Zach Sang On The Future Of Radio

Zach: The Daily Talk Show.

Tommy: It's a daily talk show and we're in Los Angeles.

Josh: And yeah, we're in someone else's studio. I feel like we've just gatecrashed.

Tommy: Yeah, Zach Sang. You can— you'll be able to see if you're watching the video, there is a massive illuminated sign.

Zach: Yes.

Tommy: Or projection. Uh, thank you for, for having us.

Zach: It makes me feel so good when I see my name in a light on a wall. It's just, it's just something about it.

Josh: Well, if you don't catch that one, there is one there, there, there, there, there. Oh, that's Westwood.

Zach: You got How do? It's so disgustingly littered with my name. They clearly had no other creative vision for the room. But by the way, I feel like that's what people do, right? Especially when it comes to like radio studios or any sort of like studio. When you have no creative vision, you kind of just put the logo to your thing everywhere.

Tommy: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think that like the daily talk show, we do put it everywhere as well.

Josh: It's on my t-shirt right now.

Tommy: I know. I felt like it was a bit much if we all were wearing it, so I decided to do something different.

Josh: Two for three.

Tommy: Yeah, Mr. 97's wearing it as well. But Zach, You, in my eyes, is one of the best interviewers. You've done over 10,000. Shut up. You've done over 10,000 interviews, which is ridiculous.

Zach: Yeah. Some of which, like probably a couple hundred at least in this room and on the couch that you're sitting on right now. By the way, this is very weird. I've never done somebody else's show in my studio.

Josh: To be honest, dude, I thought I said to Josh, If he lets us do it in his studio, that's a massive compliment.

Tommy: It's a big deal.

Josh: Because I mean, I don't know, we— I mean, now we have to— if you come to Australia, you can have our studio, let's say that much. But I understand that it's your safe space. I mean, Josh is sitting where Ariana Grande was. Which side was Miley?

Zach: Miley was right side as well. So I'm not going to lie, you're in the camera spot, Josh.

Tommy: Okay, thank you.

Zach: So you're where most of the celebrities end up sitting because we shoot it right from this corner to my right. And yeah, you're in the prime spot.

Josh: So what am I on?

Zach: Uh, you sat there.

Tommy: The drummer spot.

Zach: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big band. The one that doesn't talk as much.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah.

Zach: Because where you are, Tommy. Okay. Or Kesha's boot, which she chose to spread out.

Tommy: Did she?

Josh: Mate, compliments on the couch. It's very comfortable.

Zach: Which is crazy because it's a couch that literally was salvaged from our dumpster.

Tommy: Really?

Zach: Engineer Craig found this couch in our dumpster. When he found it, the actual bottom was fallen through. Yeah, so if you were to sit in it, it like literally hit the bottom. There was no support. He had to put in planks of wood to support it. We fixed it once, and then there was somebody who works here, another engineer. They used to allow their kids— and they're not really kids, they're like mid to late 20s, adults— they would let their grown adult children come to work with them on the weekends and turn my studio into their video game haven. And they would literally sit on the couch and turn the TVs behind me into video game stations.

Josh: Now I get it, it would be comfortable doing this.

Zach: Oh yeah, yeah, it was so comfortable until one of the bigger guys broke the couch and literally sat on the couch playing video games. The whole thing caved in.

Tommy: Yeah.

Zach: And then Engineer Craig for a second time had to come in and resurrect the couch. He had bloody fingers. So no pressure.

Tommy: No LAN parties going forward.

Zach: Yeah. Please do not play video games in my studio. But know that where you're sitting right now, it's woven with the blood of engineer Craig Fingers.

Tommy: You can smell it. It's great.

Josh: Or is that the dog?

Zach: He farts really bad. I'm so sorry.

Tommy: No, that's fine.

Josh: Zach's dog is in here. He's not just talking about some guy in the corner farting.

Zach: Some name Louie who farts.

Tommy: Sorry. You're a radio geek. What was your first home studio like? Describe that.

Zach: It was my room, okay, oh, great question. It was my bedroom, I had an IKEA desk. At first, I used a very crappy microphone. I was able to get one great, by great I mean crappy professional standards great when it comes to just a little kid trying to figure it out. I saved up my money, was able to spend like $120 on a USB microphone, and I just put that on a stand, and it was me facing a wall, and behind me was a poster of a monkey wearing headphones,— and that is in one of my first quote-unquote promotional pictures for my radio show, and it was all done on one laptop. I didn't even really need a board at first because I started on a platform called BlogTalkRadio, and what BlogTalkRadio was, was anybody who had an internet or a phone line had the ability to pretty much set up a radio show. What YouTube was for video, this was for radio. So you really didn't need a lot to get it done. But dude, I mean, I tried to make it feel such like a legitimate radio studio. I remember when I was able to find like one of those arms on the internet, like one of these arms here, but like a crappier version.

Josh: Definitely not the Michael Adams.

Zach: I mean, yeah, I don't know.

Tommy: Super squeaky every time.

Zach: It's so like, it's hard to put those shows I did from my bedroom, like it's hard to even think about them because they were real radio. And I meet kids every now and then who started listening to my show back 12 years ago. It's just hard to think of those as like legitimate real times, but the truth is like they were. And I mean, I used that USB mic plugged into Skype connected to my BlogTalkRadio dashboard, you know, 4 times a week at 7 PM for a year and a half.

Josh: I mean, people struggle starting anything 12 years ago. You're pretty young. What was the catalyst to actually start and why doing radio? Why the radio thing for you?

Zach: Tommy, it was like friends, man. I had, I had no friends and I felt very misunderstood when I was younger, younger. When I was in middle school, I had so much fun with my best friend at the time creating a party DJ company. We'd go around and we'd DJ all of the middle school Catholic school dances. So we do the 8th grade dances, we do like the graduation parties. I mean, anything that was like everything from like bingo nights, whatever a Catholic school in our area of New Jersey needed, we were there to DJ. And I just remember the thrill and the escape I had in helping somebody else put on a stellar party and the fun I had in helping people escape through music and community, which by the way, like that is an 8th grade party, that is a graduation party. What What is it? It's like you're leaving your troubles at the door, you're having food, you're hanging out with people you care about, and you're listening to music. And in that moment, you really get an idea of like what music does to the human body and how it makes somebody feel and the transition from song to song. I loved doing that in middle school so, so much. And then when I started like getting older, I just, I felt, I lost my best friend. We ended up not being best friends as time went on. And I feel, I started to feel very misunderstood because I also I also remember at the same time while I was trying to do the party DJ thing, I started a YouTube channel with my friends, my neighbours at the time, and I remember overhearing them, we were trying to shoot a YouTube video and I remember overhearing them say something like, I think Zach's just, his ideas are too over the top. They're just, they're not good. They're not like, whatever he's trying to do, it's just not right.

Tommy: Very extra, as they would say.

Zach: Yes, that's what they were saying, it was extra.. And in that moment I was like, fuck, man, I feel very misunderstood by people I thought understood me. Mm-hmm. And that's how I started making a transition into finding friends and community in anything that was public. And if YouTube wasn't gonna be my thing, I always had this longing, this longstanding affection and appreciation for radio and the role that radio had played in my life from even earlier. And by the way, like, the time I'm talking about right now was like middle school to like freshman year of high school. You know, that transition, which for me was very intense because I went from a school of only 80 kids to a school of 2,800 kids, and nobody knew me. So feeling like the people I held the closest to me, my two friends Paul and George back, they were my neighbours growing up, like the second I felt like they didn't understand me was the second I needed to find somebody who did. And for a lot of kids during that time period, YouTube became an outlet. And for me, it just ended up becoming radio. And I, I turned to radio for a friend. Like, that's, that's the simplest answer to your story— to your question, I'm sorry— was I just needed a friend, and it's turned into a friendship that I never could have imagined.

