YouTube’s $14 billion bet on NFL Sunday Ticket
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Welcome to Most Innovative Companies. I'm your host, Yasmin Gagne, joined by my producer, Josh Christensen. Hey, Josh. Hey, Yas. Josh, have you made your fantasy football picks? Oh, yeah. No, I'm way ahead of fantasy football picks because I do what's called a dynasty league.

Which, if anyone's listening who's a fantasy football nerd knows what that is. It means you draft the team and then it carries over year to year. So basically you run your own roster and there's like a lot more trades and then there's offseason stuff. It's the nerdiest version of fantasy football. In your league, what does the winner get and what does the loser get? So we have a box.

buy-in. Well, some leagues are different, so you get some money, but there can also be some loser penalties as well, which if you're ever online, there's some very funny loser penalties. My favorite one was someone who lost the league, came in last place in their fantasy football league, had to sit in an IHOP or a Waffle House or something like that and eat a pancake. It's like 24 hours, and for every pancake they ate, they got

one less hour that they had to be in the pancake shop. Which is ridiculous. My husband is in one and I think one year they, the loser had to take the SAT. Oh, that's awful. Which was rough.

For a lot of reasons. One, because the SAT is like a miserable three-hour long, like really annoying standardized test. And you have to get up so early to take it. And you're taking it with a bunch of 16 and 17-year-olds. It's not like the LSAT where it's like adults in there. Yeah, no. I think I would rather take the LSAT. Anyway, before we go on, do we have any housekeeping? Just one piece of housekeeping that I want to drive home today because we are three weeks away from Fast Company Innovation Festival. Yes.

So reminder that we are hosting a week-long festival in New York City at Convene downtown at Brookfield Plaza. We put a link to tickets down there in the show notes, so go click on that. Get your tickets. We have so much great programming, and you can meet Yaz and I because we'll be there all week long. You know, for the past two episodes, I've been like, oh my God, slide into our DMs. We'd love to meet you. No one has taken me up on that.

Well, because we also don't give people our social handles, which we should start doing. So there's a flaw in our logic here. Nice one, Yaz and Josh. At the Joshua Chris on Instagram and you are Yazzy G on Instagram. And Yasmin Ghani on Twitter. I don't use Twitter anymore. I've completely left that platform. I'm just really bad at tweeting. I'm not funny enough in like a pithy way. Yeah.

You're not funny enough in 200. Well, they do have long form stuff now on X. Like when I think of something funny and this is me, I'm not that funny anyway, but like I'll just text someone like I never have that impulse. I mean, I think that's fine. I think just have some group chats. It's also going to like get you in less trouble, too. And anyway, later on today's episode, this is a true episode for bros. I feel David Salazar, friend of the pod, will be talking with Seth Rogen about his cannabis company, Houseplant.

- But first, YouTube is the most popular destination on connected TVs, and next month it's taking on its most high profile project, broadcasting the NFL's Sunday ticket. Here to help break down what this means for the digital media giant is Fast Company senior writer Ainsley Harris. Hey, Ainsley. - Hey, Yas, great to see you. - So let's talk a little bit about what this actually means. Why did YouTube acquire those rights? - You know, YouTube has 2 billion monthly active users.

Why do they need more people? Yeah. Why do they need more stuff? There are a million different things you can watch on YouTube. But in a way, it's almost sort of overwhelming. And I think things kind of get lost in the shuffle. So YouTube's consumption is heavily fragmented. You know, everyone is watching YouTube, but very few people, even your best friend, is probably watching something different from you.

Having something like Sunday Ticket, which is a real sort of kind of cornerstone type of content. Consistently, NFL games are among the most watched broadcasts every year. If you're looking at the charts around linear TV, you know, there are always NFL games in that. It's not just the Super Bowl. Millions of people are watching these games.

Real question for you. The NFL is obviously like huge in the States, right? Is it also big around the world? Like is or is this really just an effort that's concentrated in North America? You know, it hasn't been something they've talked about a lot yet, but the NFL is interested in expanding internationally. It's something that they're definitely interested in leaning into, I think. And YouTube is obviously a great partner to that, too. The first

NFL Sunday ticket games on YouTube are going to be played the weekend after Labor Day. And so this is all just sort of getting underway. And it's also a seven year deal. So this is really just sort of the early innings. They haven't leaned into that global piece quite yet. But I think one thing they've been very clear about is that they see this as a long term partnership. And how much did YouTube pay for it? I know they have 40 billion in revenue a year, but it was a lot of money, right?

