Alan Black & Alan Zweig: Making Tubby

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The sound of podcast, the show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:13  
There's a new podcast from a couple of guys named Alan. Alan black is the producer and has things on his resume that you may know, like Canadaland and Hot Docs. The other Alan is renowned filmmaker Alan zwig. You may have seen some of his documentaries, like vinyl I curmudgeon and when Jews were funny. The new podcast is called Tubby, sometimes sad, often hilarious, featuring human conversations with friends, special guests and the occasional expert about weight, health, body image, self esteem. But overall, the show is about what it's like to live being or feeling fat. At podcast YYC, I saw the trailer of this podcast, and it was my first introduction to the show. You can see what I saw on the episode page at soundoff podcast.com Tubby is a project from Alan Black's company left of dial media in Calgary. I asked Alan black to come on the show to talk about the making of Tubby, and he did one better by offering up host Alan zwig to join us for today's conversation. And now Alan zwig and Alan black join me from Toronto. What came first the idea of doing a podcast or doing a work about being overweight?

Alan Zweig  1:25  
Yeah, well, you know, I have thought about making a film about it, but I also thought I've done enough really personal films, and I should leave that one alone. So if I had run into somebody commissioning documentaries, and said, I want to make one about being fat. And Nate said, Yes, I would have done it, but the first person who said yes was a Podcast

Matt Cundill  1:52  
Producer. How long has this been in the works?

Alan Black  1:54  
Alan? So I left my previous employment in December. I think Alan and I met in January. I kind of didn't really have a big plan for my life. I just knew I wanted to make something and make something that felt like it would be fun and it would be good and it would be meaningful. And Al and I had worked together at cannaland on a podcast called The worst podcast. We made six episodes. Alan we had coffee, he said to me, I'd like to make something about what it's like to be fat, and I could relate. And knowing Alan's work, I thought that would be perfect. And so the idea, I suppose, came in January, and we started working in earnest, I guess maybe March. So we've been working on it for whatever that's been six months. There's

Matt Cundill  2:43  
a zillion podcasts out there about health, I know because I've got five of them sitting in my podcast production company. But this one is different. This one has stories, and it's not even though it is listed as self help, it's telling stories, you know, about being overweight. It's not necessarily providing solutions. Yeah.

Alan Zweig  3:04  
I mean, first of all, I don't know why it's listed in self help, like that was the whole idea of the thing was essentially not to be self help. I mean, over the different periods of my life when I was trying to lose weight, I have listened to 20 self help podcasts. I have three or four or five in my favorites. Now, I look at them every once in a while, but none of them. And I was like, well, first of all, I can't do a self help thing. And also, anything I've ever made about, you know, I made a film about collecting records. It wasn't self help. It was people saw it and took it as a cautionary tale and stopped collecting so I suppose on some level, I could see this as self help. It's like somebody could listen to me talking about being fat, and they're like, oh, fuck, I never want to be as fucked up as that guy, I better stop eating or something, but, but, no, the self help ones are are good. I just can't do a self help. And I think the theory was that of all the 1000 podcasts about being fat, there should be one just about being fat, and not about how to stop being fat. So did you

Matt Cundill  4:24  
find when you're interviewing people that they are perhaps maybe more open or telling a different story because you don't have a camera on them, and this is a podcast and there's a microphone, are they a little more open than maybe some of the past documentary works that you've done?

Alan Zweig  4:39  
No, there's no difference. I mean, you know, the biggest maybe this is a little too much inside baseball, but I've made films where I had to interview celebrities. Mostly I haven't interviewed celebrities. Celebrities are by far the hardest interview. I know this is kind of. Crazy, but I interviewed all these people, Jewish comedians, and I asked my producer, like, do you think they'll want to talk about what I want to talk about? And he's like, Oh, they're so tired of telling those same stories they told on Johnny Carson. It'll be such a relief. But that's completely untrue. All they know how to do is tell the same stories they told on Johnny Carson, and if you ask them anything that's off script, they're like deer in the headlights. So even on this show, though we're not interviewing celebrities as famous as Shecky green or something, still, it's the same thing. When people talk about something for a living or for you know, their presence online is about being fat, they have talking points, whether they know it or not, they have talking points. You have to get them off that. And that's really hard, so it's much easier. That's the only difference is between people and celebrities.

