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The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and More, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
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This, this, is, is, Talking with the Pros. Like, professionals. This is Talking with the Pros, with me, Jeff Speight. I speak to the professionals in the world of audio to gain an insight into what it takes to become a pro. Talking with the pros. Ben, how are you today?
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I'm doing really well. It's beautiful out, it's nice, I've been spending time outside, walking my dog, my son just turned one. Congratulations, happy birthday. More than your audience needs to know about how great things are going for me.
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Oh no, we love that. Thank you for sharing. Ben, just thank you so much for coming today. Of course. It means a lot to me. I know you as my teacher, a Marvel
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enthusiast. You used to work at Marvel. I did, yes. Not a lot of people know that. I did used to work at Marvel for for 10 years from 2007 to 2017. That's where I
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was at. You also teach Web 3.0 and podcasting here at UNLV. So I teach
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introduction to digital and social media, which is a lot of kind of where is Web 3.0 going. We cover a lot of, I would say, you took the class. Yes, I did. But I would say we cover a lot of what Web 2.0 is, so we can kind of forecast where Web 3.0 is going. Just like the way I teach the class is I would say the first part of each class, each meeting is a lecture on what's come before. And then we would generally spend the second part of the class talking about what's coming next. And that is a lot of, you know, the metaverse and chat GPT and artificial intelligence, whatever's coming next. We try to get a handle on that in the second half of the class. So it's, it's kind of web 2.0 meeting web 3.0 is how I would describe the class.
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Right.
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The history of what we have, like social media wise, like MySpace, that old thing. And like chat GPT, wow, that, that must be a hot topic right now.
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Right now we're talking a lot about it. It's, it's interesting. We've had some, uh, I've had some interesting conversations just with like colleagues about like, you know what, we can't ignore chat GPT as like teachers because students are going to want to start using it for different things. And the question is like, what's a good use, what's a bad use. The big lesson that I think we're constantly learning from technology, you can do one of two things. You can ignore technology and hope it's gonna go away. That never happens. Or you can embrace the technology and say like, all right, well, how can we make this kind of a force for good? In the same way that we utilize social media to connect the world, to have conversations, things like that. How can we use chat GPT? Maybe there is some practical applications. We obviously, as teachers, don't wanna see students writing whole essays using artificial intelligence And there's an even more controversial thing, you know getting into like the arts I know a lot of like my comic artist friends are you know Up in arms about the fact that people are drawing with AI now and they're they're throwing these artists to the wayside But the question is not how do we fight this? It's not gonna go away new technology never goes away The question is how can we make this something that benefits us as opposed to being something that hurts us? But I'm getting ahead of myself. Oh, no, you're good. Yeah, this is definitely
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Exactly what I want to talk about how things are just always constantly involving Especially the world of digital mediums social media being one that's where everybody's getting their news That's where everybody's getting their information. That's where everybody communicates So it's evolved into this new thing and I think that's what you were talking about in terms of like the AI and the chat GPT. This is evolving and what's the integration and what's that going to look like in the future? We always like checking in on new technology and what's going to come out of that. Let's talk more about the term like Web 3.0 and entertainment and social media now. and even in the business and professional areas are wanting to integrate that into what our world is today.
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So the way it breaks down, and I cover this in my class, is Web 1.0 is really like the early days of the internet where basically you could post something, someone could reply, but it took a little while, like basically just one-way conversations, what we call it. Web 2.0 starts around the mid 2000s when your MySpaces, your early versions of Facebook and that sort of stuff, the early social media started emerging and Web 2.0 is kind of defined as like, you're able to have two-way conversations. So you and I, as opposed to like me posting something on a bulletin board and you finding it three days later, I instead can say something to you, you say something back to me, that's Web 2.0. Now for a long time people kind of thought Web 2.0 was it. That was as far as we were going to go. But now, as companies like Meta are starting to experiment with the idea of virtual reality, augmented reality, and again, using AI and tools like that, that's a whole new leap. It's interesting. So that's what people are calling Web 3.0, basically the metaverse, and this fully immersive experience. I always use the shorthand of Ready Player One. Ready Player One is full on Web 3.0. And some people are afraid that's where we're headed. And it's interesting because I had, you experienced it when you took my class, is everyone was so negative towards Web 3.0. And you guys, you're younger people, like people in their 20s or in their late teens, and they're saying, no, we don't want virtual reality, we don't want AI, we don't want any of this stuff. And they were like, you know, unlike social media, which we all wanted. And I go, well, here's the interesting thing, guys. I was like, you all grew up with social media being part of your regular lives. So you don't question it, it's just a thing for you. I guarantee you, maybe not my generation, but definitely like my parents' generation, when social media was becoming a thing in the 2000s, they did not like it at all. Like they thought this is too intrusive, it's too invasive, we don't like the idea of our kids, you know, communicating through Instagram as opposed to talking in real life. So the backlash that you guys have towards Web 3.0 is the backlash that people had against Web 2.0, but then you think about like my kids, like my daughter is five, she's going to be six in a couple weeks She like plays roblox all the time and she just immerses herself in that and I guarantee you When something like the metaverse comes along she's gonna be interested in that There's gonna be a whole generation of kids who grew up with this as a normal thing Does that mean like the metaverse is gonna be hugely successful in the same way that you guys treat web 3.0 is how older people treated web 2.0 and you think of web 2.0 as being like essential to life now.
