"Ted Sarandos"

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Subject to change. Hey, everybody.
We've been doing this podcast for quite a while now, and we're always kind of reminded of people who come on and kind of maybe for the first time listener don't quite understand the format that we've created, and I just kind of like to take this time and explain it to you. You sound like a pilot on an airplane.

Like, hey, everybody, I just want to let you know we're approaching Chicago O'Hare.

I just thought I'd take it down because of the energy

that they're about to be smacked in the face with by you.

Your energy couldn't be lower.

You're so low, you'd have to rally to die at this point.

That's how low you are.

I'm trying to balance this out, Will.

I'm trying to balance this out because you are high on energy 24-7. So I'm just going to keep it like here because these people don't know what they're in for.
Welcome to SmartLess. Welcome to SmartLess.
SmartLess. SmartLess.
SmartLess. Jason and I are in a fight apparently.
So Will is doing a project. He's in Atlanta.
What's your problem? So he's in Atlanta because I'm also in Atlanta working when I'm there, when I'm working. Right now I'm not.
I'm in Los Angeles. So Will said, so I'm going to be be doing a project in Atlanta.
Jason, where are you living? And is it a good spot? I'm like, yeah, yeah. It's a great apartment building.
So you should get a place there. So he gets a place there.
In the same building. In the same building.
Now, Will is an attractive man and needs no help from anyone. Yet he is super passionate about keeping a fellow near him that is an artist with a comb i guess and you feel that you need some sort of hair help so he's got a guy with him yeah listen listener that's not that travels with a groomer and an assistant no i'm talking so he's got three people with them living in Atlanta.
And guess what? It's too crowded to live in the apartment with these three guys. So while I'm out of town, he asked me if he can use my apartment.
Yeah, and you know who gave me the keys? You know who gave me the keys? Yeah. Jason's Atlanta assistant.
Because he's got a few in every city. Every port he lands, he's got one here and one there.
Let's not get into the fucking assistant shit because your assistant, do you want to tell me, do you want to tell a listener? This is a work program. Do you want to tell? I am trying to help out.
Doing your laundry is work. No.
Guys, guys, can I just say anything? You opened up a fucking Pandora's box, Bateman, and you'll never close it. In the gay world, they're called travel companions.
Thank you. I know that.
So Will's a little top-heavy on the travel companions, so he needs to get away and stay in my place while I'm out of town. And guess what this guy does? He starts taking snappies of little areas around my apartment and throwing them up on a group chat.
Snappies. Yeah.
So I go into Bateman's fridge. it looks like it honestly, it was just different colors of like different flavored waters that have no sugar, obvi.
Yeah. And a couple other waters and then like half a yogurt.
Sugar makes me puffy, Will. And I sent a picture to Jason and to Jimmy, to Kimmel and Molly and to Thoreau saying, just in case you guys are worried that Jason doesn't live like a total psycho in Atlanta, I sent him the picture.
And then I took a picture this morning because I was up there this morning. What were you doing up there this morning? Because you don't like to crap next to your travel buddy? I was using your treadmill.
Have you noticed that the monitor on your treadmill is a little like shaky when you run? Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's noisy.
Can you fix that? Especially when you're heavy. So I go up there.
It doesn't shake that much when I'm on it.

I look in the cupboard, and it looks like a hospice.

Like somebody's dying.

They're in their final days.

And it's just, it's like seeded crackers.

Did you put that picture up on the chat too?

I'm saving that one, motherfucker.

Oh, God.

I'm saving it.

And you know what I thought?

I thought, maybe I won't do it.

But after this on-air barrage, believe me.

Have you stayed off my toilet?

Have you stayed off my toilet?

Yeah, I haven't taken a dump in your apartment. By the way, if you have your own apartment, what are you doing in Jason's apartment? I told you.
He's got travel companions. So they stay there with you? Yeah, exactly.
I've got my buddy Eli, whom you know. Yes, I know you know.
So I've got Eli with me, who's my pal and also works with me. Some of us know how to travel alone.
I've been there for 10 years alone, okay? Sometimes I like quiet time. You'd like to be alone without people, and I include your family in that.
You want to be alone. Yeah, and your hair's not that complicated.
Send Eli home. Looks good, though, doesn't it? Yeah, it looks great right now.
He's nowhere near you, right? He's right outside. Are you kidding? Did you do last looks for this little? No.
You know what I did? I did. I went.
I was working this morning doing some voiceover, and then I went up to your apartment, and I worked out, and then I took a shower, and I came back here. And I'm going to, right after this, I'm taking a snooze.
Uh-huh.

Another one.

In my bed?

How many channels do you get on that cable?

Because I haven't cranked that up yet.

More than you've got at yours.

You got the full package?

Yeah, you betcha. I bet you got a pretty full package.

That's my handle in high school.

Sean.

Yeah.

We have a guest here, and it's Jason's guest, and let's get to him.

So stop interrupting, please.

Stop interrupting.

Sorry.

Sorry.

All right, listener.

God, I'm being such a baby about his apartment.