Unknown Speaker  6:02  
That's the only difference.

Matt Cundill  6:04  
You know. Alan black, when I spoke with you at podcast YYC, you had this sort of look in your face of joy, because you were going to be creating something for yourself. So two questions, how joyful has it been so far, and how long have you had this particular project earmarked as being the first for left of dial media.

Alan Zweig  6:22  
I just want to say I've tried to make it as unjoyful for him as possible. I've tried to suck every ounce of joy out of the experience for both of us. I don't know if I succeeded.

Alan Black  6:35  
Working with Alan is a true delight every single time. I used to be a filmmaker when I was 20, and, you know, I didn't have any prospect of being a successful filmmaker. I just there were things I either wanted to make movies about, and things I was interested in, and because there was no real pot of gold at the end for the I mean, even in the best of times a documentary filmmaker, there is no pot of gold. You can kind of just do whatever you want, and like, chase the things that you're interested in chasing. I've worked for 20 some odd years now for other people's things and other people's projects and companies, and to me, I mean, I'm very excited about this project for many reasons. One, Alan will hate me saying this, but I think he's one of the most original and unique voices in this country as a documentary filmmaker, but just generally, so it's really exciting to get to hear that voice on a podcast.

Alan Zweig  7:27  
That's only because the Jews of my parents generation are dead. Everybody sounded like this at the Coleman's deli when I was a kid. But anyway,

Alan Black  7:38  
you do something on Mike, on camera, behind the camera that very few people do. There is no facade. There's an ability to have real conversations with people about real things. And that's not the case for most podcasts, most films, like people talk about authenticity. A lot. They talk about being authentic. And I think, you know, in podcasting, they mean it as flip on a mic and be yourself. Most people's selves are quite unoriginal and boring, and Alan is not and just generally. You know, my operating principle for myself was, let's, let me try to make things that don't fit neatly into a box unfortunately, Spotify and Apple and everywhere you get your podcast, they like to categorize things as self help or as comedy or as true crime or as society and culture. And I found it incredibly fun that we get to kind of play with the idea of a self help podcast or a weight loss podcast or any number of podcasts, but it isn't any of those things, and it gets to sneak up on people. So it's really fun. And every every bit of the process of making this and distributing it and marketing it, we've tried to have a little bit of fun with it and do it a little bit differently. It's odd. Spotify has listed it as a self care podcast, and it's most definitely not that. But there's something fun about the idea that somebody is going to click on this for self care decidedly not get the thing they were looking for, but hopefully get something entirely different, which they didn't know they wanted. And I think that's what's happening, and it's going to happen with this podcast.

Alan Zweig  9:09  
Yeah. I mean, it would be nice to think that somebody trying to lose weight would click on it and then afterwards go, you know, I feel better about myself now, like which is the best kind of self help. So, you know, the thing is that not that this was my goal in life, but it turned out that long time ago I heard this phrase, which has been very kind of inspiring my whole life. They said, the more deeply personal you say a thing, the more universal it is. It's when you make a general statement, people won't relate when you say something like one day I wanted to throw an ashtray at my daughter's head the. That's when people will go, Oh, I've had that thought too. I just never heard anybody say it. So again, I'm not like a proselytizer. I'm not like a social worker, but I am aware of the fact, after making so many personal films, that people have thoughts that they think nobody else has ever had. And of course, there is no thought that they've had that nobody else has ever had. They've just never heard anybody say it. And so when somebody says it, whether it be me or one of our guests, I believe people will feel less alone. And I also believe that this will happen with not fat people? I invite unfat people who also have whatever to look at themselves in the mirror and go, Oh, fuck, I can't go out like this, you know, whatever. I think it'll be entertaining for them. But mostly, yes, the idea of the show was to make fat people feel less alone because they're going to hear from other fat people and go, Oh, how have you

Matt Cundill  11:04  
found the creative process between, at one point, doing films, but this time just being focused on audio. Has that changed anything? Or was there a moment when you said, Oh, this is a little different? Oh, wow.