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Yeah. And I think a lot of it too, is like the access in terms of like now Facebook is something your parents are on, your grandparents are on. And so when it comes to the metaverse or this augmented experience, it's more of like, well, what's the price point? What's the entry level to these things? And, and thinking about like this fear, what's the price of entry to their that experience, because people are interested in these new things like Area 15, you know, all these different experiences of just of entertainment, that leads me to like, what podcasting is, yeah, now, it's still I feel like an up and coming thing, but it's still so prevalent. Anybody and everybody's doing it. Subjects are being talked about, niche topics are being covered, and you can really find those people on the platform just talking about of your interest. What is it like now for audio specifically in, in this new world of augmented web 3.0 versus, you know, oh, I look at TikTok, I like video, you know?
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I think audio sells a place.
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I think audio is always gonna have a place because, this is important, this is why radio is not gonna die out anytime soon, in my opinion, yes, is that you can take audio with you when you're doing stuff, if you're driving your car. I can't watch a video while I'm driving. I mean, I can, I shouldn't. Um, or even like when I walk my dog three times a day or if I want something to play in the background while I'm doing audio, like, so I teach a podcasting class. Um, and I talk about the fact that like audio is just, it's the most intimate form of media and communication because someone's literally in your ear talking to you while you're doing whatever you're doing. And it's much more versatile than video. Um, like nothing against video love tech talk love Instagram Yeah, but there's something about audio that there's a lower barrier to entry You just described it the fact that anyone can do it one of the first things I say in my podcasting class is Anyone can do this that doesn't mean everybody should and if you're going to do it, how do you make it good? That's really what my class is about It's not about how do you do a podcast because you don't need a 16 week course to learn how to do a podcast. It's more what makes good podcasts good, what makes bad podcasts bad, and how can we kind of separate that. And I always say it's gotta be, you have to have a reason and a unique kind of like value proposition and voice that you're contributing. What are you contributing with your podcast? If the answer is just, me and my best friend are talking about movies, that's great, and there's no reason you shouldn't be able to do that. Probably you're not going to find a lot of success unless you're a celebrity. If you find something like me and a friend are workshopping doing a new podcast right now, gonna be a wrestling podcast. And he used to work at Marvel too. And it's our perspective as two guys who worked at this huge entertainment company who are big wrestling fans, who got to meet a lot of wrestlers and go to a lot of events because we were at Marvel, how does our point of view change from someone who's just like, oh, well, I like WWE and I watch Raw every week. We have a different perspective. Are we gonna succeed? I don't know. I don't know if it'll be successful or not, but at the very least, I can tell you our mission statement is we're two guys who have had unique experiences that you're not necessarily gonna get everywhere. Being in Vegas, a lot of people, like students, like yourself, can trade on the fact that you're in Vegas, which is such a unique place. And especially right now with everything that's going on with the golden Knights, with the Raiders, with just like the up and coming sports community in Vegas, someone who does a hockey podcast from Vegas is more interesting to me than someone who's doing one from New York necessarily, because there's a million of those, but you have a unique perspective. So it's just really, it's about asking yourself, all right, what do I want to talk about? Because you got to talk about something you're interested in. But if I'm going to talk about something I'm interested in, why should anyone else be interested in listening to me talk about it? That's the real consideration.
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Definitely talking about focusing on your passions and like the genuineness of a podcast is like when you can tell like these people are really into the subject and they're bringing their expertise and they're bringing, like you said, the perspective. So definitely something you want to care about and giving to your audience value of this subject matter. So that's kind of what we're doing here and hoping to learn more about the world of audio specifically. Really, you mentioned earlier, radio, podcasting, just things that you don't really take notice of, like in movies or in any kind of show, like at the sphere, you're going to be listening, like that's also part of the experience. So like 4D, like that's what I'm basically imagining this new augmented reality that they're going to be pushing at the sphere, you're going to be immersed in like a sound experience and a visual experience, and then just the interaction between all of that. I know you've touched on what you're doing at your podcast class. Yeah. Just tell me more about that.
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So I started teaching podcasting right before the pandemic. So I think I started either, yeah, I started in like 2019. It had been taught by another professor prior to me. And I think that was, the person who taught it before me didn't necessarily have any podcast experience. They were just kind of like a fan of podcasts. For me, while I was at Marvel, I hosted This Week in Marvel, which is a special Marvel podcast. And I did that for like six years. Uh, we put out hundreds of episodes. I was immersed in podcasting. So what I bring to the class is I'm not someone who has never done this before. I am a fan of podcasts. I am going to talk to you about stuff I like. The cool thing, Jess, is we did a lot of things wrong. So it's not just me being like, I did things this way, you should do things this way. It's also a lot of me being like, I learned from this mistake. Here is a way you can learn from it and hopefully not go down the same path. What I like doing with the podcasting class is we listen to podcasts, we pick them apart, we talk about what's good, we talk about what's bad. I have a lot of folks who I know from my previous life who come in and talk. I have people from MTV, from ESPN, from Marvel itself who will come in and basically the students get to just have roundtable discussions and I will assign students to interview the people who come in. So like there's gonna be two people responsible for basically, you know how I do guest speakers, I do it interview style. Like I don't just be like, all right, do a 40 minute presentation. I say like, all right, you're gonna sit down, I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions, and we're gonna go from there. In my podcasting class, I extend that to, I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions, then I've got these students who are gonna ask you a bunch of questions, then we're gonna open up to everyone. Podcasting is a unique class, it's very different. There's an audio announcing class, Dave Norris teaches classes, Matt Peralte teaches classes where you can learn all the kind of technical sides of podcasting. My podcasting class is more about content. It's not about adjusting sound levels or what microphone to use. It's once you start recording, what can you say to make this interesting? I've done thousands of interviews over the years. I bring that to the table. As far as I've interviewed everyone from big movie stars to little kids to everyone in between. We had a lot of random people coming to the office when I was at Marvel who were arguably celebrities, some more so than others, and we would, you know, we'd record with them. So I've interviewed everyone and I can tell you what worked for me. I can tell you what didn't work for me, and I can hopefully get you to a place where you're going to come out of my podcasting class feeling like if nothing else, you're a competent interviewer, but best case scenario, like you're ready to go and do your own podcast from there.
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That's awesome. Talking about how vital audio is. I really feel that way about audio. It's such a passion and growing up listening to the radio and still to this day, a fan of radio and I'm on air as well, but just the podcast is bringing a different experience. It's something that you pick up and you could take it with you.
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Yeah.
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And I also think you forge a real relationship with the people who, both ways, like the podcasters form a relationship with their audience. And the audience kind of imprints on the podcasters and really like you become not friends, I guess, but like I put it this way. I always say in my class, I go, if you're starting a podcast, you don't want to kind of go too in depth on your stuff when you start out because you're trying to like earn your audience. But if you've been doing something for 100 episodes and you've got an audience who like listens and genuinely cares about it, you can talk about the like crappy customer service situation you had earlier that day because people are gonna wanna hear about it. Like you earn that right to be able to basically talk to someone as if they're your buddy and not just this person that you're messing around. You have that with radio to a degree, but I think because, you know, a radio DJ, unless you're doing like a talk show, if you're, if you're introducing music, I mean, you're really only talking for a few minutes every hour. Yeah. So it's not the same, right? As I am going to literally just give you a stream of my consciousness for 30 to 45 minutes at a time, which is very different.
