- So I thought about introducing Alex Blumberg by grabbing a microphone and recording a conversation with him about doing introductions so that he could use it on a future episode of his critically-acclaimed podcast StartUp, but I didn't.   If you're tapped into the world of contemporary radio and podcasting and if you're in this audience tonight, I have to assume that you probably are, but if you closely follow radio and podcasting today in what I like to call the A.S. era, after Serial, (audience laughs) then you've likely heard talk about podcasting's intimacy, the so-called intimacy, about how up close and personal the medium is compared to television and video and newspapers.  Podcasting seemingly creates a one-to-one connection between the listener and the producer through the primacy, authentici...  authenticity rather, and emotion of the human voice.  After all, next to the body itself, the voice is our most elemental form of communication, and it serves to bind us together.  Now, if you're a media historian, like I happen to be, then you know these very same things were said about radio in the 1920s and the 1930s.  Everything old is new again.  But there's something to be said about the personal bond that listeners have with their favorite podcasts.  Because podcasts are on demand, we can listen to them anytime, anywhere, in places that most other media can't reach, so, in the car, in the subway, in the shower.  These are some of the most private innermost moments of our day, and more often than not, we're listening through headphones with Sarah Koenig, Marc Maron, or the Kitchen Sisters whispering in our ears like trusted close friends. 

 Alex Blumberg has earned his place amongst those trusted close friends.  For nearly two decades, starting with the public radio programs This American Life and then Planet Money, and most recently with the podcast network he founded, Gimlet Media, and his own podcast, StartUp, Blumberg has developed as a masterful audio storyteller, producing the thoughtful, engaging content that makes us want to listen in the first place.  And don't just take my word for it.  Blumberg has won practically every major award in broadcast journalism.  He won the Third Coast International Audio Festival Award for best documentary in 2002 for the, the "Yes, There is a Baby" episode of This American Life.  Another This American Life episode he co-wrote  and produced, "The Giant Pool of Money," was awarded a Peabody and a George Polk Award and was selected as one of the top 10 works of journalism in the United States by the NYU Carter Journalism Institute.  To this day, "Giant Pool of Money" remains one of This American Life's  most acclaimed episodes, and it inspired the hugely popular NPR series Planet Money, which Blumberg created with Adam Davidson in 2008.  Blumberg even won an Emmy last year for the Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt interactive project.  But I quickly wanna go back to the intimacy of podcasting.  What I personally find so inspiring about Blumberg's work is that he takes that intimacy to a whole other level. 

 His Gimlet Media network is one of a handful of initiatives at the heart of the so-called podcast renaissance.  He's building a stable of high quality programs, Mystery Show, Reply All, StartUp, Surprisingly Awesome, and the upcoming Science Vs.  And he's experimenting with new ways to fund and distribute them, breaking away from both the traditional NPR public media model and the commercial broadcasting model.  Put simply, he and the team at Gimlet are key players in popularizing podcasting and shaping the very future of the medium.  But what's most fascinating is how transparent he is about the entire process.  So if you've listened to StartUp, then you know what I'm talking about.  Season one details Blumberg's personal story of leaving his successful NPR radio career to launch a for-profit podcasting company from scratch, which is a completely unproven business model.  It's filled with brutally honest and hilariously embarrassing stories about the challenges of starting a business, like when we witnessed a bumbling Blumberg crash and burn trying to pitch his business model to a billionaire, potential investor.  Or when we overhear his wife, Nazanin, laughing in his face at the prospect of naming the company "Orelo," (audience laughs) which is apparently Esperanto for ear.  We also get a recent entire episode about Nazanin's decision to leave her job to become Gimlet's creative director. 

 It's a frank discussion of work-life balance.  These are intimate personal stories, but they resonate because they speak to larger social insights.  This type of openness and candor makes me think that podcasting's special power of intimacy might be real.  Whatever the case, one thing is certain, Alex Blumberg loves what he does.  And, as devoted radio and podcast fans, I'm sure we're all thankful for it.  So, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming to the stage Alex Blumberg.  (audience applauds)  - Hello.  Thank you so much for that wonderful introduction.  That was a very...  I sound really impressive, don't I? Holy moly. 

 (audience laughs) So, I wanted to talk today about a lot of things.   I'm gonna tell the story of my life.  Sit back.  I'm gonna tell the story of how I came from being a nonprofit journalist  to being the CEO of a for-profit company.  And I'm gonna talk about what I learned along the way about storytelling and what starting a business  taught me new tricks about storytelling that I hadn't really realized before.  And I'm gonna be playing a lot of tape, tape from This American Life, tape from Planet Money, tape from my new venture, Gimlet Media.   And so I'm gonna start here.   It's very surprising that I became...   that I am in my current position as CEO of a company because I did not...  I don't have an MBA. 

  I've never actually taken any business class in college.  And, in fact, the only...  the last time, the last full-time for-profit job I ever had was when I was bagger at a grocery store in high school.  (audience laughs) And then, after that, it was CEO of my own company.  (audience laughs) So, how did that happen exactly, right? So, it started, I got my career in radio,  started at This American Life, which is a show on Public Radio and a podcast.  And that was where I sort of first grew to love the medium of audio and first grew to understand its power.  And I wanna play a couple of examples of what I think audio is really great at.  I think audio is a medium that has special powers  that only audio can do, and it has things that it does better than anything else.  And to demonstrate one of the things that audio does better than any other medium, I'm gonna play you a little story.  This is a story that appeared on This American Life a while ago, and it was a story that was told by a guy named Tate Donovan. 

 Tate Donovan is an actor.   And in the mid-'90s, when this story takes place, Tate Donovan was not very famous,  as I don't think he's very famous now.  Anybody ever heard of Tate Donovan? (audience laughs) Okay.  But he was like sort of at the apex of his very, very minor fame because he'd had a sort of regular run  on the hit series Friends.   So he'd gone from being sort of a non-, sort of recognized character actor to somebody who people, all of a sudden, started to recognize on the street.  And this was great because he'd always had this dream of being the kind of actor that he would have wanted to meet as a kid, the kind of actor who would, like, absolutely shake your hand and sign the autograph and just being this magnanimous, you know, man-of-the-people kind of actor.  And so, one night, he's at this show on Broadway, and people are coming up and they're recognizing him.  And he gets to be that actor, and it's just going great.  - Tate Donovan: I was exactly how I wanted to be.  I was doing it. 