Shut your mouth, or I'm going to take my key back. Listener, we're going to have a conversation.
Yes, I've written this. Listener, today, comma, listener, comma.
We're going to have a conversation. Shut up.
We're going to have a conversation with somebody who you've never met, but you live with. A person you count on for your routines, your moods, your link to some of your closest and most intimate relationships.
Someone who, if he drastically changed the way in which he did his job, it would unsettle your emotional well-being and also the health of the financial markets. He loves sandcastles, ham radio, taxidermy, and hand gliding.
He's got a very recognizable laugh, so shut up. He's recently converted from Virgo to Capricorn, and this is his very first interview here in the United States.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our friend in your housemate, co-chief executive officer and chief content officer for Netflix, Theodore Anthony Sarandos Jr. Come on, Teddy.
Hey, Ted. Oh, God, I couldn't believe you started laughing.
I saw Will stop there for a second like, why is that so familiar? What does that sound? Ted, it's so nice to see you. Hey, Sean, how are you? I'm good.
You know, we had a dinner a long time ago uh ted long many many years ago at our mutual friend john davis's house which he's the best and uh he i said to you i go gosh it must be so annoying you must get so many people that come up to you on a daily basis saying hey what about this first show what about this constantly pitching you anything and everything for netflix and you said yeah well you know part of the job but you know it's what it's what it is and i go wow that must be something and then literally maybe two minutes later i go hey ted what about this i got a thing no i was gonna ask you about that ted because you're so you're so, I mean, you listener can just hear his laugh. You're such a personable, warm person doesn't throw up any sort of like barrier, like, please don't come talk to me.
You're always very sort of inviting. I can't imagine that it was bigger and better than that as far as your warmth before you became the man running the world.
Like, has that has that lessened? It has to, hasn't it? To keep people away? Someone asked me before, you know, what I get to do is big and there's a ton of things to do all over the world. And someone asked me what I like the most about it.
And weirdly, the thing I like the most is sometimes the thing I like the least, which is being pitched. I mean, I actually, the best part of the day sometimes is hearing an incredible pitch.
It's almost like decadent almost that this is my job is to be told a story to. Uh, no, it's not great if I'm in the middle of dinner with my wife at a restaurant and people do it.
And that happens a lot. Uh, and I, I kind of feel for people that think that someone gives them the really bad advice, which is, hey, if you ever see a person who buys TV shows, you may never see them again.
So do it now. Just pitch them.
Just get in there. Get it out.
Get the idea out there. So to that, so you started – we can kind of get into the history of Netflix a little bit and your history with them.
And I know that you've grown with the company. And what was the first year, do you think, that you started hearing pitches on a regular basis? And how did it increase in volume? Like, did it pick up steam really quickly? Well, the very first pitch was literally someone walking out of the door at the end of a meeting.
And it was the guys from MRC who we were meeting with. MRC also produces Ozark, Jason Bateman.
What a show. Yes.
What a show. Oh, you like it? Yeah.
Have you seen it? Oh, God, you got to catch it. No comment from you, Sean.
I have got to catch up. Well, we were meeting with them about buying the rights to a movie.
And literally while they're walking out of the door, they said, hey, by the way, we're going to make a new TV show, take it out to the market called house of cards. And it's got Robin Wright and Kevin Spacey and Bo Willamont, this Oscar nominated guy wrote these three amazing scripts.
And David Fincher is going to direct the show. Are you interested? And yeah.
So, and I just, you know, it was funny. I had known the original house of Cards from seeing it on DVD, actually, from the BBC.
And we had been talking about someday getting into original content and making original shows for Netflix. So I said, wow, if there's ever a moment to step in, if there was ever a unbelievably perfect packaged show, it'd be this one.
It's a great concept. It's really great scripts.
And then basically, asked us about hearing the pitch and we pitched them. Wow.
So you, that was something that you and Rita talked about doing down the road and then they kind of dropped it on you and it sped up your process a little bit. Yeah.
I mean, we knew we'd do it at some point. I was always a little nervous that we'd wind up doing it small.
You know what I mean? Like people want to get their, you know, dip their toe in and then there's all original programming doesn't work because this show didn't work and you went the other way i went the other way which i said if it doesn't work it's got to i mean let's eliminate that we made the wrong choices because this show was great and in order to compete with the other potential buyers you guys had to really come over the top because as i think you've said before like there were a thousand reasons for for david and mrc to not it with you guys. So you had to come in with two seasons, $100 million, and kind of make it undeniable.
All the creative freedoms and autonomy that you guys have justifiably become famous for. Was that the moment when Netflix was most exposed as far as like we're going to do it, let's do it now, a big outlay of cash.
And if we make it through this transition, the wind's at our backs. The main one, Jason, is that we thought about there's going to be a couple of things that we thought about when we thought about should we make original programming for Netflix.
A big one was if everybody has all the same stuff, then there's going to be just a big race to the bottom.

And it's not a very interesting business.

And how do you distinguish? How does any network distinguish themselves from the others is by their programming. And at the time, we were just by kind of buying everyone else's reruns and putting them on Netflix.
So this was like at some point we're going to have to do this. And the other one was if we believe that the world we live in today, where there's an HBO Max and a Disney Plus and a Paramount Plus, all those people are not going to want to sell us their programming anyway.
So we better start getting good at it now. You knew that was coming, even though you were in business with those people.
You knew that there was going to be that tipping point where it was going to go the other way and that they were no longer and you were going to be their competitor the foresight is amazing and you're so you guys of course have have always been a subs business you know subscribers what was your subscriber sort of approximately like when you first started making house of cards to today for instance whatever's public you know what i mean yeah yeah no what's interesting about it is we started in the world some people don't know this, but mailing DVDs around. Right.
So we were a DVD by mail service before we were streaming content. Sean, you're still doing that, aren't you? I still have a couple that haven't returned.
You still got a couple? Yeah. They're coming.
They're coming. I'll send you a courier over to pick them up.
Thanks. So then we started offering the streaming content to our DVD subscribers for free.
And then later on, we separated the two businesses.

But it was before we started doing any original programming, we had about 25 million subscribers who were taking DVDs and streaming.

And then, you know, today we're at 204 million.

Wow.

204 million worldwide.

Yeah, that's incredible.