Alan Zweig  11:15  
You know what? First of all, a lot of people would look at my films and say they would work just as well as radio. And even though I know that's a put down, I basically think that that's true of 99% of documentaries, that if you turn the picture off, basically, you know you're not getting that much from the picture. Well, okay, I'm a filmmaker, and every bit of filmmaking and picture and audio and all that is important to me. Having said that, the most important thing for me and all my films has been the editing, and that's pretty much the same for even though I'm not doing the editing on this, but I think they're very similar, and the only difference is that most interviews you do on zoom so I wouldn't want to make a film out of zoom interviews. But other than that, I feel like we're making short films, and on the podcast are basically short films. And

Alan Black  12:17  
I agree. I think like way we're thinking about the producing it and cutting it is more like one of Alan's films than like a podcast. From the beginning, didn't want to think about it like a It's a show like Welcome to my podcast today. There are bits that require a little bit more thought. I was listening to the episode we released today, and I was telling Alan this morning, there's nervous giggles from the person that Alan is interviewing, and there's moments where you know he does things that you just don't hear in podcasts. It feels like you're not like listening to an interview. You're listening to a real thing happening in real time. And that, to me, feels much more like documentary. What I like about what we're doing is that we're stealing some documentary conventions for audio. And the way people talk about documentary and podcasting is very much in the vein of like journalism documentary. Podcasting is kind of like the true crimey audio journalism. But there is a form of documentary that I love, and I suspect Alan loves the verite, the inter like, some interview stuff that is a different form of documentary that I think we're introducing to podcasting in a really interesting way.

Alan Zweig  13:26  
Well, you know, I'd put it, I'd say it differently. I would just say that. So now I've been in the podcasting space making a joke, because I think that's funny. But anyway, I've been in the podcasting space for basically two years now, and I had listened to podcasts, but I hadn't really paid attention to them. Now that I'm paying attention to them, I see that people are trying to do something different, like, you know, I just assumed podcasts were like radio or documentary or journalism, but, no, I can't characterize it, but it appears that people are trying to do something very like, create another genre that is podcasting. And listen to some of these shows. Almost all I'm hearing is the polishing going on, even, like, once upon a time, they interviewed somebody and they asked a question, but now they're going into a studio and redoing their question so that it's like this beautiful thing. I don't know why that's happening, really, I don't know. It feels like everybody got a bulletin. This is what we do. And, you know, I never got any of those bulletins from documentary. I did get bulletins. Like, when I'd made my fifth documentary, I got some bulletins and they told me, you know, we don't do that. And I was like, Really, there are things that people told me, you know, you've gotten away with this. So far, but this is how we do. And I'm like, Just as I always have the same rant, which is, there's much more openness to being your own tour in fiction than there is in non fiction. In non fiction, somehow we all get squeezed into this, like it should be like 60 minutes, or it should be like this podcast is as individual as my films were, and I didn't become world famous or successful, but I had an audience, and I'm hoping the same thing. But this one, even though it's not a polished podcast,

Matt Cundill  15:38  
it sounds polished. But Alan, there is a temptation to make this video, because, you know, we always talk about podcasting. We talk about video and, boy, we could have a nice, sort of complimentary video that sits in YouTube, but you've chosen not to do that and make this an audio first exercise for people to listen to and not focus on all the hocus pocus these days of what a video podcast will do for your

Alan Zweig  16:03  
stories. Well, I mean, it's also because I don't know that fat people want to be seen on camera, even though most people aren't that fat from the neck up, but I still maintain that I would rather tell them you're not going to be seen. I would rather reassure them. So we have used sort of cartoon avatars for the publicity, but, yeah, that's the basic reason. I don't know why, like, I get it that people watch on YouTube, but that's annoying to me.

