The Exchanges

Q But who knew? So, was your accent hard to understand? Were you hard, was it hard for people to understand you when you spoke English?

A In hindsight, yes. And I remember being at meetings and seeing faces of people frowning, and I remember that being the cue that, oh, I said something that people are not understanding, and that got in the way of my ability to communicate and to inspire people and to get my points across. And I remember hearing that advice and saying, oh my god, what a gift. How did I not see this before? How did I not know that, um, they're accent reduction coaches? So, I remember finding one in LA, as far as time spent versus impact on my career, One of the best decisions I ever made, and I recommended this to so many people over the years.

AI assessment note: “In hindsight, yes. And I remember being at meetings and seeing faces of people frowning”

Q So, Arnan, you, when you started this out, right, I mean, you've got to raise the money and start a business, but at the same time, you had to make great shows, right? And, and, and you wanted to do something different than, than what was being done in public radio at the time, or, or at a company like Gimlet. So what was it that you wanted to do?

A So I wanted to bring everything that I learned in 25 years in television to the area of podcasting from storytelling style to marketing to business model. But the first product that we wanted to launch were audio dramas. It hadn't been done much. It was only maybe one or two audio dramas. Um, and, uh, and I essentially wanted to create Those Hollywood soundscapes with characters and sound design, and, and essentially turn it into scripted audio. And, uh, and we did. We, we, we launched this, uh, great show, I thought, or we all thought at the time, called Secrets, Crimes, and Audio Tape. It was an ongoing audio drama, and it hit only number two on Apple Podcasts, and we couldn't get to number one because there was this one other show that launched at the same time, Called How I Built This. Have you heard of it?

AI assessment note: “I wanted to bring everything that I learned in 25 years in television”

Q on this show, which is a really interesting story and worth listening to, but let, let's start with the reaction. I mean, I'm sure most people around you are like, you know, this is great, Hernan, go, go for it. Did you feel any sort of, I don't know, underneath the surface that there was, people were like, this is, this is a weird idea. Like, what is he doing?

A Oh, no, they did. It wasn't, it wasn't very much under the surface. I, I remember talking to colleagues that were wondering, like, what the heck is Hernan doing? Um, and, and it was just very, 2016 was tough. It was in a number of ways. So, because We have that 250,000 dollar check from Fox, and then a few, uh, friends, um, and, and former colleagues, um, also offered to invest, and we raised another 200 grand, and I thought, okay, this is easy. Yeah. Uh, but then, this is where it gets interesting. I, I, I try to go and raise money from, uh, venture capital the way that Gimlet had raised money, and the phones stop ringing.

AI assessment note: “Oh, no, they did. It wasn't, it wasn't very much under the surface.”

Q And I think in the United States today, no boss would ever give somebody this advice. They would not give this advice because it would be considered to be toxic. Right. Um, to say, hey, you might want to take a class to work on your accent. So you're, you're, you know, but, um, you know what I mean? Like nobody would have told you that in 2023 at all.

A 1000%. And I remember this same executive gave that advice to somebody else who did get offended and didn't work on it. And you still probably can see that I still have an accent. It's not that it completely went away, but Think about it if you are at a, at a meeting with your peers, and you come up with a great idea, but you're not communicating it well in a way that comes across. And then another colleague who has a perfect accent and is a great communicator picks up on your idea, but then communicates it in a way that inspires people, that gets people to say, oh, wow, that's a great idea. Who do you think gets ready for the idea?

AI assessment note: “1000%. And I remember this same executive gave that advice to somebody else”

Q How were you, what about your pipeline of, of like, content creators? How did you develop a pipeline, especially as there was more money coming into the industry with other content companies who were now starting to write checks, significant checks? How were you able to compete when, you know, you didn't have an endless pool of money to do that?

A I think it really helped us that we were in L.A., and we're kind of alone in L.A., and a lot of people- Had listened to Dirty John, and the other thing that helped us was the fact that Dirty John, even though it was owned by the LA Times, very quickly got optioned to television. It was turning to a very successful television show for Bravo, and it's, um, it really put us in a position where, because we were in Hollywood, we could give creators the potential of having their show Be turned into a television show because we were starting to show that there was a track record. But, um, every time that a pitch came to us, we thought, could this be turned into a high stakes character driven, interesting human story that will resonate with showrunners because it would resonate with viewers, for example. If somebody came to us and said, um, I have this open case, and nobody has been able to solve it, and I want to create a show of me trying to solve it, we would always say, no, thank you, because one of the most tried and true things in Hollywood is that you need to have a satisfying ending to a story. And when you don't have a clear ending, people will not recommend the show to other people. It's just as simple as that.

