AI and Ozempic: The two great disruptive technologies of 2023
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Welcome to Most Innovative Companies. I'm your host, Yasmin Ghaniyeh, joined as always by my producer, Josh Christensen. Hey, Josh. Hey, Yas. Josh, what is the most embarrassing song that you listen to on a regular basis?

I get random spurts. Obviously, I'm more of a podcast guy than over listening to things. I guess the most embarrassing song that I listen, it's not even embarrassing. I just throw on Whitney Houston every once in a while. That's not embarrassing. Oh, everyone does that. That's great. I love I want to dance with somebody. And I like just doing the part where it's like off time to the, you know, the background singers. It's like,

Dance! Those background singers, I absolutely live for that. But the most embarrassing thing that I ever listened to on repeat in my life was the Disney Tarzan movie soundtrack. No, that soundtrack is awesome. He went so hard. So hard!

Fun of Man? Great song. Featuring Rosie O'Donnell on that weird scatty jazz track there. Okay, I don't remember that one. That's kind of a deep cut. I think it was like track six. Yeah. I only know the two, Son of Man and You'll Be in My Heart. They're great. I mean, it's a great soundtrack. What about you, Yaz? What's your most embarrassing listen? Top Gun theme song. I listen to it when I run. Okay.

Yeah, that's a good running song. It takes a while, but it's so satisfying when it hits. I get that for a running song, but it's weird. I feel like listening to theme songs or like soundtracks is like inherently nerdy. It's not it's because it's not it is a real song, but it's also like not a real song.

It's true. When I was in college, I used to listen to the Social Network soundtrack by Trent Reznor whenever I was writing papers. That's problematic on so many fronts. I don't like that at all. Anyway, we're going to be talking more about music shortly. But first of all, do we have any housekeeping? We're in the

bit of the doldrums of summer, but just reminders that you can subscribe to Fast Company Premium on fastcompany.com and remember to subscribe, rate, and review to this podcast. Leave us a review. I made a joke the other day that if we get a thousand reviews and ratings on our podcast that I'll get a Fast Company tattoo. Maybe a temporary Fast Company tattoo. Wait, no, you definitely didn't say temporary. I did not say temporary. I said real one, but now I'm backing off of that.

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Later on today's episode, I'll be talking with Found CEO Sarah Jones-Simmer about how her company is revamping the way we access weight loss medication. In other words, we'll be chatting about Ozempic. But first, AI is poised to upend the music industry. And here to unpack all of this is Fast Company Associate Editor David Salazar. Hey, David. Hi, Az. You wrote an article about all this, but I want to sort of go back and just explain some of the basic facts of AI and music.

So let's start with the distinction between voice synthesis and voice generation. What's the difference? So the voice synthesis, people are kind of familiar with it because it's made a lot of waves in terms of things that people upload to YouTube or go viral on TikTok. It's taking someone's voice and either using feeding a computer data to then generate a version of it. You'll see that with podcasting.

meme videos of like Joe Biden and Barack Obama and Donald Trump playing like Call of Duty. Oh, yeah. Okay. And Drake rapping Ice Spice. Whereas generative AI is similar to like Dolly or Mid Journey or ChatGPT for text. You train it on music and then you can feed it a prompt like chill hip hop beats and it spits out something sort of in that vein. Yeah.

So you listen to a bunch of these. If you put them in a playlist with a bunch of original songs by artists, would I be able to tell the difference? Yeah, definitely. And I think part of the general thing about these songs, specifically generative songs, is that they are not good and they're mostly instrumental for now. Yeah. In your article, you mentioned, you know, a lot of background music playlists have them, right? Yeah.

Yeah, there's a company called Endel that does it sort of in the functional music space where you sort of choose a mood that you're feeling and what you want the music to help you with. And they sort of do that. There's some programs. I think one is called Google Music LM, yet to be released text-to-music generator. Tell me about how that works and when that's coming out. Well...

It's unclear, and this kind of gets at the heart of the issue with generative AI, right? Because it's a similar problem to what people are complaining about with ChatGPT and with Midjourney, which is that if you're training it on something that's copyrighted, you're going to run into problems. In this case, you're going to run into the record label's

But the problem with Google's Music LM is that it seems to have been trained on copyrighted material. It's not released yet because about 1% of the time it's spitting out something pretty similar to something that's copyrighted. That's not something that copyright holders are going to allow. So just to get a sense of what we're talking about, give us an example of a voice synthesis song.

