INFLUENCE

It's a busy week here in my house, so while I'm lining up fresh interviews for you, please enjoy this feed drop from my other show, where we interviewed two wonderful video game speedrunners who race through one of the chillest games ever made: "Stardew Valley."- Originally published on January 13, 2023 -Where RUSHING into marriage is a good idea!Speed running Super Mario Bros. is a straightforward endeavor. Whoever saves the princess fastest gets the record. But what about open-ended sims, where you set your own goals?This week, we were so mesmerized by Stardew Valley speedrunners on GDQ that we had to invite them on the show. Lee (@atwentysomethingloser) and Lisa (@lichatton) are Stardew-obsessed Twitch streamers who have dissected the game to find the fastest ways to marry specific villagers, complete Community Center bundles, catch every fish, and other in-game milestones, often achieving these runs in mere hours.Their strategies involve animation canceling, min/maxing gifts, and a lot of sleep! Lee and Lisa share how they got into the wild world of speeding through one of the chillest games of all time, how it has increased their love for it, and share what else they play after thousands of hours of Stardew.Follow and subscribe to Lee and Lisa!https://www.twitch.tv/atwentysomethingloserhttps://www.twitch.tv/lichattonFor more video game community conversations, subscribe to "Colette & Matt Have Entered the Chat," wherever you get podcasts: https://haveenteredthechat.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You and everyone you love will die. There's no way around it. Yet we rarely talk or think about the topic until we have to. For the first time in human history, we are "living longer and dying slower." That's good news, but it also creates a cultural disassociation with the reality of death.But there's a growing movement - online and IRL - around death literacy. It advocates for ongoing conversation and education about this universal part of life. Just like exercise, finances, or playing piano, how can we be successful at something if we don't learn, practice, and grow?That's the mission of Bevival, an online community and resource devoted to changing the cultural conversation around death. It's the brainchild of Caren Martineau, an entrepreneur who suddenly realized she has more time behind her than ahead.Jade Adgate is a death midwife, who supports people with terminal diagnoses and the families left behind. She also empowers a large community on social media by sharing her work and insights to help grievers she can't reach in person.Together, they produce the Exit Interviews podcast, a regular conversation with leading authors and philosophers about how we can make meaning from "the final frontier."This week, Caren and Jade sit down with (a reluctant) Matt to discuss their calling around death literacy, their mission to engage the Internet on difficult topics, how death has become commercialized in the 20th and 21st centuries, and why that dehumanizes mortality.Connect with Caren at http://bevival.comFollow Jade on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.farewell.librarySubscribe to the Exit Interviews podcast: https://www.bevival.com/books-podcast-death-literacyThis show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepodWatch & subscribe on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/@InfluencePodcastJoin our Discord community! https://discord.gg/influencepodCall the show and leave a message: (347)-871-6548Email me with guest & trivia suggestions! influencepod69@gmail.com (NOICE)Follow me:🐤https://twitter.com/Matt_Silverman📸 https://www.instagram.com/matt_silverman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The surreal machinima "Skibidi Toilet" has been viewed 65 BILLION times across platforms, attracting the attention of Hollywood explosion enthusiast Michael Bay. The mega producer (Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean) has licensed the bizarre web series to make a feature length film or TV series.The Gen Alpha meme generator is more than just a flash in the pan - it has real narrative structure, and the Skibidiverse has been rapidly expanding over the last year. Even if your kids have never seen a Skibidi video, they are definitely talking about it on the playground. I break down whether toilet heads make any cultural or financial sense in a theater near you.Meanwhile, two extraordinary online child safety bills are making their way to the U.S. Senate with bi-partisan support. If passed, they would dramatically reduce the data collected on kids, and cut off the algorithmic content that is so damaging to their mental health. What would social media actually look like if we could make it safe for minors? And could these regulations help adults, too?Plus: Would you quit your job to be an influencer? 