Yeah, I think they paid $14 billion for the rights. It's a seven-year deal. Yep. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. And that's really, I mean, in my understanding, just what they're paying the NFL directly for the rights, right? There's additional money that they are spending on. I'm sure I'm probably getting followed around the Internet.

with YouTube Sunday ticket ads because of writing this story. But you've probably seen them too. They are everywhere. Like right now, you know, they're really promoting this in a big way. And they've made a lot of technical investments in their infrastructure in order to be able to actually broadcast live these games.

Obviously, it also costs consumers. You're paying maybe a couple hundred bucks, so it is also a revenue generator for them. YouTube, and I mean, to me, I still use it this way, was kind of known for being the platform that you procrastinate on, right? Now it's obviously a super popular destination on connected TVs, and it's like people sit down to watch the NFL. It's destination viewing. Tell me a little bit about how this shift happened.

I think a lot of it is that YouTube viewers have really grown up along with the platform and along with the creators that are on it. Some of them may have started out making the stereotypical videos in their basement. That same person today has a production studio and a team and sophisticated graphics and Hollywood-esque editing.

there's a real evolution that's happened in terms of sort of the professionalism of creators themselves. And so I think you are seeing that in viewers' response that they're saying, you know, this is content that is on par with what I'm getting from Netflix or what I'm getting from a Hollywood studio releasing its next film.

So it deserves a spot on the big screen. People certainly are also still watching plenty of YouTube on their phones. And particularly as YouTube has leaned into shorts, they're sort of, you know, played to take on TikTok. But it has been just really striking to see that

they have been able to really capture the living room in a way that they have. To them, it's not just that like, oh yeah, we're on living room TVs, isn't that cool? It's that there are advertisers who are gonna say, oh, I'm gonna think about YouTube differently now because I know that someone is really sitting on their sofa, leaning back, spending an hour or two, and that's a really different kind of,

opportunity for a marketer than someone spending five minutes on their phone. It's so crazy to me. I actually read a stat that I think it's like most Gen Z prefer watching user-generated content compared to like content that is made for them, you know, like a show. And I think about that all the time because I'm not in that bucket. You're old school, you know, like

And I'm just old, so yeah, I guess we share that. Though I will say I did have to watch a lot of creator content for this article. And it is really interesting. Like you quickly realize like what a broad range there is. Are you a Mr. Beast fan now?

Oh, no. Well, I'm not a teenage boy, so I don't think I'm really designed to be a Mr. Beast fan. You're not into toxic philanthropy? Yeah, target me online because that's my primary interest, toxic philanthropy. Big fans of the Sacklers and Mr. Beast. That's a little unfair to link those two together. Next time I talk to you, you're going to be like, you know, I do think Jordan Peterson makes a few points. Yeah.

You can watch YouTube without going down that rabbit hole, I think. Yeah. But looping back to a more serious point about creators, I wonder how much YouTube is planning in this endeavor. And I wonder if you have some answers to this, including more of their creators in some of these like

alternate broadcasts that we've seen pop up on like, you know, I think Amazon Prime has had like Dude Perfect do an alternate broadcast or then the Nickelodeon like children's more focused slime cast. And then the most famous one is... Dude Perfect is part of this, right Ainsley? Yeah, it's unclear what they'll be part of exactly with Sunday Ticket going forward, but they are

definitely there. One of the alternate telecasts for the Thursday night games that the NFL does with Amazon. And those have been really successful for them. And also the Manning cast, maybe Josh. Yeah. That's what I was just getting to. Oh, I'm a fan. Yeah.

That one, I think a million people or something tune in to watch that. That's the cast that I watch. I kind of enjoy these alternate casts because it's a little bit like there's a lot of downtime sometimes in sports, which I think makes it a little more appealing to watch something that's interspersed.

You're basically hanging out with someone, right? You're getting to like have your buddy on the sofa with you, except your buddy is like Eli Manning. And who's more set up to do this well than YouTube? Exactly. I don't care about football, but I think the Manning cast is so fun.