So everyone knows about BTS. They're the huge K-pop juggernaut. Their label, HYBE, bought a company called Supertone back last year. And Supertone's thing is voice synthesis AI. And the first sort of collaboration there, the first artist to use Supertone from HYBE was an artist called Midnat. Terrible name, by the way. It's not good. I think you might have just offended some Scandinavian country, but...

It's an objectively bad name. Midnat? Midnat. It sounds like a test you take when you're in junior high school. It's like, oh, we got the midnats coming up. Gotta take the midnat.

And so what they did with this artist is actually a guy named Lee Hyun, and they used Supertone to let him sing kind of fluently in six languages. So they released it in English, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Spanish. Can we listen to some of it? Yeah. ♪ Pulling back in a minute, mm-hmm ♪

Yeah, we can keep up the role play. I don't care what the rules say. Did you say, I care what the grooves say? I think I don't care what the grooves say. I don't know. The lyrics don't make any sense.

They don't. I remember when I was in high school, you remember that Enrique Iglesias song, Bailamos? Yeah. And my Spanish teacher would always be like, the song goes, Bailamos, but really the emphasis should be like, Bailamos. And she'd like yell about it all the time. And I...

That's such a Spanish teacher thing to do. And I feel like that's like, gotta be a problem. That would really ruin the song. Bailamos. Bailamos. Yeah. Good song. Henry Churches. What? Henry Churches. Enrique Iglesias. That's his name?

Oh. Oh. I was so confused for a second. Yeah, me too. I was like, not another country artist covering one of these classic songs. Henry Church's does sound like a country artist. Henry Church's covering Bylamos is like Blake Shelton covering Home by Michael Buble. It just doesn't make sense.

So another artist that you talked about is an artist named Holly Herndon, right? Tell us a little bit about them. Yeah, so Holly Herndon and Grimes sort of fall into the category of people who are pretty interested in creating synthetic versions of their voice. So Holly Herndon created something called Holly Plus, which is sort of just like a synthetic version of her voice.

And she's made a couple tracks with that. I think she and her voice covered Jolene by Dolly Parton. That can't be good. It's not amazing. Jolene, Jolene, I'm breaking up.

Well... This is the whole thing, and this is my music background. And David, I'm pretty sure you're a musician too. I mean, it's just... It's so precise that it's just a dead giveaway why it's AI and why it's generated. It's like an uncanny valley situation. Yeah, exactly. It is something where, like...

how you the affectations the imperfections the you know the kind of interpretation is just all stripped away because at least to this point there's no like artistry to ai it's just not

a relative thing. So it just sounds so weird hearing Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene. It's just like, it's like very like middle school chorus, like director who has like no real musical talent being like, no, this is how you have to do it.

So the last clip I want us to listen to before we get on to sort of the big picture of all this is Timbaland using AI to resurrect Biggie Smalls. I guess to me it's like, what's the point? Yeah. With something like that.

That's a great question. I'm like, let's just go listen to the original music. It's very strange, especially with like the deceased artist thing. Again, it goes back into like Uncanny Valley thing. And I mean, there's a whole world of like digital legacy stuff that we could get into at some point, which is just a whole nother thing that AI is going to continue to get into. But like, it's weird. It's just it makes me a little sad, honestly. It just kind of bums me out.

Now, actually related to that, David, how is sort of AI generated voice and how are all these innovations affecting recording artists? It's sort of like an iceberg thing, right? The voice synthesis and the fake voices are actually sort of like the tip of the iceberg that everyone's aware of. But they're not actually the real problem. For the story, I spoke to a lot of folks in the recording industry. And the sense I get is that if you're creating like a Drake soundboard or uploading a fake Drake in the weekend song, like someone did on TikTok,

It kind of becomes just like a standard name image likeness thing. And it's a pretty easy sort of take it down. You're infringing on our likeness, whatever. The real issue is going to be generative AI and not in the way you think you're

So the actual issue is that folks are using generative AI to create these sort of nothing songs. Someone I spoke to named Jamie Brooke, she's a really great producer, artist herself, and writes very thoughtfully about the music industry. She basically called them viruses that are designed to work on Spotify, Apple Music. And the way they work is that you put out enough of a song to...