Alan Black  16:37  
Let's be candid, though. Matt, when we started, we did think we would, you know, it's an easy format for video. We do actually record everything we have been recording on descript and in video. We listened to the first cut of the first episode and made the decision then and there that we would it was much more powerful. And you could the listener could put themselves in the shoes of the person of Alan and the person being interviewed, if they didn't know what they looked like. So we decided very early on that we would record the video but never use it. And we are. We're trying to figure out clever ways to put it on YouTube and get it on social and put it all the places you should be to get discovered. But we decided we should be audio first. We spent a lot of time, actually, Alan, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what a video look would be. That is not just Alan sitting on a slick couch with a slick background. And we realized we were spending far too much time concentrate. You know, both as filmmakers, we spent a lot too much time focusing on the video, and we should be focusing on what the audio would be like. And also, I think it's, you know, we could release videos anytime, somewhere along the lines a part of the marketing strategy, and just the strategy generally, is like, to the point of like, everything is everything in podcasting is formatted within an inch of its life. People make things because they're told that's how they how you're supposed to do it now, a lot of conversation at every conference about why you need video before, like, how to make a good thing. And I was like, we can release video episodes with two people and on Zoom screens that look like shit, but if we're going to do it, let's be more interesting and clever and better than everyone else who's just releasing the lowest common denominator version of their thing. We are trying to be a little bit elevated and a little bit unique and a little bit different. And if we were just going to release video that looks like everyone else's video, it would defeat us on purpose.

Alan Zweig  18:33  
Well, I mean, I listen to podcasts in the car or in earbuds, like just the idea of having to look at them, I thought, you know, to me, basically I stopped listening to the radio. Now I listen to podcasts. It's not a substitute for watching TV, and he's about to go away. But you know, that's what I like about Mark Marin, that he never Why did you stop listening to the radio? Well, because basically I only listened to the radio in the car, and when I started listening to podcasts, you know, also, whatever it just there's, I don't want to listen to music radio, because they're not going to play anything I like. So I guess there's NPR or there's CBC Radio. And CBC Radio is, I believe, a lot of podcasts in Canada. We're very influenced by what CBC Radio has been over the years, but you can't pick what you want to listen to on CBC Radio. So the visual podcast, I don't get it. I don't Joe Rogan. So you see Joe Rogan's head and you see the other guy's head. It's not like they're out in a field, you know? I mean, I've thought I had this idea. I pitched somebody. Let's do a on screen podcast where the whole time you're walking, you're walking with a guest, and you're walking through the city, and you're both miked. I thought that was a. Good idea, but nobody bit. So that would be fun. That would be worth looking at whatever. I just don't even get it. I don't get it these Bert and the other guy, or Theo, like, whatever, they're just sitting there at a desk. I'll

Matt Cundill  20:15  
give a shout out, by the way, to buzz Knight taking a walk podcast during the pandemic. He actually did that. We talked a number of times about the struggles of just getting the microphone right, and the wind coming around the corner, and then, of course, the traffic and the honking that also went into it. But it's still a great idea.

Alan Black  20:30  
But Matt, I guess, like, that's, I mean, I find that interesting too. Like the idea that, you know, in podcasting, you take out the ums and ums and imperfections, and I understand why it needs, you need to be able to hear the thing, but I find it interesting. We've come to a place where all that stuff is kind of unacceptable, where, in, you know, in documentary, you'd have clean film, you'd have clean sound too. You don't want, you don't want to be an audible but like having some texture and some feeling, like, I love the idea that you could do that stuff and break some of those rules. Like, I like that a lot.

Alan Zweig  21:03  
You know what? You're reminding me of a couple of films I made, not documentaries where we tracked a guy walking along Boys Street, or, you know, we did these walking things. And of course, we couldn't light them, you know, we didn't have the crew. And whatever, you see them, and they walk in front of a bright restaurant, you see them well, and then they go somewhere else, and it's darker, like, I have to say, like I could, I could make a big meal of this, but I work with the same crew most of the time when I make documentaries, but every once in a while, we get a guy who's a professional and works In TV, and those people drive me fucking crazy. Like they drive me crazy, like, I have a whole story of this guy who set up this shot where, you know, he said I wasn't really paying attention, and he's having one of my the subject of my film is throwing stuff out of this space. And this guy set up a shot where he, like, focused on the ground, and had to make the guy throw the object to that spot so it would land in focus. Like, you know, you're just now you turned my documentary subject into an actor. I haven't seen any advantage to that professionalism. I think it's just some concept that it's needed, but that professionalism often destroys content.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  22:32  
Transcription of the sound off podcast is powered by the podcast Super Friends, five podcast producers who get together to discuss podcasting, sharpen your podcast and creation skills by following the show on the sound off podcast, YouTube or Facebook page, the sound off podcast with Matt Cundill,