I mean, I just love men with really large heads busting on each other. It's great. And it's become really popular, especially the kind of growth and popularity of fantasy sports and sports betting as that's been legalized, which I think is probably another reason why YouTube is jumping into this is because as sports betting gets legalized in more and more states and the NFL is partnered with these sports,

Fan duels and Caesars and draft kings while they're still also punishing players for gambling in these partnerships, which is a whole other conversation. But like I imagine that's a revenue stream that is making these streaming platforms really want to jump on the NFL bandwagon more than they already would have.

I think people's viewing has changed because of fantasy and because of video games and all these things. You know, you obviously have part of what makes the NFL such a powerful brand and such a powerful media entity is the loyalty that people have to their home team. But at the same time, you have these new sort of trends in terms of how people are interacting with NFL content. One of the things that they are most excited about is this feature they're calling multi-view.

where you'll be able to, in the same way as if you were kind of at a sports bar, you know, looking at multiple screens, you'll be able to have multiple games on your living room screen at the same time. And you'll be able to kind of pick which one you're listening to in terms of the sound, but be able to actually see the action at the same time across these different streams.

I think they're, one, sort of seeing this as a social thing, right? Like maybe your friends are coming over and maybe you're all kind of watching these things together and you have different favorites. But also, yeah, whether it's betting or fantasy or other ways that you sort of have an attachment to what's happening in the NFL, like you might want to be watching all these things at the same time. And that's actually really difficult to pull off technically. They did test this out with March Madness last year. And I'm...

watched a decent amount of it with the four, it was four boxes that you had max. And it was pretty seamless. Like the product was, at least from my user experience, pretty good.

They actually went and YouTube designed their own silicon chips in order to do this because they don't want to get caught out because some partner who controls some piece of the chain here messes up. I think that really speaks to sort of the long term investment that they're making in live, you know, both live sports and live entertainment.

NFL games. But also you can imagine, I don't know, maybe you're watching multiple Coachella stages at the same time. Yeah, I'm imagining a world where I can watch the Gilded Age while Lou watches the Texans. Just a big fan of Christine Barinski.

I am curious, you know, to go back to the creators. Tell me a little bit about some of the content or some of the weirder content that you've seen from creators around football games and also whether you think there's a downside to creators with all this. When you talk to creators and you talk to the agents who rep them, they are tentatively feeling optimistic about something like Sunday Ticket coming to YouTube in that, you know, hey, it brings more people to the class.

So I think there's some, you know, some sort of cautious optimism around that for a smaller group of creators have been involved in promoting Sunday Ticket. And so that's obviously been great for those individual creators who some of them were at the NFL draft, for example. So doing kind of promo videos and that kind of thing.

I think creators are kind of in a funny spot now with YouTube, though, partly because YouTube has really been leaning into shorts. It's hard to advertise against really short content just from a structural point of view. And I think YouTube hasn't really solved that yet. And so a lot of creators are frustrated because obviously, if you're a viewer, you only have so many minutes in the day. Any minute that you're spending with a short is a minute that's taken away from the more lucrative, longer videos.

I think audiences are definitely there for it, but the money is not there yet. And that's been really tough for people who are also seeing a hit from just the overall downturn in the ad market. YouTube has a relatively new CEO in Neil Mohan. Do you think he has a very different strategy compared to its previous CEO? I think Susan Wojcicki.

He's been at YouTube, Google for a while, so he's definitely sort of part of the machine. I think what's interesting about Neil Mohan is that he's kind of a product guy and I

I think you start to realize that in contrast to other streamers who are having to make budget cuts and are really struggling to sort of figure out how their business models are going to work. YouTube, meanwhile, is doing great. It's not affected by the strikes and the fact that they're really committed to making TV more interactive in ways that might be sort of new and surprising. And to see that where at the same time, Hollywood is sort of just really stuck with

This feels like a real moment for them to race ahead of the pack. But there are some Hollywood players, right? We mentioned Amazon earlier. I mean, tell me about the other digital media companies that are in this space.