50% of adults would if they could. Many of those are already trying. And YouTube's biggest stars are pissed that AI is learning from the captions on their videos. Where is the philosophical line between fair use and theft when it comes to large language models? And how will we protect creators who may soon be out-matched by "synthetic" video content?This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepodListen & subscribe wherever you get podcasts:🍎 https://apple.co/44FeACS🟢 https://spoti.fi/3UGQjrN⏯ https://amzn.to/3wCdueFJoin our Discord community! https://discord.gg/influencepodCall the show and leave a message: (347)-871-6548Email me with guest & trivia suggestions! influencepod69@gmail.com (NOICE)Follow me:🐤https://twitter.com/Matt_Silverman📸 https://www.instagram.com/matt_silverman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we report a spammer, a scammer, or online harassment, where does it go? Who decides what gets removed or banned? Bots can do some of the work, but when it comes to messy online emotions, we need human expertise for context and judgement.So who are these heroes? What do they see all day? And how does content moderation work on a global scale, where the ethics, laws, and cultures of different platforms are so subjective?This week on INFLUENCE, Alice Hunsberger breaks down this complicated world. She's the VP of Trust & Safety and Content Moderation at PartnerHero, a company that staffs some of our favorite social media apps with specialized teams that weed out bad actors to ensure everyone has a safe experience online.Alice explains why this crucial work is often unnoticed or deeply misunderstood by the public, why viewing humanity's worst behavior for a job is so punishing, the impossible tasks for regulators, and why she remains optimistic about the Internet despite the constant flow of harmful content.For more on the Trust & Safety industry, subscribe to Alice's newsletter and podcast: https://alicelinks.com/This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepodWatch the show on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/@influencepodcastListen & subscribe wherever you get podcasts:🍎 https://apple.co/44FeACS🟢 https://spoti.fi/3UGQjrN⏯ https://amzn.to/3wCdueFJoin our Discord community! https://discord.gg/influencepodCall the show and leave a message: (347)-871-6548Email me with guest & trivia suggestions! influencepod69@gmail.com (NOICE)Follow me:🐤https://twitter.com/Matt_Silverman📸 https://www.instagram.com/matt_silverman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Catie Osborn ( @Catieosaurus ) had a medical emergency, she thought she was losing her mind — perhaps experiencing early onset dementia. But after further evaluation, she got a much different diagnosis: ADHD.Suddenly, her entire life snapped into focus: Intense fixation and extreme boredom, difficulty maintaining friendships, the crushing burden of everyday tasks, and in her own words: "I didn't know how to People."She deeply educated herself about the spectrums of ADHD, autism, and their corollaries like anxiety and depression. Then, when she lost her job as a Renaissance fair director during COVID, she began educating the Internet about the struggles and triumphs of the neurodivergent. Her deeply personal videos on TikTok and Instagram caught fire. 3 million followers later, she now works full time as a speaker, author, podcaster, and social media advocate for neurodivergence and mental health.Specifically, she observed a unique connection between ADHD and intimacy. And when no one was talking about neurodivergent sex online, she became a unique advocate for that as well.This week, Catie and Matt talk about the rapid rise in ADHD awareness, its ongoing stigma and misrepresentation, the empowering (and sometimes life-saving) impact her content has on her audience, how to make a living as a science communicator, her unique brand of adult "spicy" content, table-top RPGs, answers to your questions and voicemails, and why getting doxed by online trolls brought her closer with her mom.Follow Catie and learn more about her work:https://catieosaurus.com/https://www.tiktok.com/@catieosaurushttps://www.instagram.com/catieosaurusStart your own podcast with Zencastr's 14 day free trial: zencastr.com?via=mattsilvermanThis show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepodListen & subscribe wherever you get podcasts:🍎 https://apple.co/44FeACS🟢 https://spoti.fi/3UGQjrN⏯ https://amzn.to/3wCdueFJoin our Discord community! https://discord.gg/influencepodCall the show and leave a message: (347)-871-6548Email me with guest & trivia suggestions! influencepod69@gmail.com (NOICE)Follow me:🐤https://twitter.com/Matt_Silverman📸 