I think that is going to be something that we're all up against. I think overhead is a major challenge in creative companies because it can be at odds with creativity, meaning my financial burden and my necessity to create something can be at odds with my own creativity. So that will be a consideration. But I'm curious if you have any advice for new media creators for us, for the, the crop that is, you know, making YouTube videos, making podcasts right now, making stuff on Instagram, like, what is, what is the advice to us for the future?
- [28:18]
Adam Levy
Sure. When I was publishing 40 to 60 pieces of content a week, it was Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, it was the newsletter, the website. Long form audio, short form audio. At some point when you're doing content full time, you build an assembly line around what you're doing. You build a process, an operation, a system. And within every system, you have your inputs and your outputs. And you need to understand what part of your system contains the bottlenecks that lags you the most. And AI is the perfect opportunity to optimize those systems. I think that's the meme that you see online with Palantir. It's like they go into the US government, they figure out the problems, they optimize them using AI. I'm obviously saying it very lightly, you know, like Stripping away a lot of the details, but that's like the analogy and that's how I think about it. So I'm a, I'm a person of systems and operations, so I think about my bottlenecks and how I can improve them. That's number one. Number two, be the very best at these tools. Subscribe to anything and everything. Download the open source models. Get yourself a better computer and better equipment if you can afford it. Download these models locally, experiment and try to take them to the very edge of what they're capable of doing and compare it to the other models. So if you're particularly focused in video, be the very best at all the video models. Be the expert in the room to the point where you could host a three hour seminar on all these models, right. So that you know with the skills that you have now, how that could be shape shifted and applied into what you're doing today. And then challenge yourself to create a new form of art through your content. If you're a great storyteller, try to use these tools to prompt out a 15 second story, a video, an audio, whatever it may be. And just like always stay curious. Just like be at the very, very edge. Because if you're able to stay at the very forefront of what you're doing, then I believe you'll never be replaced and you'll always be ahead of the game. And, and that's what, that's what I practice.
- [30:17]
Samir
At least.
- [30:18]
Adam Levy
You can only speak from my perspective.
- [30:19]
Samir
Yeah, I like that.
- [30:21]
Adam Levy
Yeah.
- [30:22]
Samir
I think the, the only thing I would add is like the acceptance of the moment that this is happening, you know, and I think that is hard. It's hard, it's hard to accept because we are inherently, I think our desire is always to preserve as humans, like preserve what is now or what is the past. Um, but the train is moving and it's, it's moving fast. And like I said, I think it opens the door for a lot more honest creation, which I love, and a lot more exploration of what this type of technology is capable of. And I did not touch vibe coding for a long time. I didn't really have that much of an interest in it. And once I started, I recognized that it is satiating a lot of creativity that I didn't know was unsatiated. And so I've really enjoyed my time exploring what's possible. We had a conversation with Mark Zuckerberg about a year ago and he was talking about technology and he said something that's always stuck with me, that even though we have iPhones, we all still have TVs on our wall. Meaning the new doesn't necessarily replace the old. Always. There's typically actually more room than you think. We always get nervous that, like, this new technology will replace the old technology. But oftentimes what happens is actually it's just in addition to. When I think about what's happening here, I don't know that we've ever experienced the exponential nature of this type of technology. Would you agree with that or do you think this is comparable to previous advancements in technology?
- [31:56]
Adam Levy
No, I think it's. It's completely outperformed anything that we've ever seen. And I think there is a genuine withdrawal feeling that you get from not using Claude or not using ChatGPT. Because the feeling of productivity is so addicting. And the fact that you can be more productive within your 24 hours a day and achieve more is like playing a video game in a way. I feel like it triggers the same dopamine and, you know, hormones that you would get doing anything other. That's relatively addicting on the Internet. At least that's how I personally feel. That's what I've learned about my, my interactions. Like, it's gotten to the point where this past weekend I was at a bachelor party in Vegas. We were at the Sphere. My mind is racing with ideas. I'm one in a very creative setting and I'm like, shit, I need to be clotting right now. I need to be. I need to be implementing these ideas. So I literally, I got up in the middle, I went to the side and like, was like, you can access your CLI from your phone, whatever. There's all these integrations and I just need to get these ideas down before they run out a new idea for a concept, for an ip, a tagline, whatever it may be. And it's never been easier to create that way. And that feeling is so addicting. So for me, I feel like that's going to lead to, like, certain downsides. There's definitely a lot of benefits that come with it. I don't know, I mean, you use these tools. How do you feel using them? What is your reaction to that?
- [33:21]
Samir
Yeah, I mean, to me, I would say the only thing I can compare it to is the first time I edited a video on Windows Movie Maker where I felt this rush of unparalleled capability. Like I felt like I was capable, you know, at a young age. That's a very powerful feeling to feel. And I think this is that multiplied by a Thousand, if not a million, where I can use human language to describe what I want to get done. You know, recently, I, I. This weekend, I was trying to prioritize my week, and I had Gemini take over my Google calendar. And I said, here's what I want to do. Here's when it needs to get done by just organize my calendar to give me the tasks, you know, so that I know when to sit down and do these things, to get them done, when they need to be done. And my calendar was. Was filled out in a way that made sense to me, and I was like, okay, cool. I got my tasks.