 I was doing great.  And then the kid with the camera came along, (laughs) (light rhythmic music) this nervous kid.  I don't know, he must have been 16 years old.  He was in a rented tuxedo, unbelievably, like, shy and awkward, and he's got, like, acne.  And he's got a camera in his hand.  And underneath the marquee is his date, who is in literally like a prom dress, and she's got a corsage.  And she's really, you know, nervous and sort of clutching her hands.  And he sort of comes up to me and he sort of mumbles, you know, something like, something about a picture.  And I'm like, I just feel for him so I'm like, "Oh, absolutely, my gosh, sure, no problem.  "My God, you poor thing." And I go up to his girlfriend and I wrap my arms around her, and I'm like, "Hey, where are you from? "Fantastic. 

 "Gonna see the play? That's great." And the guy is sort of not taking the photograph very quickly.  He's just sort of staring at me.  And he's got his camera in his hands, and it's down by his, like, chin, you know? And she's very stiff and awkward.  And, you know, I don't know what to do, so I just lean across and I kiss her on the cheek.  (audience laughs) And I'm like, "All right, come on.  "Take the picture.  Hurry up." - Do you guys wanna find out what happens next? (audience laughs) So, I will tell you what happens next, but I just wanna pause there for one second to explain that  is one of the things that audio does better than anything else.  It wraps you in a narrative that takes on a life of its own, a propulsion, and makes you want to hear what comes next.  The pure narrative is something that can sort of sweep you up in its stream.  That is something that audio is, I think, unparalleled at. 

 Nobody is turning off the podcast at exactly the moment that I stopped that tape.  (audience laughs) All right, so I'm gonna pick up again.  I'll just play it back a little bit so you remember where we were.  - Tate Donovan: You know, I don't know what to do, so I just lean across and I kiss her on the cheek.  And I'm like, "All right, come on, take the picture.  "Hurry up." And finally he sort of like snaps it.  And I'm like, "Okay, it was really wonderful to meet you".  And he just stammered over to me and was like, "Um...  "Could you take a picture of us?" (audience laughs) And the whole time, he just wanted me to take a picture of him and his girlfriend underneath the awning of the play.  He didn't want a picture of me. He had no idea who I was. 

 (audience laughs)  Oh, God. (laughs) (audience laughs) (light rhythmic music) - So that was something that, very quickly, at This American Life,  I learned, when you were telling a story in audio, you are going for what at This American Life we called anecdotes, which are sort of pure narrative.  It's a sequence of actions.  It's sort of like...  And it's very simple.  At its very basic sense, it's something that we humans have been doing with each other since we became human.  I went out of the house one day/ cave one day, and I was, like, walking along the street, and then I looked up in the sky, and you won't believe what I saw.  And like, right away, everybody's, "What did you see?" We wanna know.  We wanna know what comes next.  And the difference between a good story and a bad story is often what did you see? I saw a cloud.  Not a very good story. 

 I saw a UFO.  Okay, I'm interested.  I wanna know.  So, like, that's one problem.  The other difference is sort of like sometimes people put in too many details.  Like I was walking out of my cave and I looked, and the rock that's usually by the cave was in a different place, but anyway, and then I saw our neighbors, and by the way, their cave looks like hell, and anyway, where was I? (audience laughs) You know, that's a bad story.  You know.  So, but, like, within those...  But that was what we were going for.  We were going for good well-told anecdotes, something where there was a sequence of actions that culminates in some sort of unexpected something. 

 I often thought of it as the punchline, even though it wasn't necessarily funny.  Sometimes it could be funny, but sometimes it would be, you know, moving or surprising or, you know, revelatory in some way.  That's one thing, narrative.  Audio is great at narrative.  The other thing that I came to understand audio being great at is truth.   There was a study done a while ago by, you know, some media studies team at some university somewhere.  I don't have the details, but I swear to God this is true because I know.  And I know it's true because I would tell this story at other talks and I would say that I think this is true but it might not be true because I've lost the...  I heard about it a long time ago.  And then somebody at one of my talks actually found it for me and sent it to me. 

 So I have it somewhere on a computer that this is an actual real life study that was conducted.  But what they did in the study is that they implant, they put a lie in three different forms of media, in a newspaper story, in a radio story, and in a television story.  And they had the presenters or the journalists report this lie as if it was true.  And then they asked people, the readers or viewers or listeners of that story, to tell whether it was a lie or not.  And people were able to detect the lie through audio more frequently than through any other form of medium, through any other form of media.  Audio was, like, the clear winner.  And the place where it was easiest to lie through, by the way, television.  So, keep that in mind as you're watching TV.  (audience laughs) And I think the reason is that it's just you.  There's no other clues. 

 You're just hearing the voice.  And because there's nothing to distract you, you can sort of tune in on something that feels false.  And what that means when you're telling stories in audio is that you wanna focus in on those moments that feel particularly true, where you can hear truth coming through.   And that's this next piece of tape that I wanna play you.  - [Voiceover] We're going to start this segment off with Carrie in Kankakee, Illinois, WKAN 1320.  Hi, Carrie, how are you? - [Voiceover] Hi, how are you? - [Voiceover] Good.  How can I help? - So this is audio from The Dave Ramsey Show.  Dave Ramsey is a radio personality.  He has a show where he gives people financial advice.  This was audio that was taken in the '90s. 

 Again, this was a story that appeared on This American Life  a long time ago, and it's always stuck in my mind as a particularly vivid example of the thing that I'm talking about.  We did a show about Dave Ramsey, and we played this piece of tape on the This American Life story that we did.  Dave Ramsey is taking a call from a caller.  She's calling about a financial problem that she has.  And, as often happens on these sort of call-in shows, the problem that they're calling about is often, you know, masking some other larger problem.   And so she's calling because  she's got a problem in her relationship, and her boyfriend makes a lot more money than she does.  She works a couple factory jobs, and she makes very, very little money a week.  And she's got two kids from another relationship, and she's worried about them.  - Caller: The thing is he's like, very, to a point, controlling.  We share expenses. 