Tommy: What do you think are some of the things that you can bring to YouTube and online that is unique to radio.

Zach: So the biggest thing with radio in America for the longest time has been this— I don't know if homogenization is the right word, but it's like very much manufactured. It's very much the same records every 42 minutes, every hour. Jocks only talk for this little amount of time. They only do this, they only do that. And the thing with creating anything on the internet was there are no rules. Conversation and authenticity is what reigns supreme. Being an actual human is what matters. By the way, radio was the original form of social networking, in my opinion. Calvin Coolidge first used radio fucking back then to get the word out. What is social media now? Like, some of the greatest radio shows of all time are built off of one guy saying something and then a tonne of other people calling in. What is fucking Twitter?

Tommy: Right?

Zach: You tweet something and then you just wait for people to respond to you. Everybody has the potential to host their own version of a radio show. So what I realised really quickly back— so just in a brief— I moved out of my bedroom about a year and a half to 2 years into making radio, and I go to this digital radio startup, and it's just a whole different way of thinking. It was taking traditional radio and matching it, mixing it with this digital mindset of There are no rules. It's the Wild West. Quality matters. User experience matters. Like, all things that radio hadn't really thought about for a long time. You know, even how, like, we would get commercials across. Like, we were just rethinking all of that. So creating digital radio, I've— that's what my whole FM radio show is built on. Like, nothing has really changed. Yeah, the only thing that's changed are my mechanics of my show. Like, I name-check and I tease forward, but it's the same authenticity, it's the same no rules, it's literally the same everything. But it's exactly what radio was missing. Radio was missing authenticity. Radio got very used to having 40-year-old men balding in bowling shirts trying to relate to 16-year-old females.

Tommy: Yeah.

Zach: And it just— there's no way that works. In the online age, people want Everything. People want to know who you are from all sides, you know? And even now, like, artists, people who make music, the audience demands a deeper relationship, a deeper understanding of who they are. And a radio is a companion medium. It's a friend by nature. Your ears are so delicate. I mean, what is a conversation? What are your ears? I mean, when you think about who you let access to that sort of stuff, like, that's a personal relationship, and that's what radio is. So the second that I think people realised that they couldn't keep up with what this authentic generation required was the second that, like, they gave in to the corporate mandates of 5-second talk breaks, play the same song every hour, no personality, read this line.

Tommy: Do you get what I'm saying?

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. And so we've been trying to sort of figure out the landscape here in LA. Australia's got quite a strong radio understanding. I did a couple of years on radio in a town called Shepparton where they, you know, a bunch of these rural or like sort of regional towns have their own sort of breakfast show. And so I hosted the breakfast show and then the nighttime show or the afternoon was syndicated from the bigger city. For Westwood One, the company, this building we're in, how does it fit into the American radio landscape?

Zach: So it supplies quality content to radio stations who need it while at the same time having the potential to fill 24 hours worth of programming for signals that require it. Westwood One is like a, Westwood One is a one-stop shop for all things content to fill any sort of radio station you may have. From the NFL and getting sports games on your sports radio stations to if you have a pop radio station and you need a nighttime radio show because you either have to cut costs or the radio show that's been in there before us isn't doing what it needs to do. Westwood One has the ability to fill it. You know, Westwood One is just a— it's a vehicle to get great content out to radio stations and to radio groups who need it. That's what we are. The one thing that I think is really cool that Australia does, and I hope that they keep this, is a local morning show. I— you know, syndication is changing radio as a whole, but it's not a negative thing. At least here in the States, it shouldn't be seen as a negative thing. A lot of times, there's a lot of content that we have the ability to generate every day that a local radio show may not have the potential to do that. Plus, we also have the ability to connect and relate and do all the things that a great radio show that's in a community has the ability to do. And I think national radio, the right sort of national radio, has the ability to work its way within a radio station where the two work together for each other. Do you get what I'm saying?

Tommy: Yeah, yeah.

Zach: I believe in local morning shows. Totally. 100%. I don't wanna, like, people deserve to wake up with their neighbors. They also deserve to go to sleep with their neighbors. I'm just as much as somebody's neighbour in Fort Wayne, Indiana as the morning show in Fort Wayne, Indiana. We're all human beings at the end of the day. We all share this planet. We all share this country. We all drive on the same roads. We all have pasts, presents, and futures.

Tommy: Yeah.

Zach: Do you get what I'm saying?

Tommy: Yeah, absolutely. Did you find that in your hometown, did you feel limited with where you could go with your career?

Zach: I was so lucky, man, because I grew up right outside of Manhattan. I grew up 25 miles outside of it. And I don't know, there's like growing up outside of New York made it seem like anything was possible. Yeah, because I just had to figure out how to get there and I couldn't drive for most of the beginning of my radio career. So it was like taking trains in weird places and taking the fucking bus at the in the middle of the night, like just weird stuff. Sorry, just started my dog and I had a fear that he stopped breathing.

Tommy: He's very relaxed.

Josh: Push him with my foot.

Tommy: No, I think he's alive. He's fine.

Josh: Do you think? He's just relaxed.

Zach: He's like living this.

Josh: He's just living the life here.

Zach: I love him.

Josh: So did you— one thing we've sort of grasped a sense over here is that you can think big and there's a chance of hitting big growing up, going to school. Is that what the other kids are thinking? Are you thinking I can make it in Hollywood?

Zach: I think now it's different. I think my generation of millennials, a lot of my peers followed by the traditional rulebook, which was you go to school, you go to college, you do well on your SATs, then you go to college, then you get a job, you pay off your debt, whatever. Like, that's, that's the path. Then there were a few people within my generation, and I— maybe I'm one of them, maybe I'm not, only history will be able to tell that story— that went against that grain and made it clear to the generation that was coming next that they could do it too. And I think people like that are Ariana Grande, the David Dobrik of the world, anybody who is successful today that said, yo, I'm not going to do what society has laid out in front of me. I'm gonna do what I feel in my heart, and I'm gonna follow my passion and follow what I feel like I'm good at and destined to do. And the internet has changed the world because everybody has the ability to get out there and do something. You know, before Ariana Grande was Ariana Grande, she was filming videos on YouTube singing covers. Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes— I mean, there's so many people that have that have shown the generations that are coming up what they can do with this technology that they're now born into. We weren't born into this phone and to YouTube. We had to figure this out. We had to say, yo, people who want me to go right, right is not the direction for me. I have something new to figure out, and left is where I want to go.

Josh: Well, these are all self-starters. Do you feel a sense of you got lucky by— I mean, you love the thing, right? You decided to turn on the microphone and start recording your own internet radio show. But it's also like, imagine if you didn't do that. Do you have those moments where you're like, fuck, imagine if I didn't just— if you didn't have a USB microphone, if you didn't want to find the friends, you know, find that community.

Zach: Yeah, I wasn't lonely as fuck having a terrible existence in a grocery store. And you're right. Like, I I don't, it's weird, I don't think about those moments because I genuinely, with every fibre of my being, I feel like I was destined to do what I'm doing. I feel like I was meant to do this. And maybe that's a fucked up way to think, but I don't know if there's anything else I can do. And as I progress in this world, it becomes even more and more clear to me that this is what I've been meant to do. I meet people all the time who are more famous than me, different types of influencers, whatever, and everybody is talking about like, ah, you know, I don't want to interview people, I don't want to do that. Everybody wants to be the star. Everybody wants to— everybody wants to be the focus. Everybody wants to be the centre of attention. And at the end of the day, All I want to do is be able to live my life with people I care about over the radio, and that's my audience and my friends in the studio. And I also want to be the vehicle for people's stories. I want to be the eyes and the ears for the normal person who's just hanging out at home or driving in their car. Nobody really wants to do that. It's not cool to be that guy.

