Experience as Media

Alexa Kristen. Welcome back to Atlantia. Episode for I Like even Numbers, Yes, And this week we have podcast O g and Atlas Obscura CEO David Plotts on the show. We like to call him Platsy, Yes, plots and he was okay with it, yeah somehow. So we talk a lot about Alice Obscura with him and how experiences and a media company are coming together, converging and creating audiences

that I think people didn't even know existed. Yeah. This whole idea of offline experience built from online discovery is one that we were super fascinated with and really excited to talk to David later in the show. But first we want to have a conversation about some of the

things that have been happening with a lot of traditional publishers. Yeah, so, if you've been following at Landia podcast on Twitter, you'll notice a flurry of tweets over the last few weeks that have been focused on this convergence of legacy publishers. So in the news, Fox, Turner and Viacom, who have um come together to talk about the future of measurement as it relates to broadcasting, presumably cable television, and saying that we as an industry need to challenge the way

standards have been bought. You know, this is proceeding this year's upfront, which will be interesting to see how the implications and how people think about buying models. When you've got three of the biggest broadcast cable network standing up and saying, we know that our audiences are proliferating across technology, we know that viewing behaviors have changed, and we also know that the whole person becomes a part that a

brand and an advertiser want to get to write. And so you've got this interesting tension now happening where you've got a model that is quickly approaching later in the second quarter, which asks brands to commit dollars based on upfront ratings. So, now, how do you ask advertisers to pay premium for a model you just profusely claimed as broken and by the way, on the same platforms that you've been using. So I think it's big media companies

are going at audience in different ways. So you've got the Turner Fox Viacom relationship and they're talking about, Okay, we've got to take data, we've got to look at it across the networks, right, and have a different conversation about who the audience is and how we're going to

reach them collectively. Right, So you've got that model, You've got the scale game that others are playing with the convergence of NBC, Vox and now Conde nasked coming to the table to reach a wider and presumably deeper audience pool that currently exists in their network. So what does

that totally mean? That means you can buy right across NBC, Vox and we say Vox, v X, v o X through the Conde portfolio and totally get why NBC and Vox partnered in early days, right, NBC was looking to go younger, looking for new thought leadership, especially around people like Carrot Swisher and recode and leaning into the super smart micro uh communities are subcultures. And then Conde came to the table. And when Conde came to the table,

it's set off that red flag. We call it the f It was like that we describe as the flare going off, and we're looking for a sound effect for the flair and when that happened, right, it's confused, Susian because Connie Nast presumably has the quality of content, but are they really pulling the audience? Are they pulling the audience? And then are you competing with vox You're both going

down very niche paths. So that one is a really interesting one and one we need to watch because it signals a couple of things to me, and I'm not sure what direction is going, and I don't know what you think about it. On the other side, the Viacom, Fox and Turner, I find that one to be more interesting because they were the first major networks to say we have to think about this differently, and we recognize that audiences aren't just made up of simple age, sex

and location demographics. Right that we've got you're far pasting generations we've got a market to the whole person, and so I think that that one is more interesting about Listen, we know that we've got this audience, but we're gonna get really fucking smart about who they are, right A men, Sister Peace talking about audience and building experiences within a media company. We'll be right back. So welcome back, everybody to a landy. We are so excited to have the

O G of podcasting David Plots in the house. Welcome, welcome, thank you. And I just have to say O G of podcasting with gab Fest. You are a co host of Political gab Fest. Correct, I am. We've been doing it since the year the word podcast was coined. We've been podcasting that long, but you've been very long time. Didn't coin it now, but you could have definitely would have coined it had someone else not beaten me to it.