 I have to give up half of my paycheck to pay for the bills.  - Ramsey: Mm-hmm.  - Caller: To help pay for the bills.  When I'm done doing that, then I have hardly any money left to do for my kids or for myself or to try and put money back.  - Ramsey: Mm-hmm.  - Caller: Okay, he says that I can't leave because I would never be able to make it on my own.  - Ramsey: Mm-hmm.  - Caller: I will admit, I'm not very good at handling money.  I don't know how.  - Ramsey: Mm-hmm. 

 Let me ask you something.  If you were sitting down with a cup of coffee...  How old are you? - Caller: I'm 41.  - Ramsey: Okay.  If you were to sit down over a cup of coffee with a 27-year-old, single young lady that was living with a guy, and she told you what you just told me, what would you tell her?  - Caller: To get out.  You can make it on your own.  - Ramsey: Mm-hmm.  Good advice.  - Caller: Okay, but where...  How do I start on my income? I mean... 

 -Ramsey: Well, I'm not positive.  You don't make a lot of money.  I agree with that.  - Caller: Right.  - Ramsey: But let me tell you what.  You're in a really unhealthy relationship.  - Caller: Mm-hmm.  - Ramsey: You're dealing with a guy who...  He's not hitting you, is he? - Caller: No.  - Ramsey: You sure? - Caller: Yeah. 

  - Ramsey: I'm not sure I believe you.  - Caller: Yeah, it's fine.  - Ramsey: I'm sorry? - Caller: It's okay.  I just... I need to...  - Ramsey: You gotta get out of there, girl.  You gotta get out of there now, okay? - Caller: He says, you know, that it's me, it's because...  - Ramsey: No, it's not you, darling.  This guy's sick.  - Caller: Okay.  - Ramsey: You gotta get away from him. 

 - Caller: Okay.   - And, I mean, I think we can all hear in that interaction the thing that Dave Ramsey heard, which was there was...   You know, you could tell that she was holding something back.  You could tell she wasn't being honest about the situation.  And he heard it.  We all heard it.  And we all heard her admit the truth to it.   And that's something...  I don't know if that could happen in some other form of media where all of that information would be being conveyed in that way.   So, this was something that I was sort of,  as I was working at This American Life, I was learning, I was thinking about. 

 When I was trying to tell stories, I was going for particular moments.  I was training myself to not accept a canned answer, to dig deeper, to get an answer that was real, to get people to tell me stories.   I was just thinking about it very, you know, sort of like as a craft.  What am I going for when I'm telling these stories? And the moments are like the building blocks or the anecdote, and then the moments of power are these moments where you feel an emotional truth coming forward.   Or, you feel something in, like what you've heard in that Dave Ramsey piece, which is sort of somebody not being fully truthful, and then in real-time, as it's happening on tape, you hear them become...   You hear them admit the truth.  It's like a chord resolving.  There's something incredibly satisfying about hearing it.  And so those are the things that I was going for with This American Life.  And I got better and better at sort of, like, finding stories that had that, getting that out of people. 

 I got better and better at asking questions that would elicit truthful responses.  I got better and better at sort of, like, shutting up when I was doing interviews to let people give me emotion, you know, honest emotional answers.  I got better and better at sort of like diagnosing in real-time whether people were sort of bull (audio cuts out) me or whether they were actually telling the truth.  And that was great.   But there was a certain type of story that I felt like, okay, well, there's certain kinds of stories that are outside of, you know, the abilities of radio.  And one of those stories was a story that I wanna tell...  That I was really interested in, but I could never figure out how to tell, and it was about the housing bubble.  I had become particularly, you know, sort of obsessed with it.  And I was reading all these blogs and I was up at night and I was talking to my wife about it all the time and I was talking to my rec league basketball team about it all the time.  (audience laughs) And I was like, I gotta figure out how to do a story, but it was, like, you know, It was all about, like, mortgage finance, and it was like hard to figure out how to do it. 

 But I'd been talking to this friend of mine and my colleague at NPR, Adam Davidson, about doing the story together, and we finally...  We had sort of been kicking around for, you know, like almost a year, and we ended up doing it.  And that story, we took the tools of sort of storytelling and emotional honesty that I had sort of been learning at This American Life, and we applied it to a story that was a little bit outside of our wheelhouse, like sort of, you know, the American economy, finance, the housing market.   And it worked.  People really liked the story.  And it brought a level of emotional understanding to this thing that was happening that I think people had been lacking.  They'd been reading the stories and they'd heard the facts and they'd all been presented with the facts, but they couldn't understand it  on a sort of emotional level.  And I think what we were able to do is sort of tell it in a way that resonated emotionally with people.  So I'm gonna play one piece of tape from that story.  This is one of the first... 

 This is sort of one of the early pieces of tape that we did in that hour.  And it was this guy who had taken out a loan.   And it was what was called a NINA loan, which stood for No Income No Asset loan, meaning that the bank didn't check your income or your assets before giving you the loan.  And he had had three sort of not very steady part-time jobs in the last year where he'd made a combined total of, I think, $40,000.  And, yet when he walked into the bank, they gave him a very large loan.  - [Voiceover] Call it 540 for round figures.  - [Voiceover] You basically borrowed $540,000 from the bank, and they didn't check your income? - [Voiceover] Right.  It's a no-income verification loan.  They don't call me up and say, you know, "How much money?" They don't do that.  I mean it's almost like you pass a guy in the street, and you say, "Will you lend me $540,000?" He says, "Well, what do you do?" "Hey, I got a job." "Okay." (audience laughs) It seems as if it's that casual, even though there are a lot of papers that get filled out and stuff flies all over with the faxes and the emails and all like that. 

 Essentially, that's the process.   (light jazzy music)  - [Voiceover] Would you have loaned you the money? - [Voiceover] I wouldn't have loaned me the money.  And nobody that I know would have loaned me the money.  (audience laughs) I mean, I know guys who are criminals that wouldn't lend me that money, and they'd break your kneecaps. So... (laughs) Yeah, I mean, I don't know why the bank did it.  I'm serious.  I mean, $540,000, a person with bad credit.   - So, you know, I knew when I got that piece of tape  that I was sitting on gold.   That became sort of the thing that kicked up the story.  It's been something that has been referenced many, many times.  I've played it at speeches many, many times. 

