This episode was written and produced by Casey Emmerling.
After making Age of Audio, a feature documentary about the history of podcasting, filmmaker Shaun Michael Colón sat down with Dallas for a revealing conversation about the state and future of this industry. Together, Dallas & Shaun unpack the shift toward celebrity chit chat shows, what gets lost in video, the real economics of making Twenty Thousand Hertz, and why highly crafted audio storytelling still matters.
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
Wesley Slover - Just Facts 06
Wesley Slover - Help from a Stranger
Wesley Slover - Inner System
Wesley Slover - Just Facts 01
Learn about this year’s Listener Stories competition and submit your story at 20k.org/2026.
For updates on Age of Audio, visit the official website, or follow the film on Instagram and Tiktok.
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced by Defacto Sound.
Support the show and get ad-free episodes at 20k.org/plus.
Subscribe on YouTube to see our video series.
If you know what this week's mystery sound is, tell us at mystery.20k.org.
Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Find out how you can get the iPhone 17 Pro at no cost with an eligible iPhone trade in at att.com/iphone, or by visiting an AT&T store.
View Transcript ▶︎
[20K Sonic Logo]
[music in: Wesley Slover - Just Facts 06]
Our last episode was an adaptation of a documentary about podcasts called Age of Audio. It covered the creation of podcasting, through the Gold Rush era of about five to ten years ago, to the bubble bursting, and the mass layoffs that followed. It ended at the strange place the whole podcasting industry is in now... where there are more podcasts than ever, but it's much harder for narrative shows like ours to get the funding we need to survive.
Age of Audio was directed by my friend Shaun Michael Colón. And after spending years interviewing many of the brightest minds in podcasting, Shaun has this unique front row seat into the state of the industry, and where it might be headed. Meanwhile, I've been hosting this independent podcast for close to a decade now, so I also have a lot to say about it. Because these things have very real consequences for Twenty Thousand Hertz.
[music out]
When I interviewed Shaun about his documentary, our conversation was so fascinating that I felt it deserved its own standalone episode.
[music in: Wesley Slover - Help from a Stranger]
Dallas: Lemme just gush over the film. I don't think I've got this on tape. So, what Shaun made is incredibly important to everything that I've been experiencing since I started Twenty Thousand Hertz. He has documented it with all of my heroes and all of my inspiration.
Dallas: And I've seen the cut many years, like early cuts, late cuts, and I've been able to watch this thing transform into the defining podcast movie, in my mind. Like this will be the thing that people will study for decades to come about podcasting, because it's just a fascinating look at this entire industry in a way that has never been visually documented before. So thank you for making it.
Shaun: Well, thank you for saying that. That's, uh... as the person who was the seed of the idea, this is like a full circle moment. I'm on the show. Like, it started seven or eight years ago with me reaching out to you because of the show, and now I'm a guest on the show. All I had to do was take seven years to make a documentary. That's all it took.
[music out]
Dallas: Why did you feel that this story specifically needed to be told?
Shaun: At the time, podcasting was becoming very popular. And I felt there was a certain type of audio storytelling that wasn't being represented in a lot of the discussion about podcasting. And I always felt that the power of audio and audio storytelling was something that was very special from an artistic point of view, and wasn't always just two people talking into microphones, which is very enjoyable. But there are people who were creating these works of art that use sound design, and storytelling techniques, and interviews, and created these, more or less masterpieces. And I thought that was being lost in the discussion.
Shaun: And I hope to elevate the idea of what a podcast could be through the film to people who may not know more about it, that, "Hey, this is a medium that people can create all different kinds of things with... something simple, something fun, or something that's moving and significant."
Dallas: I feel like you also documented a very, very important moment in podcasting. And it almost feels like podcasting has moved out of that Gold Rush era. And I'm curious how you would define the current era that we're in.
Shaun: I think we're in the corporate era. The day that we landed in New York to begin filming with Ira Glass and a few other big podcast notables was the day that Gimlet sold to Spotify for $200 million.
Gimlet was the podcast studio behind shows like Reply All, Heavyweight, and Science Versus.
Shaun: ...which, there had been previous purchases, but the numbers were never that big. So I, I feel like we were there at the very start of the Gold Rush and through the filming, which took about 5-7 years, we were around documenting the up and the down of that particular Gold Rush in the industry, where the Top 10 podcasts on the Apple Podcast list were almost all narrative, where you had This American Life you know, at the top—not the very top, Joe Rogan has had that crown for a long time. But the majority of that Top 10 lists were NPR shows, audio documentaries, and narrative podcasting.