Amazon, yes, last year had its first year sort of broadcasting the NFL's Thursday night games. I think they paid a billion dollars per year for 11 years. YouTube is going to kind of lean into its creators, perhaps, and sort of promote them through this deal. Amazon has the potential to sort of lean into its retail operations and kind of

its e-commerce business. Of course, Apple has this deal with MLS and, you know, that is a way for it to sell more tablets and all the stuff that it sells and its services. So everyone is, I think, trying to figure out like how do they connect the dots between live sports and their own business objectives. There is something so funny about the fact that at some point there were a bunch of short-lived experiments by the NFL like streaming games on Twitter. Oh, yes. Yeah, no. I mean, these guys have

have been experimenting for a long time and not a lot of it has had staying power. Solve your CTE problem, guys. Wow. Yeah, that's a whole nother thing. It's such an interesting thing with Amazon spending so much money on the Thursday night football because for a long time, Thursday night football outside of the Thanksgiving games has been kind of a joke. It's always been kind of bad, but maybe they can turn that around.

Now that this partnership has been announced, what can we expect to see broadly? So I think you can see the games. They'll be airing on Sundays. I think the main thing to look for is going forward what YouTube does in terms of experimentation with the actual viewing product. And I think that's what I'm going to be curious to see. There's obviously there's the games themselves and whether they successfully get into people's living rooms and people tune in.

I personally am really curious to see what they make possible in terms of viewer interactivity and how marketers take advantage of that. I don't know if I'm going to be tuning in because I have historically been a Packers fan and this is a very complicated year for us. I think Aaron Rodgers is really hot, but then he... Oh, no. Yeah. You said this historically on the podcast and I haven't believed you that you have horrible taste in men, but this proves it.

Get on the Jordan love train. Anyway, we're going to take a quick break, followed by David Salazar's interview with Seth Rogen about how he became interested in creating well-crafted accessories for weed enthusiasts. ♪

Hi, Seth. It's great to meet virtually and talk to you a little bit about Houseplant. I know there's some exciting stuff coming out of your brand. I know that you're launching a new version of the ashtray that you've designed and sort of is the flagship product of the brand.

So I'd love to just start talking about, you know, it's been a couple years of houseplant now, a little more than a year, I think. I know that in the past you've said, you know, you kind of came to it through your wife introducing you to pottery. What was that sort of like discovering this new interest and applying it to pottery?

an interest you already had? It was really gratifying and kind of like, it was kind of like a life-changing thing in a lot of ways, you know. I've always had like hobbies, you know, I guess you would say, and I've always been on the search for more creative outlets. I'm always like seeking ways to kind of express myself in different ways, and I've painted, I did a

photography a long time. I have a lot of cameras and things like that. I've tried various things. I had a big gardening phase. But my wife, Lauren, was always like, she had done pottery when she was young and ceramics, and she was always kind of imploring me to try it and for us to go take a lesson together. And

And then I did. I went to a local studio in LA called Bitter Root and I took a lesson and I really just loved it. I instantly fell in love with it. And we very quickly bought our own wheels and our own kiln and started, you know, we took workshops and classes. We took glaze making classes, formulation classes, all this stuff. I mean, we went very deep into it, you know, but yeah.

Really, the first thing that I started making was ashtrays. You know, I smoke a lot of weed and I have for a long time. And ashtrays are a thing that I've actually collected for a long time. And I would start by buying them just in like secondhand stores, you know, and then I kind of would start buying them off of eBay and stuff like that. And I kind of became fascinated with a time when kind of like glassware.

great design minds were putting their thoughts towards smoking, you know? And although they were originally made for cigarettes, I was kind of repurposing them to smoke weed with. And I took great joy in like giving these things that had kind of fallen out of fashion, like a second life a little bit, you know what I mean?

But that being said, they kind of a lot of them weren't designed like to my very specific desires, you know. And so when I started doing pottery, I started making ashtrays that I, you know, that were kind of based on exactly what I wanted, which was kind of like a notch to hold the joint and like a very deep well that could kind of hold, you know, the ash.

It was just kind of more simple and, you know, it had some nice shape to it. But yeah, it was I wanted to be able to put a lot of roaches in there and not have them blow away and to be able to walk around with it and move with it, but also be able to like rest a joint on there and not have it fall in and be able to cleanly kind of pick it up and put it back down. Because I tend to like I'll take a few puffs of my joint and I'll put it down and walk away and then I'll come back to it, you know. And so, yeah, I started making those ashtrays and I would post them and post.