Matt Cundill  22:52  
tell me about the trailer. The trailer feels very audio. First it sounds good, and then it looks good, because then you put some animation to it, and now I can watch it in a theater, which is where I first encountered the trailer. But it's audio first, and I think that's one of the biggest lessons of podcasting here, is create something audio for the ears First, figure out the video later.

Alan Black  23:17  
I absolutely despise podcast trailers like your 32nd or 62nd I think they are. Hello. My name is blank. My podcast about blank. Sound bite a, sound bite, B, listen on Spotify or Apple, wherever you podcast, every single one, they strip them of tone of humor, of like any I mean, there's, you know, ones that have an interesting story. They can convey the story interesting, but they're stripped of tone and texture. And I've been on about this for a few years. I was making, we made pretty good trailers at Canada land, both video and audio, but we're so intent, like, if I had a life goal, it's to, like, explode the podcast trailer and make something new. I don't know you should listen to it, but we made a teaser that's sitting on the feed too. That was our first attempt, which is just Alan throwing up synonyms for the word Tubby. I was watching on criterion, I was watching an old Brian De Palma movie from the 70s. And there, as a bonus extra, they had an audio trailer they made for radio, which was nothing to do with the film, and was just the narrator saying, the film is so scary and so unsettling that each theatrical screening, they'll give you five minutes after the screen to sit there and regroup. And I was like, That is such an interesting idea for a trailer. And they used to do things like that all the time in the 70s and 80s and like that spoke to me much more than just having, like, your conventional horror movie trailer. I was like, if I could do something half as interesting in audio, that would be cool. You know, I know what trailers are used for. You drop them on people's feeds and they're meant to be kind of generic. But I was like, what if we just dropped a trailer where we didn't even say anything? Me, but people were like, What is this thing? That's not what we did, but we made a trailer that really, I think, conveyed Alan's tone. It was a little slower and a little longer and a little bit like, funnier and a little bit just more idiosyncratic than your typical trailer. And that was the goal, to make somebody stood out, and then adding the layer of video again, we made the decision not to show anybody's faces and not to use the video we had shot. So we're like, how do we do this in a way that is visually compelling? And so we went with the animation. I think, I think it sounds great. It's like, works as an audio trailer, and it works as as a short film, you know, like it's Alan can speak to making the show, but in terms of the way we market it and think about getting it out into the world. We just want every element to be, you know, we want the title is not what you'd expect from a title of this sort. The artwork is not what you'd expect. We want it all to be a little bit

Alan Zweig  25:53  
unexpected, if anybody's listening to this. I just want to make it clear I'm not saying I'm a rule breaker. What I'm saying is that, left to my own devices, I do things a certain way, and sometimes I find out later that I broke a rule. And it's just like, how is it that art, I'll use the term make all of this art, it doesn't have rules. Like, rules are stupid. Rules are for people who don't have their own ideas, and then they can buy the book, and they're like, Oh, that's a rule. So I'll do that. Like, I'm not like a rebel trying to smash conventions and break rules. The question was, can I do it the way I would do it. Are you going to allow me to do it the way I would do it? You know, I would say that when I make my films, I am in charge. When I make these podcasts, I'm always working with somebody who, even if they're my collaborator, I'm giving them a right to do something like editor package and like that. And it's just like, I'm just asking them, I know you're going to package me. Just don't package me too much and and basically, I don't think I am packageable that much. So package me as much as you want, but I'm not, you know, whatever. I'm not going to be whatever ready for prime time. That's not my strength. It's really true. I have to say this, that I have made films with film producers who are like very clear. We know what you do and we want you to do that, but they don't even know what that means when they say it, because when I do it, they're like, Okay, I know I said it about that, but now you're doing this. And, no, that doesn't work. Like, yeah. I mean, I don't blame them. That's the way they are. Just, I've been