So, I mean, but is the math – I mean, I'm not a smart guy and i don't need the boys chiming in on it there it is um uh the if there's seven billion people on the planet and you guys are effectively as a result of your success effectively a utility now if there's seven billion people on the planet even half of those people you would think would need the utility of basically television. If you guys are only at 200 million now and it is such an incredible success story, the growth potential for your company is – you can't even quantify it, right? And, Ted, before you answer that, just how does that feel? You guys are making credible content and Jason has now dubbed you a utility.
Go ahead. You're like the fucking water and sewer.
Well, would you, well, could you have them? You'd be more successful than being something that people rely on like electricity or water. I mean, or like your TV.
I mean, like TV is today. And I think there's about a little more than a billion pay TV households in the world.
The people who pay in some form for subscription television. And there's about more than 3 billion people with a mobile phone who watch content on their mobile phone around the world, you know, and they're paying for a subscription and they're watching content on a screen.
So when you think about addressable world, you know, we're only about 10% there. And then the other pieces of it will, you know, will keep growing in terms of the way you use Netflix today.
A lot of people share their accounts with other people and all those kind of things. So at about 200 million people, we might have about 400 million watchers today.
Wow. Now, in the 70s, especially on CBS, they had Saturday night.
They had the foresight to – everybody used to watch TV on Saturday night like it was like you know the new heart show or something like that or carol burnett it was like this massive crazy lineup and the whole nation was watching on saturday nights then the the networks had the foresight to go oh wait everybody's now slowly going out on the weekends they're not spending as much time at home at night on the weekend so they had the foresight to change programming in that way to the week, right? To the middle, to the regular. And then what I think I keep coming back to is like Jason said, the foresight to know, to actually shift the human behavior, the watching behavior of the audience to now consume the way we consume entertainment.
Like how, describe that like for House of Cards, was it originally just originally just like well we have to get into original programming so let's just do one a week like whose idea was it like wait a minute let's shoot the whole thing this is great i love i love this answer i i dealt this answer tell him this is the happy accidents of happy accidents uh because i never even thought about it sean i when we when we finished this season we were getting ready to launch. Somebody said, how are we going to put it out? They're already done shooting both seasons of House of Cards.
Not both, but they shot out the entire first season. And we had a meeting saying, okay, well, how are we going to release them? And I go, how do you mean? And they're, well, you know, one a week, four a month.
And they said, well, I don't, everything on Netflix, we got it a season after it was on TV before, and we put up the whole season. So I said, well, we can't have one show, one episode a week and everything else all at once.
Let's just put it up all at once and see how people watch it. And you were seeing the data on your service that people are watching multiple episodes of those full seasons that they were pulling down.
And some people watch two, some people watch three, but nobody watched one. Yeah.
Like nobody watched one a week. And you had to have a conversation with Stevie Van Zandt at Lilyhammer before this, correct? Or was it afterwards? And tell them how that went.
Yeah. So Lilyhammer was actually our first original show that launched on Netflix.
Our first deal was House of Cards, but talk about getting a great pitch. I get a phone call from an agent who said, would you take a phone call with Stevie Van Zandt? Yes.
Out of the blue. Yes, exactly.
Yes. And so Steve, I get on the phone with Stevie.
He's in Norway and he went to Norway to produce this garage band album. And somebody approached him with a script for a show about a guy who's just like his character from the Sopranos, who goes to Lilyhammer Norway to be in the Witness Relocation Program.
And he goes, yeah, I'm on board. And he does it.
He plays this character. He produces the show.
And they didn't give him very much money. It's Norway.
And he was trying to get a soundtrack money together to put music on the show. You got all the fish he could handle, though, right? Got a great fish deal.
Complimentary. And three bandanas yeah yeah but no but by the way no trailers in the middle of winter for talent they had to like knock on doors and ask neighbors if they could use their houses oh my god but anyways so he tells me about the show and i go great can you send me a script or some he goes where are you finished i'll send you the whole show so he set the show we loved it and we did this deal um to put on.
And then when we told him how we were going to put it up all at once, he goes, wait a minute, wait a minute. We just spent nine months of our lives making this show.
You're just going to dump it out all at once? And I go, yeah, just like an album. Just like an album.
Yeah. But it changed the world.
It changed everybody's. Now you don't even think about it.
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Our show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Hey guys, everybody should have a support system, right? Who's your support system? My support system, as you well know, talk about all the time, is Scotty.
And of course, my two besties, Will and Jason. Whenever I have a problem, an issue, I talk to them about it.
And if they're not available, I will talk to a therapist. And I've been going to therapy for a long time.
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That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash SmartList. So, Ted, kind of getting back to, I don't know, do you guys still have, is there still the DVD business at all or is that? There's a few million people who still take DVDs.
I'm guessing it's, you know, parts of the country that don't have fast broadband or people of a certain age that are unlikely to adapt to new things. And then maybe even for hardcore, like if you're a real crazy, deep movie lover, they still have everything ever published on DVD on that service.
So, right. Oh, wow.
Okay. So that's, so that's where you start.
So you started and you had started before Netflix, you were in the video business as well right home video yeah back at the old video store and home video distribution all right you and quentin tarantino worked out well out of that uh video story video store nerds so you started that and then you then you come on to netflix and you continue in distribution and it becomes distribution of dvds and then quite sort of organically kind of by miss, I know that you guys had this plan, but that just kind of happened. You start getting into content and you start being sort of the gatekeeper of all this content for Netflix and making all these decisions.
And your guy who has a really strong, strong sort of encyclopedic knowledge of film and television, you know, I don't think there's ever been a time where I've referenced something where you haven't gone, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, and you'll list like everybody who's in it. And so you went from that and then you became the guy who started to greenlight and all these like really great shows, these really top, like, you know, quality programs and movies.
Now, of course, Netflix makes original movies. What was that shift like kind of going from distributor to sort of content provider and really overseeing all this great, you kind of backed your way into becoming a creative in a way.
And that's usually the length of abatement question. Yeah, boy.
I know, it's true. That's from using my apartment, I guess, is catching.
So you became the maker and not the seller. Yeah, it was, you know, in all fairness, we failed miserably at it first.
Because we did a thing back when we were just doing DVDs where I took a bunch of money that we could barely afford and started a label for Netflix called Red Envelope Entertainment. That that was the porn.
Was that the porn? No, no, no. That is a good porn name too, though.
But this was basically foreign language films and documentaries, indie film, and some live standup stuff that we recorded only for DVD to put it on Netflix as exclusive content. Was that live at the Purple Onion? purple onion was that part of that yeah that was zach galifianakis yeah so we did it one of the first things we did was a documentary with patten oswald called the comedians of comedy yeah and it was a documentary about their comedy tour of patten brian possein ria bamford and zach galifianakis who i was a huge galifianakis fan i didn't know anyone else who him at the time.
I remember you were, and you're not now. I remember that.
I said that in the past tense. Zach, if you're listening, Ted hates your shit.
But in the middle of the production of the doc, Zach came in with this idea of a comedy special, which was basically going to be like a fake documentary about him traveling to do his show. And it was so, the pitch was so crazy.
And I said, look, we don't really do all this yet. I'll tell you what I'll do.
I'm going to give you a hundred thousand dollars and a camera and whatever you bring back, I'll put on Netflix, I promise. And it was Zach Galvin, I guess live with the purple onion.
Wow. Now, now, you know, you, you, you are nowhere near a doormat nor the people that, uh, that are on your team, but that sense of, um, of, of creative, uh, latitude and, um, and freedom is something that you have, uh, been really consistent with and your place is known for giving that kind of, uh, autonomy to the creatives.
And it's a great recruiting element. It's a sincere position that you take.
Like if we're going to hire creatives, let's let them do the creative work. It seems like such a common sense policy and position.
Why is it that you think it is so rare in the industry? I think, you know, it's an offshoot of the executive philosophy of Netflix too. You know, hire the best people and give them the tools they need to do the best work of their life and then get out of their way.
It's just something about human nature that people feel like they need to add value to everything, no matter if they do or not. And I think the idea, and I would always, I have a lot of friends like you guys who tell these horrific stories about network notes for television shows.
And I always think, man, if I was ever in that role, I'd hate for people to be talking about me like that or my company like that. And I was thinking about this idea, like who has a better idea of what's funny than the funny person you hired to make this show? Right.
It's such a common sense concept. And by the way, do you ever have this fear that you're going to become, that Netflix, once you guys become, you're very very successful now but you become so successful that you end up becoming like the status quo that that starts happening always the culture at netflix is that something you have to kind of stay on top of always i don't i don't imagine any of the folks we're talking about wanted to end up doing this right i think there's something they made a left somewhere where they should have made a right right i'm constantly thinking about how do you make sure we keep that spirit alive how do we make sure one i had somebody who made a documentary film for us recently who made one back in those early red envelope days and when they came in they said i have to tell you ted it felt about the same which was a huge compliment i just i'd love to hear it i don't know if you remember you and i had a conversation we use this or not, but about somebody that we both know who was working for you.
And I said that this person comes from that world. They had come from a more standard studio world and network world.
And you had said, I said, is it tough? Do you have to kind of break them of those old habits? And you said, yes, I do. Absolutely.
Yeah, you do. Absolutely.
And I do think it's one of those things where it's like I've had someone on our team basically say something along to the effect of they couldn't get into the writer's room to meet with the writers. And I said, well, this showrunner must not think you add much value.
So that's really on you. You really have got to.
Wow. Because I've never met a creator yet that didn't want to have a great collaborative conversation.
Right. That really didn't want to figure out, is this working? But there is that dynamic where a creative person will quickly sense whether the note is coming from a place where they're sort of assessing a false negative on what you're doing because they're giving you a note to try to get you to do it the way that they had always imagined it would go as opposed to the note coming from a place of trying to help you do what they think you're trying to do.
Right. So it comes from a place of helpfulness is the good note as opposed to conformity, which is the bad note.
Right. And and it really is consistent over there with you guys.
It's great.

