INFLUENCE

By day, Jason Kingsley is the CEO of Rebellion, an independent video game developer that’s been cranking out hits since the '90s. But in 2017, he noticed a shift in the media landscape. YouTube - once a bastion of cat videos and reaction vlogs - was emerging as a destination for longform educational content. Jason’s obsession with medieval history, background in raising horses, and love of fantasy...

This week U.S. tech companies lost nearly $1 trillion in "value" after a Chinese startup called DeepSeek released its R1 large language model, which was reportedly developed for WAY less than Silicon Valley is pouring into the AI bubble. And while it is fun to laugh at tech billionaires losing money, DeepSeek's innovation (if real) could change the model for AI deployment - allowing LLMs to run on...

Adopting a rescue animal is a noble pursuit, but dogs who live in a stressful, chaotic shelter may not put their best paw forward when potential owners come to visit. That’s where fostering comes in. It’s the often-overlooked step between rescue and adoption, and it can be transformative for many dogs. Even while young and broke in New York City, Isabel Klee took up this calling, and it changed he...

Gary Arndt ignored all the advice for new podcasters. Instead of focusing on a specific topic, he made a show about literally everything he could think of: history, geography, quantum physics, games, technology, and more. Instead of pacing out episodes weekly or monthly, he decided to publish every single day. 1,600 episodes later, his show “Everything Everywhere” has a community of 1.5 million mo...

When Sky Burkson was a kid, he had two obsessions: drawing and video games. He went on to pursue a career in set design, but his love of games never faded. And when life threw his family a curveball, he knew it was time to recombine his passions. These days, his painstaking recreations of video game architecture and environments delight thousands of fans around the world, including some of YouTube...

Happy Nude Year, one and all! I'm still on holiday break, but wanted to check in with out about the YouTuber(s) who exposed the Honey browser extension (owned by PayPal) as a massive scam, my upcoming guests, and sharing an encore episode from my other show, Colette & Matt Have Entered the Chat, about a small but mighty video game community that did the impossible, just in the nick of time! Exposi...

In 1984, a German teenager recorded a moody new wave song from the radio. The mystery song, with crunchy guitars and English lyrics, was preserved on a cassette and forgotten. That is until 2007, when his sister discovered the tape, and began a 17-year quest to identify it. From Usenet groups, to music identification forums, a Discord server, a popular YouTuber, and a dedicated subreddit called r/...

Wikipedia continues to be a modern miracle. Unlike social media platforms — which are rife with misinformation and grift — Wikipedia's openness and non-profit status are key to its two+ decades of value and accuracy. But a new threat is looming. Generative AI now touches everything we read, watch, and listen to on the Web. And some Wiki editors have begun experimenting with it, with mixed results....

Karen Cassady had finally made it. She was working full time as a comedy performer and teacher, with weekly shows at Atlanta's top improv theater. Then March 2020 happened. She and her comedy cohorts tried to translate their shows to Twitch live streams, but the "lulz" in the chat just didn't cut it. Unemployed and painfully bored, she put on some wigs and began riffing other people's videos on Ti...

Salutations, one and all! I'm taking this week off, but excited to share some episodes that are on the docket for the coming weeks, and a BRILLIANT piece of media theory that might explain what the world is going through at this political moment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amanda Lee was a passionate wedding photographer whose business was booming - that is, until, February 2020. Covid canceled her job and income, and to make matters worse, severe stomach pain was preventing her from eating (and pooping). When she finally got an appointment to see a doctor at the height of the pandemic, instead of offering scans or tests, he said it was "a blessing" that she hasn't...

Mattel's movie tie-in dolls for "Wicked" are being recalled due to the greatest typo ever made. Bluesky adds 700,000 users in one week as Americans flee Twitter, and a new contender might be on track to surpass MrBeast as the most-subscribed YouTuber of all time. Plus: I'm now obsessed with finding the Reddit sleuths who solved one of the oldest musical mysteries on the Internet. This show is made...

