Ashlee Vance launches Core Memory: tech TV show, two books, and the future of independent journalism

his dog yeah he He is building hard tech dog so andal for dogs basically yeah yeah I like it um great I think we have our next guest let's bring him on in Ashley Vance how you doing top journalist in the world yes and founder now hello gentlemen founder of core memory great to have you here how you doing today I brought a there we go to join I didn't I didn't have my black card but I have a suit but you're all good yeah it's great it's great to see you uh how is core memory going I saw 15,000 subscribers on substack already uh the stuff you've been putting out is fantastic I love the boom coverage we've read a bunch of your pieces on our show uh I want to hear about uh some of the brain computer interface stuff you've been working on I want to hear what you're excited about uh because you're always on the edge of the edge of the edge of the frontier of the frontier and so uh how's it going and what are you most excited about right now it's going well man I don't even know where to begin we got so much going on um we just put up a interview with Max hodak so if you are into brains you can uh you go deep on on some very weird stuff but yeah we and then tomorrow we'll be launching the first episode of our kind of proper TV show that I'm doing hosting and writing and all that and um and then we got movies in the works scripted unscripted all kinds of stuff rewinding really quickly the TV show is releasing tomorrow like the first God willing if everyone does what they're supposed to do uh yeah you know I used to make um hello world for Bloomberg which was like a tech travel show and had to had to kill that we're coming back we've got uh I think by the end of this month we'll we'll have filmed 10 episodes so hopefully coming out like every couple weeks and um doing some space biotech um little bit of everything fantastic and and the production for that is uh weekly still travel still go on site talk to Founders show us what they're building show us their factories that type of stuff yeah 100% I mean my the goal we're trying to pull off this year is like 20 to 30 kind of individually focused episodes that would be a single company slers and and then we're going to have two full season of you know so those episodes could be anywhere from like whatever 8 to 20 minutes and then we're going to have two full seasons of deeper dives into different areas of technology that will be four episodes each of like an hour hour long so so closer to kind of like a a documentary yeah it's I mean it's hard work I've done like I've dipped my toe in that and I have a ton of respect for it because it's really really hard to get right you show up you film a lot and then you know it lives or dies in The Cutting room floor for sure I mean it's really fun to do and go meet everyone and do all the travel I know when I was at Bloomberg everyone thought I was just on some endless boond doggle not I mean it's a fantastic job and not to not to make it sound like it's not but it's long days and um like very long days and a lot of organizing and everything so how are you thinking about distribution for that uh obviously you're part of the New Media going direct movement but there is a pay wall you want to monetize that way are the videos going to be gated for a little bit are you just trying to get them to go viral on X and YouTube what are you thinking yeah I mean I think in the early days it's kind of like maybe a little more free un letting things out in the wild just to let everybody know what we're doing and show show kind of the quality of our work but yeah I mean I think the substack part of this I mean my company is like multi-pronged and I didn't know which direction all this would go substacks kind of done better than I I even imagined at the beginning so so I think the videos you know eventually will go there first for the subscribers for some period of time and then we'll release some of them onto YouTube and then stuff like the the really deep dive Seasons where I think we're putting showing off our very best work and investing a lot of money um you know some of those might never make it to YouTube they'll they'll live on core memory and um you know and then I'm trying to figure out like do we have to get can we live off sub subscriptions or do these have to be sponsored or or what does that model look like but I feel like we've got to build up our audience first to even be able to address some of those questions yeah well we love ads so if you ever go the ad route stuff it with ads I want we'll we'll be your first uh we'll be your first we have very all our sponsors we can just sponsor through and you can just have the full NASCAR Jacket we'll send you one of our jackets I'm so impressed man I was like stickers all over everything you guys got the ad power rolling I was I was very impressed yeah our our our North Star Was Nascar for sure I'm curious so uh maybe this is just how it feels maybe it's not actually real I think you're going to be able to address this but what happens to Legacy Media when all the you know long-term all the best content creators realize hey I can actually do more of what I love and make more money in the long run if I go independent does just create space for the next Ashley Vance to kind of join Bloomberg and and work their way up and build a brand and then the cycle continues or you know it does feel like platforms like Bloomberg you know really do have brand value in terms of delivering uh sort of legitimacy to launches and announcements and things like that but uh sort of what what what's your read on on where Legacy Media goes um yeah I mean it's a tough question I um you know exactly what you said I've I've worked at the New York Times I've worked at Bloomberg I've written for the economist there's like this cache that comes with that there's a certain amount of influence that comes with that you always feel like it's part of your last name and and it feels good sometimes you know and then and then I I just kind of like reached a point where couldn't really move fast enough for all the different things that I wanted to do within the confines of Bloomberg I felt like it was kind of lacking some flexibility bunch of things and so yeah I don't know man you know it's a tough question because um when you're on this side it's exciting and it's awesome and it's exactly what I want to be doing but it's also really hard I'm not sure that like every journalist you know can can pull all this I'm not even sure I can pull this off so I'm not sure that like every everybody can we we are we we have faith in you Ashley yeah I guess like the main you know a sort of question um you know one one thing that I think is is a challenge with the internet right now and creating content in generally is like the sort of um the type of content that that you know you want to make uh isn't potentially ever going to be able to do like sort of Mr Beast numbers right because it's not that sort of like lowest common denominator yeah uh are you um how are you thinking about balancing I just am so obsessed with this topic like I need to cover this I need to make the sort piece on it that feels like there feels like 100,000 people in the world that would like happily pay for that product uh but are you okay with with sort of understanding that you maybe are building for the sort of uh the sort of extreme techno Optimist uh and kind of willing to sort of ignore at times the broader market like I'm totally okay with that even as we're going into the edits for this new show when I was talking to the editors I mean you nailed it on the head I I like gave them a commandment which was look at Bloomberg I think we were talking to a smart audience but it was it was a mainstream audience it's like anytime I was like let it breathe when the the dude is nerding out on the rocket engine when we're talking about stem cell engineering it's like okay if that runs a little bit long and we're talking we're talking up to people we're never talking down to people and and I'm not I I didn't even start this look it would be awesome if we had say you know like the best case for this particular company is probably maybe some of the script stuff we end up doing which is like winning the lotto if you actually get that on there maybe that makes a ton of money otherwise I want this to be sustainable I just love doing this and so as long as we're making enough money that I can keep making everything I want to make it's okay and so yeah if we find that chunk of people who will actually pay for um what I hope is like you know we try to make it smarter and more entertaining and and to like for people who actually want to learn stuff to make make it fun to do that I mean that's kind of my that's my general goal and um we'll figure out sort of how big that is I I wonder if there's a world where this all kind of round trips like we've seen this with a few independent creators like Rogan did the big Spotify deal uh Pat McAfee had an independent show then eventually now Pat McAfee just has a segment on ESPN it still feels like the Pat McAfee Show podcast but it just happens to be distributed through ESPN as well as YouTube live streams and podcast feeds and I'm wondering if at some point Bloomberg comes back to you and says hey you're going to get complete control creative control but we' love to just you know have this fill out our content stack because I was turning on Bloomberg the other day and like in the middle of the night they're rerunning uh your show they're rerunning uh Emily Chang's brotopia or I guess it's called the circuit um but uh that that that show's done very well for them and so I I wouldn't be surprised if that's kind of where this goes in in terms of long-term distribution I'd be i' super curious I mean it's it's really weird like Hello World got nominated for Bloomberg's first Emy ever we we used to like have you know a THX views of the next show and anytime I would try to have these more flexible kind of discussions there's just there wasn't a lot of you know open-mindedness to some of this so so maybe if you know if you bear it out that you can you can kind of build this audience maybe that does does come back however I have to say like there's a weird thing that happens where um like the most fun I ever had early in my career was writing for the register which is this like British text site that's quite funny and can be cynical and it's run it was run by the writers it was like one of the first blogs and it was you know you really could say what you wanted to say and as you as you get into more traditional media there's a lot of fantastic stuff that comes with it and you learn a lot but you don't I you don't fully kind of realize how your voice is getting shaped by the platform until until I started this and my register voice just like kind of came back yeah it's kind of like my book voice I think it's like my happiest place to write and fantastic it just kind of came roaring back and then it was so you know I know like Pat McAfee gets to say whatever he wants so as long just as long as you could kind of keep all that all that freedom that would be networ realizes that this is actually better for the viewer than the incentives can align which is great I want to stay on uh books uh you've obviously written two uh Jord is thinking about writing a book called The 100 hour work week kind of a response to the 4our work week uh very on brand for us but I uh uh you know there are some people who just become authors and they publish a book every single year uh you're obviously getting on a Cadence of newsletters go out on a