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Yeah, very different. Of course, people become invested in somebody. And I love that bond and relationship. It's like companionship, though it's a, you know, you're on the other side of it I really feel that audio brings that personal connection as well I enjoy as a listener learning more about somebody on the other side of the mic to being Involved in listening to oh what's going on in their life? You mentioned before unique experience that you get. Yeah audio. So I'm really think that audio is valid and important and I think you just, you know, agree with that. Absolutely.
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No, I think audio is super important. I think, you know, it's a low barrier to entry as far as you don't need as much equipment and technique and all this other stuff. You do need all of that to be good, but really I think the opportunities for young people, especially in audio, are huge. I hope radio stays vital. I think it will. I hope podcasting continues to be a huge form of communication for people. It's a great way for people to make connections. I consider, like I said, I teach social media, I teach podcasting. I consider podcasting to be a form of social media. It's a way you can talk to other people and interact with them through digital means, which to me is the definition of social media. So it's important. I think it's huge and I'm glad people like you are still into it And I hope you know like when my when my kids get to be this age I hope there's gonna be a place for them to do it as well
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Yeah
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just speaking about you know being what you know V provides and the ability to work on equipment that is state-of-the-art and Having a chance to really learn and be taught by those that are doing it in a professional level. So that's why I'm so thankful for you to be here today. Totally. Telling me more about like that professional aspect and the expertise you had mentioned that you bring from Marvel. Tell me a little bit more about that Marvel universe and your podcasting experiences. What are some things off the cuff of, you know, what was it like from the beginning? Like when you guys first started up, what were things that you didn't expect and then how that progressed?
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So we really had no roadmap because there had been podcasts that had been done by Marvel before. So you started like right when podcasting was happening? So we started in 2011. Podcasting had been around for a little bit at that point. I don't think serial had hit yet so it wasn't like huge but it was a thing. Like people knew what they're doing. The biggest mistake that me and my cohost Ryan Penagos, Agent M made when we started was we would record these three hour long talking about everything podcasts. And if I heard those today, I would just cringe because a good podcast should be like 30 to 45 minutes, but it also, it just needs to have focus. Like we were just talking because no one had showed us how to do this. So we would just turn on and talk. What was really great was we found our community right away, primarily through using Twitter. We connected with people, and I'd say the coolest things we got to do was we got to take the show on the road. So we went to Texas one time, we went to Vancouver, different places in New York, and we put on live shows and we'd get audiences, which was great. It was not an overnight success. We didn't have huge listeners right away, and that's like, everyone's like, but you were Marvel. How could you not? And I'm like, well, it's tough to get someone who watched a movie to read a comic. It's even harder to get someone who's into either of those things to listen to audio. So it was a challenge. We refined it. We got better. We got more focused. The stuff they're doing today, I've been gone five years now. The stuff they're doing today is light years ahead of even what we were doing five years ago. You know, we found, we found what we were good at. We focused on it. We listened to our audience and found out what they wanted to hear more of and what they want to hear less of. And we cut that up. But we had a lot of fun, man. We had a really good time. We spawned a whole second podcast. It was just interviews. So every week we'd interview someone, whether it was an actor, musician, comic artists, you know, anyone who had some connection to Marvel and sometimes even no connection to Marvel. Um, but that's a whole nother story, but it was a lot of fun and it's brought me to
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where I am today. Right. So you're saying three hours. Wow. Oh my God. It was brutal. How did you do a three hour event?
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So it was like, so here's, here's how we did it. Here's how we did it. Initially we're like, all right, we're going to talk about every Marvel thing that's happening this week. So movies, not that hard because they only come out every few months. TV shows once a week, not a big deal. The thing that crushed us was Marvel's producing, and this is in the mid 2010s, they're producing upwards of 30 comics a week. And we're like, we're gonna talk about all 30 of them and go into detail on each and every one of them. So that's really where it came from. And that was where we realized we could make cuts because we're like, oh, we don't need to talk about 30 comics, we can talk about our five favorites and then just keep it moving and like throw in a cool interview or do a section where we read fan questions from Twitter. Like that's more interesting. They don't need to hear us talk about every single thing that came out. But again, we didn't know what we were doing, so we're like, well, we don't want to miss anything. So we want to get everything. So it was a learning curve with that. But that's how you get to three hours, is you talk about 30 comics every week and it gets to three hours very quickly.
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Note to self.