to get royalties eventually, you know, get some money back for the people who listen to it and sort of do it under those mood playlists. And it ends up because streamers are kind of increasingly working on like...

algorithmic curation, it ends up on playlists, people listen to it, and what happens is that songs by real artists don't end up on those playlists. So it's something called stream dilution that's actually going to be a big, it's already kind of a big issue, but as these generative AI music tools get more sophisticated, it's going to become a much bigger problem. And you can tell that the music industry knows that because they're already sort of assembling algorithms

the troops to combat this. They don't want to get caught flat-footed the way they did with Limewire. Yeah. What are record labels doing about this? One of the main things that they've done this year is...

create something called the Human Artistry Campaign. And this was launched at South by Southwest this year, spearheaded by the Recording Industry Association of America, RIAA. They are sort of a trade group that reps about 1,600 labels. They've got about 100 people signed on to this, and it actually isn't just people in the music industry. They've gotten NFL Players Association. They've got writers and other media people involved. But the main sort of...

thrust of this seems to be that they want to use it as sort of a lobbying arm to push Congress, other lawmakers to set something up legislatively that will protect their copyrights. That's sort of the main thing. It's still pretty nascent. There's nothing to say that they've fully done or accomplished yet, but they're still sort of in the early stages.

Mm-hmm.

they came out of the nineties into sort of the piracy boom, right? The LimeWire's and the Napster's and it fully changed the model. The rise of iPods and digital music fully changed their business model. And what ended up happening is that they basically,

bought into streaming sort of because they had to, you know? Yeah. And the streaming business model isn't amazing because everyone's paying the same thing. You don't have people paying like per stream or whatever. People who listen a lot pay the same as people who listen a little. Yeah.

And so there's a very finite amount of money involved that you can get for your artists. And so as more of that money starts to go to non-major label, whether they're indie artists or whether they are the sort of AI generated tracks and sort of like nothing music, that piece of the pie that labels get shrinks and it's actually already started to shrink. Right.

in the past several years. And so to combat that, what labels want to do is try to negotiate new payment structures with streaming services. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, but it sort of sets up a possible problem, right? People who are optimistic about

will say, you know, well, there's a lot of kind of garbage music out there. And actually, the labels can play a key role in helping discern what's legit from what's not. Or labels can just start making AI generated music. That's the thing. Like, well, that is all this kind of affects artists more, right? Yes, that brings back Endel, who I mentioned earlier, they do those sort of functional songs. They actually announced collaboration earlier this year. I think it's

May with UMG, which is one of the three biggest labels. Yeah, Universal Music Group. Yes, yeah, to sort of make similar sort of things with their artist music. I don't know that anything has really emerged from that yet, but I know that it's

something that's in the works. So I would say that it could be that they decide that that's something they want to do, and it may be part of their toolkit. But for now, the focus is definitely on one, making clear to streamers that they shouldn't let anyone building an AI tool, a generative AI tool, to train it using their platforms and starting to work on an individual level with every streamer to restructure how payments are dealt out.

The problem there is that the labels are some of the most powerful forces in the music industry already, and independent artists...

have some trouble with that, I think. So there are three major labels, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music, right? The fourth sort of big player there is something called Merlin, which distributes stuff from larger indie labels. And those four account for like a huge amount of the music on streaming services. But the remainder, which is something close to like 20%, I think, they're fully independent. And what ends up happening, people are concerned about,

is that if those four entities are negotiating the payment structures, what happens to the actually like truly independent artists? What happens to the smaller independent labels who are lumped in with the virus tracks and left to fight over what, like 10% of the pie? Yeah. So speaking of sort of collective action and of artists' rights when it comes to when we're facing things like AI taking over our jobs,