People really responded to them and people really liked them. And it really spoke, I think, to a lot of things. But mostly, I think, like in broadest terms, just this idea that like not a lot of people were putting a lot of like thought into like the lifestyles.

of people who smoke weed from like a housewares standpoint, you know, and I was, you know, meanwhile, I'd been working years and years and years on like a weed company. And in Canada, we had been selling weed, you know, and this idea of kind of like combining the companies and making a like a weed home goods company became really like exciting and kind of novel and something that

you know, like kind of couldn't have been a better expression of like my taste and passions and sensibilities, you know, which to me was very exciting. So that kind of became like the cornerstone of houseplant. You know, we make lighters and other things like that, grinders, rolling trays. But the very simple kind of ashtray was, yeah, is like one of the foundational things we sell.

Totally, yeah, and I think, to your point, I think you're very right that it's been a long time since anyone thought about what ashtrays look like. Yeah. Older stuff, I mean, I have an aunt and uncle who are very old, and they have these sort of, like, older, very nice, like, standing ashtrays that sit near the couch. They haven't used them in decades, but...

they're there and they look really cool. Yeah, I mean, there was a time when, yeah, like unabashedly great architects, great designers would design ashtrays, fashion houses. Again, I mean, smoking was so popular that like whenever something's popular, it's more enticing for like creative minds to put their energy towards it in a lot of ways, you know, and for those things to be funded by big companies who want to sell them, you know, and so

Like, yeah, it was this really like interesting time of like a lot of people putting a lot of thought, time, energy and like passion into what an ashtray should look like. And then that just completely went away, as it probably should have with the kind of, you know, realization that smoking cigarettes was killing everybody. But with the rise of smoking weed, yeah, it's really exciting to a kind of be able to give some of these old things new life and to be able to,

inspire people to put that same thought into ashtrays once again. And, you know, I design a lot of our ashtrays, but we also work with a lot of like very talented designers and we make a lot of beautiful stuff with a lot of brilliant, creative people who are really excited to make ashtrays because it's something that speaks to their lifestyle.

Yeah, totally. And I think there's something to be said about this convergence that's happening between a renaissance of mid-century modern sensibility wanting very beautiful housewares and also weed smokers generally, I think, realizing that they're not being served by the $30 bodega bongs or the...

You know, the Rick and Morty ashtray that they get at the local corner store when they like go and buy their weed. Have you seen this sort of in the past 10 years as weed smoking becomes a little bit more mainstream and as you are kind of perfectly positioned as someone who was smoking weed in the 90s when it was still very sort of taboo, hush hush, and now it's becoming something that people want to bring into their homes in an upscale way, not

the Rick and Morty bubbler or the ugly Joe Camel-ass tray. Yeah, I mean, I think it speaks to an overall, like, destigmatization of weed and sort of a pent-up desire from weed smokers to be treated as, you know, like...

normal people who like nice things, you know? I think we grow up in a world where like alcohol is so proudly displayed there. Everywhere you go, the bar features the alcohol. It's so beautifully lit and displayed. People's homes. I remember when I was young, one of the first things you do is you get a little bar, you display all the alcohol you have. People have wine glasses, martini shakers. And what's nice is I think we're like in an era of like a reckoning of hypocrisies in a lot of way. And there are like few cultural hypocrisies more prevalent

to me, than the fact that, like, alcohol is completely culturally acceptable and not just that, like, celebrated and beautiful things are built and dedicated to it and weed was always viewed as this, like, terrible thing.

you know, when the reality is like alcohol is terrible for you and weed does not carry like one iota of the negative side effects that alcohol has, you know? And so part of it is that we've been treated very unfairly and we've been lied to over and over again. People have gone out of their way to make us seem like less than members of society, you know? And so...

