Business on the Brink

It's the final episode of Business on the Brink (at least for now). Ariel and Jonathan give a behind the scenes look on how the show came to be and how they put together each episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Business on the Brink, a production from I
Heart Radio and How Stuff Works. So yeah, um, I
guess this is Business on the Brink on Business on

(00:25):
the Brink. Hey, everybody, I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Ariel Kasten,
and um, I guess we have some news for you guys. Yeah,
this one is not a listener request, or if it was,

(00:46):
it's the meanest listener request we ever got. Jeez, that
would be pretty funny though. No. But so here's the story.
We could say the show is being put on pause.
That's the way it was described to me, but I
think to be fair, saying it's going away is more accurate.

(01:07):
That was how it was put to me. So, uh,
this episode is actually our final episode. Of course, never
say never. You never know. There might become a time
where this gets revisited and we're going to do it again.
But we thought that it was a good idea for
us to record a final episode because I don't know

(01:29):
about you, Ariel, there have been shows that I've listened
to that just stopped and I didn't know what happened. Yeah, yeah,
I always like some sort of resolution, and you know, also,
I I personally kind of want to talk about this
journey because it's been really interesting and I've learned a lot. Yeah, yeah,

(01:49):
and this is this is again. It's it's we respect
you guys, our audience so much. We're gonna have a
lot to talk about about you guys in particular. Uh,
it's us. Here's the thing. We love you. You're all amazing,
you're all special. There's just not enough of you. But
I mean, let's be transparent. The way podcasting works is

(02:13):
that you need to develop a certain level of audience
in order for there to be a right balance between
how much it costs to do the show and how
much you're making in revenue from the show. And just
like any business, if that doesn't balance out, eventually, you
have to make some tough decisions. And you do have
podcasts that are labors of love, you know, and and

(02:35):
certainly I loved, love, loved doing business on the brink,
but we were created as a part of a business. Yeah,
we're part of a larger podcast network. Like if this
were an independent thing where it's just me and you
arial we probably could have kept going. And and like, well, yeah,
we're not making money on this, but we just enjoy

(02:55):
doing it, And but that's not We're not part of that.
We're part of the bigger work that has very real concerns.
They have to answer to stakeholders, So there is no
reflection on the company. We're not here to throw I
Heeart Media under the bus, particularly since I still work
for them. Yep. And and this is is not doing
any of you under the bus, because so many of

(03:16):
you have written and saying, you know, I've been listening
since the beginning of Man do we appreciate that very much.
So we're going to take you on a bit of
a journey as to how this show came together in
the first place. And this journey actually starts way way
before there was a Business on the Brink, even before
there was the precursor show that led into Business on

(03:38):
the Brink. I think, really, this history starts with me
and you Aerial just as as friends. I think. So, yeah,
we we started working together the Georgia Renaissance Festival, I
think at the Atlanta Radio Theater Company. Well technically, well,
I guess it was right around the same time, right
around the same time. Yeah, so you know, figuring out

(04:02):
which came first to splitting hairs, right, I and my
memory is so bad, but I mean it was two
thousand one, was your first season. It was festival, okay,
So I had worked nine nine to two thousand one,
so I was getting out of the Festival just as
you were getting in. Um I did come back while
you were still there. So we worked a season together.

(04:22):
We weren't like super close that first season. We probably
chatted maybe a couple of times, but we weren't like
super tight. Yeah. And I had been I had gone
to the fair before and seeing you work, and I
thought you were awesome, not like creepy stalkery awesome. You
were creepy stalk orring someone else on the cast. It
was just no, people will believe you, Jonathan. Uh No, people,

(04:48):
I won't say aerial, but people have told me that
they had a crush on my character, not on me,
on the character Anya. Anyhow, and my first action with
the Atlanta Radio Theater Company was a staged production of
something called Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter, right, which
I was also in. Mr Byron was that when I

(05:11):
was also Admiral big Ben was that because there was
one production of that where my dad played that character,
and then there was the second production of it where
I played that character, and I can't remember which one
was which at this point. No, that must have been
the second production, because the first production is what led
me into working at the Renaissance Festival in the first place.
It's all secular, circular say that. Guy Ariel and I

(05:36):
did several theatrical productions together. We got closer at the
Atlanta Radio Theater Company. I would write pieces, Arial would
be in pieces. Sometimes we would be in pieces together,
and we found that we just had a really good chemistry. Yeah, yeah,
you know, because Jonathan's awesome. Yeah, thank you for saying that.