 And I think the reason that it works, what makes it so compelling, is that he's telling the truth for the first time.  Like, he is...  When he says, "I wouldn't have loaned me the money," it's just so satisfying because it's something that you sort of thought was going on at the whole time, but, you know, but the way it was being talked about in the media at the time, before and even since, it's sort of, like, nobody would cop to that.  Nobody was like, "Well, the bank shouldn't have lended to me," or the banks were like, "Well, you shouldn't have borrowed it." But nobody was, like, copping to their own complicity in the thing.   And copping to your own complicity, by the way, does not mean that it's not somebody else's fault also, but it was just...  It was just nice to hear somebody acknowledge what felt like a very, very real truth, that sort of like, "Yeah, they shouldn't have loaned it to me "and I probably shouldn't have taken it." There's something very, very nice about it.  It just feels so honest.  And it's so rewarding to hear somebody be so refreshingly honest.  And I think that's what makes that piece of tape work, and that's what made the reporting work.  And so we did "The Giant Pool of Money," and that was like a... 

 It was a huge success.  Like, many, many people...  Like they finally understood it on the sort of gut level, something they hadn't really understood before.  And Adam and I, well, basically, Adam was like, "We gotta do more of this." We have to basically do a podcast where we take the tools of sort of like narrative audio that we've gotten good at and we apply it to a different subject area.  We apply it to the economy and finance.  And I was like, "No, that'll never work." And he kept badgering me and badgering me and badgering me, and then finally I was like, "Okay, I'll try the story out with you." And so we started Planet Money.  And Planet Money launched the Monday of,  the Monday after Fannie and Freddie went under. (laughs) (audience laughs) So we had, like, spent all summer sort of, like, meticulously crafting this, like, lovely little story about, like, windmill parts in China and how they were affecting the price of cars in the United States, and it was, like, this wonderful little story.  And we're about all set to launch on that Monday, and then the weekend before, Fannie and Freddie went under.  And so we changed all our plans.  And then we were just sort of like up and just sort of like running as fast as we could to try to like, first of all, understand what was happening in the economy and then try to sort of explain it to our listeners. 

 And Planet Money just became a, you know, it grew and grew and grew.  And as it was growing, it was like, you know, sort of a rush.  It went on for...  I was there for almost five years.   And as it grew, I was realizing like, "Oh, this is really working.  We can take..."  It sort of made me realize, like, if we can do this, if we can do audio stories about, you know, central bank policy and if we can do audio stories about, like, monetary exchange rates, which we did and which people liked and were like, "I love that story about the Chinese Central Bank." (audience laughs) If we could do that, you know, what can't we do? It really opened my eyes to sort of like these tools are even more powerful than I thought.  These tools of sort of like narrative combined with emotion and sort of like telling stories, they can be used in a lot of different ways.  So that was sort of like I was realizing that.  And then something happened that probably set me on this path that I'm on that I hope is the right path,  which was I accidentally made some money (laughs).  (audience laughs) We launched this thing at Planet Money called the T-shirt Project, where we wanted to trace... 

 We wanted to take a T-shirt and sort of use it as a lens to explore the global economy.  So we wanted to sort of take a standard T-shirt that you can get anywhere, at Target or whatever, and trace its path as it gets made.  So we talked to the place where the...  the farmers who grew the cotton.  We talked to the factory workers who sewed the shirt together.  We talked to the people who spun the cotton into yarn, all that stuff.  We'd go all around the world as the shirt got made.  And our plan was we would make this shirt ourselves, and then we would sell it to our listeners.  Once we told the story of its creation, then our listeners could have it.  And so, it was very exciting. 

 We ended up partnering with Jockey.  Jockey let us sort of like sit in on their entire production process and visit the factories where they made the shirts and all that sort of stuff.  And we told our listeners about it, and we pre-sold, and we said, "Hey, if you wanna help us do this, "go to Kickstarter." We set up a Kickstarter page.  And you can, essentially, pre-order the T-shirts And then once we've made them and told the whole story, you'll get yours.   And, you know, we thought, you know, whatever, 5,000 people or something would buy them.  In the end, we ended up selling 25,000 T-shirts.  And we brought in close to $600,000 on that Kickstarter project.  And that was just in two weeks.  It was up for two weeks.  And it was shocking. 

  And it also got me thinking, like, okay, so there's this market for these stories.   The listeners are really excited.   These storytelling tricks can be applied to a bunch of different subject areas, and look, we made a bunch of money.  We made like over half a million dollars in two weeks.  So that really got me thinking, like, well maybe there's something, maybe we could be building something more here.  And I tried to do it within NPR, but there's like a bunch of...  Nobody's fault, really.  But it was just like...  It was hard to get the vision of like, I wanted a lot of money to fund a bunch of different Planet Moneys.  And Planet Money didn't come cheap, by the way. 

 Planet Money was a very expensive show to produce.  So, I eventually ended up going out on my own.   And it wasn't what I wanted, initially.  And it was very scary.  But it felt like...  It felt like something I had to do.  Like it felt like I couldn't not do it.  It felt like there was like...  It was so clear.  Like, people... 

 We'd started This American Life.  This American Life was growing like crazy.  We started Planet Money.  Planet Money was  growing like crazy.  It was just very clear that people wanted more of the stuff that I knew how to make, and I should just try to make more of it.  So I left.  I quit my job, and I went out on my own to start to raise money.  And that was...   terrifying (audience laughs) because I didn't know the first thing about raising money, I didn't know the first thing about starting a business, and I was leaving a huge, huge platform  with lots and lots of listeners, with millions and millions of listeners, and going out on my own, and I was nobody.  At that point, I didn't even... 

 I had, like, a Twitter account, I think, but I'd never tweeted anything.  (audience laughs) I wasn't active on Facebook at all.   I, to this day, don't have an Instagram account.  So I had literally, you know, no personal brand.   I know, everybody today has a personal brand.  But, like, everybody...  Like, anybody under the age of 30 was already, was way better known personally than I was.  Like I had access to zero people.  (audience laughs) So, I opened a Twitter account, and I was like I gotta start learning how to tweet.  My first tweets are embarrassing and crazy. 