Members of the Writers Guild of America have been on the picket line since May, and the SAG-AFTRA strike started last week on July 17th. How can musicians borrow some collective bargaining ideas from writers and actors at this point? I know that musicians and recording artists are really in a difficult position because they don't necessarily have sort of the collective strength

that writers and actors say have. And that's just how those industries have evolved over time, right? Like the writers and actor unions are really strong because historically they have been proactive about that. And the relationship is different, right? Actors and writers, they're sort of a single entity that's

they negotiate with, whereas the music industry artists are negotiating with their own labels, and then the labels negotiate with everyone else, which is tough. And there have been some efforts to sort of try to build that collective power. There's an organization called United Musicians and Allied Workers that

sort of got started during the pandemic and has grown to sort of champion a lot of artist rights things. One thing they've said they've had a hand in pushing for victory on is sort of an amendment in Austin, a city ordinance, I believe, to require a minimum payment for South by Southwest artists. Right. And they've also gotten some interest from members of Congress like Rashid Clive. But

that's still pretty early, still pretty small. It sounds like a bad deal for indie musicians. It's not great. Well, we're going to take a quick break now, followed by my interview with Found CEO Sarah Jones-Simmer about how the company is focused on long-term weight care.

Hey, Sarah, welcome to the show. Hey, yes, thanks. So nice to be here. I want to start by just asking, what is found? I mean, just tell us fundamentally what your company's mission is and what it does and how you came to found it. Yeah, so found is a comprehensive weight care platform.

And I think there's a couple of key words in there. One is comprehensive. That means that we treat weight through a health lens, including prescribing medication where it's appropriate. And I think that was something that was really missing from the world of weight loss historically, tools that could address biology, not just behavior change. But when I say comprehensive, I also mean behavior change. We really do believe that lifestyle change is at the core of healthy, sustainable weight care. And so we do help our members with things like

nutrition, movement, and also sleep, stress management, even addressing social determinants of health. We think that weight needs to be addressed in a comprehensive way. And so much of the legacy diet culture, if you will, was just really focused on eat less, exercise more. Yeah. Calories in, calories out. Yeah. Shame if you didn't have the willpower to do those things. And the science shows us that it's so much more complicated than that.

it is things like your underlying biology, like hormones or genetic predisposition or your body's ability to produce leptin or manage leptin and insulin resistance. And so what we've done is tried to take the comprehensive model that was working in these academic weight management centers where clinicians were able to get patients to clinically significant outcomes, 5%, 10% body weight loss that started to actually reduce things like hemoglobin

hypertension, hypoglycemia, musculoskeletal challenges, diabetes even, those models worked, but they couldn't scale. They saw like a couple hundred to a couple thousand patients a year. And so that's a ripe opportunity for something like telehealth to come in and create more access to care. Weight challenges don't only exist

in the cities that happen to have wonderful academic weight management centers, like the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Weight challenges exist across this country, and only 1% of docs in the country are trained in obesity medicine, while 70% of Americans struggle with obesity or overweight. Just like a classic supply-demand challenge.

So to your earlier question of like, why did I come to this space? You know, I've spent my career in consumer technology. I was most recently at Bumble before coming to Found. Bumble's a marketplace in a way as well. And so really just thinking about how do you better match supply and demand? How do you get people access to the tools that they need that are going to have a transformative experience and also wrap that

in a brand and in powerful storytelling and a narrative. And God knows we need that when it comes to weight because the conversation around weight is just so broken in this country. Yeah, I feel like it's very clearly a chronic illness, but that's not how it's seen by so many people, by even insurance companies. Weight is so complicated.

in this country. I think for so long, it was treated as a personal failing or as a choice or a decision that people made. And the science shows us that there's a lot more at play here, that there are biological genetic factors that influence that, as well as frankly, the existence of things like food deserts. Not everyone has the choice to eat healthy whole foods on a regular basis. And so I think we do need to try to zoom out and think about it in a much more comprehensive way and

I have very complicated feelings about this kind of wave of discussion around Ozempic, Wegovy, GLP-1s. I do think one silver lining, though, is that we're finally talking about the role of biology and people are recognizing that this is about much more than just eat less, exercise more.

You know, and what you were saying earlier, you said for a long time, a missing piece in weight care was really that medications weren't prescribed. And I'd love for you to kind of take us through, A, why that was, and B, just when Ozempic started being prescribed for this stuff.

