The AMA Episode: Tracy and Joe Answer All Your Questions

Tracy Alloway (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:15)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:16)

Joe, it is a very special episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. It is the Christmas call-in show.

Joe Weisenthal (0:23)

I am very excited. We've never done, you know, we've never done an episode like this. We've never really had like sort of listener participation. We've never had anything resembling a call-in show. We've never really done an episode like about us, which feels a little narcissistic.

I usually like being, I like asking questions more than answering questions.

Tracy Alloway (0:45)

That's why we all became journalists, but you're right. This is a special one for us. We asked people to send in audio recordings of them asking us questions, and we are now going to attempt to answer them. We also are doing this in conjunction with our producer, Carmen Rodriguez. She is here with us right now. And Carmen, you've put together some questions of your own, right?

Carmen Rodriguez (1:08)

I have, I have. And I just feel like I'm being robbed of my moment to say thanks for having me. So thanks for having me.

Tracy Alloway (1:15)

I jumped right into it.

Carmen Rodriguez (1:16)

It's okay.

Joe Weisenthal (1:17)

I guess you're not the perfect guest, the perfect host, the perfect co-host, but it is exciting that the listeners are hearing your voice for the first time, I guess. Maybe they heard it on some of those live episodes.

Carmen Rodriguez (1:29)

Maybe, maybe. Anyway, thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here even though I'm here every day.

Tracy Alloway (1:33)

We are.

We are happy to have you in front of the camera and the microphone as opposed to behind it for once. What's your first question?

Carmen Rodriguez (1:42)

My first question is how did you meet and how was Odd Lots born?

Joe Weisenthal (1:49)

I guess you want to start, Tracy?

Tracy Alloway (1:52)

I'll start with the beginning, which is I remember the first time I met Joe, and we had both been covering finance and markets for a long time. Joe was at Business Insider at the time, and I was at the Financial Times.

And I remember I met him in a bar in Midtown, and it must have been like 2012 or 2013 It was in the midst of the Eurozone crisis, and we were having a sort of finance Twitter gathering, but Joe and I showed up first.

And I remember for those who have never met Joe in person, he can be intense. And I remember there was no chit chat. It was just like, hi, I'm Tracy, hi, I'm Joe. And then Joe's first question was like, so you think the Eurozone's gonna collapse? And that was it.

Carmen Rodriguez (2:35)

That's the most Joe Weisenthal thing ever.

Joe Weisenthal (2:38)

No, yeah, Tracy is right about that. I'm not good at like, you know, chit chat and stuff. Like I just want to get right into it. But anyway, obviously, you know, we hit it off pretty well despite the lack of chit chat.

I joined Bloomberg in late 2014 So basically exactly eight years ago. And as part of like the, my job at Bloomberg has like evolved numerous times since then, like I've done numerous different things and different permutations. But one of the first things I was given the opportunity to do is, okay, we're going to do something digital. It wasn't podcast or anything like that yet.

And I had a chance to go out and hire some people to work. And Tracy was the very first person that I wanted to hire.

Tracy Alloway (3:22)

Clearly I answered the Eurozone question correctly.

Joe Weisenthal (3:26)

Yeah, you got it right. I don't remember what you said, but clearly you got it right because I had always been a fan of Tracy's work when she was at the FT.

And yeah, she agreed to come on. And it was like she had been at Bloomberg once. So there was like a little like bureaucracy, like getting back and all that stuff, but we didn't really know what we were doing, but I was excited and that, yeah. And so that's how we both wound up here.

Carmen Rodriguez (3:49)

Nice, great. So on that note-

Joe Weisenthal (3:52)

And then I guess on like the podcast question, just before we forget about that, we sort of like didn't know what we were doing and we were doing a lot of different things. And I remember like one day I like turned to Tracy, I was like, should we do a podcast together? And you know, we sort of like, at the time podcasts weren't nearly as big as they are now and not every media company like had their whole like podcast strategy and all these like podcast startups.