AI assessment note: “we could give creators the potential of having their show Be turned into a television show”

Q again is, uh, Pretty incredible rise. I mean, you've reached sort of the top of the food chain overseeing TV channels, production houses, digital assets all over the world. Um, and you probably were thinking, I imagine, that, you know, maybe one day you'll be the head of Fox, I don't know, or maybe the head of another studio. Is that, was that the trajectory you felt you were on?

A Part of me felt that I wanted to see whether I could go and lead another company, and, um, at the time, I also was curious about entrepreneurship, and, uh, I remember part of my job was in, in, in business development, talking to founders, talking to entrepreneurs, and seeing how they went from zero to 100. And actually, there's a moment that I remember in 2015, there's this, um, bank that generated or published a valuation of the whole company of Fox. Uh, it's called a sum of the parts valuation, where they go and value each part of the business. And there's FIC, which at the time had grown into one of the biggest, um, parts of the Fox organizations, was valued at ten billion dollars.

AI assessment note: “Part of me felt that I wanted to see whether I could go and lead another company”

Q Was it, but it was easier to, to attract the money at that point?

A It was easier, because I, at the same time, he had listened to Dirty John every episode, so he understood emotionally. And also, we felt that we couldn't rely on only miniseries. Right. So, at the time, we came up with this concept of the Always on shows that also came from the emotionally immersive storytelling. The first one was American History Tellers. It was a show that allowed people to put themselves in historical moments, and so that was the first show, and then we had also lined up Business Wars, what the second show that we created in that, and that allowed us to essentially have wholly owned, wondrous shows that in the future would allow us to have a library that That made, um, Wondery Plus possible.

AI assessment note: “It was easier, because I, at the same time, he had listened to Dirty John”

Q I mean, there could still be the possibility of an appeal from, from federal prosecutors, right? I mean, there's still a possibility.

A There is a possibility, yes, but I am living my life as if this chapter is over because I know that the truth is in my side, and I'm having seen the strength and the weaknesses of our legal system, and actually there's research, even Despite the presumption of innocence that we all taught in school, people that go to serve on a jury believe that indicted equals guilty. And deep down, I was one of them. And I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I was one of them. And, and it took me to go through this grueling experience to realize that not only indicted doesn't equal guilty, but sometimes guilty doesn't equal guilty. Um, you know, you work in podcasts, I worked In podcasts, I'm sure you listen to many stories of wrongful convictions, and you just, you don't think that it could happen to you until it does.

AI assessment note: “There is a possibility, yes, but I am living my life as if”

Q All right, so you are now, this is, you know, early 2000. In 2003, you became president of Latin America and the GM of, for the UK for Fox International Channel, so you were really, clearly you had people there who were, who really liked you, were impressed at the work you were doing. Did you, Were you, were you good at finding mentors?

A I think, um, most importantly, David, my direct boss was the best mentor, and he gave me chances and opportunities to learn, but I was always somebody who was reaching out to other people and trying to learn. Um, I heard this amazing expression that if you work in international, you have the ability to, quote unquote, read tomorrow's newspaper, because you're in a country, and You're seeing a trend, and that trend probably happened at some other country five years before, two years before, three years before, and so you're much more able to predict trends that are going to happen, uh, from one place to the next. So, for example, my boss, David, gave me the chance to launch a television channel in the UK, and that, that would become the FX channel in the UK. And remember, flying in, we only had six months to get from zero to launch. And noticing that the television market was hyperfragmented, because every household had digital penetration, so, and they had multiplex channels, a number of things that weren't even available in the US. And I remember thinking, this is the way that multichannel television will go everywhere, not just the UK. So, in the future, we're going to go through a world of hyperfragmentation of audiences, So that's when I started to realize that we need a new set of skills to create shows and market them in a way that would break through.

AI assessment note: “most importantly, David, my direct boss was the best mentor”