Doctors who have studied and practiced in the field of obesity medicine have been using medication to support weight loss for decades, truly. There's a range of generic combination therapies that can be really effective in treating things like brain hunger by dulling the pleasure sensation you get from food, or even things like Phentermine that help to improve your metabolism. There's a complicated history that we probably don't have time for today around Phen-Phen, and I think that had really put

the spotlight on medication-supported weight loss in a negative way. Just so our listeners are clear, I've heard about fen-phen. There's a wonderful podcast called Maintenance Phase, I think, that has a lot about it. Yes, I love that podcast. But just tell us, like, what was the issue with fen-phen really quick? Fen-phen is a combination of phentermine and fenfluramine, and it was found to cause heart challenges and real damage. And there are side effects with most medications, which is why, and we should talk about this vis-a-vis GLP-1s,

It's really important to think about whether the juice is worth the squeeze. Yeah. The challenge there was fentanylamine. That was where the heart problems were coming from. Fentanylamine continues to be prescribed safely when it's prescribed by an educated practitioner who knows how to utilize controlled substances effective

And I do want to stress that so much of what's important in this space is working with a reputable clinician who knows what they are doing. And these types of clinicians were working in academic weight management centers like founds chief medical officer, Dr. Rekha Kumar.

And they were getting their patients to really significant outcomes because they were addressing biology through this combination of medications that have existed for a while. And they were adopting lifestyle changes. They were even using tools like GLP-1s. So the current wave of GLP-1s is focused on an ingredient called semaglutide. There's actually a precursor to that called loraglutide, which was the first GLP-1 that

It drove meaningful outcomes, but not at the level that we're seeing here. But Ozempic has been used to treat diabetes and in off-label uses, weight and obesity for a few years now. It's not as new as you may think based on the trends you're seeing on TikTok. Yeah. I think the things that really drove increased activity is twofold. One is Wegovi, which is the same underlying medication as Ozempic, both made by Novo Nordisk.

but in a prescription strength designed for obesity. That was approved in the summer of 2021. So that meant that there was an FDA-approved treatment for obesity specifically, not just off-label diabetes use. That was one game changer. And the second, I think, is social media. And the way that messaging about ozempic and legovie began to spread on social media, the way that celebrities, for example, were rumored to be using these medications to drive their own weight loss goals...

whether or not they started with the BMI that would have made them an appropriate candidate or not. And so I think you saw a fever pitch conversation around this. And this is where it starts to get challenging because in almost no other field of medicine, do you have consumers coming to their clinician demanding a certain medication? Right. Do you have customers that are now coming to you saying, listen, I want Ozempic?

We do have some that come and ask questions. I would say as an organization, we've been really thoughtful about our marketing and how much we even talk about things like Ozempic and WeGoVe because people should be coming to found for comprehensive weight care. They shouldn't be coming to found for Ozempic or WeGoVe. They should be coming to found to meet with a clinician and figure out the plan that's right for them.

There's a whole industry that's going to be focused on marketing these drugs. It's the lilies. It's the novos of the world who are the actual manufacturers. It's our responsibility as telehealth platforms to be agnostic to the meds. We should do what's appropriate for the patient. And sometimes GLP-1s are appropriate. Sometimes even if they are appropriate, we can't get coverage for them through insurance. And as you know, they're really expensive medications, somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000 a year.

These drugs need to be taken in perpetuity. So this is not a quick fix, lose 10 pounds. They operate like statins, right? You take it, we get you to the desired outcome, and we keep you on the lowest possible dose that maintains the desired effect. It comes back to your point about this being a chronic condition. We need to treat it the way we treat high cholesterol or high blood pressure. The idea is you're on the meds in perpetuity.

What happens when you go off the drug, right? Why this is a drug that you need to stay on for life if it's prescribed to you. And two, I want to talk a little bit about the side effects.

Yeah. So in terms of the long-term utilization, as I mentioned, you have to think about these as drugs that you would take to manage a chronic condition. When people go off the medication, the research shows that on average, two-thirds of the weight is regained. Anecdotally, we have also heard stories of folks that have uncontrollable cravings that never existed before.

Because you are re-regulating your body's production of glucagon by injecting yourself with synthetic glucagon. And that is going to have an impact on your system. Now, if you are struggling with obesity and you are barreling towards a life with diabetes, it may very well be that the juices were at the squeeze and you want to go on these things and take them long term because they're going to be life-changing. And they're going to help you avoid the pain associated with diabetes as well as the cost.

And that is, I think, the point that insurers are leaning into as well. It's like, how do we identify the candidates where we really are going to see a reduction in claims costs because we're treating this upstream at the obesity level? I guess I'm curious, like, just tell me about the ecosystem of all this.