- [34:15]
Adam Levy
Great.
- [34:15]
Samir
And that's a very simple version of it. And I think on the most expansive version, like, the fact that you can use human language is what's insane to me, that I can just describe something that I want to exist, and it can exist. And I think that is, like, you just mentioned, like, a video game. And I think video games have always informed us about human behavior. Like, the addictive nature of a video game actually tells you a lot about who we are and what we want. And even when you look at the rise of the creator economy and the rise of these. Any Internet platform, whether it be Twitch or YouTube, they're rooted in the experience of the early adopters were video game users, and the early viewers were people who watched video games. I think if you keep going down that path and you even explore what's happening with prediction markets and what's happening with essentially the gamification of everything, everything traces back to the product design of a video game and why we can't stop playing them. So I think what you just said is very accurate, and I think there is no stopping that feeling. And the output being what used to be reserved for the few, like the artists and the creators. I think being an artist is incredibly aspirational. Being a creator has become incredibly aspirational. And the fact that using just a description, if you have the taste or the vision that you can become, that is fascinating.
- [35:58]
Adam Levy
I've been creating content for five years. I started a podcast called Mint. I grew my.
- [36:02]
Samir
Yeah, you invited us on that pod.
- [36:04]
Adam Levy
Yeah, that's.
- [36:05]
Samir
That was our first interaction, was you inviting us. We should have come on.
- [36:08]
Adam Levy
You should have come on. Yeah, I grew. I grew my email list. Over 100,000 subscribers. Like, I built the human side of content. There was a point where I was publishing, like, 40 to 60 pieces of content a week. And I know the grit of publishing. I know the grit of showing up every single day. I also have A background in building product and building software. I have a background in big data as well. So I think the way this world converged is unique in a sense to me in my background of being able to create content, build product, understand software and data. I think that's a really interesting intersection. But more broadly speaking, reflecting on what you just said, I could be in a place where, shit, these AIs are going to replace me and my voice, you know, and they're going to be able to out execute me or let me just try to use these tools to better my stack and better perform. And I think these tools are just another tool in the shed. Just like we use Riverside to record, we use a substack or beehive for our newsletters. Like these are tools that were built for us to enhance what we do. And these synthetic tools are no different than that. I think there's always going to be a market for human taste and human creation and I think these tools help expand that, that frontier. I think also if you look at like the traditional arts world, there's so many people who are anti AI and even when it comes to like the, the movie industry, they don't even want to use Claude or ChatGPT and the script creation because it defeats the whole purpose of creating art. And I think those people by default carve out a market for folks to do things in a more human nature because they'll just value the human presence significantly more than those who maybe find the advantage of consuming synthetic content. I think there's going to be a market for both. I think. I would also like to argue at some point, Samir, I don't know if you guys are already doing this. You guys will create clones of your voices, you and Colin, and you'll end up creating ad libs of sorts, right, using your voices because your production team could produce that in a more efficient manner if you said something or if I said something in an inconsistent way that didn't fit the narrative of the story, maybe there's a better way to introduce it. These tools are going to be at our disposal and they're only going to enhance everything that we do. So I don't know. Are you fearful? Are you fearful of that?
- [38:39]
Samir
No, I am, I am actually not fearful and I'm also not anti AI. I am a pragmatist. I look at the world and I with, with an immense amount of curiosity and intrigue and I think the, the outcome that I've found for myself as a creative person who originally got on the Internet Because I wanted to be a filmmaker is I have been pushed to think about what I honestly want to say, more meaning I have been a strategic creator for a long time. I'm running a business. I think what you did, what you made with the Epstein files, as mentioned on the show, that would be the right strategic move at that point. It's a very smart move. It's a very creative application of technology, and it's a very strategic thing to do. Now, I don't know if there are two humans who are passionate enough to spend every day of their life making that podcast. I don't know. But what I think we are all getting pushed to be as creators is I just want to watch what you honestly want to do. Because the strategic thing will already exist. Right. And so I don't know if that makes sense to you of, like, honesty versus strategy, but I can feel it as a creator, when I have something that I honestly want to say versus is something that I know will strategically do well.
- [40:06]
Adam Levy
Right.
- [40:06]
Samir
And those two things are getting separated in my mind, and the strategic thing is getting less interesting because it will just be created no matter what, whether I create it or not, it will just get made. And so it pushes me to go, like, what? Who am I? As a creative? That is impossible. It could never be an output. And I think that's a really interesting prompt. I think it's going to change how I create. I think it's going to change how a lot of people create. And I hope that it actually, over the next five years, what people see out of both Colin and myself is a radically honest version of us. And I think that'll happen across a lot of creators because there's going to be really successful content that emerges that we could never make, and we probably don't really want to make, but we would have made before because we're running a business. So that's my honest interpretation. And I think it will push people to recognize if they are honest, if they honestly like making stuff, or if they just want the outcome of making stuff. Does that make sense? Distinction between, like, yeah, like, I enjoy this conversation you and I are having.