Tommy: Isn't it funny? Look, but I feel like it's changing. I think podcasting You know, obviously it's been around for a bunch of time. I remember like 2005, the This Week in Tech and all that sort of like the Leo Laportes and all that sort of thing and consuming Dignation, all these different podcasts. It feels like this is a new generation of podcasting that started in the last 2 years where it's gone a little bit mainstream. What, what's your relationship with the mainstream.

Zach: What is the mainstream anymore?

Tommy: Yeah, well, that's what I'm trying to figure out. I guess there is—

Josh: I think it's more confusing over here too because there's Westwood One. We don't have something like this.

Zach: Yeah, but anybody can do a podcast. What's gonna— anybody has the ability to grab a mic and do it. By the way, like, again, that's the difference, like what I was talking about in the generational differences, right? Millennials had to forge it and figure it out, whereas now there's a whole template. They sell kits on how to podcast within 10 minutes. You know, anybody can get a podcast up and running, literally anybody. So I think it's amazing, but what it's gonna end up doing is the cream is going to have to start rising to the top. But at the same time, How do you do? But does the cream rise to the top? Is that what you determine as a mainstream podcast? Do you get what I mean?

Tommy: Yeah. Yeah. Do you? Well, it's a thousand true fans. It's like finding your audience. Like, do you find— because in some ways the people that you have on, you have the biggest stars in the world on your show.

Josh: Which side was Bieber? Which side? That side? Is that side?

Zach: No couch for Bieber. He was in a chair.

Tommy: I'm sorry. And so there's part of that, which is like when you have of the big A-listers that you have on, that does lean towards—

Zach: That's mainstream, I guess.

Tommy: Yeah. And so like, because that would be interesting because there's almost a bit of pressure there, which is like if you go on YouTube and you type in Justin Bieber, you're watching, you know, people are watching your interviews, which the pressure is on where I feel like podcasts, certain podcasts have the ability depending on what it is, you can build a podcast for anything. Yeah.

Zach: Anybody and everybody can find their audience. Right, which you did state, and I think that's the most important thing, is like the most niche podcast— if you have an idea, you got to go for it. But don't get discouraged if your podcast is not being heard by millions of people, hundreds of thousands of people. If you have a concept, go for it. If it's about, you know, ninjas, I'm telling you, there's other people out there that want to talk about ninjas with you.

Tommy: Yeah.

Zach: Or if it's, I don't know, about dog's paws, there's people who will discuss at length The paws of dogs. Do it if you feel passionate about it.

Tommy: Do you find that you're in a time that because there's so much change, I mean, if you go on YouTube, there's not many people that have the studio that you have, the production value. Do you feel the pressure of this is a unique opportunity where no one's fucking doing this and I can cement our position in this?

Zach: Dude, I believe that nobody is ever gonna be able to do interviews the way we do interviews because we come at it very uniquely. I think great radio shows can never be duplicated because what is a great radio show if not the lives of people that are on mic? Unless you're gonna start living in my footsteps and wearing my clothes, our shows are gonna be different. You don't look at a conversation and an interviewee or a subject— nobody's gonna look at it the way I'm gonna look at it because it's fueled by my experiences. It's fueled by the way I communicate, which I do believe is unique to what we do. So, to your point, I believe we have something here that is very unique and very different, but unique in a way that is not revolutionary. Interviews have been around since the beginning of time, and guess what? The way we're all gonna find out that the world is officially over is most likely through an interview. One guy asking another person, hey, What's going on with our planet?

Tommy: It'll be a Zach Sang Show exclusive.

Zach: If we're only so lucky. So I don't know if it's— I just, I feel like we have a duty to keep interviews cool and to keep injuries relevant to entirely new generation of people. And I also have an obligation, I feel, to keep radio relevant to a whole generation of people. So as long as we're doing those two things, then we're doing our job right. But I do believe that there is a lot of pressure because right now, a lot of people look at us as a very trusted source for information. And the truth is, everybody out there doesn't watch every single interview we do. They come to us for the people they care about, but when they come, they're expecting the best. They're expecting to get to know that person on a really human level in ways that nobody else can bring it out. That's just the truth. And that is a lot of pressure, man. So—

Josh: I mean, that's external pressure. What about internal pressure for you? What do you— are you hard on yourself?

Zach: I mean, yes and no. Yes, totally. I watch my own interviews and I do— I give myself a tonne of notes. There was like— One of the biggest, most impactful notes that was like, I realised that I was saying, yeah, and it was a realisation that came maybe a year ago, year and a half ago. And it was like, you don't need to verbally cue someone that you care. You can, you know, I don't need to tell somebody that I'm focused into what they're saying. I can show that I'm into it.

Tommy: Which you only, you only work out when you have a mic because you'll constantly do it in a conversation. It's not until you hear yourself back where it's like, and you're trying to get a snippet.

Zach: Yeah.

Tommy: And he's fucking saying yes. It's like, yeah, I can't use this snippet.

Zach: Great. Yeah, yeah, polluting every fucking thing. Yeah, it's annoying. You're right, you got to listen back. So yeah, but the other thing too is like, uh, I want to— it's hard to prep for so many interviews in a week, and right now we do 4, 3 to 4. We want to up that to 5 or 6. So it's more about being able to churn out a lot of Mm-hmm. Because that's the other thing too, is like when guests come on, we get a lot of guests because they watch other celebrities do interviews. Like Diplo comes on after watching Justin Bieber, or Logic comes on after watching Big Sean. Like, like there's a lot of hype, and then an artist comes on and then they come on again. It's like they want you to ask great questions, they want you to know things about them that nobody else is gonna pull out, and it's like, dude, It's a lot of pressure and a lot of prep that goes into that type of stuff.

Josh: And then so I mean, there's some of the big names. Is there you as a host that's looking to see who could pop or who's coming up that you, that you want to sort of support?

Zach: Always. Because always. Alec Benjamin is an incredible artist. If you haven't heard of him, you need to cheque him out. He is an incredible storyteller, one of the greatest storytellers of my generation. And, uh, He's amazing. He's just superb. And he was an artist that came on the show for the first time like a year ago, but I had met him maybe 2 and a half years ago playing at a coffee shop, and now he's touring all over the world. Incredible artist, had a hit, "Let Me Down Slowly." I mean, there's a lot of artists that— we have an obligation in radio to stay a tastemaker. It's the only way we continue to keep music relevant and allow for new artists to rise, you know? So you need to keep your ear to the freaking ground and understand what's going on and be able to, when you hear a great record, feel compelled to share it and also feel obligated to share it. Because I'm a firm believer in pop radio has a tendency to sound very much the same, and pop radio has an obligation to to really be a mix of all of the different records from all the different genres. Like, it's popular for a reason. We're pulling from all the different genres to create one— not cohesive, but one sound of the now. That's pop's job. And when music sounds too much the same, your brain kind of tunes out, you know? If all the BPMs are around the same, like, you don't register the difference. We have an obligation to search out music that is different. So if we have a playlist right now that is too rhythm-heavy or too electronic-heavy, we need to seek out live instruments. You know, we should look for music that might lean more alternative or slower songs like Lewis Capaldi. I mean, there's a lot of— we have an obligation to stay different, to stay fresh. And yeah, I keep my ear out there. You got to, like, fuck.

Tommy: Yeah. What was your first month like in LA?

Zach: Terrible. Lonely. Lonely. I moved here 5 years ago. It sucked, man. LA's a very lonely place, I think. I think. I don't know. Like, maybe it's insula— it's isolating and insulating because I make it that way.

Tommy: Well, radio, like, I feel like I feel like I've got a radio brain. I feel like a bit of a misfit. I think a lot of radio people feel like, like there's something comfortable about being behind a mic. In a studio and not having to be at parties and not being amongst all that sort of stuff. Did you— how does that fit in with the LA lifestyle?

