The Odd Lots AMA Episode: Joe and Tracy Answer Your Questions

Tracy Alloway (0:10)

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

Joe Weisenthal (0:14)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:15)

Joe, it's my favorite time of year.

Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

That could mean so many things, holidays.

Tracy Alloway (0:20)

That's right, it's earnings season again. No, it is the holiday season, the festive season. More importantly, it is our annual Ask Me Anything episode.

Joe Weisenthal (0:31)

I love the end of the year, because rather than coming up with new guests and figuring out what the big stories are, we can just do like round up episodes and sort of look backs and retrospective. No, but for real, I genuinely enjoyed this episode.

Tracy Alloway (0:47)

I like it. I like that it has that old timey radio call in feel. And I always like to hear what's sort of resonating with our listeners and what they're curious to hear more about.

Joe Weisenthal (0:57)

Totally. And you know, sometimes people are curious about us and our careers and stuff. And we don't really like, I don't know, I'm not that into like talking about ourselves. You know, I want to be the question asker, you know?

Tracy Alloway (1:09)

That's why we went into journalism.

Joe Weisenthal (1:11)

But it's fun to hear what people are curious about. And every once in a while, I guess, having the microphones turned, so to speak.

Tracy Alloway (1:18)

Yes. So we invited all of our listeners and readers and Discord subscribers to send in their questions, anything at all that they wanted to ask us. And we have a selection of those questions here. So without further ado, why don't we hear from our first caller?

Alfredo (1:36)

Alfredo, as of now, I live in Bonn, Germany. I had a question pertaining to how you actually started the podcast, where you got the idea. Now you two went from being coworkers to co-hosts on a podcast so niche and so interesting.

Joe Weisenthal (1:53)

Thank you, Alfredo. I'll start with that one. There was no real plan. I think, so Tracy and I started working together here at Bloomberg in 2015, and we were doing digital stuff, and we've had a variety of jobs. But I think it was sometime in 2015, podcasts were getting big or starting to grow.

And I turned to Tracy and I said, you want to do a podcast together? And she said, yep.

That's my memory of it.

Tracy Alloway (2:21)

It's a good thing I said yes. What if I said no? I have too much other stuff to do.

Joe Weisenthal (2:25)

We did have a lot of stuff on our plate in those days.

Tracy Alloway (2:27)

Yeah, that's right. I think at one point, Joe and I were doing three different jobs, if you include the podcast. We were going on TV.

We were managing the Bloomberg News Desk. Lots of stuff going on. But I am really glad that we started it in 2015 If you go back and listen to some of our early episodes.

Joe Weisenthal (2:46)

Don't, don't.

Tracy Alloway (2:47)

Well, they are a little bit embarrassing because you can tell that we were sort of learning as we went. But they are also some of my favorite episodes. So one of our very first ones was an episode about the banana, the evolution of the banana, how the world ended up with a boring banana. There are some really interesting episodes with an archeologist, Arthur Demerest. Those are still, they live free in my head.

Joe Weisenthal (3:11)

Do you remember the catfish bubble episode?

Tracy Alloway (3:13)

Yes, yes.

Joe Weisenthal (3:14)

We did some real niche stuff back in the day. And of course that I think that still exists, but we were like, the news was like, oh, what's that? Like we were way off the news back in those days.

Tracy Alloway (3:24)

Yeah, but I'm glad we started it. It's turned into a really great place to actually dive into topics and learn more about them in a more, I guess, intense way than you can necessarily through other journalistic mediums.

So yeah, that's how it started.

Joe Weisenthal (3:40)

And I definitely didn't think this would be our main jobs. I always figured it was a side hobby of a, or it was like a side job of a side job. So when I turned to Tracy, I said, should we do a podcast? It was definitely not like, this is what we are going to do with our careers. So this has been fun.

Cale (3:56)

This is producer Cale. Before we go on to our next question, could you also say why and how you came up with the name Odd Lots?