How to Start a Podcast (Then vs Now) w/Alex Goldman

Alex Goldman (0:00)

People have little curiosities that they just sit with, and I'm sure this is with you too, and it's with me, where I'm just like, a good example is, the town that I live in, they insist on not letting us put both paper recycling and bottle recycling in the same, in the, on the same week. It's every other week. And it's like, now then I have like tons of bottles just hanging out in my house. And I'm like, this is so dumb. Why do they do this? And when I was pitching Hyperfixed, I was like, this is the problem I want to find out the answer to. Why are they doing this to me?

Marques Brownlee (0:39)

All right. What is up, people of the Internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. A bonus episode. We're your hosts. I'm Marques.

Andrew Manganelli (0:46)

I'm Andrew. And today we've got a very special guest.

One you've probably heard of quite a few times if you're a long form wave, if you're a long time Waveform listener. In fact, I think we could make the argument Waveform doesn't exist without his work. Alex Goldman, thank you for joining us today.

Alex Goldman (1:00)

Thank you. And that's incredibly kind of you. I really appreciate it.

Andrew Manganelli (1:02)

It really is true. I think Marques and I, one of the first podcasts that we both consistently listen to episodically was Reply All. And when we were thinking of making a podcast, like every YouTuber felt like they had to do at one point, we talked about Reply All all the time. So long time ago, we'll get into that later. But you've been podcasting in the space for over a decade. What got you started and can you introduce yourself a little bit for those who don't know you?

Alex Goldman (1:29)

Yeah, so my name is Alex Goldman. I'm currently the host of a podcast called Hyperfixed and also a podcast about the Amityville movie series called Amityvilleville, which don't recommend anybody actually listen to.

And I started in radio. I got a journalism degree and then didn't know what to do with my life. And I got into IT for five years, installing RAM, fixing computers, troubleshooting error messages, making sure... Turning them on and off again. Yeah, exactly. Making sure everybody's McAfee virus scan was up to date in 2007 or whatever. And then I always really loved radio, specifically like narrative radio. I mean, This American Life was a big deal for me. And then Radio Lab came along and that was a big deal for me.

And my co-host and I were working at WNYC. We got, I got a job at WNYC in 2010, which is the flagship sort of NPR station in New York City. I was working for a media analysis show. And the way that we actually got started making our own podcast was the station put together a contest, which was like, hey, everybody in the building can submit their idea for a show. And if we like it, we'll give you a little bit of money to make it. So we submitted our idea, which was very different from what Reply All ended up being, which was nominally an internet podcast. And they were like, yeah, we don't like this.

Andrew Manganelli (2:53)

Oh, really?

Alex Goldman (2:54)

We're not interested. But my boss was like, listen, if you can just do it in the sort of corners of time that you are not making on the media, the show that you're making, we'll let you make it. We'll give you the studio space and we'll let you make it. So we made sort of like a proto Reply All that was called TLDR. I think we did like 30 some episodes of it. And then while we were doing that, Alex Bloomberg, who was a producer for This American Life for two decades, was like, hey, I want to go start my own podcast company.

When I go, would you guys want to do what you're doing now over there? And so we were like, well, absolutely.

We would love, because WNYC, great station, I learned a lot working there. They were not, they're a non-profit and they're very risk averse, you know? So they were not in the market to fund the thing we were making. They were like, you guys are doing great. Keep up the good work. And we were like, yeah, well, we also make $44,000 a year. We're not really, this is New York City, we're not making money to live off of. So from there, we just started Reply All and it was kind of off to the races.