Zach: It's like weird. If I brought Dan in here and I, if I, and I gave my answer that I believe is genuine, Dan would be like, you're lying. You love attention. You love all these things. The truth is I hate parties and I don't dig that vibe, but it is a part of the way it works here. At least. And you do got to get out there and meet people and network. But at the same time, I've also reached this weird place where I believe that our work is good enough. And if our work is good enough and stays to this level and beyond, it will touch the eyes that it needs to touch. And we don't need to network as much because, dude, I used to not turn down a single invitation.

Tommy: So what was the first month like then? So it was lonely. What were you actually doing? Did you have In-N-Out a bunch?

Zach: Yeah, ate a lot of In-N-Out, ate a lot more Del Taco, to be honest.

Tommy: I haven't had Del Taco. I've just gone vegetarian because I watched Game Changers, that great documentary.

Zach: Do you like the meatless lifestyle?

Tommy: It's harder because normally, do you know Dickies here in the US? Like, there's this— it's like McDonald's, but like barbecue. It's fucking delicious. I'm sure it's trash.

Zach: It's definitely trash.

Tommy: But I love it. Yeah, but there's— I feel like when I come to the US, I'm always having barbecue, and so it's been different having to get like beans and like— like, I love Mexican food, so it's just getting the veggie option.

Zach: So let's talk— let's talk about you for a second. So how long have you been a vegetarian?

Josh: How many?

Tommy: I mean, it's been 3 weeks. It's early days.

Zach: I've been a vegetarian for 5 years.

Tommy: Oh really?

Zach: Yeah, I love meatless lifestyle.

Tommy: Okay.

Zach: Because we're in a The golden age of vegetarianism, my friend. Yeah, we have the ability to get meat that tastes like meat that isn't meat.

Josh: We only are just getting that in Australia. Yeah, like the Impossible Burger stuff, non-existent. It's coming. We've got something that's similar, but we had the Impossible Burger the other day.

Tommy: I feel like it fucked with my shit though. Like, I feel like I was like, what smells like funky? And I was thinking like, and there was no dog around.

Zach: By the way, that's called healthy.

Tommy: Yeah, exactly.

Zach: That's what it smells like to have normal bowel movements. How does that feel?

Tommy: Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting— I mean, I'm still getting used to the American toilets as well, so that could be part of it.

Zach: So watch out, might suck you in. By the way, like, it is crazy. I have a lot of Australian friends, and by a lot, I feel like I have a lot, but probably they all hate me. You guys get everything so slow because it takes so long to get things to you.

Josh: It's only because Americans complain about the 14-hour flight.

Tommy: It takes a long time.

Josh: It's a long flight.

Zach: But, but like, booze for you guys is so expensive.

Tommy: Yeah.

Zach: Unless it's made in Australia.

Josh: Yeah. And still then it's— everything's going to It's taxed. Yeah, we have a really high tax for alcohol.

Tommy: It's because we get— the Australians get pretty loose.

Josh: Yeah, don't give them.

Zach: What about Guy Sebastian? Is he still cool down there?

Tommy: Yeah, he's great.

Josh: He's awesome. He's been on the show. Has he? No, on your show.

Zach: Oh, he's been.

Josh: Yeah, he's been on your show.

Zach: Yeah.

Josh: I mean, I remember coming here 2012. Great year.

Zach: Heyday.

Josh: Peak 2012. It was amazing. It was Battle Scars. I just remember hearing that song playing everywhere.

Tommy: Well, I was— I used to be digital content producer for a show called Fifi and Jules, and they did a—

Zach: I know them.

Tommy: Yeah, well, they did the big— I filmed the Ed Sheeran Passenger No Diggity cover. Do you remember?

Zach: Yeah.

Tommy: And the thing is, like, an honour to be in your presence, viral superstar. That Zoom, that was me. Yeah.

Zach: Really good hands.

Tommy: No, but yeah, I remember it was also— there was another song it felt like that was Popping. He did one like around gold because it was around the Olympics.

Josh: But he's great.

Zach: Yeah, I love him.

Josh: You can't not love the guy.

Zach: I always wonder where he's at. I was just going to pull up a guy.

Tommy: Well, he's lean as fuck now. He's been like, he was on Men's Health or whatever, doing all of that.

Josh: Good Christian boy.

Tommy: Yeah. So what do you, what do you eat? What do you like? What's your— on the veggie? Yeah, on the veggie thing.

Zach: Oh, I eat a lot of fake meat, bro. A lot of Impossible, a lot of this brand called Gardein.

Tommy: Do you like black beans?

Zach: Yeah, black people do.

Josh: Is it good for you though? Like, yeah, the Impossible Meat. Like, it's— what's in it?

Zach: Well, it's like scientific.

Josh: Yeah, it's science.

Zach: You don't really ask what's in your meat.

Josh: Nah, nah, true, true.

Tommy: It's really rude.

Zach: Only a fool would think that what's in your meat is actually meat.

Josh: No, I think, uh, I think people who eat meat don't think too much.

Tommy: That's why. Yeah.

Josh: Um, just on the networking thing, living in the city, because we've met like cab drivers, people at Whole Foods, everyone seems like they're grinding. They want to get there.

Zach: They all got to scrim.

Josh: And so what's the— I could imagine that first sort of period of time you're here, the mindset is I need a network, network, network.

Zach: Here was my mindset. Do a great radio show because the transition between us coming from New York to here. So in a nutshell, I go from my bedroom to this internet radio startup called Goom. Then I go to Nickelodeon. I worked for Nickelodeon for like 2 and a half years.

Tommy: So what were you doing at Nickelodeon? I was like, I was Nick's Orange Carpet.

Zach: So like, uh, I did Worldwide Day of Play, Choice Awards. It was like movie vignettes. It was called interstitial programming.

Tommy: Did you ever get slimed?

Zach: No, but I slimed somebody.

Tommy: Okay, great.

Zach: Uh, and I watched a lot of people get slimed.

Josh: Michelle Obama. Drake Bell. Did you get him?

Tommy: No.

Zach: Drake wishes I slimed him.

Josh: I once went to a Hollywood Hills party and then went back to Drake's place with a bunch of people.

Zach: Oh, excuse me.

Josh: No, the thing, the thing, me and my mate were laughing so hard because all on on the wall was the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards.

Tommy: And we're just like, this is so funny. Look at them all.

Josh: I mean, there was a lot of them. I'll give him that.

Tommy: What was that show?

Zach: That's the only award he's ever won.

Tommy: What was that Nickelodeon show where the people would have to climb up the thing and you'd get the mountain like a big—

Zach: Legends of the Hidden Temple.

Tommy: Yeah, it was. Now I'm trying to think of the name. There was—

Zach: Wasn't Legends of the Hidden Temple?

Tommy: No, it wasn't that one. It was the one where it was like a glow in the dark. Like it was like mid-'90s. I can't remember. It's going to fucking annoy me. Guts.

Zach: Oh, do you remember Guts? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tommy: That was great. And so you did 2 years in Nickelodeon.

Zach: Sorry, I missed it. By the way, that's the Nickelodeon— there was a couple Golden Ages Nickelodeon. The era that you just—

Tommy: The Amanda Show.

Zach: Amanda Show, Drake and Josh, and iCarly and Victorious. I don't know where it's at right now. I don't really follow it.

Tommy: Kenan and Kel. Who loves orange soda?

Zach: I do, I do, I do. I love him so much. And he's on Dancing with the Stars now, Kel Mitchell.

Tommy: Oh really?

Zach: He's killing it. He has a whole— he's thriving.

Tommy: Yeah.