The fact that there's a desire to celebrate weed and applaud it and really put forth our passion for it and display it with pride, to me, that's a feeling that I have and a feeling I think other people have. I shouldn't have to hide it under my coffee table. I should be able to display it proudly, and I shouldn't be having to have this ashtray that

Like I'm shoving in the drawer every time everyone comes over because I'm ashamed of it or because culturally it's not as accepted, you know. But instead, like, why not have something that speaks to my taste and my passion and the things that I like doing with my time and my energy, you know. And I think people have like a very, it's nice when you smoke weed and you get a product that crushes.

clearly has had a lot of time and energy and consideration put into it, because I think to what you're saying, we're used to being fed products that have had no time or energy or consideration put into them. And I think it's a very validating experience to get a product that...

speaks to your taste and your lifestyle and is highly considered and well made, you know, because it's validating and it tells you that other people agree with you. And they also think that this is a worthy thing to be doing to the point that they've dedicated a huge amount of time and energy into creating these products specifically for people who like to do this, you know. And so...

I think it's like a long time coming. I think it's nice that finally, you know, people are able to celebrate their love of weed and the things are moving in that direction. I mean, they still have a long way to go, honestly. Weed is still much harder to get than alcohol, even though alcohol is much more dangerous. And that simply makes no sense.

And as long as there are things like that that are just like blatantly hypocritical staring us in the face, it's hard to be like completely thrilled with the situation. But it's for sure moving in the right direction, you know? Yeah, I agree. I will say my personal weed smoking heyday did not coincide with

the rise of of these sort of brands for a very long time your hand wasn't long enough yeah i know i feel i feel bad but yeah for a long time the centerpiece of my first apartment after college centerpiece of the living room was this ugly like 30 bong that sat on the coffee table next to a repurposed urban outfitters bowl yeah it was like nicer than an ashtray like trying to to aestheticize it a little bit but still was kind of

unsightly. You saw the desire. You had the instinct to try to make it nice, you know, and to make it fit as nice as other things. And I think that's something that I'm always thinking of is like, I love weed. And to me, weed is one of the best things in the world. And it's made my life so much better and more livable. And to that end, it deserves nice things, you know? And I think people who love weed have that instinct. How do I...

find my own way to celebrate this and to put it on a pedestal because I like it. And for most people, it's by kind of finding your own ways to do it because there aren't things being made to do it. And I think that, you know, that's one of the things that's nice is to be able to make things that celebrate people who smoke weed, you know? Yeah, not for nothing. You stumbled onto a huge white space that I'm sure you're seeing is...

people are very receptive to the need for these sort of higher design items. Yeah, I mean, it's something that was like,

It's nice, and it happens with movies sometimes where, like, you have an idea that is personal to you, that you're passionate about, and also something that not a lot of other people seem to have been thinking about that much. When all those things happen, it's really nice. Yeah, definitely. And so I'd love to, if you can talk a little bit about coming from the world of movies and coming from comedy, and obviously a fan of Weed, a Weed evangelist of sorts.

But you're not a product designer necessarily. You weren't running a business in the same way. You weren't like, you know, inventorying products and knowing what needs to go out. What was the learning curve there like? And how have you, how do you feel you've done learning to run a brand rather than, you know, work for a movie production company or write a script or whatever?

or learn your lines? - It's been really interesting. And you know, in some ways it could not be more different and in other ways it's very similar. You know, like from a macro standpoint, like we are trying to make products that people

and are happy that they've spent their money and time on that speak to our tastes and sensibilities and passions as who we are as people. And hopefully that is coming across in our work. So in that sense, it's exactly the same as making a movie.

And within the making of a movie, there is physical representations of things like this. You know, like, you know, when we made this at the end, like we essentially had to build a house and design that house and really lay out the house and what's in the house, what in the house speaks to the characters and to the comedy and serves the story, you know, so.

When you're producing and directing, I would actually say that there is a kind of a direct link to design and architecture in a lot of ways. Because they are both art forms that really explore space in a visual sense, you know? But...