Shaun: We've definitely shifted into an era where it's more celebrity podcasts, there's a lot more tech... for lack of a better term, "tech bros." And the money that's being spent seems to be spent on not storytelling, but more easy-to-produce or slick celebrity-driven type podcasts.
[montage of Smartless, Goop Podcast, New Heights]
Shaun: All of those other things still exist, but they're not the thing that is the most popular anymore. And I think the film that we made, at its inception, was a discussion about art and commerce. And for a brief moment, we've called it the "Gold Rush," but really it was this moment where the thing that was the most popular thing was the art. Audio storytelling that was well-produced and thoughtful really was the top thing. It was the most popular.
Shaun: And I think there was a thought that they had hit a moment and that would continue on forever. And it only lasted a few years, and then a lot of these companies realized that unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of money to be made in these very expensive shows. But it happened for a moment, and it broke through and it… it still presented these great stories to a wider audience.
Dallas: How has the addition of video into podcast changed the art form, and the industry?
Shaun: I think it's really diminished the idea of an audio story, and what that art form could be, 'cause now it's seen as just basically another version of a cheap to produce television show. And there are still people out there making exquisite audio pieces, and I am very happy about that. But it really diminishes what has been historically important about this audio-only medium, and creates more complexity for someone who wants to get something out there.
Shaun: Before, you could set up a microphone, if you had the ability to record an mp3, basically you had the ability to produce your show. And now, even though you can still do that, many people feel like, "Okay, now I have to get some cameras. I have to learn how to edit video and audio. I have to make sure I build a set." I think something about just using the power of audio is disarming to people that you're talking to, because they're not concerned about how they look, or the way they're gonna be presented.
Shaun: So the way people will present themselves is different when they know they're gonna be on a camera. And it's very hard to get that candor sometimes, or to be able to have your person you're talked to feel disarmed and feel very natural when there are cameras, 'cause now it creates this whole other element. You may forget that you're being recorded, and kind of get lost into the conversation, but if there's cameras, you're almost kind of always aware that you're being watched.
Dallas: You're absolutely right. I've discovered through the life of Twenty Thousand Hertz, there's a lot of individuals and there's, I would say a good third of the guests that would come onto Twenty Thousand Hertz wouldn't even come onto it if it required a camera going to their home, or going to a studio that's super well-lit with a crew of people. They just simply wouldn't feel comfortable enough, let alone comfortable enough to become vulnerable.
Dallas: But when you take away the humongous burden of camera lenses staring at you, and lights all around you, and have a one-on-one conversation with someone, you get much, much deeper. So I would encourage people to understand like that the alchemy of how to actually make authenticity happen matters immensely. And I think that's what I love so much about highly narrative podcasting of the likes of This American Life, or Radiolab, and 99pi, and what I'm trying to do with Twenty Thousand Hertz is that you're able to just get much deeper.
Dallas: I mean, there's been many times where people get incredibly choked up, and very emotional, including myself at times. And I, I just—that's not gonna happen with three camera people, and a big lighting set up and, you know, a green room.
Dallas: It's funny, it's like I watched The Great Outdoors the other day with my oldest daughter. And in it, John Candy tells a whole bear story.
[clip: The Great Outdoors]
Dallas: And I feel like that's so representative of what I remember from the 80s and the 90s is like older people going on these long stories about their lives that would have like a beginning, middle, and end and it would be in like a quiet place, or on a porch, or in a living room.
Dallas: And I feel like that is this kind of magic that we don't often get, because we have phones in our way, we have noise constantly happening, we have every corporate entity possible trying to vie for our attention at all times. And yeah, I feel like that's kind of what leans back into why I am doing this, it's because it's magical to see these pictures in your head, and be like in sync with someone else's brain.
[MicroHertz Bumper]
Dallas: Podcasting started very much as an open ecosystem. And I'm even seeing in my world the encroaching attempt for platform control, or the YouTube-ization of podcasting. From your vantage point, do you see us slowly drifting toward platform control?
Shaun: Yes and no. In the film, we go into a discussion about RSS.
Dallas: Can you explain what RSS is to a 10-year-old, and how we can connect the dots of why that's open, and yet something like YouTube is not.
Shaun: Well, RSS is basically a set of code that allows someone to upload an audio file and allows someone else to subscribe to it.