(05:58):
That's true. I mean you are also so we we
did several plays and radio plays together, radio comedies together,
and we just found that we really enjoyed working with
one another. We could finish each other's sandwiches and yeah, no,
we can't like tomatoes, Jonathan, that's true. Yeah, and Arial's allergic.

(06:20):
But yeah, we had we had a lot of good interactions.
And then skip ahead, because I mean our friendship stuck together.
Like once we were working together at Artsy That's really
where our friendship and then we we remained friends while
I came back to the festival. You were still working
there almost twenty years now, I know twenty years. And

(06:45):
so then Ariel comes to me with a show idea
several years ago. This is again before we started doing
a podcast, more more than I'd like to admit. Yeah,
I I had had like I wanted to do a
video a series, and I had this idea that maybe
we'd take these these like geeky properties and mash them

(07:07):
up together. So we did a YouTube series. You can
actually still find it on the YouTube. It's called The
Large Energon Collider. Yes, uh, and we did things like
what happened would happen if ben Her and my little
ponies got mixed up? Or what would happened with four
and Clash of the Titans? Or Firefly and Game of Thrones,
which so sad, that's well my that's my favorite site

(07:29):
gag that we never did. So really really it was
an excuse to do two things. One talk about stuff
we loved, like you know, geek properties that we truly loved,
and we got to gush about them. So each episode
was was structured so we would talk about we do
an introduction. We would then give the research section, which
Ariel was always in the fiction of the show. She

(07:51):
was always the most excited about and I hated in
the fiction of the show. Well, that's that's because you
were doing most of the research at the time, Jonathan.
But it was it was I mean as research into
stuff that I loved, so it really wasn't I really
was playing a grouch, but I wasn't actually crouchy about it.
And then we would do a cut to whatever the
gag was based on the combination of these two things,

(08:14):
and then we would have a conclusion and the game
of thrownes Firefly one had my favorite site gag. I
will not spoil it in case you guys want to
go out and find that, which you totally ship. Yeah.
The other the episode that I think is the best
one that we did of that was the Seven Sons
of the Seven Samurai. I agree. I agree. It's it's
different than the rest of what we did for that,
but it is really it's really pretty cool and very informative. Uh.

(08:39):
But you know what, here's the thing when you use
college student uh, very professional and awesome videographers, they move
on to bigger and better things. Yeah, and then you're
stuck with a lot of equipment that you don't really
know how to use properly. So yeah, we had a
great editor and producer who did an amazing work with

(09:00):
that video. It's why it looks so good. And then
he goes off and we a combination of things, lack
of time and lack of expertise using the equipmentent that
it kind of fell to the wayside. But what we
designed to do is we also launched a companion audio
podcast called large Nerdron Collider, which also is still out there,

(09:23):
but large dron Collider dot com. But it's it. It
was a geek news podcast. It was so really we
just look at all of the articles that came out
and all of the news that came out during the weekend,
and then we'd talk about it. And it started off
forty five minutes and it you know, the thing is
geek culture has become so prevalent that we end up

(09:46):
talking for like two hours. Yeah, and this was back
when like the m c U was just really starting
to pick up, and just when like we would constantly
have these discussions about how the m c U was
getting everything right and the d C universe got everything wrong,
whereas today you could say, oh, it's the same yeah,
but but that was the show. We did that for

(10:06):
a while and yeah, and in fact we were still
going strong when the company I worked for went there's
some changes and as part of that, like our work
agreements changed as well. And part of that was that
you know, you couldn't you couldn't compete against the company, right,

(10:27):
you couldn't make a competing thing. Um like I I
couldn't go out and start a podcast on a competing
podcast network. It's a conflict of interest. I'm an employee
of my Heart Media. Totally reasonable, right, I don't sense Yeah, no, no,
no hard shakes on that. But this was a little
personal podcast that you and I were doing, uh that

(10:50):
I was like, I was paying the hosting fees out
of pocket because I loved doing it, and this we
weren't monetized at all, and it was a very modern
audience space, smaller than what we have for business on
the brain, quite a bit smaller. Yeah. So I then
contacted the head of podcasting at all of my Heart Media.