As far as, yeah, like manufacturing physical products and packaging, all this stuff, that was completely new to me. And keeping the thing going was new to me. Like the thing about a movie is you kind of lead up to it and then it comes out and it stops. And I work on TV shows now and those...

are the same, but even though those have a longer runway that you're trying to land your plane on, but at the same time, they are finite as well. And houseplant is something that hopefully will live on forever. And I think that's just like a slightly...

different exercise in how to keep a thing going and keep it the same in some ways, but evolve it and keep it innovative and exciting at the same time. And that's been a really interesting and fun exercise, honestly. Yeah. Like in general, it's been really fun and exciting. And when people come up to me,

You know, I travel the world and people come up to me who love our stuff and who know about our stuff and who you can see smoke weed and have never...

seen a thing that like speaks to their passion and love for weed in the way that we do with with some of the stuff we make and and it's great and it's just as exciting as when someone comes up to me and is like i love super bad i love pineapple express like i it feels the same and that like we put as much of ourselves into this product as possible and people have

got that product and received it in the exact way that we hoped they would, you know? Yeah, I'm sure that feeling is great and universal in that sense. To go on a little bit about your discussion of designing and iterating and changing things, I know that the Ashtray 3 is coming out. Yeah. What are some of the changes here from the early version and, you know, what's new with it and how does it sort of fit into the rest of the houseplant line?

I mean, what's interesting is it's a lot more sculptural. I think it's a lot bigger. I think it's more of a centerpiece than some of the other ones we've made are. Like, I think in and of itself, it kind of looks like a small vase. And it is literally based on a thing I've made. And it's funny because I think it speaks to my own...

progression in some ways. When I first started making ashtrays, they were simple, kind of rudimentary. The shape and design, you know, was very utilitarian and spoke, I think, to the fact that I was just learning how to do ceramics. And then as I got better, I think I grew more comfortable making bigger things that were meant to be looked at a little bit more and meant to be held and picked up a little bit more and meant to be a little bit more of a centerpiece rather than something that was like sitting on the side table. And

And so, yeah, it's been an exciting thing. And like most things, I mean, this was literally like a version of this was sitting on my coffee table at home. And I picked it up and was like, oh, how about this for a new ashtray design? It's something that I made and people seem to like and speaks to a new direction for what we've been doing. But, yeah, it's been interesting.

It's overall really exciting and does feel like an outwardly creative endeavor as to like what products we make. I think there's some roadmap, but at the same time, like some of our best, most exciting products are things like the like vinyl box set, which are like.

essentially mixtapes made into records that are kind of linked up to different strains of weed. So there's like a sativa record with upbeat music and an indica record with really mellow music and a hybrid record with music in between. And it's all songs we license. And it's like a playlist, you know, that does not fit into like any conventional home goods like conversation, you know, but it's something that

we were just brainstorming and became very excited about and thought was really cool and thought spoke to all the things that we've been talking about. You know, if you smoke weed and you feel underserviced, no one's ever put that much thought into how to create like a listening experience that is specifically curated for people who, who, who like weed, you know? And so it really worked. And, and so there's like, there's kind of a logistical path we take towards product development, which is,

what sells well, what colors people seem to respond to, what people seem to like. And then there's a very creative version, which is just like, what do we laugh at? What gets exciting to us? What is stuff that is we just are talking about it? We're like, oh, I would want that. If I saw that, I would think that was a cool idea, you know? And those ideas don't always fit into like the strictly logistical business-y conversations, but they're the things that we

try to take as many swings on as possible because they are what keep us excited and what keep

the products more representative of the things that we actually think are cool. Yeah, it definitely sounds like you're simultaneously sort of committed to, you know, one evolving the brand and the products as you have evolved your sort of craft, your capabilities, and also coming out of left field, taking a risk on a playlist as a record or, you know, something that you would want to see from a brand too. Exactly. I think it's like a combination of the two has seems like an exciting and fun and

you know, reasonably smart path from a business standpoint. Absolutely. How often have you done the like scene from ghost thing with your pottery wheel? A number of times, actually more often than you think we have people come over and do pottery at our house. Very regularly. We teach a lot of friends and almost every one of those experiences inevitably has a, has a ghost moment. Yeah.

And then, I guess, in the vein of the topic of discussion, which do you prefer, sativa, indica, hybrid? I smoke sativa, like, all day, basically. And I essentially smoke, like, I'll smoke sativa all day and smoke, like, one indica joint at night right before I go to sleep, basically. But I smoke 90% sativa weed and maybe, yeah, like 10% indica.