Zach: I was at Nickelodeon, did the orange carpet thing, worked within the offices for a while, and then I ended up starting an independent FM radio show. So I took everything from digital radio, some of the stuff I learned from Nickelodeon, and I started with my same digital radio crew that was at Goon with me, I started an independent FM radio show. So we started a radio show and then we would literally go to each individual programme director at all these different radio stations across the country and we'd be like, hey, are you looking for a night show? Because we got a night show for you.

Tommy: So what do people pay for syndication? Like, what's like a range?

Zach: It's barter.

Tommy: Okay. Yeah, sure.

Zach: We, we have inventory, so we get commercial time every hour.

Tommy: And so then you have to sell the commercial time. Yeah.

Zach: So we sell the commercial time.

Tommy: Yeah.

Zach: And we have to sell to get on the radio station.

Josh: Are you getting on the phone calling? Yes.

Zach: Oh, it was me and this one other woman who's one of my best friends, Liz LaMont. We tag teamed it. It was pretty cool because you have a script.

Tommy: What was the—

Zach: No script. Passion, baby.

Josh: Passion.

Zach: Passion and authenticity, which, by the way, has been like the, the thickest common thread through everything I've ever done. I don't feel like I I think I'm very lucky to genuinely feel like the same me sits behind this mic is the same exact person that like talks to you.

Tommy: Makes it so easy, doesn't it?

Zach: Oh my God, I'm so fucking blessed, dude. I'm so— it's the greatest blessing.

Tommy: Yeah.

Zach: Which by the way, back to what we were talking about earlier, further heightens why I really believe that I was meant to do this because I'm just myself. Like I don't need to put anything on.

Tommy: Yeah. It's too hard otherwise.

Zach: Totally. And also, like, people know.

Tommy: Yeah.

Zach: People in this day and age, people know.

Tommy: Yeah, definitely.

Zach: That's it. So I know this is a jumbled mess.

Tommy: No, this is good. No, this is how we do it. We end up— we love, we love a good tangent. So you, when it comes— did you need funding, like, to start the FM thing? Like, what is a license? Like, did you have to get like an FM licence or something?

Zach: I had one partner that did it with me, and then we went to this company called Dial Global at the time, which is the company that we're in now, which is Westwood One, and they came on to do like our distribution, and then they would do some of the ad sales too. But we had to pick up all the radio stations on our own. And we went from literally zero radio stations, we got our first station a week in, it was a Queen Bee radio station, Extreme 107.1, Dubuque, Iowa, and we went from zero radio stations to like 25.

Tommy: It's amazing.

Zach: And then Westwood One bought the show put us on all of the Cumulus radio stations, so it brought our total to like around 60, and then moved us out to LA. So the first month of being in LA was me— dude, we went from— my entire life are these ginormous transitions, like from elementary, middle school, it's being with 80 kids to then being with 2,800 kids. We worked in this crappy radio studio in New York doing this radio show that we got to like 25 affiliates, We worked off a board that had 3 pods, dude. We used to— when we would play music, we had to click it on a mouse to play every song. Like, we were working bare bones to nothing. And then we ended up here in LA in this radio studio that was huge with this giant board and all this new technology that we had no idea how to use. And then nobody was here to teach us any of it. We only had 4 days between when we landed and our first day that we were gonna be on 60 radio stations. So the goal was to figure out how the fuck do we go on the air?

Tommy: Yeah.

Zach: And we figured it out eventually. We got on the air, and my first month was a lot of transition. It was figuring out this whole new normal and figuring out all this new technology and this new team I had and these new programme directors and this new executive team that I had to answer to and I mean, the first month in LA was just more of understanding and learning what our new reality was gonna look like. And then from that moment on, it's been not letting LA get to me because LA is not America. LA is not the struggle that a normal person goes through. So I tried to stay away from as much of the Hollywood lifestyle as humanly possible because I don't wanna be polluted by it. Because at the end of the day, I'm just a 26-year-old dude who's a virgin, who's just trying to live life and figure it out. I'm not Hollywood. I'm a normal kid from New Jersey who just happens to live here now.

Tommy: How does LA get to you?

Zach: I mean, LA has the potential to get to a lot of people. I don't let it get to me in a sense that—

Tommy: Is it the ego? Is it the vanity?

Zach: A lot of people here are very selfish. There's no camaraderie on the streets, and it's a very isolated city from the way it's just built, right? So there's no public transportation here. I mean, there is, but nobody uses it. So right off the bat, We are— it's an insulated city. Like, we don't share anything as a city. Where when I'm in New York City, it doesn't matter who you are. You could be Sarah Jessica Parker or me. You're still getting on the subway to get around. Do you get what I'm saying? Like, that one act in a day, the fact that we all share a sidewalk.

Tommy: It's the empathy builder. Yes. Yeah.

Zach: Makes all the difference.

Josh: Well, I was thinking, like, it is a bubble, right? You look up at the hills and you see these mansions, and I was thinking, if you just live up there and you pop down or you send someone down to Whole Foods to get your groceries, you're living this like utopian life. You don't know that there's this struggle. And so it's this disconnect.

Tommy: Super lonely.

Zach: Yeah, you might be super lonely, but there's a disconnect from your reality and the actual reality that plagues America.

Josh: Yeah.

Zach: And through that, people have a tendency to just, I don't know, just forget who they are, forget that they're normal, forget that they —have a past, present, future. They live, breathe just like everybody else.

Josh: And not to mention the party lifestyle, the drugs that you see people get sucked up and spat out.

Zach: Yeah, it happens all the time. Like, you— at the end of the day, the only thing that's going to last is authenticity and being you and being, being true, but also not losing where you've come from and where you want to go. And L.A. has the ability to distract and pollute somebody's path. I just— I'm only here because there's more room for us to have a studio and my company didn't have as much real estate in New York City. That's the only reason I'm here. And so what are you—

Josh: what are you looking forward to?

Zach: I don't know. I don't know. What am I looking forward to?

Josh: As in, do you look to the future and go, this is where I want the Zach Sang Show to be, or— I don't know. I mean, I want 6 dogs.

Zach: Oh, I definitely want a lot of dogs. We gotta make money to have dogs. And then I want to give back. At the end of the day, what is radio? It's a friend, right? We have a public license. We have an obligation to serve the community and to give back to the community. I just want to make radio relevant. I want to be able to tell people's storeys and be the vehicles for people's storeys and be the eyes and ears for everybody out there., and then be able to use that to give back to the communities that we're really lucky to serve. So wherever, wherever I need to be to make all that happen is where I'll be. You know, I wish I had a more exciting answer.

Josh: I mean, what I'm gauging is you're not suffering the curse of comparison, right? Like, I think you could look to your left and see successful Jimmy over here and think, I want that. But you're kind of living in your own version of that.

Zach: There's enough for everybody. And again, like, as long— I do get annoyed sometimes where I see people and I'm like, ah, they're totally copying us, or they're trying to be like us, or whatever. That has hit me. But like, I can't stop that. And at the end of the day, that's just flattering. What we're doing works, so let me do more of what works, which is just be myself and be more researched and diligent in interviews and come up with different games to play with my friends. On the air. I mean, I don't know, like—

Josh: Well, you drop the ball looking— if you're looking at someone else's, like, you know, you're going to lose. Yeah, I don't know.

Zach: Yeah, you're right. Because you get distracted by what person number 2 is doing and then you just got to be focused on what you're doing. Just be you. I don't know. Competition is good at the end of the day because at least it keeps you not comfortable. And I do believe being comfortable is kind of like the weird kiss of death, you know, because you got to kind of stay sharp. And even though, like, even if you're not comparing yourselves to everybody else around you, you don't want to— you don't want to be lost to innovation. Do you get what I'm saying?

Tommy: How do you make— how do you make friends? Like, you were talking about the struggles younger with friendships. I'm guessing being in a new city in entertainment it can't be any easier. It's different.