(11:14):
It's not that big a deal. He actually sits not
that far away from me, and I asked if I
could still continue to do that show because Jonathan is
a very good friend to me, and I wanted to
make sure, like I wanted to keep doing the show,
but I wanted to make sure I wasn't stepping on toes.
The response we got was this is you two are
really good together. You and Ariel are really good together,

(11:37):
and we think that you guys should do a show
for us. We have to, which I was like, yeah, yeah,
and we'll explain more about how that unfolded in just
a second, but first let's take a quick break. Okay.

(11:57):
So I left off with like the cliffhanger of him
saying that we worked really well together. So the initial
plan was that we were going to launch a new
version of large nergron collider. Yes, that was the plan.
It was super excited about it. Yeah. However, before we
could get very far into the process of developing that show,

(12:20):
the opportunity arose for us to do The Brink the Brink. Yeah,
Business on the Brink. This was one exactly Yeah, it
was back then. It was just called the braink now,
it's Business on the Brink. But that the the powers
that be came to us and said, we would love
for you guys, We really want to do this show.
We've got a great idea for a show. We think
you guys would be the perfect hosts for that, and

(12:41):
so we said, all right, we'll give us a try.
It's not not immediately in our wheelhouse, but we thought
the process of learning about these businesses would be something
we could communicate to listen and and I want to
put a little aside in here. You know, I knew
I would enjoy doing this cast. I love learning about
things in general. You know, the more the better. I've

(13:05):
really enjoyed learning about a lot of these businesses. It's
so fun and so juicy. And yeah, there were more
than a few times where we got into the weeds
on some of these businesses and we're like, no, wonder,
there are these television series and movies that have these
crazy dramatic turns in them. For uh, these these like

(13:27):
that cutthroat business deals and stuff. Because when you start
learning about what really goes on in some of these businesses,
you realize it's not that far off from the fictional portrayal. Yeah. Yeah,
And we we came up with a list of a
few topics we wanted to cover kind of as our
our test episodes, and you got to hear some of
those the biggest one was Disney. Yeah, let's tell the

(13:49):
story about the Disney pilot. How many times do we
record that? I think you're right. I think it was
four times. So we recorded it as a script, and
then we recorded it as a slightly more conversational script,
and then we recorded it as kind of conversational but
based off of that script. Yeah, we were trying to

(14:11):
get further away from it sounding like we were just
reciting paragraphs we did not want that we wanted because,
I mean, one of the whole reasons why they came
to us is because they liked the back and forth
with that so our sandwiches. Yeah, so scripting it out
kind of defeated that purpose. But at the same time,
we were also dealing with subject matter that the two

(14:32):
of us weren't so deeply ingrained in. Yeah, the script
just sort of like a safety net. Yeah, and we
stuck to it way too much on that and Tyler,
who at the time was overseeing the production side of things. Um. Actually,
at first I was supposed to edit everything, but it

(14:53):
quickly became clear that the the editing suite used by
I Heart Podcast Group was just different enough from the
editing tools that I used for the large Nargron Collider podcast,
that I was making it take about three times longer
than it needed to, which is not you know, business sound. Yeah,

(15:17):
and I also have other responsibility sponsibilities at this company,
so it was it was quickly becoming a parent that
it was not something I was going to be able
to sustain for any length of time. So Tyler stepped
in to help out. Yeah, and uh, one of his
first notes is y'all talked too much, which you guys,
totally legit, totally legit. It was the like I was

(15:40):
used to recording episodes that were about forty five minutes long,
but the goal was always to get it as close
to half an hour as we possibly could, which you
guys know, if you've been listening, don't happen all that offense.
It turns out it's really hard to cover the history
of a business in thirty minutes. And you know, one
of the one of the notes we got was to

(16:01):
just jump right to the right to the brink moment
and just talk about that. But both Jonathan and I
agreed that it's it's really difficult to understand how a
company fell into the brink or came back for the
break without knowing how they got there in the first place. Yeah,
and we both felt that without the context, it's not meaningful. Exactly.