There was no Internet when Yaya Han first discovered manga and anime in the early '90s. Born in China, she fell in love with this media (which was mostly imported from Japan) at a young age. But when her family unexpectedly moved to Europe, she became an outsider overnight - culturally and linguistically. That is, until she discovered a German anime magazine and started submitting her artwork. Tha...

Before becoming Patreon's Head of Online Community, Hayley Rosenblum was no stranger to fan funding. She had worked closely with musicians in their pivot away from record labels, and toward the Internet - where fandom reigns supreme. These days, she helps creators large and small by listening to their needs and communicating pain points back to the Patreon mothership. Many artist conversations hav...

Two very interesting announcements from the Adobe Max conference connect directly back to last week's conversation about digital rights attribution. The company is launching their AI image and video generation model called "Firefly," which has only been trained on licensed and public domain imagery. So: If tools like this could be vetted, would artists and regulators be comfortable with them? Link...

Nearly every meme, YouTube video, and yes, even this very podcast, contains copyrighted work that may or may not be ... "officially" obtained. With millions of hours of audio and video uploaded to the Web every day, how can we possibly protect the intellectual property rights of creators? In short, we can't. BUT, laws and court cases dating back to the '90s have dramatically changed our perception...

When "Thorsten A. Integrity" created a trivia challenge for his co-workers in 1997, he never dreamed it would become the Internet's most exclusive knowledge battleground. The proprietor of LearnedLeague (whose *actual* name is Shayne Bushfield) built a thoughtful trivia tournament on defense mechanics and the honor system. And when it finally got online, his core group remained small for more than...

Jamie Baldanza has always been an animal lover. When the ad agency art director started posting her photos of local New Jersey horses online, the world took notice. Then, on a trip out to the American West, she brought back more than just stunning pics for the 'Gram. A life-changing passion for documenting and protecting wild horses took root. Since then, she's built a large online community of ho...

YouTube recently announced two new features. "Veo" will allow users to create AI-generated clips and backgrounds for Shorts. And "Hype" is a new way for fans to support small and medium-sized channels. The former seems like a bad but inevitable feature that will flood YouTube with synthetic, low-effort content. But the latter could be a major leap forward in audience-first content discovery. Hype...

Matt Hobbs was a working musician and the "house band" for an improv theater in Atlanta. Then the pandemic hit in 2020. With live performance on hold and life getting boring, he looked for musical inspiration at home. Luckily, his two adorable chihuahuas, Lenny and Mar-Pup, delivered. On a whim, he began writing short and ridiculous songs from the dogs' perspective and posting them on Instagram. T...

The Internet Archive, a non-profit repository for BILLIONS of pieces of media, has been lending digital books from its library since 2011 without a hitch. But in March 2020, they made one crucial mistake that now poses an existential threat to the online "Library of Alexandria." This week, The Internet Archive lost its appeal in a lawsuit brought by the 4 major publishing conglomerates. And while...

SightlessKombat is a video game streamer and reviewer, who also consults on some of the industry's biggest titles: "God of War," "Sea of Thieves," "Horizon: Forbidden West," and more. Yet he has never seen a single pixel. That's because he was born blind — completely without vision. But he was drawn to video games from a young age because ... well, they're awesome. So, how does he actually *play*...

Most people can agree that protecting children from harmful online content — self-harm, disordered eating, gore, disinformation, extreme social pressure — is a good idea. Much of that falls on parents. But algorithms are disturbingly good at showing us extreme content we never searched, but can't look away from. Addiction (and thus more ads) is social media's business model. And keeping up with th...

The flood of allegations around the world's most famous influencer range from petty YouTube drama to serious (and possibly illegal) safety issues. MrBeast is very popular in our household, but the raft of controversy makes us question whether our kids should keep enjoying their favorite YouTube channel. This week, I break down why The Beast is under fire, and how the controversy snowballed in rece...

It's a busy week here in my house, so while I'm lining up fresh interviews for you, please enjoy this feed drop from my other show, where we interviewed two wonderful video game speedrunners who race through one of the chillest games ever made: "Stardew Valley." - Originally published on January 13, 2023 - Where RUSHING into marriage is a good idea! Speed running Super Mario Bros. is a straightfor...