Alan Black  27:53  
thinking a lot about rule breaking, like, the I've been going to a lot of conferences, and there's a lot of 10 Steps, 10 marketing tips, 10 Ways to do like and everyone is writing copious notes, and they think that there's a formula to making a great thing, to selling a great thing, there's not. And I've been, you know, I've been thinking a lot about, you know, a lot of young people make a lot of great things. All the greatest things come from people that are young. And you know, that's saying they're not trying to break rules. They just don't know the rules yet. They don't have enough experience to know what the rules are so they can do things just the way they intended to do them, not the way they've been told. And that's why Kurt Cobain is Kurt Cobain and etc, etc. And Alan and I are not in our 20s, but I've been thinking a lot about, how do we adopt the spirit of, you know, we know the rules we've been we've been working on things for a long time, but how do we adopt the spirit of someone who doesn't know what the rules are, and bring that to the work we're doing, which I think will elevate it? And also, I got to say, like, I'm a big champion of podcasts and audio, and I think there's real magic in it. But I really do think everyone chasing, you know, the economics of it make it the case that you need to chase something, you know, whether it's video or whether it's a specific genre or, you know, and it strips it of its individuality. And it's like the shows are just even the good ones, to me, are pretty similar to the mediocre ones. I keep talking about how serial was both a great podcast, but also kind of invented a genre. And Mark Marin is both a great interview and also invented a genre. He broke half a dozen rules making that show, and I haven't seen a lot of that in the past few years, and I think the time is right because the money is not there, so it gives people a little bit of like, similar to being a documentary filmmaker in your 20s, if the money is not there, then you can do anything. You can take your idea that was just rejected by wondery or CBC or whomever, realize that you can do it any way. You. Want. And I think maybe the homogenized world of podcasting, where there is no money right now, is a place where people who are talented can do things the way they wanted to, not the way they were told they should do it, because that's how you monetize your audience, or whatever.

Alan Zweig  30:15  
I just want to say that a few times I've turned on podcasts for the first time and the person started talking, and they were so fucking chirpy that it's just like, I can't there was there was I couldn't listen to they could have been just spending the whole time telling this for you Allen's why you're the greatest person in the world. We love you. I didn't care. I can't listen to anything in that cheerleader chirpy voice, you know, so podcasting is odd, right? Because there's like 4 million of them, and when you open up your phone and start looking, I'm tired of the shows I listen to, what else is there? Then there's like millions of choices. But I have been surprised. I'm not I'm not even trying to Pat us on the back. I'm just saying I have been surprised how many of them. You know this is not the proper use of the thing, the medium is the message. But I take that in a much more mundane way, which is, your podcast might be about golf and your podcast might be about how much plastic is in the world, but they're the same fucking podcast because you're talking the same way, and your your music cues are the same. And after a while, I didn't even know what I'm listening to, except another chirpy podcast. And so I mean, I think it's interesting, because I think that's why maybe I'm wrong, but maybe Joe Rogan was successful because at least he was just fucking being himself. Whoever that was, he wasn't being I don't know. I'm trying to think of somebody that's universally seen as chirpy, but that's all making my films. I've had an audience, not the biggest audience, but an audience. And I think their show could have an audience too, of people that when they turn it on and they hear my voice, some guy going, oh fuck, they'll go, Oh, I'm home. You know, that's what I hope.

Matt Cundill  32:14  
So one of the things that I find at podcast conferences, and this was alluded to earlier, and that's the things we say that we start to believe that may not be true. So I hear things a lot like, oh, podcasting has a discovery problem. And I don't think it does. I think your podcast might have a discovery problem, is what I suggest. So now that you know we're doing a podcast here called Tubby, you know you compare that to maybe doing a documentary film, perhaps on the same subject. Those are different discovery challenges. So if you did a film, you'd have to go and find somewhere for it to run. It could run on Netflix, it could run on prime, it could run in a streaming it could run on CBC, it could be on gem. It could be in a number of places, but you do need to find that place, a home somewhere. But for podcasting, it's very simply, we're going to get an account with a cast, and we're going to distribute wherever you get your podcast, and now it's on Apple and Spotify and everywhere. So all that to say, Do we have a discovery problem in podcasting?