(16:25):
If we don't set up the foundation, then there's no
there are no stakes. Like we're talking about this in
a lot of narrative terms, but that's really what podcasting
is all about. It's like creating a narrative. Even with
a conversation between people, there's sort of a narrative there,
and um, we just realize, like, I don't have enough
to say about the singular moment if there in fact

(16:48):
is one. Also, as I'm sure many of you have
realized during the episodes of The Brink, rarely is there
a singular like most of these companies had more multiple
times where they almost failed or greatly succeeded. Yes, and
there usually were multiple factors that contributed, right, So you
couldn't just say because this guy had this idea, the

(17:11):
company did well. It's never that simple. And it's just
like you know, anything else in life. When we tell stories,
we like there to be a beginning, a middle, and
an end. We like there to be a clear moral.
Real life does not unfold that way, unfortunately, which makes
it really you know it's very time consuming to to

(17:32):
research an episode. Yes, yes, And Ariel knows that better
than anyone because out of the we recorded what episodes, ye,
out of fifty five episodes, I'd say Ariel wrote fifty
two of them, including some of the really bad ones. Guys,
I'm sorry, well, I mean that's there's no guarantee that

(17:53):
the three that I wrote were any good. Uh So
tell us a little bit about the process of researching
and writing an episode, all right. So when we started,
Jonathan and I were picking the topics. We'd scour the
internet for stories that were hitting the news or companies
that had made lists, sort of a stepping off point
of companies we wanted to cover, and we'd make a list.

(18:17):
We try to shake them up for you so you
weren't getting too many computer companies, are too many food
food companies in a row. And then I would sit
down and at first we had we actually had some
researchers helping us out, so they'd find a bunch of
articles for us to go through and look at, and
shows to watch and things like that, and we collect
all that material and trying to take that giant jumble

(18:39):
of material and and put it into a linear format. Eventually,
that all fell to me, so I'd make ourselves. I'd
make Jonathan and I a nice little spreadsheet and share it.
Google Docs is my friend. Uh, find a bunch of
different articles from reputable sources, and you know, some some
sources where you question, so you have to double check,
which is why we often will say, like, we don't

(19:02):
exactly know when this happened because no one kept good records,
because we always try to be transparent about that as
opposed to like, there's some sites out there that will
categorically state something is a fact when it is unsubstantiated.
We wanted to avoid that as much as we could.
And the way I like to work is generally for
most companies you can find some sort of timeline. You

(19:22):
can usually find a few, So I like marking out
those big points and then filling all of the information
in between those big points. It kind of helps me
stay on task and organize everything. And then yeah, you
just get to it reading, writing, and anything that sticks
out to you is something you remember, is something you
put down. Yeah, And ideally, when structuring a show, you
guys probably noticed this too. Ideally, we wanted to have

(19:46):
a lead in kind of almost like a cliffhanger for
the brink, and preferably do that before either the first
break or sometimes the second break. If if the brink
was you know, one of those things where a company
was very rapidly falling up part, you might want to
save the brink moment before the second break because you
won't have a whole lot to talk about after that. Um.

(20:06):
But that was another part of structuring a show. It
wasn't just doing research and filling out some interesting data points.
It was thinking how can I structure this, almost like
it's a television show where there's like a three act structure. Yeah. Yeah,
And and so we would there be multiple times where
we would research a topic and say, now we need

(20:29):
to rethink how we how we present this one because
it's not fitting our normal structure. Um. And and then
of course our introductions. So that's always the last thing
I do when researching a topic, is I'd write our introduction. Yeah,
the ones that have the terrible puns in them, Yes,
wonderful puns. They're wonderful. I've gotten soured on puns recently,

(20:51):
and that that hurts coming from me. People who have
listened to me long enough. No that I do love puns,
but man, I've been unished by them. Yeah, so that's
that's generally how we put it together. And then Jonathan
I would get together, talk about anything we had questions about,
and get to it. Yeah. Typically Ariel would finish it.

(21:12):
She'd send me a note and I would go in
and I would read over the notes and add a
few things here or there or or fact check. Yeah.
So usually I would say, like, the typical episode was
like aerial and five percent me so important, John Well, yeah,
I would. They were mostly bad jokes, but yeah, i'd
throw them in there now and then, or like I

(21:35):
would just find like a neat fact that Ariel probably
came across too, But I just would decide I'm going
to include this, whereas Ariel probably thought, like we can
leave this. Yeah, So really it was just another stop
gap and things like, well, no, I think we could
have something interesting to say about this thing, and so
we scripted out coming to the studio sit down. Tari