So as a business, we play in two spaces. We sell direct to consumer and we bring members into the platform. We give them access to a clinician who can prescribe if appropriate and they get wraparound care on things like lifestyle change, coaching community and coaching.

we sell to employers. And so we're talking to the folks on the other side of the ecosystem who are seeing the enormous uptick in costs related to Ozempic and WeKobi. Talk to folks who said Ozempic wasn't even in the top 50 of their drug usage in 2021, and it jumped to number one in the last six months. And so I think folks like employers, whether they're self-insured or whether they work through plans, are now having to navigate the claims associated with these things because of the skyrocketing demand.

we are seeing reduction in coverage, even for folks with diabetes to be able to get access to Ozempic. This is where I think it's really important to think about obesity as a population health issue. What we're really trying to do is move treatment upstream. If we can avoid things like diabetes, musculoskeletal challenges, hypertension and cholesterol by treating obesity,

that's the right thing to do for society. Now that there are so many players in this space, do you think prescription medication is going to become eventually the default for this kind of treatment? Or how do you think about the space?

I think on the one hand, as I said, to me, a silver lining in all of this is the recognition that weight is more complicated than willpower and that there does need to be approaches that incorporate biology. On the other, I don't know that we should be rushing to GLP-1s as the first or primary intervention in all cases.

My fear, though, is that we get to a place of reckless or irresponsible prescribing. And it's my hope that as some of these other players enter the space, they really focus on clinical excellence, integrity, responsible prescribing, and centering the patient and clinician experience as opposed to centering the meds.

because it really should be about comprehensive care. I guess I am curious what you think the prevalence of drugs like this can do just for people's body image. You know what I mean? Like in the culture generally. For generations, Americans have had a very complicated lifestyle.

relationship with weight on an individual level and on a societal level. There's a lot of judgment of what you look like, what your body shape is. In some ways, I felt like we had made real progress on things like self-acceptance and body positivity. But at the same time, we were seeing skyrocketing rates of diabetes. It's like, how do you thread the needle between both of those things?

Are you in the body that enables you to do the things that you love? I think a lot about finding joy in your body. And what does that look like for you? Is that being able to hike up a mountain, to play with your kids on the playground, to travel, to get on a plane without asking for a seatbelt expander or buying two seats? And we talk about that a lot internally at Found and to our members. I mean, that's where the name comes from. It's not about the weight you've lost. It's about the life you've found.

So how do we help people find victories off the scale and really try to take the conversation away from self-image or how you look in the mirror and take it more to what brings you joy? And I think that's what's so complicated by this larger social discussion of how thin is thin enough and...

In general, we really shouldn't be commenting on other bodies. It's not our business. People should be able to define what joy in their body looks like for them without others rubbing their nose in it. And that's not a culture that we have. I do hope we can move in that direction. And interestingly, I think biology is part of that thread, actually. If we can talk about weight through the lens of health,

if we can recognize there are a lot of factors that are outside of people's control, and we can want society to be healthier on the whole. And if losing weight helps folks get to a healthier place in their own experiences in their body and reduces their healthcare costs, reduces comorbidity, reduces the suffering that can happen through things like back pain or diabetes that have their roots in weight,

then I think that is a net positive. My fear is that the pendulum swings too far and that we celebrate things like heroin chic and that people who do not meet qualifications for these medications are taking them. And I hope that doesn't set back the discourse. I fear it may.

And I also really worry that these meds have not been tested in populations with a BMI of 23 or 22, right? They're designed for BMI above 30 or 27 with a related comorbidity. The trials look very strong for those populations in terms of safety profile. But what if something terrible happens to someone with a BMI of 22 who shouldn't have been on these meds in the first place or who got compounded semaglutides on the MediSpa? You know, I...

It's complicated. That makes a lot of sense. Well, thank you so much, Sarah, for coming on to the podcast. Thank you, guys. It was a ton of fun chatting with you. Okay, we're back with David and it's time to wrap up the show with Keeping Tabs. In case you've forgotten, this is where each one of us shares a story, trend, or company that we are following right now. And David, because you're our guest, what are you keeping tabs on? You go first.

This is going to be really dumb, but what I'm keeping tabs on is the name of the fourth Jonas brother. So I'm going to be keeping tabs on Franklin, nay Frankie Jonas's budding music career. Oh, he has a budding music career? I thought he was just a TV presenter now.

