Why everyone is leaving Twitter for Bluesky

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On today's episode, Blue Sky COO rose weighing on the app's massive growth over the past couple of weeks. I think the reason why people are coming to Blue Sky is because we saw overnight how a platform that's controlled by a small group of people basically changed its bipartisanship overnight.

Fast company staff editor AJ Hess talks us through two interviews she conducted with Alexis Ohanian and Mitch Purse. When we talk about women's sports being an under-appreciated asset class, it's not just that there's not enough fessment in different parts of the business, it's also that they're only told through one specific lens. And as always, keeping tabs. We can do the most innovative, hottest man alive. You can run that package, yes. Yeah, I was gonna say, I will give you a list right now. But first, here's the download.

the news you need to know this week in the world of business and innovation. The Department of Justice plans to force Google to sell off its Chrome web browser. This all comes after Google lost an antitrust case brought about by the DOJ. The department believes that selling Chrome along with other sanctions will help ensure that the company cannot continue to have a stranglehold over certain aspects of the tech industry. Now we wait to see if Judge Amit Mehta will allow these sanctions to be enforced.

shares of, we've said it before, we'll say it again, a fake company. It's not actually fake sounds. We have to say that it is a real company. That sounds fake shit. Yeah. And that company name is super micro computer.

Super Micro Computer, so shares saw two straight days of double-digit gains to start the week. The storage tech giant, sure guys, announced it submitted a last-minute bid to regain compliance with the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. This follows the abrupt resignation of its previous auditor, Ernst & Young, last month, when Ernst & Young said it had lost confidence in Super Micro's financial statements.

The paragon of budget air travel, Spirit Air has filed for bankruptcy protection. This follows years of mounting losses, a failed merger, increased competition, and more demanding consumers take.

Because we don't like to pay for carry-ons and stand up while we fly. Every time I've gone on Spirit, and I'm cheap. I think listeners know I'm quite a cheap person about stuff like this. But every time I've flown Spirit, I've been like, you know what? I would pay $200 to not experience this hell. That's saying a lot. You want to pony up for American Airlines at that point.

The airline hasn't had any profits since 2019 and it lost more than $335 million in the first half of this year alone. But don't worry, if you have booked a trip on Spirit Airlines or you still have loyalty points. I'm so sorry, this is funny. The point is the airline will continue to operate for the meantime.

On Tuesday, President-elect Trump piqued Howard Lutnik to serve as Commerce Secretary, tapping the billionaire Wall Street executive for one of the most prominent and increasingly powerful economic positions in the federal government. But this isn't exactly the role that new Trump accolade Elon Musk envisioned for Lutnik. Musk had publicly expressed that Lutnik should be made Secretary of the Treasury.

This is all part of behind-the-scenes drama that included a quote, massive blowup between Elon and longtime Donald Trump adviser Boris Epstein in front of Mar-a-Lago guests last week. Elon accused Boris of leaking Trump's cabinet pics to the media. Tension between the two has apparently been growing since the November 5th election.

Oh, my God. I wish that Boris versus Elon was the undercard fight for the type then versus Jake Paul fight last weekend. That would be amazing. No, Elon would be like, Oh, no, doctor just told me no way I can fight this. That's true. That is what happened with the mark. Exactly. Man, have you been seeing Zuck lately? He's

We're good. He looks good. He looks good. And finally, how do we transition out of that? His get low rendition could use some work, but he does look. Honestly, I've listened to it like three times. Three all the way through. That is twice more than you should have. I hope I hope he pay and got his bag. I really do. I hope.

I hope the world for TP. I wish nothing was the best. And finally, Comcast announced plans to spin off several of its cable television networks and digital properties into an independent media company. The company will be called SpinCo and will include USA, CNBC, MSNBC, E. It has an exclamation point. That's why I went up on that. And then the digital properties, rotten tomatoes and fan dango. I'm sure there's going to be others in

The split underscores the decline of linear TV and its waning role in the modern media landscape. Do you kind of wish they came up with something other than spin code or spin out something, but that's okay. And that's the news you need to know today.

Josh, if you had an anonymous social media account, what would you post about? Would you be like Club Chalamet? Is now a bad time to tell you that I'm bald and out?

Oh, I don't actually have a Finsta or any sort of fake accounts overall. I don't know what I would. It seems like a lot of work. And it's just like, it's such a plot device now also in like reality television shows that people having like fake accounts, like the whole like reality Von T's thing with like, you know, housewives of Salt City. So for that reason alone,

I feel like I would just post shit about Real Housewives so that I could hopefully get on to watch what happens live at some point. I'm going to create a Finster that is just me bitching about most innovative companies. It's going to be really obvious that it's me.

I'll be spreading rumors about us. Actually, I have dealt with someone with a fake account, like posting shit before, like in my social circles in a weird way. It was me surprise. It was not you this time, but I'm sure that's circling around this.

I can't actually tell the story on the podcast or in public, so I won't do that, but listeners DM me if you want the details. I'll tell secrets. I'll tell secrets there. We're talking about this because we're talking about Blue Sky today. We're talking to someone from Blue Sky. To give you some background, Blue Sky was actually conceived up by Jack Dorsey, the Twitter founder in 2019, and spun out of Twitter in 2021 just before Elon Musk took over.

Blue Sky came out of beta in February 2024 and found an eager, if relatively small audience. By October of this year, the social media platform had amassed roughly 13 million users. Then Donald Trump got elected with an assist from Elon Musk. It's user-based ballooned. Now, in the span of about two weeks, it's approaching 20 million users and is the number one app in the app store.

Now, unlike Twitter, Blue Sky is built on a decentralized protocol. That's actually a very different from other social media platforms, which you find by their sort of opaque and ever-changing algorithms that users can't control. While Musk has complete control over the X algorithm, which allowed him to manipulate it to Trump's advantage, Blue Sky hands that power over to users and developers.

We spoke to the company's chief operating officer, Rose Wang, to understand exactly what that means and what the past two weeks have been like for the team. Hey, Rose, welcome to the show. Thanks, Yas and Josh. I'm so excited to be here. So you know what? I worked on this script a little while ago. Blue Sky has surpassed 20 million users of what I have down here, but I think it's way more than that at this point, right? More than double the users that had just a couple months ago.

It keeps ticking up like every minute, every hour. I have that tracker that's posted. So I think someone posted on Blue Sky. I think when I won't look this morning, and for listeners, this is Tuesday, the 19th, they were recording this, I think it had 20 million, 30,000 something like that. I'm sure it's going to be much higher by the time we air.

Now, were you ready for that influx? I think ready means different things. Ready on an infrastructure side. Yes. Yes, a team to grow a million users a day the last week.