(21:56):
became our producer. She generously agreed to indicate her time, energy,
and skills. She's making faces right now. Yeah, she's listening
to us on the other side of a pane of
guilt glass right now and rolling her eyes, and you know,
she's making the friends double fist move at me and
she's laughing because she's not really doing that at me

(22:19):
right now, but she's thinking about it so that we
can't even say that, we can't tell about what she's
doing now. But no, it's it's she's been great, and
she jumped in and would do edits and stuff. So
whenever we would stumble and we have to retake something,
she was the one making sure that all that was
taking care of. Once that was done, there were a

(22:41):
couple of other steps, which I guess we can talk
about when we come back from this break. So after
we sat down to record an episode, where typically we
would throw a couple of more jokes in, like it's
so funny because Ariel worked so hard timing these things

(23:03):
out where if we did it the way she had
constructed in the notes, it would probably be about a
half hour. I'm like two pages per section, two pages
per segment, that'll equal about ten minutes. But then we
would throw in other references or questions tangent go down
rabbit holes, yeah, and then we would end up with

(23:23):
the forty five minute long episodes, which Tyler continued to
remind us were too long. Every once in a while
we'd get about thirty And to be fair, uh, Tyler
wasn't being hard on us or anything. He was he
was concerned about our time, and you know the amount
of work we were doing. I think one of the
issues is that sometimes people think that doing a shorter

(23:46):
podcast takes less time than doing a longer podcast. Doesn't, Yeah,
because because you still have to decide what goes in,
and it's the research that really takes the most time,
research and writing. And even while you're doing the writing process,
you might think, oh, I just need to write thirty
minutes of material, not forty five minutes of material. You
still get to decide which material goes in and which

(24:08):
material doesn't. Yeah, and you know, you want to make
sure that you ingest everything so you're not leaving out
a really important fact. Yeah. So after we would record,
and after tari would do her Tari magic on it,
she would then send a version of the recorded podcast
out for q A quality analysis and uh, and and

(24:30):
Ariel and I split that duty fifty fifty. If Ariel
carried both fifties, oh you've done a couple of qa
like when I have my oral surgery, you did some
QAU fun peek behind the curtain. I'm currently queueing some
of our before they before this one publishes. Yeah, and
then once that was done, and once we had given

(24:52):
the thumbs up, assuming everything was cool, you know, if
we didn't have to have anything else removed. You know,
maybe every now and then it would be like a
weird pause or a stumble or something, but most of
the time everything was gone that we didn't want in there,
and then we would publish, and uh, that was the
general process that this changed a bit because you know,

(25:14):
we started inviting you guys to write in and suggest
and did. Yeah. In fact, so we recorded fifty five episodes.
We had more than like twice that in suggestion. Yeah, yeah,
somewhere around a hundred and fifteen suggestions. I've got them
all on a spreadsheet, and you guys so excited to

(25:37):
cover these topics. Yeah, which is fantastic. We're sorry that
we won't be able to get to all of them,
but it was great to get this kind of response.
Like we weren't sure if we were going to even
have anyone writing us in, and yet we had quite
a few, and obviously you've heard us talk about several
of the episodes where we've mentioned people who have suggested them.

(26:01):
But you've got the list up right, area I do.
Do you have some of the ones that we have
not covered that people actually suggested? Sure? So amazing, Sea Monkeys,
Aimes Department Store, which is is something that if you're
not from the North you probably don't know. Atari, Barnes
and Nobles, Barman and Bailey, Circus, Bosh and Lone Bear, Blockbuster. Okay,
well we don't need to make it like Billy Joel's.
We didn't start the fire, but it's so fun. Okay,

(26:23):
some more fun ones Keita bananas, uh, Fender guitar, Oh yeah,
Squiggly do Yes Forever one. Oh yeah, yeah, that's an
important one too, Harry Potter, we work would have been
a good one to cover at this point. Yeah, we
have that on there, but it was totally your suggestion.