Zach: I have a lot of friends I've had for a long time in entertainment that I hold very close to my heart. Like, a lot of friends that have been around for like 10 years.

Tommy: Did you have to reconcile? Like, because I know, like, working in media, people come and go, and there's this like weird, uh, friendship on air, and sometimes you're wondering like, is this trans— like, real? Is this real?

Josh: Have you ever had that? The thing you're doing is building rapport quickly. Yeah.

Tommy: And are we friends right now? Are we best mates?

Josh: I mean, we could be.

Tommy: Yeah, great.

Zach: If you want.

Josh: Yeah, that'd be fun. I'm gauging he doesn't.

Zach: I want to get to know the two of you a little bit more. Like, how did the two of you even meet?

Josh: Tinder. No, no, funny enough, I was wanting— I wanted to be a presenter, TV presenter. Okay. And my mate said to me, who was— who's a successful TV presenter back in the day, you need to pick up a camera and start filming and doing your own thing, getting out there, doing pieces to camera. And so I did that. And one of those times I was working for a friend of mine's business and I said, I'll do some presenting at this thing that you're doing.

Tommy: And Josh was the guy filming. Yeah, that would have been like 2009. So that was when we first met.

Josh: But then we sort of went off on our own journeys and I did the radio thing. Josh did filmmaking, which he'd been doing, and the digital content. And then it all sort of came back around when I left radio and wanted to be a filmmaker. And so I reached out to Josh because I knew that he did that stuff and we had a coffee together and talked about, you know, starting my own thing. And he was telling me about what he was doing.

Tommy: And I guess at the start we were talking about video and then we were seeing all YouTubers trying to do podcasts and they were really struggling to keep up the schedule. Like people drop the ball with podcasts and we're like, Fuck, like video is hard. Like it's hard for us to do video constantly and be publishing and also running, you know, businesses that have corporate clients. And so we said, okay, well, we'd been chatting every day on the phone for an hour talking about, you know, how much to charge and all those types of things. It's like, why don't we do a podcast? And then thedailytalkshow.com was available. It's like, well, it has to be daily. Because the URL told you to. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, how many things have been done purely based on domain name? Not much. And so, yeah, I mean, we've done over 500 episodes and so now we've got our business together. We have Mr. 97 full-time who works for us.

Zach: Is that your name? Is that the year you were born?

Tommy: No, it's not the year.

Josh: So in Australia, the fake year he was born because he's only 20. Yeah. And so we say he was born in '97 because that would mean he's 22.

Tommy: But no, but the actual reason is because in Victoria, in the state that we're in, in Australia, at the end of the year in year 12, you get what's known as an ATAR score or an ATAR, which is sort of like the— what do they call it?

Josh: The grades is the score you get.

Tommy: So yeah, the one score or whatever. Yeah. And Tommy didn't finish high school. I barely scraped through. But look where we are. Yeah. Mr. 97. You're in my studio. Congrats. Mr. 97 did. It was out of 100. He did very well. And so that name stuck with him. So you're the smartest of the three. Yeah, exactly.

Josh: Yeah, exactly. Smartest in the room.

Tommy: And so what's your relationship with Australian radio? What do you, what do you listen to? Love Kyle and Jackie O. Yeah, yeah.

Zach: They're amazing.

Josh: Biggest radio show in Australia.

Zach: Yeah, maybe the biggest radio show in the world. Yeah, maybe they're on their way.

Josh: Did you see Kyle had a, they had a billboard? It was Kyle's dream to get a billboard in LA. Well, they had one recently.

Zach: I don't want to fuck with him, but it was a digital billboard and anybody can have a digital billboard for a second.

Tommy: For 2 seconds. Yeah, exactly. Buy a real one, dude.

Zach: What about Aussies over here? I feel like there needs to be more. There's not enough.

Tommy: Yeah. What about us? Yeah, we should.

Zach: You want to come and do a radio show here?

Josh: It excites me hearing about the scale of this, this country. Just the 26 stations, you know, syndication like that blows my mind. I was on one radio station within Victoria of maybe 6, 4 different companies. Like, it's so small in comparison.

Tommy: But what's the, what's the cash like?

Josh: So Tommy, you're on what, $55,000?

Tommy: So that's all, that's all he got for a full-time.

Zach: Dude, you're making more than people I have on my team.

Tommy: Yeah. And so from a, from a talent point of view, is it like, do you run it like your own business or is it very much like you're an employee?

Zach: There's so many, there's so many different ways to do it. Yeah, I'm an employee. That's how it works this time around. Who knows what's gonna be in the future? But I'm not gonna lie to you, there's not a tonne of money in radio right now. Radio is suffering from a branding problem. Radio has the potential to rebrand. So what about fucking Howard Stern?

Tommy: How is it like— I mean, he's an outlier. There's—

Zach: okay, so there's two different ways to look at it, right? Yeah. Howard is an IP generator, content generator. SiriusXM creates content, they generate IP. A majority of radio here in the States is essentially putting stuff out there that is never going to be repurposed on demand. Right? Think about it. It's 95.7 The Vibe— blah, blah, blah, music.

Tommy: Yeah, just this— it's not evergreen. Well, that's one of the things you can't access it.

Zach: You don't want to have forever.

Tommy: And that's what I think that we've tried to do with the daily talk show is we have huge databases. We've transcribed every one of our 500 shows so Mr97 can pick up things that like when we were doing our highlights of episode 500, it was heaps of fun because we have all of this content that we can pull upon.

Zach: So you have to transcribe all of them?

Tommy: No, we've got it. We've got an AI. We hired a robot. Exactly. But what— how much expensive ones? So how are you thinking about that though, in regards to like IP? Why aren't you— do you feel like you're in the IP generation game? Fuck yeah. Yeah.

Zach: I mean, we— the interviews are our biggest form of IP, man. Like I, at the end of the day, those interviews are not about me. They're about the people that sit on the couch and I get a chance to talk to and get to know. And I get to know them on behalf of everybody else. Mm-hmm. They will stand the test of time. Those conversations will be around, God willing, after Mr. 97 and all of us are long gone and our kids are long gone because they help shape the way people perceive artists and get to know artists and they help write pop culture history in a sense.

Tommy: Have you thought about inserting yourself more into the— or even having not within the interviews necessarily, but their own bits where it is more about you and your life and what you're doing?

Zach: I feel like that's the next step for our YouTube channels because a lot of people want to get to know who we are. Nobody gets to know us. Nobody gets to understand my great dog Lou. Except us. Dude, he looks so beautiful right now. It's sick.

Josh: So cute. He's on my lap right now if you're listening.

Tommy: And yeah, so is it— I mean, the other thing too, when you started, you're young, you don't have much of a life to talk about. Hey, hello. For the face. So now that you're—

Zach: He just wants to lick you and give you love bites.

Tommy: Sorry. Now that you're 26, like you're starting to live more of a life. So is that part of it too, that you actually have shit to share?

Zach: Yeah, dude, my radio show is full of my entire life, my entire existence. Yeah, we're going to start shooting more of the actual radio show and putting it up on YouTube.

Tommy: That's what we're saying. Like, we don't get the— we were trying to position it all right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We were wondering, we see all the YouTube content and that's sort of the lens that we view. Is there a lot of stuff that, that's on the radio that nobody's seen?

Zach: Yeah, totally. We do 5 hours of content a night.

Josh: Really?

Zach: Yeah, dude. A lot of— we film 5 hours, 5 days, 6 days a week.

Tommy: Is that anywhere online that we can—

Zach: you can only stream it. That's the biggest thing. We're gonna— I was talking to you before about all the new cameras we're getting. Yeah, it's all gonna be like— we have a whole— behind this wall right here, there's an actual like control room, and we're gonna be able to control all the different cameras in this room. Yeah, and everything's gonna be up. We're gonna be able to shoot everything top to bottom.