We'll go super meta, talk about one of your other episodes, but the interview with Ron Howard,

I love that. And I thought his, what his comment was is that I'm not looking for a different idea.

I'm looking for a better idea. Yeah.
Right. That's great.
I love that. Yeah.
I think I got

that for you because different is disruptive. Better is additive.
Yeah. It was great.
Because

there was a million difference. You know, they're all good.
What is your opinion about, I would love

the I think I got that. Yeah, because different is disruptive.
Better is additive. Yeah, it was great.
Because there's a million difference.

You know, they're all good.

What is your opinion about,

I would love to hear your opinion about the network system because it seems like the pilot system is kind of broken and like.

So listener pilot is sort of like the audition episode

and if everybody likes it, then they order more episodes.

Yeah, Sean, how could you leave that out?

Sorry, Tracy.

Sorry, Tracy.

That's usually your, I can't believe you'd be so irresponsible so sorry that's where my sister in wisconsin um so so because the business model i don't understand explain it to me and and where you think it's going and is it just like a a cycle that can't be broken at the networks where they shoot all of these they spend all this money shooting all of these pilots are buying these scripts and then they make 10 pilots and then they pick one and and then that one doesn't work and then and and now the audience is now on to them now the audience i feel for and it seems like for sitcoms especially they'll put like two or three on if they don't get a number they pull it off so the the audience goes, I'm onto you. If you're not invested, how do you expect me to be invested? That's why I'm going to Netflix because Netflix is invested.
Yeah. A lot of these tools that were built, I think we're all like figuring out safe ways to say no.
You know what I mean? And I feel like I'm always trying to figure out how can we possibly say yes to that? How can we figure out how to make this work? And I think the pilot, you know, again, for the audience, they shoot one episode. They test it with sometimes like 15 or 16 people.
And if they didn't think it was funny, they don't do it. And I felt like, well, that seems crazy.
Who are these 16 people? And that's just a weird offshoot of the way they test screen movies. And they'll just go to a shopping mall and find 100 people who have nothing to do but go sit inside of a movie theater.
And then those 100 people decide the fate of this sometimes $100 million investment. That seems insane.
So I feel like what we can do is say, let's bet on the creatives. Let's bet on ourselves.
When we say yes, we may say yes to a full season or we may say yes to a little bit more development. But I never want to do like a pilot and then see how that thing works.
Because I just see how our own shows evolve from the first episode to the last. If you watch, you know, famously the Seinfeld didn't do it.
It took four years. Cheers.
Mary Tyler Moore. James Brooks said that Mary Tyler Moore was not Mary Tyler Moore for four years.
Yeah. Right.
And there's that kind of, and I think that Jason and Sean will agree with me. They've probably been part of shows before that are, you just preemptively disagree.
Wow. Both of you.
Sean and I both passed. That there's this kind of, there is this sort of adversarial relationship between creatives and the networks often until you kind of prove it

and you become a big success.

And then even then,

then they're playing catch up

and it's like,

now we're going to fuck the studio

and we're going to try to get more money.

There's never a great dynamic there.

It's always adversarial.

And of all the shows,

every time I've worked with you guys,

whether it was on Arrested or BoJack

or Flake or whatever,

there's never that relationship.