(26:46):
Let's see what else? Uh Wow? Airlines, which was much
like Thomas Cook and kind of disappeared overnight. Target Sears
was a big one. A bunch of people asked for Sears.
We really wanted to do that one too, because the
building we record. This in used to be a giant
distribution center for Sears in like the nineteen thirties, and

(27:10):
uh it's a huge, huge building. It still has a
section where railroad tracks came up to the building so
that you could unload railroad cars right into like loading
bays in this building. And uh so we really thought
that would be a great one to cover for multiple reasons.
I mean, Sears is such an iconic name too. I mean,

(27:33):
like the Sears catalog was such an iconic thing that's
been mentioned in you know, fiction, and it's it's it
kind of was like the the ultimate example of catalog culture.
But yeah, we never never got a chance to do
that one. Yeah, Hello Kitty, uh, rock Star, Energy, Sharper Image, Showbiz, Pizza,

(27:57):
six Flags, Standard Oil, even Lionel trains. So it was fun.
We have a couple of people who travel for a living,
drive trucks and things like that, and so it they
would send in stuff like Standard oil. Now they'd also
send in other topics as well, But it was it
was really interesting as you all shared your your stories
and what you do and what your interests are to

(28:17):
see all of these different companies that maybe would not
have come to Jonathan in my mind immediately because especially
since you obviously we we have the terrible burden of
being American, which means that there are a lot of
companies out there all over the world that have incredibly
compelling stories that we don't really know about, because we

(28:39):
just never Max, which is a cement company in Mexico
that we got a suggestion for, right and we had
totally planned on doing that. In fact, I think that
was going to be our next episode before this, before
we got the note that we were on pause. Yes,
we even got a suggestion to do some sports teams,
which would have been fun to watch. Jonathan and I
navigate through that well, well, I mean, hey, I'm a

(28:59):
fan of of of a sport, which sport hockey I like?
I like hockey two. To be fair, I was a
fan of that sport. I'm not anymore. And that could
have been a story of business on the break but
thrashers come, Yeah, Spirit of Atlanta man, that would have
been well, that would have been a tough episode to
do because I don't know that Tari could put that

(29:21):
many beeps into an episode. Just be me cursing the
entire time. Anyhow, Tons Tons of of suggestions. I might
put them all in a post when this episode airs,
just thanking everybody, yeah, because we got so much great
feedback from you guys and requests and stuff, and we

(29:41):
had a lot of very positive emails that came in aerial.
Read every single every single one and you you will
continue to do. So here's the thing. By the time
you guys hear this, uh, we will have gone for
another like a couple of months because we recorded so
many episodes in advance, and that was because we knew

(30:03):
that I was gonna be on vacation, you were going
to have some some trips, and you had surgery, We
had the holidays coming up, so we had built a
huge buffer. In fact, I think this episode right now,
if I'm not mistaken, we'll publish December nine recording at
October twenty two. So that means that between October twenty

(30:23):
two and December ninth, you guys may have been sending
us messages which were still reading. Yeah. I mean, if
you send one, you probably have noticed if I've made
that post that you're think, yeah, but we won't be
covering any of your suggestions now again, never say never.
We don't know if this show will return in any

(30:45):
sort of format. Uh. We you know, we did rebrand
from the Brink to Business on the Brink. Part of
that wasn't just again to be transparent. Part of that
was an effort to get more visibility, especially because you know,
business podcasts are kind of their relatively new when you
look at the major categories for podcasts, and then I

(31:06):
would say that the people who listen to business podcasts
are very split. Some people like history, but some people
want like actionable items that they can put into their
financial situation. At that moment, sure, and clearly we were
falling more on the historical side, which is understandable. I mean,
if Ariel and I were giving out like actionable advice,

(31:28):
chances are we'd have a lot more companies to talk
about that fell off the brink because they had been
taking our advice and we are not experts. It would
be stuff like take a penny, leave a penny, Like, hey,
why not be nice for a change. Okay, you know
what I do. I put all of my change in
a jar and then I counted out instead of all
of our moneys and mattresses, not not in mattress sponsors,

(31:51):
literally in mattress. When I was a child, I used
to save all the change I got, so when I
visit my grandparents, I could take them to McDonald's and
buy everybody's Sunday. Well, that's just incredibly altruistic. It's great
business sets. Well, so we were sad that this is
going away. Uh, you know, we we do still hope

(32:12):
to launch large largerun Collider, and you can we're still
occasionally re sharing posts while we're working all those details out.
You can keep an eye out at large a Drink
Collider on Facebook. Yeah, because we'll put it there. Yeah,
we're we're working on that. And uh, in fact, as
soon as we're finished recording this, we're going to have
a bit of a discussion with Torii about ideas for