 (audience laughs) They're all about like, "How do you do this?" (audience laughs)  And I was, like, I gotta generate some interest here because I'll be able to get some help.  I have a very, very close relationship with Ira Glass to this day and with the people of Planet Money to this day, and so we're all friends, we were all on terms, but it wasn't like they were just gonna like take me on their show or whatever, just publicize my new thing.  So, I knew I would have to do something to sort of like gain attention.  And the only thing that I had, that I was doing that was interesting was starting a company. (laughs) So I decided to document the starting of that company.   And, initially, it was just a publicity stunt.  I thought I would be like...  I would do one or two episodes where like, "Hey, look at this public radio guy going out "and interviewing investors to try to raise money." But very quickly into the process, it became clear like, oh, wait, this is a really good story.  This is a story that has been crying out for the techniques that I have gotten good at.  Because the way the story of starting a business in America is typically told, it's sort of like it's always told in retrospect and it's always told in like, "We had this idea in the garage, we faced a hardship, "and then we triumphed." And it's like that.  (audience laughs) And the hardship is like two seconds long, and there's no details at all, (laughs) and then, it's all about the triumph. 

 And the story, as I was living it, was very different.  (audience laughs)  And so I decided to start documenting it.  So I would go out and I would...  I had this...   I had this, you know...  I didn't know any people with money, really, except for a couple of guys I'd interviewed for a story.  So I'd interviewed this guy for a story that I'd done on patents, and his name was Chris Sacca.  And, at the time, I was like-- He was, like, billed as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur investor.   And I knew that he liked  This American Life because I interviewed him for a This American Life story.  So, I was like, "Oh, well, I'll just talk to him. 

 "He loves This American Life. He'll give me money." And I had no idea who he was or really what...  I mean, I knew who he was, but I didn't know, like, anything about raising money.  And I now realize that going to Chris Sacca to try to get seed capital to start up your podcasting company is a little bit like going to Jamie Dimon because you wanna open a bank account.  (audience laughs) It's way, way too high at the top.  But at the time, I didn't really know anything, and because I worked at This American Life, he took my call.  So I went out and I told him I was gonna record it for this thing that he did, and he's the kind of guy who sort of likes that.  So...  (audience laughs) So, I went out and I had this...  I knew enough that I knew I had to have what they call "pitch deck," which is sort of like where you put your idea into a PowerPoint and then you play it for the investor.  But he's sort of, and I now know, sort of an iconoclastic investor, so he doesn't do the whole PowerPoint thing. 

 And so I showed up in my suit, and he's dressed in his western style sort of cowboy shirt.  And we meet at a restaurant, not a boardroom.  And then before I can make my pitch, he's like, "Let's get outta here and take a walk." So I have my kit and I have my backpack with my computer in it that's unopened, and he's like, "Okay, go." And so I have to start giving him the pitch, and I'm recording the whole thing.  And here's a little taste of how it went.  - Chris Sacca: You gotta tighten up your story.  - Alex Blumberg: So the...  - Sacca: Well, start again.  - Blumberg: Yeah.  - Sacca: So you've now kind of meandered.  Really tight this time. 

 How are you gonna make money doing this? - Blumberg: So, you make money a combination...  So there's three major...  There's three major revenue streams...  I start again.  I meander my way through the ad rates, Planet Money.  At a certain point, I find myself deep into an explanation of my friend's successful Kickstarter project.  Chris interrupted.  - Sacca: You lost track of your own outline.  - Blumberg: Yeah, I did.  - Sacca: What you haven't given me is the outline of your story, right? - Blumberg: Uh-huh. 

 - Sacca: If I were calling an Uber right now and it said it's gonna be here in two minutes and that was all the time you had...  - Blumberg: Uh-huh.  - Sacca: What are you doing? - Blumberg: So, I'm making a network of digital podcasts that we will monitize...  That will...  That will...  That is gonna meet...  (laughs) Sorry.  (audience laughs)  It didn't get any better.  (audience laughs) At a certain point, Chris literally stopped me, and he was like, "Okay, I think I have your pitch." And then he gave me my pitch back to me the way I should have been giving it to him.  And then I thought he was gonna invest, and then he was like, "Actually, you know, "but I could take it from the other way, too." And then he gave me two minutes, like right extemporaneously, all about how the idea would never work. 

 (audience laughs) And so, I was recording this whole thing, and I was like, okay, well, this pitch is going horribly, but this is gonna be a great podcast (laughs).  (audience laughs)  And so I came back  and I put that together.  And I actually told Ira.  I was like, "Hey, you know, I've been recording the stuff, "and I think it's actually a good story.  "I think I'm learning a lot of stuff." And he was like, "Okay, well, play it for me." And then I played it for him.  And so This American Life ended up airing the first episode, which was fantastic.  And the podcast StartUp was up and running.  That was the first episode.  And at that point I realized, like, "Okay, I wanna keep telling this story even as we go forward "because, like, the emotion of it, that's what's never..." You know, the sweaty palms, the underarms, the feeling of like, you know, is this gonna work or not, that's the part that is like missing from the narrative, and that's the part that I am now right now able to provide people.  And so we did everything. 

 When I met the person who would become my co-founder and we had to negotiate this incredibly uncomfortable conversation that every single person who founds a company goes through, which is sort of like, how much equity do we each get? How much of this imaginary company that we're starting are we each gonna own? It's a really, really uncomfortable conversation.  Every single person who started a company has had to go through it.  Nobody talks about it.  Matt and I recorded it.  Like we recorded it...  We recorded talking to our wives afterward.   And even things like naming the company.   Naming turned out to be such a gigantic pain in the ass.  We would come up with...  Well, first of all, I wanted to call it the American Podcasting Corporation. 

 Matt didn't like that because he was, like, "It has the word 'podcast.' "Podcast is gonna go away." He was, I think, wrong about that.  But I understood.  I understood.  It's like sort of a corny Wayne's World association to the word.  He's, like, "It should be something short and crisp "and techie sounding." And so we would go back and forth, and we'd come up with these names that we both liked, and then they'd have already been trademarked by somebody.  So we just kept getting shot down and shot down.  It was like months, and things were starting to happen.  We were starting to get office space.  We were gonna put up a website, and we still don't have a name.  And so it was getting desperate. 

 So there was this one afternoon where we were like, "Okay, we're gonna spend all afternoon until we find a name," and we were just sort of doing all these random word association exercises.  And we were in his patio, and then we were like...  We were, like, "How about a foreign word?" So we spent, you know, hours on Google Translate, (audience laughs) looking up foreign sounding words for audio terminology.  And then, finally, we hit on one that we were, like, "This is it, this is the one." So I came home and I told my wife that we'd come up with a name.  - Blumberg: Orelo.   - Nazanin Rafsanjani: Orelo? (audience laughs) Orelo.  What is that? What is that supposed to mean? - Blumberg: Well, It's, uh...  It's ear in Esperanto.  (Rafsanjani laughing) (audience laughs) (Rafsanjani still laughing) Oh, my God.  (audience laughs) (Rafsanjani laughs) That's so dumb. 