regular Cadence podcast go out on regular Cadence this new show is going to go out on regular Cadence is there a world where you think it's possible to get on some multi-year cycle for books or is it just inspiration needs to strike you have to carve out time get everything else automated more or less so that you can really focus or is there some in between where your work instantiates itself as a book but it doesn't require the labor of love that most books require oh you're asking the tough questions uh I mean I'm doing books right now so I let's go I've been I've been working on a book on breaking news new action dance novel new book coming I'm doing a book on open Ai and AI more broadly and I've been working on that for like 18 months and and penguin random house is going to publish that and um sold the movie rights to it already and uh and so that one I've already done hundreds and hundreds of interviews and and you know to your question which gets right up my soul is is like you know finding the time to to knock it out but I will and then I've got book which I'm not sure coming right after that I'm not sure I'm ready to reveal that one yet but I've been I've been kind of secretly researching these two books for the last like two three years fantastic well I can't wait I question massive Father's Day treat by the way uh I think that's originally how we interacted uh you recommended buying when the heavens went on sale your second book for Father's Day I bought two copies from my father and my father-in-law they both loved it and I think you retweeted it and I was like yes why yeah my guy uh I'm curious why did nobody really was was really aware of firefly until they were on the moon is is that uh do you and and secondary to to that question do you see yourself as potentially you know becoming almost like a marketing engine for these companies that are so laser focused on the like core technology that they sort of forget to tell the world what they're doing like a single thread would have been better than what we got from Firefly you know Firefly is funny I mean the you kind of had like the Branson musk Bezos Dynamic that sucked a lot of the attention and then you know the rocket Labs of the world the fireflies they got a little missed compared to that stuff in my in my book I have a huge section on fireflies kind of the most one of the most interesting stories I think of the book is this crazy this Max Paka this Ukrainian Rich dude who gets thrown out of the company thrown out of the country in the in the middle of all that so usually it's like people don't pay attention to space companies until you really start launching and you know they had some stop starts so so but you know the C the criminal thing is is rocket lab because there's the a little bit of a lack of attention on that because there's like SpaceX and Rocket lab and they're the only two have figured it out and they' figured it out on a scale that like nobody else has even got close to yet and they did it from New Zealand which is insane wow um one one request for a book I think that there's like one of the greatest stories of potentially our current time will be the sort of narrative battle and the the sort of uh the the the the war between the sort of techno pessimist and the Techno Optimist and uh I I'm curious you know every single day it feels like the techn pessimists are sort of taking L after L right um but uh but but that's one um on last last question I would just love to get your hot take on uh humanoid robotics it's something that we've been asking a lot of the guests that are joining the show I'm sure you're you know tracking a lot of these companies um what are what are you most excited about and you know how quickly in your in your view uh are these a part of our daily life I mean it is something that I'm tracking and I'm super into it I've been to figure and xan and a couple other companies um I don't you know I'm I'm slightly scarred on this one because I've I've been down this road before a couple times we have sort of the advantages of the AI models in particular now um you know it's going to be is that like Boston Dynamics scars or or there's like there's that there was that company that made Baxter which was supposed to be this kind of general purpose robot there was always like this feeling you know that right yeah that was it was I grew up with asmo and I was like yeah Honda's gonna solve this it's definitely gonna be helping me out didn't happen you know and it and they just always they always prove to be just like the movement part just proves to be so so much harder than than like you you think um but you know like when I went to figure they had made so much progress in 18 months to two years Way Beyond what I would have thought Optimist you know to be honest like when I first saw Optimist I thought it was like very heavy on the smoke in mirrors and like they've made incredible progress as well so I don't know I don't know man I I I kind of want to see that one happen but that one um feels I can see a world you have so many different stories to tell I can see a world where there's like 20 of you out in the world you know in the little just embodied humanoid and you're just like you know interviewing people you know writing like you're just sitting you know sitting in the studio you've got all your screens up this at Star base constantly this one's that you know so I'm that great less travel more time for and then you could just you know anytime we needed you on the show to talk about something just right in the humanoid down but thanks for coming on you're always welcome and uh we're excited to track core memory you guys are killing it thank you for giving me time it's awesome to see you guys do your thing yeah if you're listening go to cor memory.

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