I think that mentally and emotionally, we were just trying to keep up with what was happening. Yeah, what's that been like on the team? Like as you've been working with it, what are some of the biggest sort of like things that you've had to deal with? It's actually, I think a testament to how close our team is and how talented everyone is, which is in a moment of hyper skill, you actually just need every single person to be rowing in the same direction at the same pace. And that's a coordination problem.

How big is the team? The team is about 20 people. Wow. Wow. Do you have a million users per person? It's just going to say the same thing. Yeah. So it's been really exciting for us. And I think it's just, hey, you know, like the only goal we have is keep the website online.

So I want to get to this sort of keeping the website online in a second, but I am curious. Do you think if Trump had lost the election, you would have the same kind of spike? It's really hard to predict a counterfactual, like, okay, what world would that look like? But what I would say is that I think the reason why people are coming to Blue Sky is because we saw overnight how a platform that's controlled by a small group of people basically changed its culture and changed

It's bipartisanship overnight. Before X Twitter was a global platform for breaking news, for conversation, no matter who you were. Over time and very quickly that changed where it became a megaphone for one party. I think it's actually people pushing against

that more than anything else of, hey, what happened? This space that we thought belonged to us, we realized actually doesn't belong to us. We don't have much power. And the only way we can be heard is to petition the decision makers. And if the decision makers don't agree with you, then you really don't have much choice. And so that's why I think people are flocking to blue skies. They're like, wait, this is basically a world that we don't want to live in offline. Why do we want that online?

So that's basically where we are now is people are coming to Blue Sky because it's much more about user choice. You have a lot of the tools that traditionally only team members had. And so I think that's what's really exciting is social is in your control in your hands. So I want to talk about the tools in a second, but I do think right now on Blue Sky, like the interface reminds me a lot of Twitter or X.

Is that intentional? Is that going to change? Like, how do you think about that? Yeah, let me tell you the story of blue sky exam. I explained a little bit why it looks like Twitter on the front. Most people actually just think of blue sky as blue sky, the app that looks like a Twitter alternative.

The story of blue skies actually really different. So we were a company that was kicked off by Jack Dorsey in a tweet in 2019 where he said, I want to put Twitter on an open protocol. What he really wanted to do was actually turn Twitter much like into blue sky where people had choice, could choose feeds, could own their identities. And the way to do that though was you actually had to build the underlying plumbing, the protocol for that to happen.

And so we were a company set up to build that open protocol for Twitter as our customer. What happened is though, when Elon decided to buy Twitter, there was no longer that goal to put Twitter on an open protocol. Elon's, I believe back then, his goal was profitability.

We understood, but we had this protocol that we built for Twitter. And so we're like, well, how do we showcase how people can use it? Well, that's why we ended up building something that was really similar to Twitter. But we've changed it so much and evolved so much that it's really hard to say that it's the same thing. Because, for example, on Twitter, we're used to having one algorithm that is, I said, controlled by as well.

And in that algorithm, they choose who to promote, who not to promote. And there's a control of speech in that way. On Blue Sky, there are about 50,000 different feeds that users created. And so to say that Blue Sky is like Twitter, I would be saying that

YouTube is similar to TV in the 1950s. Like, okay, sure, there's a box and there's content. Yeah. Really? Yeah. I think that makes sense. And I'm sure the difference is, but from like the layman user, you sign onto the app and the user interface, I think is what we're digging down on looks like Twitter.

I'm not saying that as a knock, I almost think it's a benefit because we've seen a few different competitors to X slash Twitter rise up and quickly fail back down. And I think part of the reason why they didn't succeed is because it didn't look similar enough. That's conjecture on my part, but didn't look similar enough to Twitter slash X.

at this point. So is that user interface like, is that going to be a mainstay going forward or is there plans to evolve it into its own thing, specifically the user interface? Right. So I think you hit on a really good point is when a new product arises, I think there's only a certain amount of novelty budget you can spend for users to kind of learn something new.

And so we had to decide where to spend that novelty budget. Is it going to be completely new interface, completely new interaction style? Or is it going to be something that people are familiar with and through that familiar to introduce new concepts like multiple feeds?

different moderation services. So in that way, it was an intentional choice to make it look a little bit more like Twitter. The question is, will it continue to look in that direction? And what I would say is that overall, the look of the app isn't going to change significantly, but it's not just about Blue Sky the app. I think this is the beginning. This is us introducing choice through one app. But in the future, we're going to break out of the app, and there's going to be lots of other

experiences on the blue sky ecosystem. And so one of the things that already can be done is you can take the comment section of your blue sky post and use that as your WordPress blog comment section. Why do you want that? Most comment sections of blogs are cesspools of toxic posts because they're unmoderated. And so you can- Can a little close to home for our podcast comments.

I'm kidding. Let me hide. Users, listeners, you all are great. Some of you are so mean. It seems like these comments are red. When I get a screenshot from Josh on a Sunday at 2pm, I'm like, this is dark. Your brain is broken.

Well, I also run the podcast department here. So I also need to be like tapped into this. I can't even try. Don't justify it. What are we talking about again?

She can don't make Josh and yeah, this Sunday's bad. 95% of our comments are great, but there's like 5% of people when, especially when we're like critical of something. I remember one time we had an episode really criticizing design thinking or not even criticizing design thinking, but talking about idea of the brand and we got a really mean comment and I went to the guys LinkedIn and his job title was like,

VP of design thinking at such and such a company. I was just like, man, I wasn't coming for you, dude, but I'm sorry. Yeah. Sounds like an eye for an eye. Just a little bit. So blue sky comment section.

Going back to that, you've experienced the pain point. And so why would you want to use your blue sky comment section on other blogs? Because everyone that we've blocked or you've blocked in blue sky automatically gets blocked in your comment section. All the moderation work that we've done automatically gets transferred. And so this is now thinking about social outside of these four walls, outside of the box. And that's very much what blue skies building is

Lots of these elements, algorithms, moderation services, can all be split up, and different people can start using these different services, whether or not you're a part of this guy or not. Speaking of sort of decentralization, like in layman's terms, because our listeners aren't necessarily people who fully understand this, right? And we're both idiots. I was gonna say, our listeners, this is like a weekend. Why am I hiding our listeners?

Why was it important to make blue sky decentralized and also how do you make sure you know as you're growing so quickly that servers are not overwhelmed. Yeah and let me explain the centralization a little bit in layman terms which is basically.

All people need to understand is that it's not just owned by us. We don't control the server. It means anything we can do, anyone else can do, and that it's not a centralized governance structure. And that, if you think about social media, it's really about governance, right? What speech gets to show up? And so when we talk about these traditional social companies, they're actually these centralized systems.

where you have a small group of people who decide who gets to be on there, what posts get to be on there. And so for us, the decentralization aspect of this is anything we do, anyone else can build, anyone else can build a feed, anyone else can build a moderation service. It's just like the web and it's really hard to shut that down. And so that's essentially the world we want to see in social is that we're giving users the choice and we're doing that through decentralized systems. And in order for that,

to happen, it is a completely different infrastructure. And I think that's something that we're really proud of is we're one of the first people to prove that a decentralized system in the backend can scale as quickly as a centralized system in social. And so that was something that our team was really proud of is that at the same time we're scaling our app, we're also building the protocol at the same time. And so we're actually supporting two products with a 20 person team.

