All-In Live from Austin: Colin and Samir, Chris Williamson, and Bryan Johnson

**Colin** (0:00)
That was perfect.

**Samir** (0:02)
You rocked it, bro.

**Jason** (0:18)
Hey, everybody, welcome to Austin. Welcome, everybody. That's my friend, Dave Friedberg.

**David Friedberg** (0:25)
Thanks for having me.

**Jason** (0:26)
How are you doing, brother? Welcome to Texas. It's a little light.

**David Friedberg** (0:29)
We're missing a couple friends here tonight.

**Jason** (0:31)
We have some new friends. We got some awesome friends, and we wanted to do something around this sort of new media creator economy. It's something we're experiencing with the podcast, and that's obviously having a big impact on society, right?

**David Friedberg** (0:46)
A lot of people say this was the podcast election. The big media companies from journalism, Fox News, CNN, to the big platforms, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, to Disney, and others, are kind of rearranging their pawns on the chessboard based on and responding to what's going on. And so we thought it would be really interesting to hear about some of the people who we think are probably the smartest in the creator economy, in terms of building a business, and how you maneuver, and how you play, and how you grow, as part of that conversation today.

**Jason** (1:25)
You had a Twitter account when we started All-In, but you literally had never tweeted. And now you've become the Sultan of Science. You're very famous. Any Sultan of Science fans out there?
Awesome. Did anybody see him win Celebrity Jeopardy? You won it. I mean, we're so proud of our Bestie.

**David Friedberg** (1:45)
Yeah, it's hard.

**Jason** (1:46)
You have no idea how anxious, ashamed, hand-wringing he was for six weeks. He knew he won. He wouldn't tell us the outcome, because he knew that Chamath would gamble it, and it would be like a whole controversy. He'd figure out a way to make a bet on it.

**David Friedberg** (2:05)
Actually, someone doesn't know how to keep their mouth shut. Yes.

**Jason** (2:08)
Yeah, that's right. I keep talking to Chamath about that. And then he wins, and he wins, but he's so upset at himself, because he didn't win enough.

**David Friedberg** (2:18)
I'm going to thank our sponsors.

**Jason** (2:21)
I mean, this is what happens on an average show. I say about 17 inappropriate things. He goes, strike, cut, strike, cut. And then we have to have a grand negotiation after the episode, where we horse trade the inappropriate things Chamath and I say, and what he's going to allow us to happen.

**David Friedberg** (2:37)
I don't mind when Chamath says inappropriate things. Because it usually doesn't involve other people. It's you where you kind of cross the line a little bit, but you know.

**Jason** (2:45)
That's why they tune in.

**David Friedberg** (2:46)
I have to save you from you, Jay Cal.

**Jason** (2:48)
But what has it been like in terms of, because we're going to talk about this here, a lot of people now are taking the playbook of creating audience and then building companies. And you were doing the production board, you're building a bunch of different companies. Ohalo became very successful. You said, hey, wait, I got to go all in on this, so to speak. But you're going into it with a certain amount of audience, a certain amount of notoriety and the ability, let's face it, a lot of people in business know you from the podcast now. So what's it like being a CEO now and having the pod as a platform?

**David Friedberg** (3:23)
That's actually a great question. Because for me, I'm not doing this podcast to build a media thing. I just thought it'd be interesting. We started doing it during COVID and I just kept doing it. And I don't know why I kept doing it, to be honest. I tried to quit a couple of times. I tried to quit every week I wanted to quit. And I still contemplated a lot.

**Jason** (3:38)
We had so much tension the first two years.

**David Friedberg** (3:40)
Until we got to sign an LLC agreement. Now it's all smooth sailing. The votes are what mattered. It was a big...

**Jason** (3:46)
Actually, I think it's like a real important evolution. We had this thing going ad hoc and I was trying to keep it together. And the one thing I learned in media from Engadget, I asked Peter Rojas, who I had stolen from Gizmodo, Nick Denton's...

**David Friedberg** (4:01)
Yep...

**Jason** (4:01)
.company to come to Engadget. I said, tell me the secret of why Gizmodo, Gawker, and now Engadget are doing so well. And he said, the secret to blogging is very simple, show up every day.

**David Friedberg** (4:11)
It's actually a great point. And then, yeah, I mean, Jason did keep us showing up and then it became a thing and then it's like, okay, we should probably do something legit to make this into a business or make it into something structural that stays alive. So we did. But to answer your question, I go to meet with farmers a lot and business executives in the agriculture industry and I can't tell you how often I run into someone who's like, I watch your podcast. I'm a fan. That is...