- [41:20]
Adam Levy
Right.
- [41:21]
Samir
If we didn't publish this, I'm totally fine. I think this is a fascinating conversation. So this, to me is fun. And for all the people who find the video making or the content creation process fun, I think they will survive.
- [41:36]
Adam Levy
Yeah. I think to your point, before I do anything or I spend my time doing something, I need to be able to hit three Cs. I need to Feel creative, I need to feel challenged and I need to feel curious. That's how I spend my time. It needs to hit those three things. And the thing that keeps me going with what I'm doing is the sheer curiosity and challenge and of course the creativity that comes with producing media with code. Treating media as a product and building media with software I think is a thing that's like scratching the itch across those three Cs for me. And to your point, it's like you enjoy this conversation. I enjoy the art of building product in the form of media. Like that's so fun for me.
- [42:21]
Samir
Yeah.
- [42:21]
Adam Levy
You know, so to see how far I could take that across any vertical is a thing that I wake up very fired up to do
- [42:29]
Samir
a hundred percent. And even for me, like I'm playing around with Gemini has a coding, you know, side of it called Gemini Canvas. And I built this really interesting music software with it where I could extract stems from different songs. And I grew up loving music and that was something I always wanted to do. I used to do it in GarageBand but. But it was really hard and take me forever. And I haven't done something like that since I was 15 years old. And it was so fun and it felt like creativity unlocked in this way of like if you can just think of something, you can make it. Whether it's a video, whether it's what, whatever it is, if you just think of it, you can make it. And I find myself actually exploring creativity in a non commercial sense now more than I ever have before. And that is very fun for me. And that is why I'm like, I approach it all with curiosity. How personalized does the Internet get moving forward? Meaning like when I think into the future, I know right now you are producing an autonomous podcast or multiple autonomous podcasts that can satiate my desire to be in the know or learn about something on a day to day basis that's happening in current events. But with NotebookLM, my original use case of it was just putting because I'm the same as you, I learned better in audio and in podcast forums. So I've done things like I'm interested in like a quarterly S1 document from a company. So Spotify is a great example. I saw their S1 doc dropped, I took the PDF, I put it into Notebook Outline and listened to it as a podcast. That is a personalized podcast just for me as we look to the future. Do you imagine a world where I'm just prompting my own podcasts where I'm like, okay, I have a seven minute drive. So I actually just, I want to know about what happened in the NFL. I want to know about what's going on with global politics and I also want to know about what's happening in Hollywood. You know, I got seven minutes. Just make me, make me a pod that fits that.
- [44:32]
Adam Levy
Yeah, totally. I think that's definitely an outcome. I think we're maybe three to six months away from that actually being feasible within the existing UIs. I think we recently saw Twitter release this audio feature in all their articles and every, every LLM has, has the voice option, you know, to read something. But I still think there's an art in being able to prompt engineer properly and to curate entertainment and content for people who otherwise don't have nor care to do that level of diligence and spend the time doing that. For what it's worth, I do think the Internet is going to somehow consolidate into a chatbot. Or at least a lot of the tools that we otherwise were used to using that needed interfaces no longer need the interface. I don't think there's an argument for actually most of the products that we use anymore. Even one of the products that I was building that we built an entire front end around was for whatever data analytics, not important. But that's just now a single prompt in ChatGPT or Claude, you know, so a lot of these tools that we would otherwise use are no longer relevant. And I think the Internet is going to consolidate into a chatbot and people are going to be building a lot of infrastructure to interact. They're going to be building age, building agent first infrastructure so that the interfaces that do have the attention will be optimized to leverage whatever it is that, you know, consumers want to do to interact with other means outside of the chatbot. Because that's really what it is. A chatbot has its general intelligence and people build connectors, kind of Legos into them to enhance their features. And that's only going to get easier with time. And I think there's already an interesting behavior that you are doing and that I am doing. We're building our own personal software in solving our own personal problems with a few prompts. And that already within itself, like the example that you just gave me, Samir, that you were doing, that's an app that I pay for 30 bucks a month because I'm a musician. I like to separate the tracks and the drums and the vocals and the piano. Guess what I'm going to do after this? I'm going to go try to build that myself, you know, like, what's the point? And. But we still all have 24 hours in a day, and we all will spend our time in a particular direction that we think will bring the most value to us. And. And I still think there's an opportunity to curate the services or the content or the experience for other people, and people will be willing to pay for it, regardless.
- [46:57]
Samir
Well, thanks, Adam. I appreciate it. And we will definitely see you soon here in the studio, because I. I want to collaborate on something.
- [47:03]
Adam Levy
Let's do it. I'm here for it. Thank you so much.
- [47:12]
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