That's pretty incredible and in terms of moderation, you know, obviously you're giving people sort of as much choice as possible. Does that mean that you as an organization do not moderate anything? Oh, not at all. No, we absolutely moderate. The way that we think about moderation is similar to governance, which is like there's multiple layers of

It's just like in the US, you have Supreme Court, you have federal courts, and then you have local courts. And so on the Supreme Court level, I would say that's our terms of service. That's our community guidelines that we've set out for the Blue Sky app. And that's governed by our head of trust and safety, Erin Roderick, who used to be the head of election security at Twitter. Didn't necessarily want to talk. Wow, what a horrible, horrible job to have.

It's a really hard job to have. And he helped Twitter through a couple elections. So is he the guy who took Trump off the platform? That was part of the reason why Jack started Blue Sky was it was bubbled up. I think Jack, I don't know who made all the decisions, but it was a series of folks. And then Jack talked about how, hey, it's not up to the platforms to make these decisions, which is why he wanted an open protocol where essentially,

If you kick someone off of Twitter, there's really no other home. But on blue sky, if you kick someone off of blue sky, they can just go to gray sky or some other app. And the whole idea is that we don't necessarily get to decide who gets to be online or not. That's not really our job. Our job is more deciding reachability. So it's really about freedom of speech, limit of reach, is what we believe. When it comes to then just like how the different layers of moderation work, then essentially,

We have the Supreme Court level, which is here, no tolerance of hate speech, misinformation.

pretty standard. But then there's lots of other types of behavior like rudeness, AI generated images, movie spoilers, even the deep fakes of Taylor Swift that ended up on Twitter, right? Like these policies just weren't fast enough to keep up with what was happening on the ground. And so we kind of took a page from Reddit's playbook and they have figured out how do we give community moderators some tools so that they can govern spaces. But most of those tools are quite manual.

And they, you can't really transfer them from subreddit to subreddit. And so the way that we've, I would say even made it even more powerful is that we have given folks programmatic usage of moderation tools so they can actually like across the board look at

posts that have movie spoilers and label that for the entire network and so then you as a user can say, I don't want to see movie spoilers and you can hide that by subscribing to that labeler. It's those types of tools that we've given to everyday users that then can cover edge cases or the needs of diverse communities that a centralized organization just doesn't have the speed or efficiency to get to.

So then do you rely on users to flag hate speech? Is there any element of like AI detection? Or like, how do you think about that? Like, if I tweeted something really terrible right now, like who would be the what would be like the first thing that would flag it?

It would probably be AI. Yeah. So where AI is extremely useful is at the moderation level at publish. I mean, you want to look for anything that's child safety. That's problematic. Like for us, we do know exactly what is considered intolerance or hate speech. And so we have those triggers and we're catching those at publish. Then after that, we have users report different poster accounts. That's pretty standard. And then

That's just the central moderation that is standard across most social apps, but then we have what we call moderation labelers.

and that any user can go create. And so some users have used it for rudeness, you know, maybe spoilers, you can hide spiders, things like that. And then others have used it in a very positive gun way. Like some, I think someone created a TTRPG game where you can label, there's it like Kiki or Buba. I don't know. Kiki or Buba. It would be fun for people to kind of play that game. And so, yeah, we've seen some really fun ways that users have used our tools to

Make social fun again. I think that's what really what it comes down to. How many outside developer feeds exist on blue sky at the moment? There are about 50,000 feeds on blue sky. I think our team has created maybe like a few hundred and the rest is just user created.

I'm new to the app. I downloaded it a week ago. Overall, this is a dumb question. Are those the feeds where I have like, you can add feeds to the top of your bar? Is that what we're talking about there? For anyone who's on blue sky, I don't know any of the terminology now. But basically, you can go fly. I have like a news one that's like an it's all gender like it's a feed that's just news. That's what we're talking about.

That's right. We're probably used to two or one feed in other platforms. And on Blue Sky, they're more like tabs, like browser tabs, the way they show up, all sorts of different feeds that you might be interested in. And you can just swipe right as you go from feed to feed to see what's happening in either the cat worlds or the news worlds, or we have 200 Taylor Swift feeds. That's it. I'm surprised there's not more, honestly.

I agree. Thanks for the challenge. Listeners, get on it. What is your favorite feed? What is your guilty pleasure? One of my favorite feeds is the moss feed. Basically, it's like windy. OK, it's just like moss. The growth on trees are like the different actors and actresses with the last name Moss, Kate Moss, Elizabeth Moss.

I never thought of that. You can combine the two. Yeah. You can combine that. You know, it could be whatever you want. That's whatever you want to make it. But this one that is literally pictures of moss. Because sometimes you just want like a calm.

Nature. Yeah, it's true. My favorite Twitter, no blue sky account yet is called liminal spaces. And it's just like, oh, yeah, yeah. Hotel corridors. An empty computer room. I'm like, yes, thank you.

Exactly, that's how you feel. This is kind of what the magic behind TikTok algorithm has been a little bit. It's not obviously the same thing, but you get onto different talks, essentially, on official, and then your feed's just filled with satisfying videos or carving soap. The problem is that you get on one talk that you don't actually want to be on, and that my whole TikTok feed, and I don't even watch that much TikTok, is people in big law complaining and talking about how they plan to leave their jobs.

I watch like one day talk about it one time. See you last you last. No, I know. Yeah, that happens to me too. I'm like, I accidentally sit down my phone for a minute.

And now that's what I like. Do you see people posting different content on blue skies than they do on Twitter? Or do you think the vibe is like very similar? The vibe is very different. First of all, on Twitter, it's something like 1% of users were posting.

On blue sky, it's depending on what demographic, it's mostly it's around 30%. When the Brazilians came on, it was like 50%. Our users were posting. We love Brazilian users are so chatty, so fun. And they run like most of the fandoms in the world. We talked about this on the show before. One of our one of the has a nice favorite podcast who weekly was talking about when.

Twitter got banned in Brazil. How like all of our like all of our favorite accounts ended up off of Twitter. All the standard accounts. Diana Agron updates was like sorry. We're going for good entertainment gossip really took a hit.

Yes, it was really funny for us to watch where, you know, we were seeing it happening in Brazil. And then the second way was then all the folks in entertainment being like, wait, what's happening? We're all our fan accounts. And then those guys basically liberals in Brazilians, especially the demographic now.