Alan Black  33:09  
Yes and no. I mean, not every podcast. Most podcasts do not deserve to be discovered. Like, but we have, like, there's categorization problems we account for subject. Okay, I'll put it this way. I love this Roger Ebert quote where he says, it's not what it's about, it's how it's about, it and like, my wife is always like, let's watch the trailer for this new Paul Thomas Anderson film, or whatever. And I was like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie is about, what matters is the way Paul Thomas Anderson makes movies in podcasting. It's all what it's about. This is a self help podcast. This is a true crime podcast. This is a society and culture podcast. They're grouped by subject matter, and granted, lots of people are looking for a self help podcast or a podcast about the Blue Jays, but there is no accounting for how it's about it. There is no way to discover something interesting just because you're looking for something interesting. There is no way, based on the way the platforms organize things, and I think they're Apple is trying to find ways to break out things that are deserving of being broken out, but there is no easy way to find great things. There's an easy way to find the things that are popular because the algorithm favors the things that everybody like. But if you're looking for something that has a tone or a feeling or is about something in a different way, or speaks to you not because you like tennis, but because you like a certain feeling, there is a discoverability problem in that regard.

Alan Zweig  34:43  
You know what? Now I'm gonna I'm gonna annoy Alan. Now, when we were putting this together, we reached this point where he wanted me to answer the question, why should somebody listen to this? And it was. Like, he gave me the impression that, essentially, we were taking this thing that was different, but now we had to talk about it in a way that it sounded like other things. So you have to give them a reason why it's like, I don't remember what I said, but whatever I said was fucking bullshit, because I was just trying to get him to stop persisting, that I had to answer that question, or the other one was, what's the show about? They have to have something that the show's about that every week they will tune in again because they know it'll do that. Yeah, I know about that. That's like, bullshit. Horrible TV does that. So I get it Alan. He wants us to succeed. So it's like, okay, go off and do your crazy thing. But now let's punch it and into some form that is also like everything else. All I'm saying is, it totally makes sense to me that there's these conferences and that people are trying to figure out how to do it and all that. But all that they're doing at these conferences is which I would love to go to one, but all they're doing is kind of people are saying, how do you get into podcasting, or what are the rules, or something? No, you know, like, I guess that happens with movies too. But generally, people who make movies just make them. The people market them. You know, that's why people make these trailers that show a movie that is not the movie. I don't know

Alan Black  36:40  
Alan, it happens with movies, too. I remember trying to be a screenwriter when I was 22 and being in these screenwriting classes. And every time the teachers were like, what questions do you have? It was always about finding an agent or formatting, or like, how do you get discovered? And so little of it was about making a like, writing a great screenplay. And I find that at the conferences and generally, all the questions are about, there's almost no talk about how to make something good. Sorry, you can't teach

Alan Zweig  37:13  
somebody how to be original. And the thing is, again, I'm not saying I'm a rule. I'm so original. You know, everybody's original, if they'll just be themselves and do what they want, but if you're trying to pound your original idea into a format, you know that's what my friend, my friend, just worked on a TV show, and I have now seen that TV show, and he told me, it's all about format. That's all the people making it care about the content has to be pounded into this format. And I watched an episode of this show and there was almost no content left. All I noticed was how it was framed, how the dialog that people in it were saying sounded like rehearsed. It's like, you know, obviously that works. Obviously that's how to be successful on some level. So I guess I think of our podcast, I guess more like independent cinema, where there were fans of independent cinema, there were fans of the Duplass brothers, mumble core, etc, etc. There were fans of John Cassavetes, etc, etc. He was my hero. Like, we're in that category. We're in the indie cinema category, if you want to hear things in the Property Brothers, there's a million podcasts trying to be the Property Brothers, or trying to be the view, or whatever

Alan Black  38:53  
the fuck Casa vanities versus the Property Brothers. That's the greatest head to head battle.