Shaun: And one of the discussions we had as we were making the film, some of the producers were like, "This is kind of technical. Do we wanna include this?" But I thought it was incredibly important for people to understand that this medium is unlike almost any other mass medium that's ever existed, in that a corporation does not control it. And that is extraordinarily rare in the society that we live in.
Shaun: And although YouTube I think is an amazing thing, you know, I think it's an amazing opportunity for a lot of people, you are always beholden to the changes that they're gonna make.
Dallas: Yeah, when I post something to YouTube, it's on YouTube only, and there is no way for it to show up in other places. You can embed it onto a website, but it's still playing from YouTube. So therefore, if you see an ad, it's coming through YouTube.
Dallas: But with podcasting, and why it's unique is that I could literally post Twenty Thousand Hertz on a computer in my closet, and then set up this bridge technology, AKA RSS feed that then any…
Shaun: Lemme… Lemme just say…
Dallas: Oh yeah.
Shaun: Real quick, sorry. "Really Simple Syndication."
Dallas: …the Really Simple Syndication code that then every single podcast app can find. And therefore, because there is no monopoly, if you will, you could have a hundred different podcast platforms and all of them are sourcing it from the exact same spot.
Shaun: Yeah. It does have some limitations because of how old it is, but it still remains something that anyone can use, and no company controls. And I think there's something of value in that.
Dallas: What do you think most people fundamentally misunderstand about the podcast industry?
Shaun: That you can make money at it. And I might get in trouble for saying this, but I think there's a lot of the industry, especially the conferences, and a lot of the businesses behind podcasting, really tries to push the idea that anyone can make money doing this. And I feel like that is a little disingenuous when the last statistics that I've heard is 10% of all podcasts that are active make any money at all, not even a little bit of money, but it's only 10% who make any money.
Shaun: It's like, uh… playing in a band. Anyone can do it, but there's only a select few, if they can build that audience, they're gonna be able to make money doing it. You know, there's literally millions of independent bands out there. What's propped up is the companies that get you on Spotify's playlists, or get you placement, or this, that, and the other. 'Cause there's almost no money to be made in the bands; the money is in selling the dream to the bands.
Shaun: And I feel like the parallel is almost identical to podcasting. So much of the way the industry is kind of built is selling this idea that "You can make money doing this. Here are all the tools you need." And I think that's the wrong way to think about it. The way to think about it is if, "Do you have something you want to say? Do you have an idea? Do you have something that you wanna put out there? You should put it out there. And if it becomes popular, there are tools out there to monetize that. But you shouldn't be doing it to try and make money."
Dallas: Right.
Shaun: I'll say this, I won't say who, but there was a company that wanted to share the documentary with their audience, and I said, "Well, you should watch the movie first." And after they watched the movie, they said, "This is brilliant, this is amazing. But I can't show it to my audience because it's not fully positive, and it shows the realism of what it is in the industry." And I think that's because that particular company is selling that dream, and the film, in a way, can undercut that.
Dallas: I could go on a whole manifesto on how Twenty Thousand Hertz makes money. I've never said it on the podcast, if you're interested.
Shaun: Oh, I would love it.
[music in: Wesley Slover - Just Facts 06]
After the break, the not-so-secret financial secrets of Twenty Thousand Hertz... plus, the future of narrative podcasting.
[music out]
MIDROLL
[MicroHertz Bumper]
Dallas: So starting from the very beginning, you're absolutely right. I did not make Twenty Thousand Hertz with any intent to make money. Early on, the first ten episodes were completely non-monetized.
Dallas: The only way that it gained a large audience is because Roman Mars played Twenty Thousand Hertz on 99% Invisible.
[clip: 99% Invisible introduces 20K]
Dallas: And because it's so much in the DNA of what 99pi does, and how that show was my guiding light on what I wanted to do, but sound, with Roman's blessing, it grew very quickly.
Dallas: And the thing is is I was paying writers and sound designers and my team and all of that, and my hope was that if it did well, that money would actually come back through my own company, Defacto Sound. Because I wanted to essentially highlight not only the technical prowess, but the thoughtfulness of understanding story, and documentaries, and films, and things through our own thing that would signal to other people that, "My company, which is for hire, Defacto Sound, is trustworthy enough to hire, on very large projects."