That relationship is always really solid. You're regarded as a partner, truly.
And I don't even mean that in some sort of BS fucking way. I mean that for real, like, hey, let's check with Netflix.
And the notes that come from you guys never come like, hey, man, you guys have – it's always like, hey, did you guys think that maybe blah, blah? And you go, oh, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, No, I think it's – I just feel like it scales better. It lasts longer.
Because remember, I came into this business as a fan. Yeah.
I didn't grow up in the business. My dad didn't do this.
So did Sean. Yeah.
I'm still a fan. I also think the audience might get a sense that there is – you know, the fact that there's no ratings and that you guys, for many probably great reasons, keep all of that information in house.
You don't share it with any of us that make stuff for you guys. You'll imply, you know, it's kind of doing well or not doing well, perhaps.
But it's really sort of like if it's not doing well, it's gone. But if it's doing well enough to stay on, it stays on.
There's no sort of teeth gnashing about, oh, the ratings were up or down today or tomorrow. There's sort of a, all of that kind of nonsense is taken out of it.
And things just really exist on the merits, which I think the audience picks up on as well. And sometimes, you know, relative to what it costs to make a TV show or a movie, sometimes you don't get enough people to watch it.
And eventually, if you do that too often, you don't have enough money to make new shows. So the balance of this is just relative to what it costs.
Can we get people to show up? Maybe what's unique about this relative to TV is, you know, it costs X amount of money to make a half hour of network television. And everyone has to like it.
And this has got to be like, you know, we can make a show for a couple hundred thousand people if it's economically sensible. We can make a show for a hundred million people if it's economically sensible.
One thing that we get to look at, sometimes it's super helpful, is among the people who push play. So there's a million reasons that sometimes the show just doesn't connect with the public and nobody, everyone missed a great show.
but among the people who pushed play, did they like it? And did they like it enough to watch the whole thing? Did they watch four episodes in one night because they couldn't go to sleep because they loved it so much? Those are really positive signals, even if the big audience didn't show up in the first season that we used to make that second season decision. So, Ted, so like a lot of your competitors, I remember a few years ago when they first started making noise about, to Jason's point about not releasing your numbers.
And there were a few people who ran other networks who were almost beside themselves about the fact that you wouldn't release it. And we know that because what they actually said publicly, they were almost beside themselves.
Can you imagine how they were privately and they were so pissed and your language in dealing with it was so great because you were just like, yeah, I know people are mad, but we're just not going to do it. And how did that feel to you? Well, the funny thing was, I wasn't, we were not trying to be secretive in that.
I just don't think it's an apples to apples thing. When we say how many people watch a show on Netflix versus how many people watch it on the network and on day one.
So if you're selling advertising for a movie that's going to open this weekend, how many people saw your ad on Thursday night is hugely valuable information. And it correlates to the fee you're going to charge.
Yeah. Crest toothpaste to run your 30 second ad.
If it's on a show that's watched by 30 million people, you're going to have to pay X for that 30-second ad. 10 million people, it's Y, yeah.
And because our business doesn't, we're not selling toothpaste for Crest, it's irrelevant in the same way. So over time, I think there is a measurement of, is this show relevant to the culture? Are enough people watching it for me to think about it? And that's why you see us being much more open about you know in the first 28 days x millions of people watch this show and that show because i do think it's a bit of a cultural measure not a business measure but also even practically speaking for you guys when you're hearing that pitch you can go back to your office you can say okay so this is a show about auto racing in you know iowa.
And you can look on your, right? I mean, it's a great show already. And you can look at your internal metrics and you can say, how many of our subscribers love stuff about Iowa and cars? And you go, well, that's a million people.
And so a million people paying 17 bucks a month for the subscription, would that justify the presumed budget of this show? I mean, I know it's not as simplistic as that, but that's kind of at the core of what you're trying to manage in your mind about whether to make the investment of the show or not, whether it's right for your subscribers or not. Correct.
All those indicators. Yeah.
And then every once in a while, something just comes out of the blue, like a Queen's Gambit. Nope, there was no data that says that this period chess piece is going to be the most watched show on television.
By the way, Ted, Queen's Gambit was great. I could have used less chess.
You know what I mean? That's your note? It was a little heavy on chess. It was a little, honestly, and I took it out.
I didn't know until the last episode it was about chess. You didn't even realize.
I was like, what is this game? And then I bought a board and I'm in. Now I'm in.
I play every Sunday. Now you're all in? Yeah, I play every Sunday.
It's kind of like checkers, right, Sean? Yeah, it's just a little bit of checkers. It's on the other side of the checkerboard.
Yeah, just flip it over. It's like the underworld and stranger things, whatever it is.
Okay, so my question is back to my kind of original thing. So in your opinion, how long do you think the network system can sustain itself before what happens? Before, I don't know, like what do you think about that? I think the inevitable thing that happens is everyone starts bringing their original stuff to their streaming services.
That means they're not going to put it on the network and it's just going to be a race to the bottom. It's going to be sports and news.
Yeah. And, you know, and you saw Amazon, but Thursday Night Footballers buying Thursday Night Football.
So what does that mean? Like, so when I, so NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, what's going to happen to those channels and those networks? I don't know. I mean, what we have to go.
Okay. Good night, everybody.
One way to think about it is if you watch, I'm a big fan of, we watch a lot of home and garden TV in our house. I'm very embarrassed by the number of hours we spend doing this.
But if you watch it right now, you see they just launched their own service called Discovery Plus. That's a little pitch for them.
And they have turned their network into a Barker channel for that service. They're basically every minute you watch a Discovery Network on TV, they're saying, don't watch it here, watch it there.
The one blessing that we've had in our business and our professional existence is we've never had to manage ourselves out of anything. You know what I mean? Like we didn't have to like, how are we going to replace our movie theater business? We didn't really have a business of people in the theater.
So for us, we've been saying, just go where the audience is. And we were able to do it pretty nimbly.
All these companies make all of their money on advertising and cable television fees are going to have to replace that with the revenue on their services. And in kind of some balanced way, or they're going to end up in these weird places.
And anyway, I think they'll navigate it fine. But just these changes don't come around very often.
I mean, this is the first big change since cable TV 40 years ago. How have you noticed personally, to the extent you're comfortable revealing, in and around the community, how has it evolved socially when you are at a function or a dinner with one of your colleagues that happens to be heading up, let's say, one of these broadcast networks, some of the places where you represent a threat to their existence early on.
Now, actually, you guys have become such leaders that it's actually buoying the whole industry and changing the model. And people are having these pluses, right, these streaming services as offshoots.
And it's really elevating some of their business models. Are they now less sort of confrontational for lack of a better word? And are they more sort of deferential? He wants to know if people are hissing at you at parties in town.
Are they friendlier now? How do you feel about all that stuff? What's it feel like out there? You guys know this town, not to my face. But you can sense it.
You're really in touch and a sensitive guy. I'm sure you can see how it's kind of ebbed and flowed.
Yeah, this person X, it was particularly annoyed by the existence of Netflix and all the changes. And basically that we didn't have to put out ratings and why would they put someone from a Netflix show on the cover of a magazine? No one knows who's why.
I mean, you say these things very publicly. He was very upset about it, which the irony is this person now runs a network doing exactly that.
But the comments didn't age well. Yes.
But it was really the funniest story for me in my time in the business is we there was a party, one of these night before the Emmy Awards parties. and there was two parties going on next door to each other.
And one of them was the big industry party. And the other one was just for this person's network and their, and their talent.
And when I walked, of all people, me, I was, I'm walking in the party. I went left instead of right and walked into their party and they're all, you know, the biggest town so i thought this is the big party and and it was their private party and as i'm walking around i come to the realization oh this is his party uh his party so i like it was almost like an episode of i love lucy i'm trying to sneak out the side door so no one sees me in there and then i walk around behind the outside I'm going to walk out, but I walk out across this big glass wall where he is making a speech.
And I'm literally walking behind him. I know.
His nightmare came true. Yeah, yeah.
And Person X, by the way, is so talented. I mean, there's been such incredible decisions.
But that brings me to like the fact that you again talking about like the foresight into into this this new world of programming with netflix and then you see things like quibi or other people trying to push those boundaries further by thinking about what's next and i know you probably hate this question but to the you, that thought of this whole thing that changed the world,

do you have any kind of what's in your crystal ball next?

Like what in the world is next?

You know, it's funny.

Every couple of years, we're doing that thing that we didn't do before.

So we started off making our first year out, right?

We had House of Cards, Lily Hammer, Arrested Development.

Yeah.

What a show. I say both words, by the way.
Oh oh you do that no because you know ricky you know ricky ted knows it makes ricky jervis so crazy when i say arrested makes him fucking nuts uh and hemlock growth right so that was all right that was our big lineup uh and then after that we started you know we didn't do any unscript didn't do any animation. We didn't do any feature film.
And we didn't do anything outside of the United States or not in English. So every two years or so since that launch in 2013, we've expanded to do all those things.
And now we are producing a $200 million feature film. We're doing local language shows and we have about 200 local language original shows premiering this year.
What I wanted to get to, that's been a big part of your expansion. Well, two things.
One was when we started making Arrested Development, and Jason, you remember, we all went out to Las Vegas to make this announcement. It was very weird.
We didn't really know each other a tad at all. I mean, we'd sort of met.
Yeah. And then we ended up, you and I stayed with David Cross, and we played, and we stayed and played craps one night.
We almost cleaned the place out. And we broke the bank.
And we go, come on, shooter. Where was I? Was I already passed out? You were in bed, yeah, with a mouthful of walnuts.
You were just already asleep. and so we go to and and so at that time i will admit that when we first started having we started hanging out and you announced the show i had no idea of course i i had very little idea of what it was going to you had didn't know what you guys were going to become yet i had even less of an idea right and then it became we arrested development kind of happened at a time when you guys were rocketing.
Your business was really expanding quickly. But I was going to say- Why didn't we ask for stock instead of cash? I know, because we're so stupid.
God, we're dumb. Because you got in there is why.
Bullshit, wasn't my fault? You got in the deal. Could you imagine how rich we would be today? Imagine if we just listened to our lawyers and not Bateman.
So anyway, we go to, but I was going to say, so Ted, it cuts to a couple years later we do we do bojack and i want you to quickly tell the story about how bojack came to be in a minute yeah but we go to you do you remember that time we went to europe i just done the first season of flaked and we went to europe to promote netflix you were opening in france so we went to madrid and we went to italy we went to paris and you and uh reed gave all these great speeches in front of people but i remember distinctly so we're in like i guess we're in milan and all these reporters going oh why should we care about uh netflix what's it gonna do and i said to them clearly i want you to remember saying this to me now a year from now and of course it becomes true and Netflix goes and and it explodes in all these countries and it becomes the thing and part of that this is a huge question so long i'm bored myself yeah it is it's tuesday you made all these local productions in every country that you went to yeah that became a big part of your success it's very big and what's cool about it is they get watched get watched everywhere, including in the U S so our watching of non-English television has grown 50% year in year and things like, you know, Korean drama has grown a hundred percent in the U S huge, huge. And, and you know how much I love those European shows.
I told you years ago, and then you'll text me. You'll say, we've got a new show coming out.
You got to check it out. Now, you know.
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So far, we've been chatting with Ted Sarandos, CEO. I would like to chat with Theodore.
Oh, my gosh. Here we go.
This is where he makes you cry. Here we go.
Favorite color. Get ready.
That was a very smooth transition. Take us back to Arizona.
What were you driving to the video store? Let me make a guess here. Was it a 320i? Was it a Jetta? Or was it a Datsun B210? And was there a mullet? There was not a mullet.
But there may have been a Ford F-150 pickup. There we go.
Oh, there you go. This was Phoenix, Arizona, Jason.
Is this, are you doing the thing you've dreamed of doing? If not, what is that dream? How much longer can you do this? Do you get burnt out? What else do you want to do? I am doing way beyond what I could have dreamed of doing in my life. I really hold the art of making film and television in very high regard.
I think it plays a critical role in people's emotional and mental health. I agree.
I think it is so important what happens every day there. And I feel like being involved in it at any scale is insane.
As a kid, for some weird reason, I needed like five hours of sleep. So I would be up late and I'd watched tv and and my life I've talked about this kind of publicly before my home life was pretty chaotic when I was young I have five brothers and sisters very young parents and it was kind of like there was no bedtime there was no curfew it was pretty crazy same television brought me a sense of order I knew what was on at 11 o'clock on five.
And it was really important for me to have that order. I really did.
It had a huge influence on me. And then what it came through is I had a deep reverence for old things.
I mean, I've seen every episode of Dick Van Dyke and Eddie Griffith and the shows a hundred times. I could quote them.
And so growing up in that thinking about how important that was to me, I just wanted to be around it, let alone, you know, which was fine for me. You know, when I was young, the, the gauntlet, a movie from Clint Eastwood, they came to Phoenix to shoot.
And my parents drove me downtown and dropped me off for the day to watch them shoot the movie. And it was, anybody want a kid? Oh, completely.
And it was the hottest day in Arizona history.

I don't think they gave me any money for a drink even.

But, but they sat out there all day and watched them shoot.

And my, my tennis shoes were like, were literally melted on the street.

It was so hot that day.

Wow.

And, and it was just, and to get a glimpse of this magic that was happening.

And I, and I don't know, I probably still have them somewhere, but I collected some

of the old shells where they were shooting at the bus and all that.

Wow.

And it's just to me, it's like I got close to the gods that day. And then so to me, Sean, when you say, are you doing what you want to do? Beyond.
Oh, that's right. But also changing it to a way that you kind of saw maybe even at a young age where it was kind of missing and where it could become better.
I love what you said.

I read somewhere where you got tired of sleeping too late on Saturday

and missing your cartoons. Yeah.
So the sense that you could have that on demand at some point maybe was lodging your mind. And then also watching all the Mary Hartman's back to back to back to back on a Sunday night after they aggregated on that day.
That was my first binge. Right, exactly.
So that that wouldn't be a negative when that became a possibility for you guys. It's funny, my kids are 26 and 24.
And I try to get them to understand that there was a time that, like you said, if you slept in on Saturday, you missed cartoons that week. The whole week.
The whole week. And if you didn't see a show in prime time, you might have to wait 20 years to see it again right so right yeah yeah and and now you not only when you have a new show this week and you go you know you can watch it whenever you get around to it but you're also when you come on against other shows new this week you're also coming on against everything ever made yeah yeah so it's like's a very strange dynamic.
And I think the relationship people have with programming,

all kinds of storytelling is so different.