Alan Zweig  38:58  
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I'll just say, like, when I came to Canada land and we ended up doing the worst, I mean, I liked how it turned out, but I didn't realize I'm slightly contradicting myself here, because here's the other thing about podcasts that drive me crazy, which is That story you're telling at the bar might be interesting, but on the podcast, you needed somebody to edit you. I've listened to podcasts where whatever even like political things, like pod save America or something, but for the first 10 minutes, they're just like, oh, Tommy's dog just shit on the rug, and then they're talking about that for 10 minutes, and it's like, I often want to tell people kind of I want to phone them and say, I'm not doubting that you're an interesting person, but for a podcast, you should get down to the essence, you know. So that's one thing that's. It about packaging, like I don't think there's anything. Maybe I'm being incredibly boring now, and you'll have to edit my boringness, my boring talk about others people's boredom. But I believe all podcasts should be edited, that's for sure.

Matt Cundill  40:17  
So if I hit follow on your podcast, I'm interested to know. One of the things I always think about when I make a commitment, I feel like I'm getting married to the podcast. I feel like we're entering a relationship and we're getting hitched. And I wonder how long it's going to be. Will this go three years? Will this go two years? Is it going to be in seasons? How am I going to be able to plan my life so I can listen to this particular podcast? We have podcasts that take the summers off and organize themselves in different ways. Is this something that you have thought about, or it's too early to think about?

Alan Zweig  40:48  
I think all podcasts should be every whatever you'd say every week, every two weeks, for the rest of time immemorial. We did the worst. They did six episodes. I was like, how is that gonna work now we're doing another season of the worst a year later. People have to discover it all over again. I would think we should do this until people stop listening. And the challenge I will tell you, maybe I shouldn't go there of this show is that there's going to be a lot of similar conversations because it's a narrow ish subject, but on the other hand, we edit them and we will just leave in the stuff that's not similar. We just did one with a friend of mine, and it was just like every example she had Katie about her struggle was just like nobody said that yet. So hopefully a lot of fat people will want to be on the show, will listen and want to do it, and a lot of people listen. I think we could do it forever, even when I've, you know, when I'm no longer obese, I'll still be obese in my soul.

Alan Black  42:03  
So, I mean, the, you know, there's two issues. One, how soon do Alan and I drive each other crazy? How long do we want to do this for? I It's creatively fulfilling, so we could do it for a long time. There is the matter of economics. I think, you know, we're we want to make it sustainable. So I think we need to grow the audience we you know, I said like, we're not making Joe Rogan, we're not making something that 10 million people will like, we're making something that 100,000 people will love. And if we can find 100,000 people that love it, we can keep doing it for a long time. Like, clearly, it's a format that could be every week, every second week creatively and pragmatically. The question is, can we sustain it economically? And early signs point to yes, we can. It's interesting. Like we've made 10 of them. We've got a 10 episode first season. And to my ears, each episode is a bit of a different flavor. I don't know how many you've listened to, Matt, I think there's three out there now, but each of them is, you know, one is quite funny, one is quite sad, one is very philosophical and contemplative. We've got some upcoming that have people that, I guess would be categorized as experts, and those conversations are a bit different. And then we've got, you know, we haven't featured a woman, yet on the podcast, like that's a whole, you know, everyone's got a very individual story, but each episode feels kind of distinct in a way, and that's what's been so fun about it. Like they, you know, they're not formatted within an inch of their lives. They feel like they could be little standalone pieces. I guess the goal is to make more. So we have started to think about it, and we've started to kind of piece together how we might make that happen. And you know, I suspect that as long as we can sustain it and it is fun and fresh and creatively exciting, we'll keep doing it.

Matt Cundill  43:53  
My goal was to get you out of here at the top of the hour. I clearly failed, but I would like to tell you that I started this show to learn things, and I have learned a lot by talking to you both today.

Alan Zweig  44:05  
I love teaching people that's my goal in life is because I have so much wisdom and experience, and I just think the world would be a better place if people would just listen to me and

Matt Cundill  44:18  
learn. Thanks, guys. I really appreciate it.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  44:21  
The sound off podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill, produced by Evan sir Minsky, edited by Taylor McLean, social media by Aiden glassy, another great creation from the sound off media company. There's always more at sound off podcast.com you.