I think the reputation that we're gaining is like, oh, you can actually have thoughtful conversation here. And I think part of the reason that's happening is starting over is a good thing. I think when people experience the cesspool of social that was created after 20 years, I think there is a lot of energy to, hey, let's restart the norms. Let's actually think about how we as people can help each other govern the space.

And so that's what's been really exciting is not only are 30% people posters, but then they're actually, we call our blue sky elders who've been with us from the beginning have been just amazing and helping remind folks who are new that there's a certain new culture here and that people are a lot nicer. And just that type of culture norm setting has helped the dialogue a ton. Do you get worried that that's going to go away as it grows so fast?

I think that's part of the challenge about fast growth and that's part of the reason why we're really glad that we were able to grow more slowly over the last year through beta because we were able to develop and nurture a set of power users who can help evangelize and help us.

really tell the culture and reinforce the culture. That said, it's not just, of course, the people we need to give them tools. And that's partly where the moderation labels come from, is that on blue sky, you can actually label a post or an account as rude.

You know, that doesn't go against your terms of service or community guidelines. But if there's actually an external like consequence for you saying something rude and then you getting labeled, it actually can people like see when like if I post something and Josh labels it as rude, can people see that? Yes, if they subscribe to you. Oh, yeah. I'll do that to all your posts.

We'll review them, and if we disagree over time, we'll put Josh in trouble. Knowing as is online presence, I think I'm pretty fine here.

Blue Sky also calls you rude. Yeah. Rose Logs on is like, yeah, upvote. My profile will have a rude tag next to my name. So yeah, we haven't thought about how what'll happen when rude is a badge of honor, but hopefully that won't be true.

I mean, people started wearing garbage bags before the election, so you can't underestimate what people do. Oh, God. That's really funny. You all raised $15 million in October.

Right, that's correct. That was last month, yep. I have to believe that you're running through that potentially at a faster rate than you thought you would. Is that fair to say? Or how do you think about, do you plan on raising more money? How do you think about capitalizing the business? I know we're early on in a social media platform's life, but what are those conversations like?

Absolutely, yes. As I mentioned earlier, that all my cost productions have kind of flown out the door. Yeah. And so, yeah, when you have a million users join on every day for seven days, definitely costs go up, especially in FRA. And right now, what's very important for us is that we have moderation coverage, global coverage 24-7 around the clock. And so I would say spend has gone up in both of those areas significantly.

that said we did announce that we're launching a subscription model most likely before the end of the year and so that'll be our first monetization and what we have said is that we will never put core functionalities like.

speech behind a paywall. Speech should be open to all. It's more like custom aesthetics or more video uploads or higher resolution images that users will be able to pay for. And so subscriptions I think will help us a ton. The key is let's just make sure that people are making friends and having a good time. That's actually like

priority number one for us and if that's happening then there will definitely be ways for us to make money in the future because then people will I'm sure be buying things from each other and or all the people who are creating feeds who are making content we want ways for those books who are building things to be supported.

was there any per either personality or entity that when they joined a blue sky all of a sudden a lot of other people followed like do you chart like who is really like bringing people with them right now we're seeing a lot of interest in the u.s uk canada and that's what.

Having these conversations, but blue sky has from the beginning been very international and global. So we've had Brazilian Japanese users as a part of our first 10,000 users. Our first meetup was in Tokyo last year. I didn't get to go. I know that by when you're trying to convince your boss that you deserve a flight somewhere, they're like, there's no chances happening.

us trying to get to Fashion Week in Milan.

Yeah, you gotta post more. Actually fun, so funny. It's so hard to get users. So I remember our first Team Week, Jay wrote on the whiteboard, like 10,000 users. And I was like, how are we gonna get to 10,000 users? And she's like, if we get to a million, we're gonna go to Japan. We got to million in a few months. And she's like,

I'm going to send you Japanese snack boxes. Oh my god. In terms of your priorities, obviously it's just like managing the insane amount of growth. But what are some of the big features that you can share that you want to roll out next?

Like I said, we had some plans beforehand that yeah, it was. But one of those plans was what I was talking about in terms of domains that you click into into a web page. And because well, we really believe the future of identity is presence. It's not just about identity online, but how do you bring together all your different presence across different platforms into your own control? And you can show a lot more context about who you are.

And not only that, I mean, one of the ways that people are experimenting with this is through the feeds. Like, we're really excited to see what'll happen with different creators coming together to build different feeds rather than just having their own broadcast channel, which is like what's happening on other platforms is you only get your own broadcast channel. You have to figure out how much you have to have so much content to entertain people that way.

there's no way to really collaborate with other creators and so so much of blue sky is make friends again make this fun do it with other people make it truly community and so we're going to also work on a feed builder that's internal right now it's actually a third party developer who built.

a feed builder that all the 50,000 feeds are built on. So that was really cool. That wasn't even built by us, but we hope to bring that in house. And so that it'll be really easy to create feeds within the blue sky at Twitter has, you know, some iconic celebrities, I'm thinking of like bald and doubt or who's another like viral, like Jaboo, Jaboo key back in a day would have been like,

a classic, have you found any purely blue sky influencers yet? Or are they coming? Who are you looking at where you're like, oh, they came out here and really are on everyone's feeds now. One of the books that we give all our new team members when they join is a book of tweets by drill.

And Drill, I think, came on earlier this year, and that was such a moment for all of us. Oh my god! Drill's on board.

I will say that there's a couple others that we're just really excited about recently. Flavor Flav has been so awesome. His Olympic presence at the Olympics, he's really found a way to make it work for himself. I think he's really turned his life around the last couple of years.

I didn't want to put it that way, but I'm glad you did. Yeah. Things are looking up for play. Yeah. And he's pretty public about this. And I think the other thing is that he, he's just like genuinely enthusiastic. Like he created a starter pack that he maintains daily. Oh, that's awesome.

He's like, here are all my friends and all the awesome black people you should follow. It's called the black excellence starter pack. I love the starter packs, honestly. I think the starter pack is a great idea. Starter packs real quick are basically solving the cold start problem that Twitter had, which is.

you sign on, then you don't, you don't follow anyone. And your feed is just like a bunch of random chaos. And so we want people to be able to onboard into a cozy corner that they're familiar with. And so starter packs are basically a list of followers and feeds that somebody else has curated for you. So it could be like news and tech or play reflays, black excellence starter pack or city planners. I mean, there's been so many Taylor Swift has a bunch

Yes, we got to make an MIC podcast account. We should make an MIC podcast account. Our starter pack can be all of our guests. Yeah, actually, that's a great idea. We're going to do that. Listeners, watch out for that. Rose, you're going to be on it. Exactly. Perfect. Docs us all. Our two fans are two fans are coming for you. Well, this was great. Thank you so much for coming on the show. This was delightful. Thank you both. So good to meet you.

And now a quick break followed by our chat with fast company staff editor AJ Hess about the docuseries the offseason.