 (audience laughs) (Rafsanjani laughs) That's so dumb. (laughs) (light rhythmic music) God! (laughs) (light rhythmic music) - Blumburg: So dumb it's good though, right? - Rafsanjani: (laughs) A what? Whose idea was that? (laughs) (audience laughs) - Blumberg: It came up organically.  Rafsanjani: Well, how does that come up organically? Speaking Esperanto? (laughs) (light rhythmic music)  (audience laughs) - For a while...   For a while, when you Googled my name, not that I've ever done that, but when you Googled my name, it would be Alex Blumberg and then "wife" was the first thing that spring-loaded.  (audience laughs) Nazanin became quite a star of the show.  She was there all the time because partly that was also intentional.  When, you know, again, you hear the story of starting businesses, and the story of like...  And you hear like...  I would read these things.  Like salesforce.com, the guy who started salesforce.com, he's like a hero in Silicon Valley.  And, like, one of the things about him is that he works all the time. 

 His commitment to the company and growing the company is intense, and he's just, like, always doing it.  And, like, I was like, what is his family doing? (laughs) How does his wife feel about that? What is... What's happening? Does he have kids? Like, how is that working? And so that's one of the other things that I wanted to sort of document, is sort of just this intense negotiation that goes on as you're starting a company and you have a family and you have kids and, like, how do you manage all that stuff? So that also became a big part of it.  Anyway, StartUp was great.   It ended up going for, like, 14 episodes.  We did a whole season on Gimlet, and it was the best thing that ever happened to starting the company.  Like, once we started StartUp, it became clear to investors, like, "Oh, this is what you're doing, "and now we wanna invest." So a weird byproduct of doing a whole podcast about how ineffectual you are at making your pitch to investors (audience laughs) results in (laughs) those same investors giving you lots of money.  So, we raised $1.5 million, and we launched the company.  And we hired people and we launched...  In the last year, we launched four shows.  StartUp was one of them. 

 We did a second season about a whole different company.  We launched a show called Reply All, a show called Mystery Show, and another, and most recently, a show called Surprisingly Awesome.  And that's great and it was like it's been fantastic, it's been an amazing ride.  But one of the most amazing things that I did not expect is that one of the things that...  Launching a company has taught me so much stuff, but one of the things it's taught me is sort of, is like even more things are possible in the world of storytelling than I had imagined.   I just wanna play you a couple of examples of that.  So, the first comes from Mystery Show.   Mystery Show, maybe you've heard of it, it starts like this.  - [Voiceover] From Gimlet, I'm Starlee Kine, and this is Mystery Show.  § Why is there time § Every week, I solve a new mystery. 

 § Why is there space § Mysteries that can't be solved online.  Mysteries you can't solve yourself.  § Why are there dogs and cats and trees and the human race §  Up until now, there hasn't been anyone to help with this.  That person is now me.  § Those mysteries § Tomorrow I'll find out all...§ - First of all, I sort of didn't know you could start a show that way, but (laughs) she found that song and then we licensed it from the people.  It was a Spark song.  We licensed that song, and that became the open to the show, so that was very exciting, but it also very neatly sets up, like, here's what's going on in this show.  I'm a reporter.  I'm a journalist.  I'm gonna, like, find these mysteries that people have, and I'm gonna solve them for them. 

 And so this episode that I wanna play, she's solving a mystery for a friend of hers named Andrea Seigel.  Andrea Seigel is a writer.  She had written a book that her first debut novel had gotten some acclaim.  And then her second novel tanked.  Nobody bought it.   It sold, you know, a paltry number of copies, and it was off the shelves pretty much immediately.  And then Andrea is bummed about that.  She got over it.  And then like two years after it was published, she got a Google alert about herself  because she has a Google Alert on herself.  She got a Google alert, and it was a picture of her book  in the arms of Britney Spears. 

  And so the mystery was, like, of the 5,000 people on the planet that read that book (laughs) (audience laughs) how did one of them come to be Britney Spears? And so Starlee was on the case, and she started to solve that problem.  And so...  And there's a lot of sort of hijinks that ensued, like she goes, she can't find it.  She goes and stalks out the mall where Britney Spears hangs out.  She feels like a paparazzi.  She calls different people, managers.  She can't get through to Britney.  It finally becomes clear that she's gonna have to...  And so there's all this...  The first half of the podcast is all about that. 

 It finally becomes clear that the only way she's gonna ever be able to ask Britney Spears this question is if she buys a meet and greet with Britney Spears at her Las Vegas limited engagement.  (audience laughs) So she spends $2,500 on a meet and greet.   (audience laughs) And by she, I mean we.  (audience laughs) Spend $2,500 on a meet and greet for Britney, where she gets to be with Britney Spears and ask her this question of, like, how did you...  How did you...  How did you come to find Andrea Seigel's book?  But then she's like, "I don't know anything about this meet and greet." And so she calls Ticketmaster to see if she can get any information.  - [Voiceover] Hi, thank you for holding.  This is Dennis from customer service.  And may I ask with who I have the pleasure of speaking with? - [Voiceover] Starlee Kine.  - [Voiceover] And how are you doing, Ms. Kylie? - [Voiceover] Um, Starlee. 

 I'm good.  How are you? - [Voiceover] Oh, Starlee.  - [Voiceover] That's okay.  It's hard a one.  It's kinda hard to get your...  - [Voiceover] But once you see it, it's like, "Oh, yeah, it's like Star Lee." But, yeah.  (audience laughs) - So...  And this is the part that I was like...  And so we ended up playing seven minutes of the call with the Ticketmaster guy.  (audience laughs) And so she starts talking to him, and she asks him, she's like, "I'm going to this meet and greet. 

 "I'm trying to figure out what books Britney Spears reads." And he's like, "Oh, that's interesting." They talk about the meet and greet industry.  He tells her that she's got a pretty good one, actually.  Like a lot of them are, you don't even get to meet the person really, let alone greet them.   And then she asked him a question.  - [Voiceover] What do you wanna know? - [Voiceover] Hmm.  Maybe like something about her success, to see if success changed her or has it helped her.  I mean, because...  I mean, I've seen some of the stuff from the media, and I know she started off, you know, like, real successful, like a role model for some people, if you would.  And then, you know, she kind of had that downslide, and then she kind of picked herself back up.  And now she's kind of like rising back up. 