Tommy: It's so hard though, isn't it? Like, did you see Bobby Bones? Like, there's a studio, new studio. It's fucking hard to do well without it feeling like a spaceship.

Zach: Bobby, I love you. And I know you tried to copy my studio and it's just too far.

Tommy: Yeah, it feels like he's too, too far away. I love him.

Zach: He's one of the greatest radio personalities in my opinion to ever exist.

Tommy: Radio geek.

Zach: He has revitalised country radio for the better. Dude, you're amazing. You probably never see this, but I feel like you know that I love you. I do love you. But the studio. Is beautiful and it sounds great. Lewis, can you be polite?

Tommy: He's fine, he's fine. He's looking cute, isn't he?

Zach: They did a great job with the studio, but the guest position is so far. Yeah. And by the way, it doesn't just look far, it feels far. Yeah.

Tommy: But do we feel far right now? No, I feel— I think it's— I feel good.

Josh: It feels good. Any further? I mean, we're used to being this close to each other, so.

Tommy: Yeah, well, the thing is, the craziness of where— what we have at the moment, because we haven't got the multi-cams in our in our studio, we're doing a little bit of neck turning, which adds, which changes the dynamic. But the dream is to be able to, you know, be able to be across and having a good conversation. You look pretty comfortable. Extremely.

Josh: Yeah. He's deactivated his core. He's sunk into this.

Tommy: Do you think about doing on-the-road shows? Like, so we're in LA at the moment. Like, do you think about, you know what, I want to do a stint in Sydney or Melbourne or Yeah, we thought about it.

Zach: We used to— so for one summer a few years ago, maybe 8 years ago, every Friday for an entire summer we did our show from a listener's house. Take the whole on-the-road setup and I would set it up myself. I was the vice president and president of video club for 3 years in high school, and that allowed me to understand like the bare requirements, the bare minimum requirements of what it takes to like set something up. Yeah. XLRs, ins and outs, and all that kind of shit. And I was able to set up our on-the-road setup in like 10, 15 minutes. And we did it, too many shows from kids' houses. And there's just a lot of variables to be honest. I don't find a thrill in doing the show from a different location and having to figure out things around you. I like being in my space and being in my universe and knowing that what I'm gonna get in my headphones are proper and I just like being in control of variables.

Tommy: What are some of those controllables? So for instance, you've got a big guest coming in.

Zach: Dude, it's everything from like smell of the room to what they're hearing to where the cameras are going.

Tommy: Do you have music pumping when they come in? No, no, no music.

Zach: Well, when they come in, we're mostly already ready to go. Have you got— who's coming in today? Nobody today. Jay Park is a K-pop star. He was supposed to come in tomorrow. Today he didn't come in. Niall Horan calls us tomorrow on the phone. This guy Eric Nam, who's another K-pop artist, he's coming by tomorrow. And then we're launching today an interview with Waterparks. They're really a cool band. They're kind of new. Yeah, speaking of new music, they're somebody that we're definitely gonna play on the radio and get out there because they're kind of very like vintage pop punk vibe that has kind of gone missing. Yeah, so yeah, we have a lot— we have a decent amount of guests coming in. We're gonna have more soon. Yeah, but to your point of like variables that need to be controlled. Yeah, it's everything, dude. It's like, where do the guests go? Who are they seeing? Where is the eyeline? Because think about it, like, everything matters in a, in a long-form conversation.

Tommy: What about the greeting? So sometimes I used to get huge amounts of anxiety if I said a hug, a handshake, a kiss. It fucking drives me crazy, dude.

Zach: I do nothing. Or like, if they— depending on the guest, like, if they come to me, I'll come— I'll sometimes like reach over like this. Fist bump. And if it's somebody that I care about, like, I'll make it known to them that, like, I'm getting up to hug you. So is it pre—

Tommy: so you won't be at the door? No. You're— okay, you're seated, you're doing the thing. Very—

Zach: like, again, like, I can— very few have I been, like, at the door to bring somebody in.

Tommy: Are you guys doing— do producers— are you guys doing phones and stuff?

Zach: Like, not during the interviews. Yeah. So the interviews are recorded separately from the actual radio show.

Tommy: Yeah, because they're long form and then you chop them up. For the, for the radio show.

Zach: But the YouTube gets it in its entirety. So it's like an hour, 40 minutes. None of the conversations are usually less than 30. Mm-hmm. So yeah, I have producers. One producer walks them in, gets them set up here. Dan is sitting here to my left. Ricky is over there kind of in the middle. And then we put their team behind us. Yeah, lovesacks, aka like beanbags.

Josh: Yeah. So it's like, was it 2:30 here in LA? What's, what's the rest of the day look like for you?

Zach: I have to go cut the countdown for tonight's show. I gotta do some promos and a couple commercials, and then we launch the radio show live at 4 o'clock West Coast, which is 7 o'clock East Coast, and then we'll go live till midnight. So I'll be here answering phone calls, running the show. So you're doing it live? A combination. Yeah, a lot of the show is recorded in the morning, then all the live phone calls, and the show is actually operated live at night. That's cool. It's a hybrid. Yeah, it's kind of complicated. Way too complicated and not as complicated as radio needs to be. But in terms of what we need to do and our current technological limitations, it's the only way to do it.

Tommy: Well, it seems exciting. It's an exciting time. It feels like in the next 5 years, you think about where podcasting is going, you see where all of this, the opportunities like smart speakers is such a tiny, tiny, tiny portion of the market, just think where it could— all of this stuff could eventually go. Dude, possibilities are endless.

Zach: Content is always going to be king. Yeah. As long as you can create great content, whether that's audible content or visual content, you will stay relevant and you're going to have a home. And I do think that over the next few years, the way radio gets to people is definitely going to change. Like, the delivery systems may change, but the integrity of the brand and the notability of the brand and the personalities that are on the radio station They're never gonna go away. Just because your local radio station in Kansas City doesn't need to go anywhere just because Wi-Fi has now entered your car. It's just that that radio station might sound a little bit clearer, a little bit better. And the brands on that radio station, I don't know, you might be able to interact with them on a deeper level. So, radio, where we're going, is incredibly exciting, at least here in America. And I feel like it's just as exciting elsewhere. To be honest, I think most radio stations in Australia sound better than radio stations here in America.

Tommy: What about radio personalities that don't like the idea of filming? Are they going to have to get used to it?

Zach: It depends on what you want to do. I think Wi-Fi in the car is the first step. Autonomous vehicles is the second step. So if you're not driving your car, why do you need to listen to something when you can watch it? And in my mind, all of these different social media platforms are just places for content to go. And if you're creating content in a studio, why not figure out how to take that one piece of content and work it to as many platforms as humanly possible?

Josh: Well, we have people who just watch snippets on Instagram of us. Yeah. But they still feel like they are consuming our show.

Zach: Totally. So why not feed them with stuff? Yeah, you have the content, it exists, so why not feed them? And by the way, like, those same people who get used to watching your Instagram stuff, they're the same people who eventually click on the link in your bio and start listening to more. Mm-hmm. So true. I feel like if you're creating content, like, why not figure out how to get that one piece of content out to as many different people as possible? In order to touch as many people as possible, you need to be on many— on as many platforms. As possible.

Tommy: So, Zac, thanks so much, mate, for coming on the show and being so generous. I've talked so much.

Zach: I'm so sorry.

Tommy: No, no, this is exactly what you're meant to do when you're a guest. How does it feel?

Zach: I hate it, to be honest. I never want to do it again. I don't do these ever. We really appreciate it. You hit me up and I'm like, I like Australian people a lot.

Josh: I was saying this morning, I reckon a year and a half's time, 2 years' time, it'll change with podcasters reaching out to people.

Tommy: We won't be able to get access. Like, yeah, it's a very unique time where it's like— Because it all would have been happening.