Dallas: By this point, five years into the company, I was now starting to work a lot with Discovery, National Geographic, independent docs, shows on these channels, and my hope was, because I loved edutainment, a lot of the stuff I was mixing was like How It's Made on the Science Channel and things that just brought value. I was basically doing that, but for Twenty Thousand Hertz in the world of sound, to hopefully attract that feel-good edutainment type of content that I love working on myself, through the podcast.
Dallas: Now by ten episodes in, I had spent an enormous—like all my savings. I was just so in a bad place because I had spent so much money on writers and staff that I was very like depressed, because it was just like, "I don't even know how in the world anyone makes this thing happen," because it was so labor intensive. Took us an entire year to make our first two episodes, and they were only like 11 minutes each.
Dallas: So it was around episode ten where a company reached out outta the blue saying, "Hey, what if we put Blue Apron on your show?" And I was like, "Yeah, right. That's just for real podcasts." And I remember talking to one of these podcast ad buyers who basically like laid down the entire podcast industry on the phone, and eventually they bought on the show.
Dallas: So that started to now recoup some of those enormous losses. And then Bose came along and we did this special partnership where I essentially sold them, and I said like, "Hey, we're a show about sound. If you could float us for 10 episodes, it would be a pretty big service to the sound world, I think." And they did it. And that was such a great partnership. And that bridged enough time for other podcast ad agencies to pop up. And then, we started getting kind of all the regular players.
Dallas: But in a large part, through that time, exactly what I intended at the beginning was that it signaled to the right people, the right thoughtful types of people that I wanna be working with, that Defacto is trustworthy. Even though I don't sell the company really in the show.
Dallas: Effectively, the only ad, if you will, is at the end of the show, where I just say, "Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced outta my sound design studio Defacto Sound. Learn more here." That's it. Because we do a lot of really amazing cool stuff over there, but like I don't want to overplay my hand on that, and start to make Twenty Thousand Hertz feel like an ad for Defacto Sound. I think it's a signal to the 0.01% of the people out there that recognize that signal and go, "I wanna be close to those type of people, because they get it."
Dallas: So something we talk about internally here all the time is that Defacto Sound has to be healthy for Twenty Thousand Hertz to exist. I make my living from Defacto Sound, not from Twenty Thousand Hertz. Like Twenty Thousand Hertz, sometimes it roughly pays for itself. There are many times where it doesn't. But I, I bury that money so much that I don't wanna look at it, 'cause if I just looked at the numbers for Twenty Thousand Hertz, I would never... like, it's not something that just works on paper. But it only works through this very invisible alignment that comes through people working with Defacto Sound, which effectively, the people who work with Defacto Sound are subsidizing Twenty Thousand Hertz.
Shaun: I'm gonna make a comparison, but I don't want you to take this the wrong way.
Dallas: Okay.
Shaun: So Disney makes all their money through the parks, right?
Dallas: Exactly.
Shaun: If you look, it's something like 70% of the money that comes into Disney is from parks.
The exact percentages vary each year. But Disney Experiences, which include parks, resorts, and their cruise line are by far the most profitable part of Disney. Because, while their movies, shows and sports technically earn more money, they also cost a lot more to produce and distribute.
Shaun: Let's just say it's a majority. And then you're like, "Well, if they have all this entertainment stuff and they're making money over at the parks, why do they have to have this other part of the business?"
Dallas: To get people into the parks.
Shaun: That's how you get people into the parks. That's how you make the rides. The thing that people care about, and are emotionally connected with, is the art. And you can't have the commerce without the art. And I think there's a similar parallel with what you do. You're making this piece of art, and you're making it for art's sake, and you're making it because you care about sound, and telling good stories.
Shaun: And people who hear that, and connect with that, say, "I want to work with these people." And that can turn into the commercial work that you get. But it's because the intention of the art you make is not to sell someone. The intention of the art you make is to make someone feel something. And that translates into this other side of your business.
Shaun: And I think that balance is what most of us that live in a capitalist system, that make art, strive for. We want to make something with the intention to move someone, and then maybe, we'll able to pay our rent.
Dallas: And unlike Disney, which can have a lot of control over how much they can make in the park, I'm putting all of it in hope and faith that the right situations will come, because I can't control it. And I just believe that putting something good out in the world for free will hopefully signal to the right people.
Shaun: I, I hope my comparison to Disney wasn't taken the wrong way.
Dallas: Oh no, not at all. I think that's a perfect example that people can understand. And it's a brilliant business model, and I just hope that in my little microcosm it works, too.