 So I would kind of ask her how it feels to be like that inspiration, that you know you can mess up and make mistakes and then go and change the way your life is.  - [Voiceover] Do you have role models in your life that inspire you? - [Voiceover] Um, sort of.  I mean, my mom would probably be the closest one.  I mean, she did raise me and all my brothers by herself.  I have six brothers total.  And, you know, my dad passed away when I was like five.  - [Voiceover] Oh, really? - [Voiceover] Yeah.  So she had to raise all of us.  She had to work like two jobs, worked a lot.  And we all reminded her of my dad, and she loved my dad. 

 And it takes a toll on you, losing someone like that.  - [Voiceover] Do you remember him? - [Voiceover] Um, slightly.  I remember like playing games, like dog pile and stuff, and a couple other things like that.  - [Voiceover] You guys must have had a good dog pile if there were so many of you, right? - [Voiceover] Yeah. (laughs) - [Voiceover] Are you the youngest? - [Voiceover] I'm the second youngest, actually.  - [Voiceover] So you were pretty close to the top of the dog pile? Or the bottom? How does it work? The little ones get all piled on, right? - [Voiceover] Yeah.  It's just a random game.  (audience laughs) Sometimes you're at the top, sometimes you're at the bottom.  - [Voiceover] That's kind of like Britney, right? Sometimes she's at the top, sometimes she's at the bottom.  (audience laughs) - [Voiceover] Yeah, I guess so.  - [Voiceover] It's like maybe life is just one big dog pile. 

 (audience laughs) - [Voiceover] Wow.  - [Voiceover] Did I just blow your mind right there? - [Voiceover] That's pretty deep, yeah, like, wow, okay.  - [Voiceover] Are you being sarcastic or do you mean it that it's pretty deep? - [Voiceover] Oh, no, for real, that's...  I didn't even think about how that applied when I said that.   - I mean...  (audience laughs) So, before I started this company and before Starlee had put together that story, I would never in a million years have thought that that's something that could work.  That you could...  That you could start a story trying to solve a mystery for somebody and then end up with a customer service agent talking about how they used to play dog pile as a kid and how...  and like...  And also just how quickly it moves through a range of emotion. 

 Like just sort of like, you know, the fact that he lost his father when he was five, the fact that his father, that they all look like his father and it reminded his mother.  I mean, that is a really tragic telling detail, and it's very, very powerful, and it feels very true.  And then right away, you're sort of like in the world of dog pile, and then right away, she's like, "Did I just blow your mind?" and he's sort of like you can't tell if he's being sarcastic, and then when he says, "No, no, I'm real," you totally believe him, like his mind was sort of blown.  It's just all that stuff, and it just goes on.  I mean, and it's...   The fact that you could be sort of telling the story and wind up in this spot and be riveted at that moment was something that I had not thought possible.   And so Mystery Show  and sort of what Starlee was able to do on these episodes really opened my eyes to sort of a whole new realm of possibilities Also, her...  The project that she has underway here, it's journalism, like, everything is true.  But it's journalism in the service of comedy almost.  And I don't think there's ever been like a comedy journalism anything, you know. 

 A pure, like, that's journalism first.  Like there's been comedians who sort of like take journalistic tropes, like Jon Stewart did that all the time, but like it was always the joke came first.  For her, the truth comes first, but then there's the comedy is right there, right there behind it.  So that was something I just was blown away by sort of what she was able to accomplish there.  And then the second thing that really blew my mind was another show that we did called Reply All.  And this was sort of, for me, has been sort of the creative pinnacle to starting this company.  Like, when I started the company, I was like, okay, I think there's a bunch of...  Like we can do the Planet Money of tech, and we can do the Planet Money of cars.  And that was sort of my vision.  And I was hopeful that we would create conditions where new podcasts could start and things could become possible that I hadn't imagined. 

 But I didn't know how fast that would happen.  And this Reply All story that I'm gonna eventually play for you...  I'm gonna talk a little bit before I play it for you.  But the Reply All story that I eventually will play for you was the first...  We happened...  That's when it happened for me, where I was like, "Aow, I never saw this coming.  "Okay." So, but there's a little set up.  So Reply All,  it's a show about the internet, and what they try to do is they try to take the internet...  They tell human stories about the internet.  So, for example, a show recently started,  and it started with a guy getting a call. 

 He was a police officer at a small town SWAT team.  He got a call saying that there was a hostage situation, a gunman in a residential house holed up.  The wife was held hostage.  The kids had been shot.  It was a gruesome scene, and this guy telling it is the SWAT...  He's on the SWAT team in this small town, and he is telling the hosts of Reply All, PJ and Alex, like, "And so we were dispatched right away." - [Voiceover] You're going with the anticipation that you're gonna see a mass murderer, and you may end up having to, you know, kill somebody tonight.  - [Voiceover] At 2:00 AM, lights start to come on in the house.  The suspect notices the SWAT team in his yard, grabs a shotgun, and moves down the stairs to the first floor landing.  Somebody from the SWAT team screams, tells the suspect to disarm.  And that's where what they thought was a hostage situation turns into something much stranger. 

 The suspect puts down his gun and meets the SWAT team at the door, very confused.  His wife, who is alive and also confused, is there with him.  His children are alive and asleep in their beds.  The homeowner had no idea what the cops were talking about, even though the 911 call had given the man's name, his address, and correctly identified the members of his family.  - [Voiceover] So I don't think we really, till afterwards we realized, we've been swatted.  (light rhythmic music) (audience laughs) - [Voiceover] From Gimlet, I'm PJ Vogt and this is Reply All,  a show about the internet.  (light rhythmic music)  This week we're talking about swatting.  In case you aren't familiar with swatting, it's a prank that's played by duping a local community SWAT team into raiding the house of somebody else.  All sorts of people get swatted.  It's happened to Tom Cruise, Miley Cyrus, the Kardashians. 