Think about a movie.

Our relationship with movies used to be movies were huge, right?

They were bigger, way bigger than us.

And they were totally in control.

If the movie started at eight o'clock,

you better be in your seat at eight o'clock or you're going to miss the

beginning.

Right.

And if they said something that you missed, you had to buy a ticket and come back in two hours when they say it again. And now movies are smaller than us generally.
And we control when they stop and start. And it's an interesting thing to me with the relationship to storytelling and listening and all those things, how that evolves over time when that relationship is so dramatically different than it used to be.
Well, also, it's funny you said that, but we do now measure everything sort of apples to apples. Like you can watch a show and say, hey, I watched this comedy.
And then somebody go, yeah, but it's not as good as The Wire. And you're saying, well, yeah, of course it's different.
Like this operates over here and this lives over here. And now everybody just compares everything to everything.
The question you ask each other, we all ask our friends, and we get asked of each other is, what are you watching? What have you seen lately? I think one thing that doesn't get mentioned enough, Arrested Development, in that first season of new content on Netflix, why it's so kind of symbolically important, is when we first started the DVD business, people would just try box set television. We started seeing how people watch TV shows like that because they're watching, you know, three or four episodes on a disc and then changing disc really fast.
They really got into it. And then we started streaming.
The only things that the networks would sell us were things that were not sold into syndication. And Arrested Development had just come off of the network that year and they didn't have four seasons so it hadn't been sold hadn't been syndicated so Arrested Development was one of the first things we had on Netflix to stream and it was literally a completely different experience to watch Arrested Development four or five episodes at a time because as you guys know Mitch will write a joke that sets up in episode two and pays off in episode seven yeah and there's a 30 40 chance you are not going to see episode seven if you watched episode two yeah so and on netflix people watch the show in its entirety in a complete straight sitting and realize the genius of this comedy how it was written how it pays off the complexity the multiple how many story how many characters, how many jokes can all be running at the same time.
Because you needn't waste any time repeating exposition because you can assume the audience just finished watching that episode. Nobody missed the reference.
Nobody missed the reference. And then taking from that, and I remember kind of the conversations leading into that fourth season, the first Netflix season of Arrested, that Mitch would...
Development. Have you seen it yet, Sean? I know you saw a couple.
Have you all in yet? Good for you. Good for you, Ted.
I saw the first three and I laughed out loud. Oh, did you? But you'd had enough.
Good for you. What was my character's name? What was my character's name? What's my character's name? Gob.
I thought his character's name was Job. Who the fuck said that? And then I was corrected that it's Job.
Who said Gob? Who the fuck? Gob. Was it Gob But, Ted, as you know, Mitch started immediately.
One of the things that he got onto was he might have been one of the first, you know, showrunners, creators, writers to write to the format. Yeah.
He was really into that idea. Remember how excited he was by that? He was so, like, giddy.
I mean, he's giddy all the time, but he was really particularly giddy about that the first time i walked in when mitch was writing the new season for netflix and i walked in that little room that he was writing and it was index cards and color coded yarn all around the string yeah with a string of plots it was insane it was so amazing i'm so i'm that is an incredible comic mind but i i think in general i'd say that usually when people say things are ahead of their time that's a nice way of saying it didn't work but arrested development is truly ahead of its time it's a show that was built to be binged before anyone was binging television yeah and so so for going from a show that was ahead of its time to a show that almost never was uh bojack horseman was a 13-minute presentation that Raphael Bob Waksberg wrote and that I did with Aaron Paul and Paul Tompkins and Amy Sedaris, amongst other people. Patton was in the first.
And everybody passed on it. And they brought it to you.
And I remember talking, you were like, yeah, I think we're're gonna do it like you were literally like the last stop and you're like i was like really yeah i think we're gonna yeah and you got not only did you pick it up you got right into it yeah um and if you remember that first so first of all tell me about what it was when it when it came across your desk raphael's piece well first of first of all, it's remarkably funny. I mean, the show, and it had real meat on the bone.
I mean, it wasn't just silly funny. It was funny with a really serious, I mean, it's a comedy about depression, which is not on TV.
And if it was, it probably wasn't funny or it was too, you know, getting that balance right is really tough. And that show did.
It was unusual in that way. And I remember at your old offices, you remember like this first season, forget what episode it was, but one night you and I went for dinner and then you were like, hey, I just got the rough in the rough animatic of like episode five.
And then we kind of looked at you and you said, let's go to my office and watch it. And we went, do you remember? We went we went watching in the old screening room there yeah and we were both so excited about that the before it even came out we were really excited about it that's remember had that great hallucination animation sequence that's what we were dying to see that's what it was yeah yeah but i got to tell you but you told that story earlier about us going to vegas um again this is back to that.
You know, you're just, we were so green, you know, at the beginning of this. We brought everybody to the NAB convention in Las Vegas, which is where all the like the TV tech people go.
Not like the press to go to see. No one was bringing talent to the NAB convention.
We did it. Maybe it was an accident.
I'm sure it was. But I'm sure people go, why are they bringing all that? And remember, it was the whole cast of oranges the new black the whole cast for the rest of development yeah and it was like a big star-studded thing at this place where all the tv tech people come yeah you were just kind of winging it yeah hey ted a friend of mine and i play this stupid thing where we go quick quick quick and you have to name like three things but you can't think about it.
You have to say it super, super fast. You cannot think about it, right? So I'm going to ask you a question, and you have to answer it super, super fast.
Ready? Quick, quick, quick, name two shows that you're watching right now on Netflix. Go fast, super fast, go.
Ginny in Georgia and Firefly Lane. Great, that's all the time we have.
Wow. Shit.
Wait, wait.