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So a lot of money has gone into women's sports over the past couple of years. The potential opportunity is to pick the interest of private equity, investment funds, and private backers. Angel City Football Club is valued at $250 million, making it the most valuable franchise in the National Women's Soccer League.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian was the club's lead investor before Willow Bay and her husband, Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, took over as controlling owners. Recently though, Ohanian became involved in a new women's sports venture. Ohanian has teamed up with Gotham FC star forward Mitch Purse to launch a reality show about the National Women's Soccer League called the off season.

And the end of yourself is the hardest league in the world. Every single game is a battle. But the drama doesn't stop when the season ends. Diversity's always been an issue. I have to decide, like, sue. It's a risk. All of this is a risk. Cheers, everybody, to front of you!

Here to explain more about this is Fast Company staff editor AJ Hess. Welcome back to the show, AJ. Thanks, Yas. So you sat down with Alexis a couple months ago, actually. How did that conversation go? Aside from the launch of The Off season, which is a docu-series exclusively streaming on X, what else did you chat about?

We should note that the series aired on October 18th, which was actually after I chatted with both Alexis and Midge. But I was really curious to hear what Alexis had to say about his involvement in Angel City FC, which is the most valuable women sports team in the entire world. And I started by asking him about the longevity of this recent tidal wave of investment in women sports.

We're still in that early part. And so yes, we should all prepare for some come down. Sports is still a, it's a zero sum game. It is a, there's a scarce resource, right? There's only one World Cup winner every four years. There's only one end to be a cell champion, only one WNBA champion every year. And so at the end of the day, women's sports is about telling these stories that do have a scarcity to them, unlike, you know, widgets or Twinkies, right?

It will be insulated a bit from the hype cycle, but what a great time it'll be when we have, and I think this will happen when we have leagues that have dozens of teams in the 20s, say the mid 20s, probably is where we'll, they'll probably be this hangover. Everyone's like, oh my God, finally all these investment dollars have come in after being on the sidelines for literally decades. And everyone's like, okay, now we got to catch up. You could see a micro version of this with women's basketball and the WNBA, which has been around for decades.

But needed this perfect storm of NIL, and you can see my old tweets. I tried to buy women's college basketball from the NCAA a few years ago during the weight room debacle. And when they weren't allowed, women were not allowed to use March Madness in the branding because they thought it would hurt the brand.

God, no. The NCAA was like, please don't let the women use March Madness because God forbid could hurt the brand. And this is how broken it was. And clearly they were missing an opportunity. And what many of us saw was if you just looked, again, now this is about emotions, all facts. If you just looked at Instagram, which is one of the most democratic platforms for attention in the world,

The follower counts of the top 50 women in college basketball crushed the follower counts of top 50 men. And I post about this. I see you guys. You are messing up so badly, denying these athletes proper training facilities, denying them branding. You should be dumping.

90%, if your marketing spend was proportionate to the follower counts on IG, I think you'd see something really different. And then, of course, you set a stage now for a generational draft class with Caitlin, Angel, et cetera, et cetera. And then now social media has taken hold. We've made enough progress in women's soccer in America that I think a lot of people are looking around going, OK, but hold on.

The W's been here for a minute. Basketball is already a first-tier sport in America. Sorry, football or soccer. It's not, not there yet. It will be, but it's not there yet in America. What we're seeing now is the Whipsaw reaction where again, the investments there, the dollars are undeniable. The generational talent is there and it's putting butts in seats and people are, you know, more people watch the NCAA women than the men and it wasn't even close.

Well, I was going to say, you mentioned all the things they were denying them, but probably one of the biggest things that I think a lot of women's sports leagues have been denied is just eyeballs. It's so difficult to stream and watch so many of these leagues. Obviously, NWSL has a new media deal. WNBA's made some big negotiations, but where do you see kind of TV, traditional streaming fitting into this kind of social media disrupting it and getting in front of eyeballs, no matter what the studios have to say?

So this one's fun. So most pro teams and leagues are valued based on media rights deals. And you see that headline. It's a ton of money. Look at the NFL. Look at the NBA. Those are real dollars. Those are dollars that I think most people agree probably can't get too much higher in 10 years because we have a zero sum asset. Unfortunately, we all only have 24 hours in the day. I'm probably never going to be able to fund or start a company that fixes that.

Yeah. And so we're looking in a scenario where now the value of attention, because there's ever a growing competition, our phones, every screen we have is going to get really good at distracting us. And that's who the NBA competes with, that's who the NBA is, so that's how we all compete with. So those are all media rights deals, though, that are based on, I would say, lagging indicators, because they're looking at, oh, well, of course, the popularity

NBA, blah, blah, blah. Look at those numbers from last year, the trends in the last 10 years. But what you nailed is that for some of these emerging leagues, and especially the women, those leagues, they're led with numbers that come on social. And you know, it's someone who lives on it for better for worse.

And building Reddit, I can't unsee that experience where I actually value those numbers way more than the traditional, because that was so much of the pushback on all of my investments in women's sports. The more, let's say slightly more sophisticated pushback was always, oh, but historically,

They don't get the viewership numbers. Historically, they don't get the attendance numbers. And my point was always, okay, but if you're not making it accessible, if you're not driving, marketing, to raise awareness, those traditional channels will suffer. And you're taking it for granted because you're comparing it against leagues that have been baked into the culture of America for decades. Like in some cases, baseball is what's been there a hundred years. Like that's multi-generational mind-melding.

So he talks about raising awareness there, and I wanna stop and bring up, I feel like this is something that both of us have been on, which is more fighting in women's sports. We bring it up every time you're on the show. He's talking about narratives, I know that's a flippant way, but those are part of the narratives, these rivalries, this storytelling that he's talking about, and I think that's a big part of building awareness, right? Yeah, I mean, listen, I have already admitted that I wanna see more fighting in women's sports. Which we have.

is my shallow take. But the more deep take there is, I think, I spoke about this with midged too. I think there is this sense that women athletes are often portrayed as these perfect, family-friendly role models. When we talk about women's sports being an underappreciated asset class, it's not just that there's not enough fessment in different parts of the business. It's also that they're only told through one specific lens as being, you know, perfect golden girls. And they are these also really

brutal physical athletes who like in centuries ago would have been, you know, Vikings and warriors themselves, right? So I think it's both, you know, he talks a lot about investing across the industry, but also telling stories in different ways throughout the industry as well.

Now, I want to talk a little bit about this docuseries he's co-produced. It's a reality show that follows a group of NWSL soccer players. What was his motivation behind the docuseries behind making the show? My understanding is Midge approached Alexis with this idea, and she actually traces it back to a tweet she did years ago, where she was like, you know, the real housewives of New Jersey soccer players would be the best TV show alive.