And sometimes that indica will be a hybrid of some sort. I hope that, you know, Houseplant inspires people to be proud of

of the fact that they smoke weed and their lifestyle. And, and I, and I hope that it's, you know, just the fact that we're out there putting so much time and energy into smoking weed. And I'm out here talking about it. I hope if you're someone who smokes weed and has been told that you shouldn't, or there's something wrong with you, or it's something you should be ashamed of. I hope that it's people like me and companies like ours that let you,

think that it's okay and that it's not just something that you shouldn't be ashamed of. It's something you should take pride in, just like any other thing someone does to help them get through the day or that they outwardly enjoy, you know? I think there's nothing wrong with it at all.

Okay, we're back with Ainsley and it's time to wrap up the show with Keeping Tabs. This is where each of us shares a story, trend or company we're following right now. So Ainsley, since you're our guest, what are you keeping tabs on? I am currently obsessed with this rumor that's been going around. I think it started maybe last week about what was said to be a New Yorker, a draft of a New Yorker article.

about Tiger Global, which is a very sort of secretive investment firm. They backed a lot of the really prominent unicorns and they've had a little bit more of a tough time recently. And the guys who run it just never talk to the press. They're essentially very secretive. And not only are they secretive, I think part of the reason sort of they can be secretive is that they don't typically get that involved with the companies they invest in. So there's not like a big sort of

like, paper trail or footprint. Anyway, they can really be in the shadows. And even people who they're like, they'll write a check to someone and that person will barely kind of know them or interact with them. And then this rumor comes out. You start to see people on Twitter saying, hey, does anyone have this draft? Like, send it to me. I want to see it too. I was so surprised because I was like, how did a full draft get out? Good.

Good question. Yeah, particularly because obviously, like even in like a fact checking process, you're not going to share a draft or anything like that. And the news came out, I think today in the New York Post, that it appears that this was actually a former disgruntled employee who wrote a fake New Yorker article about.

full of essentially all the things that he has grievances about and I think Tiger is now maybe like suing him and anyway it sounds like a complete mess and but I'm also really impressed on a certain level that someone who's not a writer managed to put together something yeah that

sort of past muster as a real New Yorker article. If anyone listening has seen it and wants to send it to me, I'm very available.

Josh, what are you keeping tabs on? I am in completely on-brand fashion as an audio producer and audio professional. I am keeping tabs on the podcasting and audio industry. There was another round of layoffs of a prominent media company, Audio First Media Company, Futuro Media, which is the company behind Latino USA, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Suave podcast,

Thank you.

Gimlet Media laid off a large portion of their staff and then was completely dismantled and folded into Spotify along with Parcast. But the outlook for the podcasting specifically industry is really sunny in the macro sense. Market share continues to grow. It's up to about $2 billion annual right now and is projected to grow exponentially over the next several years.

But it's really kind of sad to see a lot of people that I know or are former colleagues lose their jobs in the audio industry. But I think there is sunnier days ahead for audio professionals. Are you saying Harry and Meghan didn't deserve their check? Yes, I am saying Harry and Meghan did not deserve their check. Hey, but I'm glad the guys from SmartList are doing well, you know? Good for them. Yeah.

Anyways, that's enough doom and gloom. Yaz, what's your keeping tabs? So Kanye West is dating- Oh no. Stop there. Sorry, I missed the rest of that after you said Kanye West. The thing that I'm fixated on is that the Daily Mail keeps calling his quote unquote wife. Like they put wife in quotes in every headline. What? Which is just like-

A really funny and weird stylistic choice. Why? Why? I don't understand why they do it. Is there a debate over whether they're married or not? Is this their... I think they did some like weird fake ceremony, right? Or like, did they... I don't really know because it's not like... Did they give each other promise rings? Is this what's happening? Did Kanye West go full Jonas Brothers? I don't want to read all these articles because like, I don't want to know that much about Kanye West. But every time I see the wife in quotes in a headline, I crack up.

That's so weird. That is very weird. There's some copy editor who is just like, I don't know. I don't know what to do with this. We're keeping the quotes. I'm going to do air quotes. Yeah, those are great in a famously non-visual medium. Can I be a guest today? I'm joined by my producer, Josh Perkinson.

That's it for quote unquote, most innovative companies. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Our show is produced by Avery Miles and Blake Odom, mix and sound design by Nicholas Torres and our executive producers, Josh Christensen. Remember again to subscribe, rate and review, and we'll see you next week.