Now, are those the same shows that Nicole, your wife, is watching? Yes. That's why it was so easy for me to answer.
So do you guys, are you one of those ideal couples that watches all the same shows together? Yeah. We don't have very similar tastes.
I mean, Nicole does not like anything dark in any way, And I do. And she really loves – she's a very tough customer, my wife, Nicole.
But she loved – she was an early spotter on Bridgerton. She knew it was going to be a hot one.
And the show Virgin River was one that she really loves. And the one thing that our sweet spot, we agree, is, like I said, HGTV.
So that's why we watch so much. So she's not cross-infecting your algorithm, right? She's got her own account because Amanda is screwing mine up so badly.
You guys have to, you have to set up a separate profile. That's the key.
Because for us, it's the same thing. We will watch four hours of Virgin River and then Nicole goes to bed and I watched six hours of the Chappelle show.
I don't think Netflix knows anything about that. Jason, just get another account and give Ted, Jesus Christ, man.
Don't be such a cheap dick. Just get another fucking account for your wife so that she can, and don't jip Ted by having 80 people with the same password and all this BS that you always show off about.
Listen, if I had stock, I would protect my profits. You know, my favorite thing about Nicole is when she admitted to me years ago, well, she said in front of you about how much stuff she gets from Amazon.
And she's like, I don't give a shit. No, Nicole was buying DVDs from Amazon, right? Of movies that are on Netflix.
Now, was it pulling teeth to get a little window to do a little TED time today? Or is she – what's it like over there in your personal world? Do you live in a prison or does she give it up? No. You know, she, I think, really appreciates the time when I need to go off and do something.
I mean the thing about this pandemic and us being in the office – I go to the office now a couple days a week at her her request. Sure.
I had a good buddy. I had a good buddy who said when this pandemic was a few months in, he said, my marriage wasn't built for 24 hours a day.
No, none of them were. So she was, I said, I'm going to do this tomorrow.
Oh, great. And she'll, I assure you, she's, I do bring a little bit of a hectic energy to the place and she appreciates the distance sometimes.
Sure. Well, we won't take you away from her any longer.
Yeah. She was very jealous when I told her who I was going to be talking to today.
She said, she loved her. Yeah, we love her.
Love to her. And I've got to tell you, you know, a lot of people, I've heard a lot of folks throughout the quarantine saying how much Netflix, it was so important to them.
But I have to tell you, prior to the quarantine,

I did not listen to a lot of podcasts.

I just didn't, I don't have a long commute.

You and us both.

And what did I get into?

I mean, of course, because my three great friends have this great podcast

and I obsessively listen to every episode of Smartless.

I think it's, I love what you guys are doing.

The only thing I like better than someone who I love

when they're a guest is when it's someone

I don't know much about.

And you guys have so much fun with them.

And I really enjoy it.

Thank you for doing this.

Thanks, buddy.

Yeah, very cool.

Thank you, Ted, for being here.

Absolutely, Sean.

Good to see you.

Great to see you, man.

It's so good to see you, Ted.

You guys too.

Have a good, buddy.

All right, pal.

See you, buddy.

Have a good day.

Bye-bye.

Bye, buddy.

Boy, that Ted.

You know, here's the thing about Ted. We all know, and and even to our listener too everybody knows bosses in the world right everybody has a boss everybody knows a boss but like ted is so rare in that he's like you said jason so personable and so likable and so jolly and so uh supportive and he he never you never see him in a bad mood.
bad mood. Yeah, I was really sincere about that at the beginning.
I just don't know how he manages his time being so inviting to everybody he comes across. How does he ever leave a room? I know.
Sociopath. Yeah, sociopath.
Ted is such a, here's what we're kind of saying. Not only is he sort of a very personal guy and quite gregarious he he's just a very even keeled guy yeah and so he doesn't lose he never loses sight of the prize and it's it's a testament to somebody who loves their job and loves the position they're in and always has right and came by it organically what you know what i mean like he's he's not in he's not out of his depth at any at any juncture yeah like i didn't even ask the obvious question of so do you want to be a writer or a director or producer like he just like he just seems so pleased and content with where he is and what he is doing and enjoying expanding that, diversifying and staying in his lane in sort of the best possible version of what he's saying.
Right, and I knew you were going to say staying in there. I knew you were going to say that he's staying in there.
You like to know where everybody is. If I can say lane each day, I will continue to win bingo.
Why does he stay in his lane? Do you think he's got a sexy indifference? Oh, God damn it. Oh, no.
You know what? I think we're spending too much time together. No, we're not.
Wait, can I ask you a question, though? What does highway rhyme with? Bye. Oh, shit.
That's it. Bye.
But that's it already. Bye.
No, no, no. Hang on.
No, I'm going to throw a veto on that. Wait, wait, wait.
Because highway does not rhyme with by. No, you got to do better than that.
Yeah, no, no, you're right. You're right.
So let's buy that back. No, I don't think we're done talking about Ted yet.
Is that the first ever aborted bi-y? Yeah, definitely. Okay, so wait.
So what we didn't get to with Ted. Was Netflix and chill, which I wanted to get to, which you still don't fully understand.
Am I right, Grandpa? I don't know what that is. It's a sex thing, right? Or a code for- Oh, for fuck's sake.
This is so fucking embarrassing. How do you leave the house? What is Netflix and chill? Okay, so Sean's equally dumb.
We're smart less. Okay, so you know what? I might just include my parents on this too, so I just don't have to explain it four times.
I'll just knock all four of you out at once. Yeah, we're listening to the only smart guy in the world.
Go ahead, Will. So Netflix and chill is a way, it's not necessarily a sex thing, but it's a term that people use to say, hey, why don't you come over and hang with me and we'll watch Netflix and chill.
It's kind of like the old, like the old time, old timey, like, hey, let's make out and watch TV. Or it's sort of like, hey, let me show you my apartment.
Come on up. Let me show you around.
That's like the old code for come on. Once you're in, then I can just kind of lock the door.
Let me show you around my apartment? What the fuck are you? This is when you're picking up straight, like behind a dumpster? What's going on? Let me introduce you guys to the gay world. We don't say that.
We just say, hey, do you want to hook up?

Oh.

Is that true?

Like why Netflix and chill?

That's more of a Hulu thing though, isn't it?

Oh.

Because I've always wondered what Hulu means.

Is it a derivative from hook up?

It's H and the U and no? I think so. so so wait i want to say that i think we're always fascinated like to go back to jason what jason said about the foresight of like i think we're endlessly fascinated with people who seemingly can see into the future and predict anything like any kind of scientist or in this case this programming genius about Netflix is like, how did you know that? How did you, and the risk and the timing, it's just always fascinating to me.
Yeah. And, and, and right at the beginning, you'd, you'd see that stock and you'd say, oh gosh, what are they going to do? I just, I want to, I want to sell that, you know? And, but like today, if you saw a bunch of stock, what would you say? And then you wouldn't say sell, you'd say

that's how you do it. Fuck face.

Hey friends, Jason here. We're so excited the Smart List has officially joined the SiriusXM family.
We can't wait to announce new surprise guests who we know that you'll love. If you want to be the first to hear new episodes ad-free and a whole week early, subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts Plus on Apple Podcasts or visit SiriusXM.com slash podcasts plus to start your free trial today.
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