(32:36):
that show, because we've got you know, we have a
basic outline for what we were thinking of for the
structure of the show, but getting someone else in besides
just the two of us to kind of brainstorm this
might mean that we come up with a different approach
that ends up being, you know, one that has a
better chance at at finding success, because just like this show, obviously,

(32:59):
even if we do launched large Nerderunkllider, again, if it's
a show that fails to find an audience, then you
gotta you gotta look at where you're spending your time
and say, like, is this worth it? Uh? I mean
it's been worth it. Sure, it's been worth it. From
a personal standpoint, it's and that's it's a tough question
to have to ask, and nobody in creative likes to

(33:20):
do it. Um And I say this about everybody here, like,
I don't think anyone at our company was eager to
acts a show. And that's a harsh way of putting
it too. But to cancel any show, I think that
a lot of shows can end up going longer than

(33:41):
they would have otherwise gone because people really believe in
the talent and they really like what's being made and
they're hoping that perhaps an audience will find that show.
But I mean, at the same time, you have to
admit there's a ton of stuff out there. There is
Podcasting is huge, and be on that. You have all
the other demands for people's attention. You have you know,

(34:03):
you have television, you have movies, you have radio, you
have audible books like audiobooks, you've got buzz feed, you
got Yeah, there's so much stuff Instagram, Facebook, There's so
much stuff that's battling for our attention that finding, you know,
creating something that actually is more than just a little
blip on the radar is incredibly challenging. And it's no,

(34:24):
it's not a commentary on the quality of the product.
Sometimes stuff just doesn't find an audience, and it can
be really good stuff. So not not to tutor around
Howren's but right, I'm not. I wasn't suggesting necessarily that
the show ranked among the really good stuff, But like
the idea being that, like quality is one thing that

(34:45):
you really want for your show, but it doesn't guarantee success. Um.
So we do hope to be back talking with one
another on this sort of network, the not too distant
and hopefully keeping you company on your drives and while
doing chores and things like that. We we don't have

(35:07):
a date for when that show will launch. The nice
thing for you guys who are listening to this right now,
it's closer to you than it is to us right now,
which just means it will have plenty of time to
perfect it. Yeah, I can guarantee it will not be
launching until sometime in because I looked at my calendar

(35:29):
and there just ain't no way. So but this was
a fun experiment. We neither of us, I think we're
really sure when we first started like how it was
going to turn out, and especially by the time we
were recording Disney for the third time are well and
and it was the problem is that the Disney story,

(35:51):
there were two stories we were trying to tell, and
that's what was taking up so much time. Story number
one was just establishing Walt Disney studio. Story number two
is know with snow white. Yeah, and that just like
while we know that everyone has heard the Walt Disney
studio story several times, it's still one where we were
finding facts that were new times and that's why we

(36:12):
wanted to really dive into it. And uh And ultimately
we're like, well, if if the goal is to have
Ariel and Jonathan uh talking about stuff, give us the
freedom to do that, because otherwise you're not going to
get that. Um. But yeah, it also just goes to

(36:35):
show podcasting is hard, you know. But you guys have
been awesome. Thank you again as so many folks who
have been so supportive and it Yeah, it's been great
and you can still reach out to us. We still
have an email address as far as I know, it
has not been deactivated by the time you hear this,

(36:55):
So what does that email address areal? One last time?
It is feedback to Bring podcast dot Show. Yeah, and
of course we have the website. Isn't the Brink Podcast
dot Show? How can I not know that? After fifty episodes?
Have the Bring podcast dot Show is our website, so
you can find all of our past episodes. That way,

(37:17):
if you've missed one, go back, listen to an oldie
but a goodie. You might see that we've covered something
that you really wanted to hear about, or maybe you'll
discover something you never knew you wanted to know. And uh,
we hope that we will be talking to you again
very soon, but definitely reach out and hey, if you're
really upset by this, if this, if show going away

(37:39):
has really upset you, uh, tell all your friends to subscribe.
And if those numbers happened to go up monumentally, then
we can take it to the powers that be and say, hey, look,
our show took off just as we went off the air,
and then we'll bring it back or we'll try We'll
see what we can do all right until oh well,

(38:03):
I guess guys. I have been Jonathan Strickland, and I've
been aerial casting, and this has been Business on the Brink.

(38:35):
Business on the Brink is a production of I Heart
Radio and How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for My
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.