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Yeah, don't do it.
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So you listen to your audience. That's really great that you integrated another social media platform to have that communication getting to know what they're enjoying. Well, there's sometimes where the people don't listen to the audience or they're like, Oh, I don't read the comments at all or I don't want to know about it but I think it's it serves a purpose if people are investing their time and to being a fan and Saying hey, I have some comments and just you know being able to you know Filter that as need be and getting that so really like from the gate You guys were promoting it through another platform. Yes, saying come check us out on this platform
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Twitter was your Twitter's our main one. We started branching into Instagram, but Twitter was just so good for that immediate, quick, I have something to say, you have something to say, just back and forth conversation, which we found was really helpful. It was really easy to organize. Some of the other platforms are challenging. I mean, like you said, Facebook has an older demographic, so it wasn't really what we were going for. Instagram was tough just because we had to come up with graphics, and we were not necessarily, we were an audience show. We didn't, we had a graphic design team, but we didn't, you know, always have something for them to work with. I think if I were doing it today, I would use Instagram a lot more because I know more now than I knew then about how to kind of get around stuff in Instagram. And I'm sure if I was doing the podcast today, I would use TikTok for sure. Like, I love all the platforms.
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Yeah, would this be the dance bit of the podcast?
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It would not. I don't know if it would be the dance bit.
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Yeah.
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I posted one video on TikTok that was just a picture of me and Robert Downey Jr. with Iron Man playing in the background. Yeah. And I was like, this is all I got. I don't have a lot of TikTok content within me.
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Yeah. Well, Robert Downey Jr.
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It worked. It worked. Yeah, it was a good start. It was a good start. I just got to find other stuff.
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I think you just needed to get it out there. You're like, Hey, look at me. Oh, you just know all day. Yeah, absolutely. That's funny. Instagram. It's a lot of like stories now. You would probably just like promote like pictures of your, your podcast audience. That was the other, the other,
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the other problem for us was it wasn't very conducive to doing visual because they literally had us in a storage closet.
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Right. I was going to ask you about the setup. It's in a storage closet, but when you guys traveled,
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then what happened? We would just bring our Blue Yeti microphones with us. We would bring a producer with us. He would run microphones and stuff like that. It was a setup that was very easy to transport and take on the road. I know now they use a professional studio. I'm super jealous because they did it like the minute I was gone. They moved into a professional studio.
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Okay, band's gone. Everybody start the conception.
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All right, guys, let's have fun now. So they're on SiriusXM now. They're a big deal. All the stuff we did for like eight years was building so they could do this cool stuff after I left. But yeah, I mean, that's the nice thing about podcasting. If you have a microphone and a recorder, you're good to go. If you have a computer, like you can edit. Like it's not, my wife wanted to edit podcasts by herself. She taught herself how to do it. She's awesome at it now.
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Well, you're going right back to editing a podcast now that you mention it. I'm hearing there's AI technology that's being integrated into the editing software.
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Oh yeah.
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So I'm interested in that. When you're talking about like how are we going to use this new technology that's emerging, AI, and that's a thing that could save time and help with production. So that's kind of cool. I'm not scared about that.
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Don't be scared.
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Well, thank you, Ben, so much for coming again. Yeah, this was fun. Yeah. Anything else that you wanted to add in? Where can we take your class?
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My classes are available at UNLV, obviously, through the Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies.
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Fall, spring.
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I teach fall, spring, and summer. I teach Journalism 112, Introduction to Digital and Social Media, which you took. I teach Journalism 427, Podcasting, which you're going to take.
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I'm going to take.
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And then I also teach Journalism 210, Introduction to Public Relations, over the summer as an online course.
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Awesome.
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You can find me online at BenJMorse on Twitter. It's the best place to look. And then at BenLikesComics on Instagram.
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All right, go and follow him, guys. Take his class. Thank you so much, Ben. I hope you have a great and amazing day. Thank you again for speaking with me as a professional about audio and podcasting. That's all we have for now. And talk to you later. I want to thank you so much for tuning in. And if you missed any of today's episode, you can find us anywhere podcasts are available like Spotify, Google and Apple podcasts. Thank you for listening to today's episode of Talking with the Pros with me, Jess B. I love you and I'll catch you in the next one. I love you and I'll catch you in the next one.
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Bye.
Transcribed with Cockatoo