Yeah, he's on Claim to Fame. I think that's part of like a hard launch of his sort of thing, right? Because he did the first season of Claim to Fame. Brutal place to launch your career. Very grim. It got a good slot. They moved The Bachelor. Yeah, because that show is so funny. Wow. Did you see the clip of Tom Hanks' niece going nuts? You did send it to me. It is very funny. It is ridiculous. She was...

They gave it 8 p.m. leading into The Bachelor on Monday night. So they're really all in on Frankie Jonas. Franklin. Franklin Jonas. So he's changed his name to Franklin and he thinks that's how people are going to start buying his music? Yeah, because naming yourself after a turtle is notably the best way to make it in the music business.

You can't tell me that Franklin Jonas is not just an AI generated Jonas brother. Yeah, seriously. He's real and he was Frankie. And I think he decided that because he can now count by twos and tie his shoes and has an EP in the world, he should be Franklin. And it's very jarring to see Kevin be like, oh, Franklin, like they're trying to do some sort of banter. And it's like, this is clearly fake.

Yeah, never going to happen award, Franklin Jones. Stop trying to make Franklin happen. Josh, what are you keeping tabs on? Barbenheimer. Of course. Of course I'm keeping tabs. We talked about Barbie all last week. But Barbie and Oppenheimer opened over the weekend to a opening weekend of a combined over $230 million gross.

which is very impressive. Barbie was the biggest driver in that. But I mean, over $80 million for a three-hour epic based on the scientists behind the nuclear bomb is kind of wild that that was that successful. Barbie grossed over $150 million, which was, I think we mentioned it last week, was basically they recouped their production costs.

Not sure what their marketing costs are, but like it seems to be working, whatever Barbie was doing. And Oppenheimer also reaping a little bit of the benefits by association, which I'm sure like they are more than happy about. Totally.

Totally. Although it's so crazy that now the names Barbie and Oppenheimer are grouped together in my head for the rest of time. You know what I mean? Yeah. Achieving monoculture like we talked about last week. Mm hmm.

Are very funny. You know, all these haters who are like, don't you realize? It's like, guys, we're trying to have some fun. We're trying to have fun. It's all fine. And it's just, I mean, it's also generated some super cringe content, too. We were talking offline about the Sam Altman tweet. That was going to be my keeping tabs. Oh, well, let's get into it, then. This is a great segue into your keeping tabs, yes. Yes.

So OpenAI's CEO is this guy named Sam Altman. Had this tweet that was basically like, it was over the weekend, he was like, I thought Oppenheimer was going to inspire more kids to work in STEM, but turns out it was a real downer. It wasn't that, but that's basically what he said. It was like, dude, do you know what this movie's about? It missed the mark or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's wild. It's so funny because he's really in the Silicon Valley ecosystem. And to me, it's just like really makes you think what these CEOs like. It makes you realize how broken their brains are. You tweeted that. That's premeditated. It's not even like you were just randomly in conversation and said it and was like, you drafted that and hit send.

That's the sort of thing I'll say to my husband and he'll be like, shut up. And I'll be like, yeah, you're right. You pair that with the Ben Shapiro railing against the Barbie movie for being too woke. And that I don't even care about what he says about the movies. My favorite thing though, was in a promo video, he throws the Barbie and Ken into the trash and then lights a match and lights it on fire. But the matches they chose to use are grill matches. So they're just huge matches. Yeah.

Which makes him look like a child with a regular match. It's just like, like chef's kiss. So stupid. He posted some photo on Twitter that was like, my producers made me go see this movie. He's like, dude, you gave them your money. Like, you get that, right? Yep. No one's comping Ben Shapiro in a Barbie movie. He could at least get a child ticket. Yeah.

Yeah, get that discount and a free bucket of popcorn. I don't think they do that anymore, guys. Oh, that's a bummer. Capitalism. We can't have nice things. Soon all of our music will come from AI. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Well, that's it for Most Innovative Companies. David, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. It was fun to report, and it's obviously in the summer issue of Fast Company on newsstands now. Hey, our show is produced by Avery Miles and Blake Odom with additional support by our intern, Mariam Kiparitse. Mix and sound designed by Tad Wadhams, and our executive producer is Josh Christensen. Remember again to subscribe, rate, and review, and we'll see you next week.