Josh: You would have been annoyed 50,000 times by that.

Zach: Yeah, I would be like, oh my God, you're fucking number 1,000. The question is like, what do you want for radio? What do you want for podcasts? Do you want it to be this wild west where anybody can do it? Lewis, what the heck are you—

Tommy: what is it? What is Lewis doing? I don't know. He's fine. He's fine.

Zach: What do you, what do you, what do you want? Do you want it to be a wild west where anybody can do it?

Tommy: I mean, I think similar, uh, to you I mean, the cream rises to the top. We just have to keep getting better and better. We have video production backgrounds, so that's a competitive advantage that we have. Also, we love the authenticity, so we love just being ourselves. And so it becomes a lot easier. Yeah. Part of our show is it's probably 30% guests, 70% just us. And so what we're trying to do is build in our personalities and personal brands into the whole piece of content so people don't just go listen to an interview and get annoyed at us just getting in the way of them hearing, you know, from their favourite stars.

Zach: Because that's kind of like, that's the balance, right? Like you don't want to just be an interview show, but at the same time you want people to know you for you.

Tommy: Yeah. You don't want to be so utilitarian that you could be the microphone, right? And so you do that through asking great questions and bringing your spin to it. And for us, we try and bring in our personalities. And so for the— for Alay, the past sort of 6 episodes have just been us in different locations talking about weird things that have been happening. And then, you know, next week we'll roll out a bunch of our guests, but we tend to not— we don't do that many prerecords. We normally do it every single day. Live? Yeah, we do, we do live to Instagram. We want to eventually get to the point where similar to where you're going with the PTZ stuff, like it's all dialled in. So it's, we, you can do the phone stuff or the new age version of that where it's super high fidelity. And so that's, that's where we want to, where we want to go. But we don't see, I guess the democratisation doesn't necessarily affect what we're doing because we just want to be unique and the 7 days a week whilst it's so crazy to me. Well, it's unique now, but we think that we feel like we're in a period where we have an opportunity to really like we've done 500 episodes where we haven't missed a day. And so the first we only started doing 7 days in June. So before then it was 5 days a week. But we see this opportunity. We like in Australia, I don't know what it's like in the US, but we have survey breaks where the radio shows go off air or whatever and they play best of. And we don't, we don't do that. Yeah, we just, we just keep producing more. So when it's Christmas, it's not like, like it feels like Christmas is, could be a real lonely time for some people, right?

Zach: It's not if you're listening to you guys.

Tommy: Exactly. And so that's part of it. It's like you don't have to listen to a best of.

Zach: You actually hear us So was that the goal, just to be friends with people?

Josh: Yeah, I think building a community, bringing on young mate over here, 97, and just like as we're building the audience, the people that are interacting, the friends of the show, the people who've been on the show many times that are coming back, it just, it just expands. It compounds.

Tommy: Yeah, we did an EP 500 event where we had like 70 people come to our live show. A guy, a guy a guy named Hayden who listens to the show. We've got our community is called the Gronk Squad. Have you— so a gronk, have you heard of a gronk?

Zach: I mean, like, I've heard of Rob Gronkowski. Yeah.

Tommy: So that's— I mean, he gets a lot of the search engine optimization, unfortunately. But a gronk is sort of like someone— like if you say if you finish the toilet roll and you don't empty, you don't replace the toilet roll, that's a gronk move. Or say it's like a POS.

Josh: I don't know. What's POS? Piece of shit. Yeah. Yeah. No, but the thing is, we're all gronks. We all do things. You're a gronk. Probably. You're a gronk. We all do things where we're thinking about ourselves and not others. Yeah, but we're all trying to be better. Yeah. Like we all don't want to be, but we all are. Totally get that.

Tommy: So the gronk squad. So we're gronks and so our gronk squad. But Hayden got a The Daily Talk Show tattooed last week.

Zach: Oh my God, that's a lot of pressure for you. No, that's fine.

Tommy: No, no, no, no, no.

Zach: You got to keep going. What do you—

Tommy: stop the show now. So we're planning 10 years. So we're going to do the show for 10 years. And so we're 20 months in, which 10 years—

Zach: Knock on wood. You're projecting.

Tommy: You're going to make it 10 years. Do you think about that stuff? Do you think about like 10 years' time?

Zach: Yeah, I do. And I think that it's still a long way ahead. And it's 10 years. Yeah. But I also think about things like I want to die with a microphone in my hand. So how do I do this for the next 30, 40, 20 years?

Tommy: Or you just need to walk across the road always wearing a microphone.

Zach: Yeah. Driving, holding one. You never know. No, I don't know. It's kind of interesting because like, I see a lot of people in this viral day and age, for lack of a better phrase, they like blow their load. You know, they go viral, they do ridiculous things, or interviewers ask obnoxious, gotcha questions. And those are just people not playing the long game. Yeah, absolutely.

Josh: They're just looking for a short-term burst.

Tommy: Oh, definitely. Yeah. Our whole game is trying not to blow our load. Isn't that everybody's? That's the tagline of our life. Life, I think.

Zach: You can't do— I'm holding in my load 30, 40 years right now.

Tommy: You're doing a great job.

Zach: Well, I'm actually a 26. By the way, I gotta applaud you. You've come here and had me on your show. You haven't asked about one celebrity guest I've had on, so thank you. I mean, you have, but like, not— you know how many times I've gotten the question, so who's your favourite celebrity guest, or which guests have you learned the most from? Like, it's like everything from casual conversation to like limit, you know, on the record conversations. It's the same sort of stuff. So I thank you for that. Louis, I see you chewing something.

Tommy: Louis, what are you up to? Oh my God, that's my phone. I mean, it's super— I think it's super interesting what you're doing. I think that it is that we're trying to decipher and understand this LA weird world and also being able to do this as a job, like what you've Like we haven't monetized the podcast at all. We tried to make money and we're like, we're going to give ourselves another year before we try and do that.

Zach: You're very nice people.

Tommy: And so, you know, it's amazing.

Zach: Mr. 97 is just going to work for free.

Josh: He still lives at home.

Zach: It's all good. You can do this. Lucky. Zach, thank you, man. No, thank you for having me on your show. It really means a lot and I appreciate it. And thank you. Thank you for reaching out. Yeah, thank you.

Tommy: Hi@thedailytalkshow.com is our email address. People can send us emails, which is really exciting.

Zach: I forgot that you were hosting this show.

Josh: You can sign it off. Can you sign it off?

Tommy: Yeah, do it. Zach, do it.

Josh: Do a sign off.

Tommy: Because we don't hear the radio Zach much.

Josh: Pretend we're Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez.

Zach: By the way, like, know something? The radio Zach and this Zach are the exact same Zach. There is no numerous Zachs.

Tommy: But we don't get to hear you talk to the post when we're watching the YouTube stuff.

Zach: Well, you know, go to thedailytalkshow.com. They bought the URL, so they had to make a show around it because that's That's nice. And you look like two people who pretend to be friends. Yeah, great.

Tommy: That's what we're going for. I mean, that's what you're gonna do on radio. You just suck it up, just like you and Dan.

Zach: No, Dan genuinely hates me and he lets it shine. Uh, go to thedailytalkshow.com. And I would say, if this was my interview, um, thank you for being here. Thanks for giving us your energy. It means a lot. That's right.

Tommy: You also say, what, beautiful people? What's your line? Beautiful humans.

Josh: Beautiful humans. Oh, my new thing is, I love you.

Tommy: I love you. You're just gonna start saying that? It's a bit intimate.

Zach: You're gonna get maced in the face. All right, I'll drop it.

Josh: I'll drop it. Zach, tell me to drop it.

Zach: Unless you're looking for a rush, go for it. Love you.

Josh: Thanks, Zach.

Tommy: Love you too.