So you've become kind of an unofficial mentor to us, and we'll talk about that because I think that's really interesting about podcasting in general. And uh, some of the advice you've given us. If the school oji prayer hands is our sign of the day, yeah, exactly, thank you, thank you. But I think first we got to know you when you were at Slate. You were the editor in chief of Slate, and now you are on the business side. You're the CEO of Atlas Obscura, a new

media company, right that is really blending experience and media together. Yes, that is extremely well put. So in I took over what was a beautiful little venture that had been started by Joshua four and Dylan Thurris, and they had created the site called out a Secure, which is where people could share knowledge of the world's unusual places, so like the secret apartment at the top of the Affril Tower

or the splunking in New York City subways. Yeah, I love that, Yes, subways or do you know if you take the six train past the end? You can take it past the end and you keep going. Legally, they won't kick you off it because it goes and does it turnaround. You can stay on it and you go into this abandoned City Hall station, which is this beautiful station that was built in the early twenty century. It's gorgeous, it's lit and you can just get a glance of

it as you just go. Podcast. We're going, actually I think we go on the six. We do a record if we can. Is that considered spunking If you go on a subway spunk and you gotta climb in, Yeah, we could do that too. I don't know if you want to see any climbing on this. Do not encourage your listeners to splunk. Nobody's blunk. Nobody Nobody's slunk. But Alice is talking about the unknown, travel and treasures and the idea, and the idea that Dylan and Josh had

was that we're all explorers, that everyone's an explorer. You don't might not know what you're an explorer, but around the corner from you is something that is going to surprise you and it's going to light you and amaze you, and we're going to give you that experience digitally. So we created this huge compendium, or rather our users created this huge compendium of these unusual places around the world.

That's part of it. But also we created experiences for people so that you can come with us and go hike to the secret fort in the middle of Rock Creek Park in Washington, d C. Or come do a falconry workshop in the desert with us. Work you get to like hunt with a falcon. No way, that's that's cool.

That will really brought outside my comfort home. My favorite, my favorite thing that we did at Alice since I've been there, were there so many things, but one is that we took over this bar in green Point one night. So it's had about people in this bar and broken land. You like, kicked out all the hipsters and brought your own We brought our own hips, bring your own. It was the hipsters paid us to be there, and we brought a wolf to the bar and so the door opened.

Everyone realized that this is when the wolf comes in. The bar went. It's totally dead silent, and then you hear I can't reenact up with the clatter of these wolf claws on the wooden floor. It was incredible. One of the cool things you've talked to us a bit about is how you've kind of went at this idea of the problem of building brand in the modern media world. You talk about how Google and Facebook on your audience, and it's very deff a goal for you to kind

of go and do things cost effectively, right. I think I'm one of the things that you guys, I'm sure experience like all the time is that if you're a media site you think you have an audience, but really your audience is coming to you because that someone has done them a Facebook link or they maybe saw you on snapchack discover Um that the platform owns your audience. You don't own your audience. Your audience doesn't necessarily know

who you are. They don't. They follow the link and they see your story and you get to count them as someone who's seen you, but they don't really know who you are. And I think one of the the that's a very deadly position to be in because all of a sudden, these people who you think are connected to you the way a newspaper subscriber used to be connected to the newspaper that they paid for, they're not connected to you. They don't care, they don't really know.

You're just a flip in the feed exactly. Yeah, I haven't used that. That's a good expression. Yeah, And so our premise is that that, um, if we can build genuine liken unity, in genuine sort of real experiences for people, that we can then create a brand that actually has meaning for them. And people are coming so like your community right of of readers or I don't even know what you call them, like explorers right, are contributing to the events, contributing to some of the local points that

you guys are talking about. Do you recruit them? Do they just talk to you guys and say, Hey, this is something that's really cool, Like how do you guys find those people? Well, it depends some of some of them find us. There. In every town, there's somebody who knows like here's the weird history, or here's the house that al Capone lived in for seven years when he was a kid, or whatever particular thing it is. There's

always someone in town who knows it. And sometimes they have an outlet, but often they don't have an outlet, so so they stumble across us and then they start to contribute. There's this kid, I shouldn't call him a kid. He's a full grown adult in Washington named Elliott Carter who knows more about Washington, d c. And it's distinctive history than anybody. And he kind of found me and said, I took him out to coffee one day and here's this person. Now every time I turned around, he's like

pointed out some other incredible thing. There's this uh, like did you know the US Constitution is at the National Archives and every night so you can go see it. I don't know if you've ever seen it, the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and every night there's this mechanism, this elevator that lowers it into a safe in the ground. I lived in d C. I can tell you my my tours of DC are different than finding the Constitution.

I was there for college. Oh yeah, as far as with great history too, yes, I love this idea of modern folklore. I was actually um on the train the other day going home to Connecticut, and I was on Atlas Obscures website and immediately GEO located me and was like, here are things in Connecticut and there are things like I'm like, oh, I live in Stanford, Connecticut home. There were some really cool things that I had never I had no idea about. That's I mean, that's really that's

really interesting, Like how do brands? Because I think something that we've talked a lot about, Laura and I have talked a lot about, is this idea of local community becoming more important, especially post election, Like what's happening in your local community? Do you really know who are the voices? Who are the people? You know? How do brand start tapping into something that Alice Obscure is doing in certain communities that are important to them. That's a really good question.

Let me think about that. I think one way is and now, and I think eight US cities we have what are called Atlas Obscure Societies, and these are local organizations and they're run by somebody who works for us, usually in a part time basis, and every week they're putting together local experiences. So in Washington, d C. I noticed that we're going to do a tasting of George Washington's whiskey and so they'll be a whiskey tasting down the mountain, getting it to a totally different side of

the president. Huge, he was a huge where that somewhere my boyfriend is putting in next trip. Um, it's one way a brand could engage. Right, Well, we've been doing these tours. If you're listening, Johnny Walker, if you're listening, Yeah, like a historic whiskey tour be amazing. There's all this kind of great whiskey history through Apple Acchian Kentucky. You

could do so much cool stuff. So, David, when you talk a lot about you know, these um new ways of curating experiences in this blend of what we call like mixed reality. Right, you've got the offline thing happening, you've got the online creation of editorial. One of the interesting lines I've heard of late came from Jed Hartman,

the c r OH of UM Washington Post. He said, you know, we're at a time when you're always um one click away from somebody never coming back to your site, and in a in a space where you're playing in a world that's blurred. How are you gauging the effect of this and success of Atlas Obscure? What does that look like? Well, we're in a lot of different lines of businesses. So we have published a book. We you know, are piloting podcasts, We do digital media, we do events,

we do international trips. So there are a lot of different ways we can measure success. I think, like most people, we look at the kind of top line audience number, but that is not sufficient. I mean that's sort of just like you can get a Reddit spike and all of a sudden, your top line audience number looks great.

So we are trying to and I could use some advice, and we're trying to get some kind of measurement, which kind of combines the durability of time on site with like user action around events and you know, buying things from us. But because we're a young brand, that's all. It's all kind of I think off earlier about this, I was like, I want to talk to David about this. I want to say, like, why even have a website today?

And I think that that's an interesting question for you, and then let's take it further, like I think that you guys are well positioned to do something totally different in terms of how content comes to life via experience and only have that be the centerpiece. You just position Obscure as a parent company that's a collective of different

revenue streams, right, and different platforms that exist. Which kudos to you because I think a lot of brands are trying to figure out how they go off platform and so I think you have an advantage there. But the other website, it's like go off of like yeah dot com. But the other part that's interesting is also to your

advantage is you don't have audience. You have explorers. So to me, the fact that people can go deep and they're not there to just click on an article and keep moving there there to immerse themselves in experience and potentially then go on one to me things like can version rate to experience or you're a lot closer depth of exploration is more intriguing to me as a marketer,

and that Yeah, that's exactly. That's the kind of we don't have like a great CRM tool, but we that's what we need is to figure that out because right now we have we know how many people went to events, we know how many people bought the book, we know how many people are going on trips, we know how many people are the website, but we don't know how one gets to the other and game those things. But I want to actually just to dig into that into the kind of website question is like why I have

a website. So one of the things I think why that was obscured in particular as a website is that so much of what we do is actually created by our users. So the entire atlas, this compendium of places, which is much of what we do online, users started all of that. They contributed all of that, and we had this amazing moment with so we published a book this fall, which, by the way, it gets crazy reviews and write crazy reviews. Lena Dunham, like tons of people

have said, this reinvented what travel should be. Yeah, it was. It's a pretty good endorsements. I'm not quoting her. I'm just saying that there are so many people who have said to that effect, that's what this is, right. I think Lena's actual line was this is the only thing that makes me get out of my house, which is which I love that. But so that book was a bestseller before it came out because we pre sold we we told our audience about it. We told the people

on the website preorder this book. This is a book that our users had written. The things that are in the book are things that they contributed. They bought a book that they had written. Do you start doing a reb stream with them? We should start doing well. The reb stream is that we is that we put out a beautiful book and that we we made it useful, and that that we are giving them you know, we're doing events with them, and we are constantly looking for

ways to give them these rich experiences. But there is a sort of virtuous cycle and the web is important part of it because the web is the place we give them to contribute contents that adds to your credibility. It's like this buy me for me sort of UM model, and that there's many travel mags and sites and destinations at a talent and yeah, yeah, I mean everything from Airbnb having the potential to become a content platform to travel and leisure. So the user content is a key

part of it. One we have to edit it, so it needs to be improved, so it needs editing. And the other is that we supplement it with professional content and stories that we can go out and find which have made the audience still bigger and made you know, people want to sign up for emails, and it creates a whole new richness to what we're doing. So I think it's I think um the balance that it's a balance.

I mean, it does mean our cost of content production is lower than it would be if we were pure professional journalism play and that that's a good position to be in. But I think we need both pieces. I want to see I want to see Alice Obscura have the ability to go from see this cool thing and do it now, like right now, Like if I was four Square, I'd buy Atlas Obscura. Are you listening. I mean, that's actually really what they need, right, and that's what

they should have become with. Yeah, but I think Airbnb love Airbnb would swallow Atlas Obscura up and make it something that it's not. What I think that you guys could do is have this immediate like I want to do this now. I want to go see a show now, like underground this, I want to take the six train now, I want to do this now, I want to buy

the ticket now. And I think like on demand experience is really the next kind of step in also in commerce, right, like having commerce and experience come together for this like amazing, you know, really great idea are you writing? So don't worry, it's reported. We had a we had a kind of like a very beta extremely like soa beta we barely let a thing called we called missions, which was we try to do that, which was it wasn't just here's a place, it was here's something you can go do now.

Do you know how many people say all the time like I'm bored. Do you know how many how many times tons if something stopped you in the middle of your tracks and said you can go do this? Now? Here are eight things that you can go do now. I mean, yeah, that's a that's an extremely good idea. Well, that's why we do what we do so in this in this shared economy, I mean, do you think that the Atlas obscure a model leans into this shared economy?

Obviously we have shared services like Uber, the Airbnb, is the world, excetera. We actually from a colleague just learned of this new app called cool Cousin. Are you familiar with coin? So similar to what you're doing, but more from a host than guide standpoint versus like actually immersing yourself in unpacking. It's like an expert down a certain vertical. So like one of our colleagues is food. He's like the foodie of New York City, so that's what he

like he does. You know, how do you see styles obscured playing in the shared economy? Do you think it gets to a place where you can exchange experiences for non transactional things or can you see like some of your contributors actually um bartering expartering experiences right exactly creating their own revenue streams off of a Las obscura. There was a great um an example of that, which is

that we did an event. Last year, we had this thing called Obscure Day, which is on May six market calendars. On May six all over the world, we it's our International Day of Exploration, so we do two events all over the world on that day. And one of the ones we did in York last year was this person who actually in their apartment has all these Victorian electronics. So I guess during the nineteenth century there was you know,

they had electronics. It was early electronics. And because this collection and demonstrated all this stuff in their apartment, um, and it was this idea that there's kind of people with secret knowledge and secret expertise and they want to share it, and we we give it a platform because many of them as possible. But I like the idea that people can start to do it themselves, create it themselves.

I mean, you've got a whole sub revenue stream then of people kind of branching off and then becoming their own sort of like self organizing, yeah explorer or obscure evangelists. I guess that that can create. I mean I see a huge partnership with you and meet up with Atlas Obscura and meet up to be able to do something like us can be amazing. I mean, the potential for brands that to do is like totally unlimited in that

there are so many ways. So like when you talk about international you know, Explorer's Day, like our brands like Patagonia and go Pro reaching out to you to integrate their products and ways that are actually tangible and useful and an experience versus just badging that day we should be badging means like it. So I'm just curious to get your take. Haven't been in this world for a couple of years, Like what are people most interested in travel? Like?

How has it evolved with technology and the sort of platform you've created has it shaped it? Yeah? I think I think, um people are really interested in kind of off the beaten track experiences and and some of it is some of it actually think is slightly one upsmanship. There's a lot of like I've been there, look at my Instagram where I've been, haven't been there, and so

so part of it I don't like. But part of it is is the sense that um that thanks to technology, thanks to you know, improve travel, you can now get to places where you couldn't get before. And it's a genuine curiosity of saying like, well, it used to be. It used to be that everyone thought, I've got to see the Eiffel Tower and the Tower of London and Mona Lisa before I die. And now people, I think, don't. I think people you could see that through a digital version,

they don't care. Like going to the Mona Lisa. It's awful. It's a terrible experience. It's super crowded, it's terrible. It's terrible. And you you if you, you know that if you had an alternative experience in like some weird place outside of Paris, it would be a better experience. I think people are looking for things that are more bespoken, unusual, things that you can't typically get access to. I feel like it is something that is more valued these days

than to your point, the mainstream tourist stops, right. I

think that's exactly right. And also one of the things that's happening is that is that because of Asia's getting so rich, there are these h Yeah, so there are tons of I mean there have been tons of Japanese tourist, but now Korean and Chinese tourists who are in in in Europe and so there it's like there's just a lot more tourists in places which there where there's been fewer tourists, and so there's a spill on effect where where people who who have tourist experience are looking for

really unusual in different places to go, and that that we think is a huge opportunity. And like you know, and people sometimes say like, well you have outos obscure and worried that all these weird places are going to be ruined. Argue is like, no, ruined because of what because suddenly people are going to find them, And it's actually much much more. The case of what happens is that places that don't get visited die, they get it's abandoned, forgotten,

and disappear. And what you want is actually for these places, these wonderful, weird places to be celebrated and found. Did you guys ever cover This is a totally random but I was obsessed with this. So remember finding Sugarman? Did

you remember that? Okay, the musician in Detroit? But I was like really obsessed with Detroit culture because of finding Sugarman and like just all the stuff that was happening some time with like the Chrysler comeback and like all of these things I've just moved into brainstorm mode because you you do this to me. So what Alexa just described, I think is an amazing product opportunity, and it's how does Atlas obscurre a move into the search bar of experiences?

That's right? So when Alexa thinks about finding sugar and I think about finding Tony Soprano, what are the experiences that I can go in and ask Atlas Obscura to curate for me to go after that? And I think that is the quintessential moment of digital and discovery and search linking up with real world on demands that I can go do tomorrow. That's where I was saying, like the footh whole four square thing. I was like, if

I'm right here, what can I do right now? But I love the like search the search bar for experiences. I mean that you just give you a new tagline. I mean, I think that's really in a lot of ways. Um, who if I said I want to see Atlas Obscura become something, I'd say, you become that. So can you tell us a little bit about how you're infusing technology to that point? So like you are eleven years in the making a podcast are and of your own right.

How are things like audio and um other forms of things like augmented reality, the artificial intelligence playing into the experience world. Because Alex and I are bracing for this time in our industry where the interface is going away, and so you are poised to be at the forefront of that. What does technology look like in your world? I mean, there's a couple of a r apps that we've talked to, and we think there's like a great you know whatever the Pokemon go is for adults around

history and experience to replace. There are some apps we looked at that seemed really cool that look at sort of historical experience and allow you to kind of place yourself in places if you have if you have a good idea for that people, So you and I want to go into a little bit. You said the founders said that everyone's got an explore in them. I would

argue that that's not true. I would argue that people generally are My mother's lived in the same place for almost sixty years in the same way like my parents, very similar. But I would argue it's not true and less engaged in the right way. And I would love to know right now when you look at your audience, who are they? Well, do you want to argue You're gonna say, I think you're wrong. No, I mean I've

I've lived all my life in Washington, you see. I grew up there, and I still every not every day, but every month I discover something surprising about this place, which I know intimately. I mean, the reason I ended up working at Atlas Obscure taking this job was I had left Slate and I was just looking around. I went for a bike ride with my daughter down in a part of Washington I never really spent much time, and I saw there's a bike path in Anacostia, which

is a poorer part of the city. And then so we went on this bike path and I noticed as we were on this path, which was kind of like a crumby path, it wasn't that fun of bike ride, honestly, but that everything we passed it was. We went through Fort DuPont Park and Fort my Hand Park in Fort Wallace Park, and I was like, why is everything called Fort? And so I went back home and I was like,

why is everything called Fort? And I looked and if you put your finger on the Capitol and then to draw a circle around Washington, maybe three or four miles from the capitol. Everything is called fort. There's Fort Totton, Fort Stephen, Battery, Kimball, and it's like, oh, these are the Civil War defenses of Washington City. But there's no forts there. It's like all gone, except there's one spot.

And so a couple of weeks later, I went out for a walk with my family in the woods up a mile from where I grew up, off a very busy street, off the corner of Military Road in Oregon Avenue. You walk into the woods into Rock Creek Park. You're in deep woods. You got a couple hundred yards and there's a tiny little path off to the right. You take this tiny little path off to the right, off to the left actually, and you go another fifty yards

into the deep forest. All of a sudden there's a moat and then these earthen walls they're twenty ft high, and you climb up on these earthen models and you realize that this is a ring and this is Fort Drusie. This is like a fort. It's in the middle of the fucking city, like right where I grew up, and it's just this incredible plan and it turns out has

an amazing history. It's where you know, there was a very important battle thought that fended off a Confederate invasion in eighteen sixty four, very little talked about, but important battle, but nobody knows that, nobody experiences it. So I so I think even your you know, your relative, your grandmother's uh,

well you just said, yeah, it's totally inspired. This This thought in my head as you're talking is like the furthest my mother is explored as the Jersey Shore And I say that and it's not a bad thing, and it's not a bad thing, but a creature of habit. Sixty years same town, born and raised, raised her family there,

continues to live there. How can brands help reach the fruit on the tree that is not low hanging, which are people like her who don't necessarily have the ambition or maybe the financial means or whatever the case may be, to go to see the mona Lisa, but can get out in their neighborhoods and find for and feel and you know what happens. What did you feel when you like discovered this, It was like, yes, it's literally it's

literally yea. And I now take groups on I take groups to this sport because it's so fun and people are like, holy count, I'm seeing the next show, but we want bar but Laura's mom to go fuck yeah. The other thing is that bar may know. So the other piece of it is, like you asked to the audiences, and I think the audience is people who are passionate about things and that that sense of like they are enthusiasts.

And I bet that Barb has, like she has some deep knowledge of some aspect of her world and her community. There's somebody who's history she knows, or some place that

she knows just intimately. And as much as we are about people traveling to the farthest flung and like having some like distant remote experience, where also about people like connecting deeply to any place, like you can connect deeply to the place that I think fingers right now, because that right there, to me, brands local communities and making people have a sense of life and a sense of like excitement, pride and pride and pride it is pride right that they didn't know even existed. That to me

is like amazingly exciting. So let's pivot into David plots the podcaster, and I just call you Platsy, one of many nicknames, that's the least awful that um, and talk to us a little bit about eleven years in the making as a podcaster, what you've seen this industry become, and what you're excited about or not excited about. I mean, I'm incredibly excited about. I love podcasting. I just love it.