Shaun: I would say that that's the monetization side of it. I think a lot of those people who make those Disney movies, the people who are actually making them, the writers and the animators, those people are doing something that they love, and are probably not doing it 'cause they wanna make money for the park. They're doing it because they love storytelling, and they love making something, and this is the path in which you can do that, and have the ability to reach the most amount of people with the art that you make.
Dallas: Right. Oh, the other thing I did want to mention: There's also kind of the Patreon subscriber model. And we do have a subscription version of our show so you get the entire catalog, past, present, and future, with no ads. And I think, uh, last time we checked, it's about 1% of the audience subscribing with recurring monthly or yearly donations. And that is helpful, but it only really accounts for maybe 5% of our production costs.
Dallas: So if we could get that number up to, you know, even 2%, or 5%, or gosh, 10%, if we had that many people chipping in, the entire business model of the podcast changes from being kind of advertiser-funded to listener-funded, which would be incredible. And then advertising could be either icing on the cake, or allow for us to do more robust, dreamy things that we've always wanted to do.
[MicroHertz Bumper]
Dallas: So how about this? We'll rapid fire the last bits of these since we're already well over. It doesn't mean you have to speak fast, just, you know, gimme some sound bites.
Shaun: Sure.
Dallas: What does the future look like for highly produced narrative podcasting in your mind?
[music in: Wesley Slover - Inner System]
Shaun: The future of narrative podcasting will be the people who love and care about it, and will continue to make those things 'cause they love and care about them. Some will connect with a wider audience. Some will find a niche audience. But they will continue to exist, because people that love to make stuff will continue to make stuff regardless of the financial outcome.
Shaun: And those people are still out there. People are still making podcasts. People are still making films. People are still making art. People still write poems. Art is eternal. Connection is eternal. And regardless of the economic value of each of those things at any given time, people will continue to make things that they love.
Dallas: Yeah, I know where the power lies. The power lies in one thing, and that is the person listening. Because that's where we grow, that's where we don't grow. And that's also why you see certain styles of podcasts grow very fast, because they're poking at very divisive issues, and that makes it very easy to short circuit someone's brain to get them to engage. Because negative clicks, or negative engagement still pushes engagement. It still pushes things to the front page. Or righteous... playing off of people's emotions to put them into, you know, righteous anger or any of those things all play into the algorithm.
Dallas: The only way that we are gonna have nice things like Twenty Thousand Hertz or some of these other highly stylized crafted podcasts that take a lot of labor is if every audience member shares it, or takes up the torch and goes, "I believe in this, and I wanna tell people how great it is."
Dallas: This is why it's like quality of audience is so much more important to me than quantity of audience. I would take every single listener of Twenty Thousand Hertz a million times over than somebody else's audience that's 10 or 15 times bigger, because I just believe that people who listen to this deeply care about sound, but they not only deeply care about sound, they care about art, they care about design, they care about emotions, and relationships, and nuance.
Dallas: I don't know, anytime I meet a listener in the, out in the wild, it's like they're just the most delightful people I've ever met in my entire life, and I'm just always like flustered and taken aback when I meet somebody who listens to the show.
Dallas: Quite literally, when I meet someone who comes up to me out of nowhere and they're like, "Oh my goodness, I love Twenty Thousand Hertz," and they can cite different episodes, to me, that person is a celebrity, because I'm just head down working, my team is head down, working, and when somebody actually goes, "I'm listening to it," I'm like, "What? Are you kidding me? This is amazing, like, tell me every—what do you think about this? What do you think about that?" And they're always like so sheepish about it.
Dallas: So just really such a pleasure to meet people, and just see how caring they are. I've never met a Twenty Thousand Hertz listener who's not an incredible person, and that's really special to me.
[music out into music in: Wesley Slover - Just Facts 01]
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced by my sound agency, Defacto Sound. Hear more at Defacto Sound dot com, or by following defacto sound on Instagram.
Other Voices: This episode was written and produced by Casey Emmerling, with help from Grace East. It was sound designed and mixed by Colin DeVarney, with original music by Wesley Slover.
Thanks to Shaun Michael Colón for sharing his insights, as well as his incredible film, Age of Audio. The documentary isn't widely available yet, so for updates, visit A-O-A movie dot com, or follow A-O-A movie on Instagram and Tiktok.
You can also watch me exploring sound stories around the world over on Youtube, Instagram, and Tiktok under the name Dallas Taylor dot mp3.
Thanks for listening.
[music out]