https://www.instagram.com/matt_silverman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the age of 7, Jacob Simon set out to become a world-class figure skater. He competed around the world and was training for the Olympics when a dislocated shoulder derailed his career. Devastated but not defeated, he made a conscious choice to focus on the positive.His other skills as a writer and artist came in handy when he started sharing short, personal videos on Instagram and TikTok about the climate crisis. But these were not about rising temps or dire warnings.All of Jacob's stories feature GOOD news about climate progress and hope for the future: animals bouncing back from extinction, governments passing green laws, renewable energy breakthroughs, and regular people making a huge impact on their communities.Turns out, the Internet was also exhausted from two decades of doom scrolling. Jacob's daily stories of progress have garnered him millions of views and hundreds of thousands of followers, who rely on him to cut through the darkness of our media diet.This week on INFLUENCE, Jacob and Matt discuss his new life as a science communicator, why social media (and news media) bias toward "bad" news, the rigorous research he puts into every video, the stories that most-inspire his audience, the ingenious way he makes a living, and what we all can do to help the climate, even when it seems futile.This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepodStart your 14-day FREE trial of Zencastr here: zencastr.com?via=mattsilvermanJoin our Discord community! https://discord.gg/influencepodCall the show and leave a message: (347)-871-6548Email me with guest & trivia suggestions! influencepod69@gmail.com (NOICE)Follow me:🐤https://twitter.com/Matt_Silverman📸 https://www.instagram.com/matt_silverman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm on vacation this week, but very happy to share this interview we did on another show, with Norman Caruso (The Gaming Historian) back in 2021.If you enjoy games as much as we do, check out "Colette & Matt Have Entered the Chat," wherever you get podcasts: https://haveenteredthechat.com/-- Original Show Notes from May 28, 2021 --Norman Caruso, aka The Gaming Historian, has been meticulously documenting the history of video games (and their weird peripherals!) on YouTube since 2008. It took him 7 years before this passion project became a full-time job. More than 90 million views later, his channel is among the most rigorous and well-respected in the world of games journalism. Norman has covered topics as ubiquitous a Tetris and Super Mario Bros. 3, all the way down to failed tech like the Sega Mega Modem and an IRL fishing module for the Game Boy.We chat with Norman about how he got his start, why primary-source historical research takes so long, how he chooses topics, why it's OK to be wrong sometimes, and why you may never see a Pokémon video on his channel.Subscribe to The Gaming Historian on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnbvPS_rXp4PC21PG2k1UVgThis show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Mark Malkoff was in 8th grade, he wrote a letter to Phil Hartman, one of his comedy heroes on "Saturday Night Live." He assumed Hartman was too famous and busy to look at fan mail. Except, Hartman *did* respond with a heartfelt note.For Mark, this (and many other encounters) cemented a life-long obsession with comedy and late night TV — so much so that he moved to New York City and became an audience coordinator at "The Colbert Report" and "Late Night with David Letterman." He was touching the TV biz, but he wasn't writing or performing, and the grueling hours were catching up. That's when he turned to the Internet.Mark is known for his creative and wacky challenge videos (like living in IKEA for a week, or drinking something at every Starbucks in NYC). But his encyclopedic knowledge of late night TV began to shine when he started "The Carson Podcast," a 400 episode love letter to "The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson," in which he interviewed many people involved in its production - from the guy who held the curtain for 20 years, to legends like Carol Burnett, Jimmy Buffett, Brooke Shields, Mel Brooks, and Michael J. Fox.Recently, Mark launched a new podcast called "Inside Late Night," which covers the generation of comedy that came after Carson — "Saturday Night Live," David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, "The Daily Show," and more. His candid and meticulous conversations with the writers and performers who've made us laugh for decades often unearth showbiz stories that have never been told before.Mark joins Matt to discuss why viral videos don't pay the bills, getting deep and personal