And it's something that I definitely relate to as someone who played sports through my childhood where, like, women's sports teams are like funny and dramatic and they're not all like glossy. You were like, I fought drunkenly with, oh my gosh, prostitution hoses! Okay, I will not go that far, but we certainly did fight and it was some of the most funny people I've ever met. And so I think there is this sense that

If they were going to do something that was showing these women athletes in a different way, they also wanted the medium to meet that, right? It's not just they couldn't just do a traditional 90 minute documentary about these women. They wanted to do it in a format that women consumers were the mainstay consumers of. So I think it's really interesting. They're doing a lot of interesting, innovative things with

The style of the show, they have the production team behind Vanderpump Rules. So they're really kind of combining this sports documentary style with reality, TV, aesthetics that we've really come to love and the drama of all that.

What do you think it is about women's sports that so necessitates this kind of celebrity and drama and entertainment? Okay. So there's a cynical way to look at it. I got to give Billy her flowers. Bill Jean King is the reason all of this happens and credit to that. And I'm so grateful she is getting to see it. She's a investor in Angel City as well. Like that's awesome, right? There's it feels like there's some karmic justice there. There's a cynical way to look at it, which is

Oh, well, this is a way you have to tell this story to get people bought into the fact that these are exceptional athletes, yada yada yada. I think what people are going to realize, and this is what midge nailed with off season, is all of the content built around sports

was also built using a legacy mindset, because it was by men, for men. And so it was, and you have to ask me about this. She has this analogy about like, you know, reporting, like her dad's thrilled as long as he knows, like, you know, man hits ball with stick. Right? Yeah. This is the controversial part that will seem obvious in 10 years.

This type of content around sports is a no-brainer if you want to attract women, because you're now telling the stories of who these people are and why they do why they do. And it's more about lifestyle, it's more of the human behind it. So they know who to cheer for and they know why. But the part that's comes versus I'd actually wager, this is just great content that men will also be thrilled by and enthralled by. And 10 years from now, we're going to look back and be like,

For a hundred years, we were telling sports in the least imaginative way possible. And it's going to be things like Aussies and then make people go, oh my God. Like, yes, this is easier and better with women because women are better storytellers, better creators, better, like all this. Again, you just look at social media. The culture, the zeitgeist is created by women, all the most popular social networking apps. It's not dudes like me, they want on the platform.

But if you look at every one of those that hit critical mass and entered a part of the cultural conversation, it's women. A lot of times it's women of color. But at the end of the day, that's the power of the meme. That is so important if you want to capture the attention.

So what I'm so hyped by is that like, there are sports that I grew up with, like American football, where it was, I mean, I consumed all of my media based around, you know, man throws ball, someone else catches it, scores touchdown. I am so excited to see this off-season revolution bleed into even men's sports, because I'm going to get stories that I know I'm going to be captivated by. And obviously as a women's sports fan, I love to see it too, but I actually think it's even bigger than that.

Sorry if I'm bursting anyone's bubble here. A lot of reality shows are kind of bullshit. Like they make up drama. It is in many ways, right? And I'm not naming names, but this general structure is that way. It's very formulaic. We still love it, but it's contrived.

The aha moment that midge really had to help folks and by the end of the probably the first week she was actually also doing like the creative direction of and it's really the EP heavy lifting of this was that when you have professional athletes living in a house together you don't need to make up anything and because these are incredibly competitive people who are doing

I won't be careful about this. I won't say they have real jobs, but they have intensely competitive jobs. The work they do is very zero some. They're not just boardhouse wives. They are very, very intense competitors. And then the very nature of being a professional athlete brings all kinds of unexpected drama. There was a lady who got, she got traded while she was at the off-season, right? And another comrade, I don't want to get, Mitch gets mad at when I get way too much spoilers.

Basically, we didn't need to make up anything. I'm very excited for folks to see this final product because it's going to give now another perspective on this emerging league. You have opportunities with these teams that you don't have in traditional teams. I cannot stress this enough. It is not about me. It is not about the owners. It is not about the logo. It is about the players. And if you can prioritize telling the stories of your players, you're going to have a good time.

All right, let's talk a little bit about the players. You spoke with Mitch Purse. She's a forward for New York Gotham FC. She was a co-producer on this docuseries and also stars in it. Tell us a little bit about her interest in making this kind of project. It really seems like Mitch Purse had her fingers in every single part of this project, which is kind of rare for something like this. Did she come off really well in the docuseries?

I think Midge lets herself show the most vulnerability. I think she seems to portray everybody else pretty positively, and I think she takes some of the nuance and puts it on herself. But I do think part of the backstory of this is that Midge wanted, was there at the inception, wanted to be a producer, was kind of line producing, and then I think ultimately had a pretty considerable say in the final cut.

which I think is really rare for projects like this where athletes can kind of come across just like a spokesperson. And I'm sold. It seems like she really had her finger in every single part of the process.

Yeah, that's sort of like the Michael Jordan treatment of the last dance where it was everything here. I just hope midge purse says, and I took it personally several times. And I took that personally. I mean, you might know midge purse from the GIF or I think it was just a photo that when really viral purse smoking a cigar holding off her trophies iconic iconic.

But I think she shepherded it, and in part because Midge wanted the final cut and final say, they ended up on X rather than a traditional streamer, which is kind of something that hasn't been done before. It's not a business model that's been proven out. Did they shop it around? My sense is they did shop it around. Midge wanted final say, and this was the home that they found. And the end product is that they kind of created this new genre that blends sports documentary with reality TV.

You follow these NWSL soccer players during their off season, including their training, their personal lives. I would love to hear your thoughts on how you think about the distinction between sport and entertainment because I've spoken with people like Billie Jean King who would tell me that sport is entertainment. But this really seems to take things to a whole new level. What are your thoughts? Oh my gosh, you really scared me because I was like, I can't disagree with Billie Jean King.

I was like, I'm going to have to agree. But I inherently, I really do truly, I agree. I think sports is entertainment. It's the entertainment business. And I think the more that people within the industry who help create sport and produce sport, look at it as that the better sport will be. The demands of production and the demands of sport haven't really been intertwined in this way.

So it was a new genre of television for everyone. I mean, we hired Boxed Box, who is their experts in their field when it comes to producing sports-based content. And then we hired 32 flavors who are experts in producing reality and unscripted television.

And marrying the two and finding that balance was actually really, really difficult because we essentially created a new genre of television. This is a really true to form show. It's extremely authentic. It's bare to bones and I really, it was really important for it to be that way. It's the main reason or one of the essential reasons that

It's not on a network right now that it's on Twitter because I wanted final cut and I wanted to make sure that the first genre of its kind, the first type of show or content where you're really deep diving into these players' lives.

was done in an appropriate way. And I don't really trust anyone to do it besides myself. I mean, these are my friends. I care about them and they trust me as well. But essentially, you know, this is like we said, it's an entertainment business. People manufacture drama. They manufacture content to make sure that you have a really good show. And I said from the very beginning that our lives are actually wild enough. There's enough drama inherently in being a

professional athlete, a female professional athlete at that that we don't have to manufacture anything. I think as the sector has kind of matured over the past, you know, maybe 50 years since the passage of Title IX, there has been this idea that it was kind of a family friendly, cheaper alternative to men's sports, right? And as it's tried to grow up and we see kind of either more physicality or maybe more edginess from players, there's been these kind of funny growing pains is that something you've noticed.

For sure, I think something I really struggled with in my career and in the earlier days of my career is that in media, in my clubs,

and just common social rhetoric, my purpose was to inspire another little girl to do something that she wanted to. And I want to be clear that I think that is an amazing thing. I think it's an honor and I really do consider it a privilege to have that kind of influence and an impact on anyone's life. It's not why I'm playing soccer.

It's not. And it's just so crazy how much we have almost coerced this narrative into all the female athletes that this is why you're doing it. You're doing it for that little girl. And I'm like, no, I want to win. I like winning.

I'm just a very competitive. It's something I'm good at. It's something I'm passionate about. And I don't have to inspire someone else to pursue excellence for myself. And I think that is really important. So yeah, I do think we're getting away from that while still holding the prioritization of inspiring the next generation as well, without making it the sole reason you're doing it.

I've always felt that the marketing of sports has been really derivative of men, which is we take the strategy of marketing men's sports to men and we apply it and we're just like, now we're going to market women's sports to everyone, but it's made for men.

And this was kind of the real ethos of what I was trying to rub against because women drive consumption, women control a significant portion of global spending, women shape market trends. Why are we not marketing things in sport to women?

It's insane and it leaves billions of dollars on the table. So the idea, you know, the more we talked about it, it was like an unscripted series about, you know, my friends would be really amazing. They're legit stars. And they're on other national teams. I mean, we have Nigerian national team players in the house. We have Mexican national team players in the house. And Kelly Hubley has been a close friend of mine since I play at Portland, just an innate star.

Taylor Smith is just like, it's stardom oozes out of them. And the idea of just creating a platform, just storytelling in a way that women, I know that women respond to, it just came together. Talk to me how you ended up at X and how do you kind of adjust your expectations or even like your media planning and marketing efforts now that it's going to be streaming on X rather than on a traditional network?

Yeah, I mean, adjusting is such an interesting word because I've never done it before. So I'm not really adjusting to anything new. This is all I know when it comes to a production standpoint. I think the biggest thing is that I'm really excited about the opportunity to create a community around something in a way that no one has ever done with long-form content like this.

So what I mean by that is, I think about how young girls drop out of sport at a really, really young age. And we already know that that's really debilitating and hurtful to the rest of their progression in their lives. And I think about the lowest barrier to entry into a sport.

And that would be watching it or seeing the players and knowing the players. And the idea that you don't need a subscription, you don't have to go find it. You don't have to go look for it. It's completely accessible to you. You can just click it. And now you know some of the top players in the interview cell. You see what they do in their training. You see how much fun they have in their interpersonal relationships and their competitiveness in their mindset. And you can break it down and see

professional female athletes in a way that they have never been shown before in a truly intimate way that has never been done before and that might keep someone in sport that might tell them hey look how cool they are and I don't need to play at a really really high level but like this is inspiring in a different way this is aspirational in a different way and it it makes me more engaged with the sport it makes me want to stay around it so

The idea of making it accessible to everyone so that people don't have to go look and find content was really, really huge to me. And the fact that everyone could talk about it in one central place directly under the content that I'm posting so we could sincerely build a united community around something that was really exciting to me because I think that's something that the women sports world and in totality has missed.

You mentioned how you didn't want the kind of final takeaway to be friendship was bigger than sport. What then is the big bold final takeaway from the offseason? I said, at the very beginning, I had a meeting with the entire production team and I said, the first thing that needs to be established is that

these players are elite athletes in their field. That is the first thing. So I'm so happy that all the already existing women's soccer fans are going to love the show and they're going to watch it. And like this is for them, but it really is for people who have never looked at a soccer game, who have never been interested in watching women's soccer at all. And they'll turn it on and they'll say, Oh my gosh.

They're really good. This is really interesting. And then the second is I just want them to feel anything about the players. I said to them, I said, I don't care if we have a villain as long as the villain is really good at soccer. That's all I care about.

I love that. And I hope that they fall in love and they dislike and they root against or they root for any of the players because that is entertainment. That is the sports world. And what's really cool about this is the way the show is shot. You're not going to root against someone for a petty reason or like you might dislike someone, but you'll respect them.

So is this project making any money? You know, I did ask Midge about the business model behind the show, and she said she wasn't open to discussing it, but as a business journalist, I am very curious to see if and how they can make money on a platform like X, not just because I'm personally interested in the off-season, but because I think it does show this kind of new world of people trying to create long-form content for social media first, that it seems like is a direction that a lot of outlets are going in.

Well, AJ, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks, Yas.

Okay, we are back with AJ, and it's time to wrap up the show with Keeping Tabs. This is where each one of us shares a story, a trend, or a piece of pop culture we're following right now, aside from the X Docu series we just talked about. AJ, what are you keeping tabs on? My Keeping Tabs this week is a Sex and the City reference, and it's going to my girlfriend and going, move in.

Oh my god, I love this. There's a, there's a tiktokker that does that and just has like a super kind of a go. Miranda. Miranda. Miranda. Miranda. Miranda. Miranda. Miranda. Miranda. And Cynthia Nixon. So good. Did a stitch with it.

Oh, that's awesome. It's so funny. Justice for Steve, though, they fucked him over so hard. I don't know. And just like that. With Shay. I was really hoping. Shay replaced Steve. Oh, my God. Just ironic because I would say Steve is a trans legend. Yeah. Steve's a proud trans man. You can't tell me otherwise. He's a business owner. He's a baller. He seems like a pretty good guy.

Miranda? Miranda? Miranda? So funny. Josh, what are you keeping tabs on? So in honor of the premiere this week of Wicked, I went on a deep dive to learn more about the writer of the original. If anyone doesn't know, Wicked is based on a book.

An insane horny book by Gregory Maguire. We had a debate about this the other week. This is why this came up because I mistook. I thought the book writer for the musical Winnie Holzman also wrote this book. It turns out it was just some weird old man.

I was like, I can't believe that book was written by a dude and Josh was like, Winnie's a man? I was wrong. She wrote the books of the musical. Anyways, but I got on a deep dive of what else Gregory Maguire, not Jerry Maguire. Gregory Maguire has written. And I just want to read some of the names of the books that he's written. So here we go. Here's one. A Wild Winter Swan by Gregory Maguire. Okay. That's okay. Cress Watercress.

I believe Cress is a what? Josh? Cress is a rabbit. Okay. Cress is a rabbit. It's a rabbit whose father dies and him and his rabbit mother have to move into a tenement oak with a bunch of other animals. And he has the same name constructed as Jean Valjean.

Which is crazy. Which is amazing. Then there's a series of books. First one, The Witch of Morkor, Morkor. The Oracle of Morkor. The Brides of Morkor.

I think he may be good at a lot of things, but names are not one of them. Names are not one of them. There's another one called Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, which was turned into a made-for-TV Disney movie starring Stalker Channing. So weird and random. One last book title that I just love, Lucas Fishbone. That's an SNL character.

So Gregory Maguire, if you're listening, man, you made a lot of money off of Wicked. Congratulations. I really want to see the Broadway musical of Crest Watercraft. May they never adapt any of your IP again. Okay, Yas, what are you keeping tabs on? It's also Gregory Maguire. We've had a lot of Wicked this episode. We have, yeah.

I want to talk about people's sexiest man alive cover. So it's John Krasinski this year. But I think it's a solid choice. Well, here's a backstory though, potential backstory. I follow a lot of Instagram gossip accounts and people are saying that his team saw his career flagging and paid a lot of money to make him the sexiest man alive. Evil media strikes again. Let me tell you. What's his career flagging? Can you name?

He had that, like he does all those Jack Ryan things on Amazon. I don't know if he's had big movies. But it has no buzz. Yeah, that's true. I mean, he really needs to get back to that level where he was at his peak, which was being a lesser girl. When he wasn't Jacks? Complicated? Yeah.

Apparently i read like glen powell really didn't want to be on the list i don't know if he actually made it all like yeah that would be weird but like he was like the obvious choice obvious choice that's what i mean so i live this year so that's what i mean i feel like editorially they may have wanted glen powell but yeah.

You know, as we all know, it's hard to make money in a print media business. Yeah. I feel like a him, Paul Mezcal must have been on the shortlist. Yeah. Well, this is their recognition program. Yeah. I guess we can do the most innovative, hottest man alive. You can run that package. I will give you a list right now. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure you can. I'm sure you have that written down somewhere.

Yeah, my list is. You should do a bunch of beeps. Beep, beep. Like the censorship beeps. Beep, beep, beep. And that's it for most innovative companies. AJ, thank you for joining us. Thanks, Yas. So before we go, we have a special treat for you. Wicked comes out this week in case you haven't seen all of the brand collabs and ads for it. And I actually got to go to the New York City premiere with our senior tween correspondent, Eleanor Woodsworth. She's reviewing the movie for us.

So Eleanor, we went to the premiere of Wicked, the New York premiere, last week on Thursday. What did you think of the event? I like the movie or just the event? We'll talk about the event first, and we'll talk about the movie. Okay. So the event was really fun. It was very on theme, a lot of pink and green, and it was just a great event and all. What did you think of the movie? You saw the play before, right?

Yeah. How do you think the movie compared? I mean, I think they were pretty similar. I just think that acting was a little different. And I feel like in the movie, they showed more like emotions and stuff. But in the play, they were trying to, but it wasn't really as clear. What was the best thing about the movie? And what do you think was the worst thing about the movie?

The acting was really good. In some parts, you really wanted to cry. In some parts, you really wanted to smile. What made you want to cry? When did you want to cry? Well, one at the very end, when they were saying goodbye to each other, and they're like, no, don't go. That was really sad. But also, when Elphaba was by herself, and people were laughing at her, and that was right before Glinda decided to dance with her.

It was really sad. I agree with that. What do you think was the worst thing about the movie? This is kind of controversial, but I think it was defying gravity because I really liked the song. The singing was great, but it was just how it was kind of like split up. Like there would be the first eighth of the song and then like 10 minutes of action, then the second eighth, then like 10 minutes of action. So like the whole actual song was like split up into like 15 minutes. So I think it would have been just like better if it was all in one.

I actually really agree with you. I felt the same way. I was like, guys, we're building towards something. Who was your favorite character in the movie? Who was your favorite actor? I think Glinda. I think like Ariana Grande, she did a really good job on acting out Glinda. Is Glinda your favorite character too?

Yeah, I think so because there's a lot of character development of Glinda because at the start she was this very shallow person who only cared about being popular and like pink and like didn't like alpha because she was green and didn't really seem like inside like true to herself but towards the end like she opened up Glinda and she started having like more emotions

and being more empathetic and really seeing into people besides just what they look like. So there's a lot of cool character development.

Are your friends excited to see it? Is it just 30-year-olds like me and Josh, or 32-year-olds or whatever? A lot of my friends, they've seen the Broadway musical, and they thought it was really good. One of my friends, she's seen it 10 times or something, and she's called the merch. I think they're pretty excited. I don't think it's

that popular, I don't think like everybody's talking about it at school, but like, I was just talking to one of my friends and she's like, yeah, I'll go see it. It seems like a good movie. I've seen the Broadway musical. And if you had to grade it on a scale of one to 10, what grade would you give it?

I think I'd give it like a nine because it was really good acting was really good. Yeah. But I feel like the thing that really got me was just the defined gravity because that's the thing that everybody was looking for. And it kind of got.

overshadowed. Also, the whole plot was really weird because there were just thoughts going general. Yeah, in general. That wasn't specific to the movie, but... Who is your favorite person you met at the premiere?

This is really hard. I think it was probably Haley. Like, she goes as Haley Bailey. She was just so nice. Her handle is Haley Bailey, but she's an influencer named Haley Khalil, right? Yeah. And she made your day.

Yeah, I actually made my day because she was sitting behind me and we took pictures together. It's just so nice. So which do you like more? Wicked, legally blonde, mean girls, the musical, right? You like mean girls and musical? Oh, okay. So legally blonde is like my all-time favorite. So I'd have to rank that first.

and me girls i mean i like the musical but i think that original is the best so if it was just a musical that i would rank wicked ahead of it but if it was just a regular than i think i would rank me girls ahead of it because it's just like a classic. Who's your favorite blonde is it glinda regina george or elle woods. Oh that's a hard one because they're all like.

I mean, at least Elle and Glinda are vibes and stuff. They're so nice, but also just, I think I would have to say, maybe Elle was, I think. Okay, and then Glinda. Yeah, and then Glinda. I think it's because at the very end, Glinda kind of decided to choose popularity over the right thing, but I think overall, she's a good person.

That's fair. Do you like Legally Blonde the movie or did you go see it as musical? Because I know there's a musical version. I never saw it as a musical, just like the movie. Just all my friends are obsessed with that. I had a really big crush on Luke Wilson back in the day for boyfriend. Yeah. So I get it. Eleanor, thank you so much for coming on the show. This was great. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. Yeah, nice to see you again. Nice to see you too.

Our show is produced by Ava Blake and Miriam F***, editing by Matt Mixon Sound Design by Nicholas F***, an art executive producer. Remember again to subscribe, rate, and review, and we'll see you next week.