It's one of the things. When I was at Slate Andy Bowers, who you guys know and work with, and Andy created this podcasting world and Slate no one knew what podcasting was. I mean, it was literally the year that podcasting was invented, and Andy saying, this is the future. You've got to try this, and we didn't know. We're like, sure, whatever, Andy, Yeah, fine, yeah, but he was so absolutely right and prophetic about it,

and and so um to me. Uh, what I love and what I think is is profound about it is that it is the most intimate medium. It is medium where you when you hear someone's voice in your ears, and when you hear someone's voice in your earbuds. It's not even ambiently like like when you listen to the radio. It tends to be sort of ambient around you. But the earbuds. First of all, you've made an explicit choice to listen, Like you can't not opt into a podcast,

you have opted to listen to it. And with the plotsy voice, I mean, how could you not actually just mee me, want to go like um, And then it's and it's right in your ears, and so it creates this intimacy. And television is a distancing medium. Print you don't make this human connection with people, um, because it's whoever writes it. It's like just you know whatever. And digital is digital is ephemera, Digital is flashing across right

so quickly. Podcasting is unbelievably intimate, and therefore you have human connections with people. I don't know if this is starting to happen to you guys yet, but you're going to meet people who know you because they listen to you and they hear your voice, and they'll hear you and they'll be like it's Laura, and not because you know anything about them, but they know you and they've connected to you, and that is a powerful connection. That's why the ad rates are so high. Can I ask you?

Can we ask you one last thing? So we have this thing, this series, and this was actually a piece of your advice. And after we talked, I was like, oh my god, Laura, we got to bring it back. So there's this Have you ever heard of the game? I feel like you're too in a lex Mary kill? Yeah kidd fuck Mary? But yeah, um we like, yeah, just a tongue. Oh it's fun Mary kill? Maybe Cam? Is it fuck? I am well? Cam says fun Mary kile,

We say Mary, And that's our show. So it's my wife and I played an hour long game of the other name. We were walking We're going to a concert. We were walking to a concert. We're just like, it was so much fun. Okay, so we're going to do that though for marketing brands, technology media with you. Okay, So it's kill. What would you kill? What would you just get rid of? What would you strike from the earth? David Blotts, what would you do yourself? Right? And what

would you buy? I mean I would definitely kill Facebook. Definitely Facebook was dead. When we've talked a lot on this podcast about sort of real experiences, I think Facebook is the champion of separating you from real experience, that creates pretend experience when where there should be real experience, and it also has had this dire effect I think on journalism and media. Okay, I buy that, all right? What would I buy? Would I buy? I would buy? Uh?

This American life. I think that's American life does what it does better than anything it has created. We are all children of this American life in the way that we're almost children or nothing else. I think it's it's created how we do stories, how we think about stories, how we listen to stories, more than anything. So I would agree with that's a enough answer, and would agree

with you. And I think a call plots if if you want to make a deal, and then he could buy me actually, and then what what would I do? What would do yourself? Yourself? Because I would do it better? Is um American soccer? Like, I'm a huge soccer fan. So disappointed you just hit You just hit a pash point of miss lor Charanti over here. I played soccer at American University, always an eagle. What would you do

differently about American soccer? Well, it's just there's a huge fan base, there's a huge participation, there's an enormous love for the game, and yet the quality of the league and of the national of the MLS and of the national team continues to be low. I think that is a huge issue with the MLS organization. You have a Hispanic Lettie community that turns out for UM international games

more than they do their own home team. The league does not understand how to put the right folks in marketing in these pockets of communities that truly understand them. So I could go on about that I learned, but um, anyway, David Plots, thank you for coming. Thank you. If you haven't already, please go check out Atlas Obscura. We're expecting a lot from Alice Obscure. I hope you know. I mean I saw you break out the iPhone with some ideas that we wrote down. We want to come and

and see these happen. So, David, how can people get in touch with you if they have more interesting experiences or ideas they want to share with us? Well, I'm on Twitter at David Plots and I'm also David at Atlas obscura dot com. Awesome, David Plots, everyone, thank you so much. Thank you guys. Um that wraps this week's episode of Atlandia. A few people we need to thank Cameron Drews, our producer Laura Mayer, Mett Turk, Andy Bowers,

and our team at Panoply. Thanks very much. Thanks for listening. Tweet us at at Landia Podcast, Like us, leave of us a review, send us your thoughts. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode. Full disclosure. Our opinions are our own. H