 But a very popular swatting target is video game players.  - All right, so that was a great episode.  It was an amazing episode.  They told this crazy story of this video game player who got swatted, and swatting culture inside video game play.  It's an amazing thing.  And they, again, they're using all the tools, like the storytelling, you're with him, like he's going to the house, you wanna keep listening.  You know, all that sort of stuff.  And they're doing...  It's great.  I love their show. 

 They've been great.  I had my eye on them before I started the company.  They came to work for Gimlet.  It's been a wonderful thing.   But what I could not have predicted is sort of episode 36,  (laughs) which is the episode I wanna talk about.  So, what happens at the end of every single Reply All is that they do the credits, like a lot of shows do.  And they say, you know, "Today's episode was produced by Phia Bennin "and editing from Peter Clowney," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  You know, the executive producer, whatever, executive editor Alex Blumberg, and then Matt Lieber is my co-founder, and he runs sort of the business side.  He's like...  You can think of us as sort of like content editorial me, business operations, finance him. 

 And we sort of collaborate on all sorts of stuff, but that's the main sort of breakdown.   And they weren't sure exactly what to...  Matt is, like, integral to the success of the company.  They weren't sure exactly what to say about him, though.  You know, like what his...  Like, you know, what...  You know...  And so they wanted to put him in the credits, but there wasn't like a language of like how do you put the business guy in the credits.  And so they came up with like...  For a while, they'd come up with like, "Matt Lieber steers the ship." So that was what they would say. 

 They would say, you know, "Editing help from Alex Blumberg.  "Matt Lieber steers the ship." And then they started getting...  Then they're like, "Ah, we could probably do better "than 'Matt Lieber steers the ship.'" So they started to freelance.  (upbeat rhythmic music) - [Voiceover] Reply All is me, PJ Vogt, and Alex Goldman.  We were produced this week by Sruthi Pinnamaneni and Chris Neary.  We were edited by Alex Blumberg and Paul Ford.  We were mixed by the Reverend John DeLore.  Matt Lieber is a comforter, accidentally warmed by the radiator.  (audience laughs) - (laughs) And then, that became a thing.  (audience laughs) - [Voiceover] Matt Lieber is the solution to a problem that's been bothering you for a while. 

 (audience laughs) - Or...  - [Voiceover] Matt Lieber is a window in a room where you didn't think there was one.  (audience laughs) - [Voiceover] Matt Lieber is Estonia.  (audience laughs) - It became a little bit of a thing.  Like there's a Reddit now where it has the list of all the Matt Liebers that have ever appeared on Reply All.   "Matt Lieber is a force to be reckoned with." "Matt Lieber is the voice of reason "in an otherwise insane world.  "Matt Lieber is an HBO Go log-in that your friend "is being cool and letting you use for a while." (audience laughs) All right, so they're doing that for the whole year.  They got the Matt Lieber going, and that is what brings us to episode 36.  (light rhythmic music) - [Voiceover] From Gimlet,  this is Reply All, a show about the internet.  I'm PJ Vogt. 

 - [Voiceover] And I'm Alex Goldman.  - [Voiceover] And this week's episode, it's a little different.  We're going to focus mostly on how computers work.  And we're gonna start by interviewing an expert on transistors.  (phone ringing)  - [Voiceover] This guy doesn't seem to be picking up.  (phone ringing) - [Voiceover] I feel kind of relieved.  (audience laughs) I have zero questions about transistors.  (audience laughs) - [Voiceover] Could we just roll the credits? (upbeat rhythmic music) - [Voiceover] Reply All is me, PJ Vogt, with Alex Goldman.  We were produced this week by Tim Howard, Sruthi Pinnamaneni and Phia Bennin.  We were edited this week by Alex Blumberg. 

 Our show was mixed by the Reverend John DeLore.  Matt Lieber is a job that you love so much that you actually sort of forget to go outside.  And then one day you just find yourself wondering, has the Fourth of July happened yet? And so you look out a window and you realize, actually, it's the end of August.  Summer's almost over.  And you just feel this tiny little teaspoon of regret.  And then you realize you could just go outside.  The building has an elevator.  (metal clanking) What if you took it? (metal clanking) - [Voiceover] It's nice outside.  - [Voiceover] Yeah.  It's pretty beautiful. 

 (light techno music)  (train station announcer talking)  - [Voiceover] Where are we right now? - [Voiceover] We're at Central Park, bro.  - [Voiceover] We're at Central Park.  - [Voiceover] That guy had a sign advertising carriage rides.  - [Voiceover] Oh, there's a bunch of horses over here.  - [Voiceover] Oh, neigh.  - [Voiceover] Hi, guys.  We were interested in taking a horse and buggy ride.  - [Voiceover] Okay, sir.  - [Voiceover] The two of us.  - [Voiceover] This goes round by Balto, the boat pond, Bethesda Fountain, Bow Bridge, Cherry Hill, the lakes, Strawberry Fields, all that. 

 - [Voiceover] Let's do it.  - [Voiceover] Let's do it.  - [Voiceover] Okay, guys.  - The whole show is the Matt Lieber.  (audience laughs)  And they go on this insane adventure all over New York City.  They go...  They take a carriage ride.  They meet a funny person in the park.  They go on their friend's boat onto the East River.  They meet me. 

 We sing karaoke They go...   They go into this crazy, abandoned building, and they sort of explore it where they see a live goat that freaks them out.  (audience laughs) They get to the top, they can see the Statue of Liberty, then they go back down, and then they show up at Matt Lieber's house 30 minutes later, and then he reads the final credits.  And that's the end of the show.  (audience laughs) And...  I loved it so much.  And I love the inventiveness of it.  I loved the, you know, just sort of like how all out they went.  I loved how they actually took this crazy idea and executed it.  It was one of the most popular shows they ever did. 

 It got way more Twitter traffic and email and just sort of love online than almost anything they'd done to that point.  And I never, in a million years, could have imagined that that would be something that would result in launching this company.  And it was one of the things that made me the most proud of this whole year, is, that, like, that was,  it turns out, the reason I did it, that I didn't even know that when I was starting.  So, I guess  I would wanna conclude by saying  that's a reason to start something (laughs), you know? Is that you have no idea where it's gonna take you.  And this is just the beginning.  You know, what we've started here is...  I'm hopeful that, like...  That was our first year.  Hopefully we can keep on doing that, and we can keep on doing things that I will be, that I never could have predicted.  And if we can keep on doing that, then I think we can be successful. 

 Thanks very much.  (audience applauds)