with podcasts, the savvy way he gets into celebrity inboxes, being mistaken for Stephen Colbert, getting Lorne Michaels' autograph, and that time Adam Sandler gave him his phone number.Subscribe to "Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff" wherever you get podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-late-night-with-mark-malkoff/id1745253634This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepodJoin our Discord community! https://discord.gg/influencepodCall the show and leave a message: (347)-871-6548Email me with guest & trivia suggestions! influencepod69@gmail.com (NOICE) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mike Johnston was living the dream. His band was signed to a major label. He was touring the world, playing for thousands of adoring fans, and making good money. But something was missing.He didn't know what, until a friend told him how happy he looked when he was teaching drums, rather than performing. That's when he figured out he has an "educator's soul." So he stepped back from the band and taught drums full time. It was exhausting, and this income potential was capped by the hours in the week. To make up for a lesson, he recorded a session and dumped it onto a fledgling website called "YouTube." That's where everything changed.Today, Mike's drum instruction videos reach millions of curious enthusiasts and dedicated musicians. He uses YouTube and his website to teach exponentially more people than he could possibly address with in-person lessons alone. Back in 2006/2007, he risked his entire career to build drum education the way *he* wished he could learn. The big unknown was whether others wanted it, too. (Narrator: They did.)This week, Matt sits down with Mike to discuss the fascinating evolution of online music lessons, where he gets his inspiration for new lessons, why he never watches other drum lesson videos, and why he's not afraid of AI taking his job.Check out Mike's Lessons to learn more: https://www.mikeslessons.com/This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepodJoin our Discord community! https://discord.gg/influencepodCall the show and leave a message: (347)-871-6548Email me with guest & trivia suggestions! influencepod69@gmail.com (NOICE)Follow me:🐤https://twitter.com/Matt_Silverman📸 https://www.instagram.com/matt_silverman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Fake news,” conspiracy theories, and click-bait are no stranger to all our Internet feeds. When we spot it, we may block an account or kindly refer a relative to a more reputable source. But what about the misinformation we can’t even see? Specifically, content in other languages, created for online communities we can’t possibly access?For the relatively small community of Vietnamese-speaking immigrants in the U.S., there are almost no reliable media outlets to serve news in their native language. And strange entities have sprouted up to fill the void, often mixing far-right conspiracies with legitimate news to create “information disorder,” a particularly insidious brand of propaganda.This week on INFLUENCE, investigative data journalist and journalism professor Lam Thuy Vo joins Matt to discuss the complexities of consuming a balanced news diet in the Vietnamese-American community. She has written numerous pieces for The Markup (a non-profit tech journalism site) about the “Languages of Misinformation,” and a mysterious YouTuber who produces a shocking amount of very dubious Vietnamese-language “news.” Who is she? Who is behind her channel? And what’s the goal?Lam also profiles a heroic Vietnamese-American grandmother who took it upon herself to translate reputable news sources to combat the misinformation she was seeing in her community’s social media bubbles. These forces paint a picture of a very complicated voting block that – if misinformed by the Internet – can significantly impact local and national elections.Their wide-ranging discussion goes deep on what it means to be media literate in a world of deepfakes, AI, and algorithms that care very little for languages that are not English.Read Lam’s extraordinary work here: https://themarkup.org/languages-of-misinformation/2024/05/22/the-inside-story-of-the-youtube-influencer-who-peddles-misinformation-to-vietnamese-communitieshttps://themarkup.org/people/lam-thuy-voAnd follow her here: https://x.com/lamthuyvoThis show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepodJoin our Discord community! https://discord.gg/influencepodCall the show and leave a message: (347)-871-6548Email me with guest & trivia suggestions! influencepod69@gmail.com (NOICE)Follow me:🐤https://twitter.com/Matt_Silverman📸 https://www.instagram.com/matt_silverman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices