Sean Evans.

I went to the University of Illinois to be a broadcast journalism major.

And the way that I dreamed, I was like, wow, wouldn't that be so cool? I get my degree and then I get an internship at, you know, a drive time morning radio show where sports fans are calling in and maybe I could produce one of those morning shows.

You know, like that's where my head was at, where like that was the mama, I made it kind of hill that I was trying to climb.

And obviously things zigged and zagged along the way to, you know, end up where I am right now, eating scorching hot chicken wings with famous celebrities.

Exactly, this is what

happens.

Should people over a certain age not eat these wings? Because maybe I qualify for that.

Sean Evans is Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Political Science, Union University.

Yeah, so I think there's a couple of things here.

One is, I think we have to be grateful for the founders, for the character that they showed in creating a new nation.

I mean, we are the longest serving, longest continuous democracy in existence.

For the simple fact that people fear that our selfish impulses will lead us to tyranny, But the simple fact that we have lasted for 250 years, that's worth celebrating in and of itself.

And I also think we have to remember that when we declared our independence, we're the first nation who said, here's why we are declaring our independence, because of our belief in liberty, equality, and self-government.

And those are the aspirational values that our country continues to to try to meet.

They DJ.

Yeah, exactly.

They have all these different interests.

So I feel like then you can stack the wings where it feels like the interview is like you're always taking one layer off of the onion with every wing that you do.

Um, but then to me, the ones that are kinda hard to write for, but I do find them to be some of the most rewarding interviews is, there's a genre of Hot Ones interview where I feel like we capture these certain pop stars right before they're about to take off, whether that was, like, a younger Billie Eilish.

Um, or, uh, Olivia Rodrigo, uh, Shawn Mendes when we interviewed him back then.

It's like these young pop stars who only have one album out.

They've, they're doing it.

So can you just talk about structurally how AMC has evolved and where is it now relative to where it's been and then a partner ecosystem on top of AMC? Curious if you can explain the different parties that add value on top of AMC.

Amazon's made a lot of, you know, they've put out a lot of instructional queries and kind of foundational things that can, is interesting insights that brands can use, but it's not necessarily actionable.

And I think that's what brands want is like, give me some insights, but I need to be able to like know what to do next.

So just looking at CAC or lifetime value or how many new to brand customers I got doesn't really tell me like what I need to do.

So I think that's kind of the next stage of this is how do you get brands this type of information, whether it's customer acquisition cost, LTV, how do they understand which of their products or ASINs are driving the best CAC or the highest LTV, those types of things.

And being able to go at the campaign level, the creative level, et cetera, is going to be super important.

So I would say it's still kind of the infancy as far as the use of AMC.

So where do you see that gap? gap in the market? And from the Slingwave standpoint, what's interesting to you in terms of how we've approached that?

People come, da, da, da.

da.... weekly episodes and then seeing the growth, and the climb, and all the excitement from that, and like catching your first white whale guest, and breaking a million subscribers, and like all of these things that happen.

And then I think the deeper and longer you go, these achievements that before would like make your entire week just become mile markers that you're like passing on the highway or something.

And-

Yeah

... read all the magazine profiles, do all that stuff.

I also think it's a good idea, and this is probably something that'sI think the vision of it was that it would be this kind of internet sideshow Super Bowl event.

Like, maybe we'd just put out, like, for a year or something.

So what do you think that tells us, or what have, have, uh, we learned about what audiences actually want versus what we think they want?

want?Well, I think that there's a lot of looking into the crystal ball about what audiences want, but to me it's always been anecdotal.

Or like, it- to me, it's always been personal.

Like, I grew up on escapism television in the 30-minute time slot, the comfort viewing sitcom.

That was a really important, uh, part of that experience for me.

And I think that there's this tendency, especially these days, to kind of over-index on like either side of the polarity, whether it's like short form vertical video, there's a ton of that that's a highly competitive and congested space.

And then on the other side you have, you know, like marathon length four-hour podcasts, or even, um, if you go to HBO, like any sort of like standard drama now, like episodically they can be the length of a feature film.

Hmm.

No harm, no foul.

Now I'm just gonna build, you know what I'm saying? I should actually get a little of this broth in there, more than what we have.

There we go.

That feels good.

Take some of these Flamin' Hot Cheetos, a little dust action over the top.

That egg on there.

And then I'm not sure if I used enough broth, by the way.

See how it's just super smooth? Like, eventually when that butter really melts, it's gonna be this very nice kind of creamy, smooth chocolate.

And he read your mind?

It was crazy.

Him and David Blaine, they've been working on this trick for weeks, and it was crazy.

He totally read my mind, you know? Read something that he would never be able to know.

And it is crazy, like just a four-digit number.

And then he's laying out the cards.

I'm cutting them.

Do you know what I mean?

Oh, no. [laughs]

...

in the book.

[laughs] We were fine, thank God.

But I, you know, there was that little alarm bell in the back of my head going off.

So that chapter has a little bit of personal resonance.

There's a chapter about a woman named Ada Blackjack, an Inuit woman who went, in the early 1900s, on an expedition off the northwest coast of America to find some islands in the Bering Strait.She didn't wanna go.

I'm curious, what's one piece of advice that contradicts advice you'd previously heard or maybe thought?

(laughs)... re-recording all your episodes with all the guests?

(laughs) Yeah, exactly.

But the thing that I thought about and what made it important to me is, I really love doing this show because of the people that I make it with.

It's a very comfortable cockpit seat for me to sit in.

And if it wasn't for that, like, I don't know if I could continue doing that.

So it was very important to me that we extracted the Jenga piece as clean as possible, kept all of the people, kept this enormous back catalog, kept the hot sauce business, kept this distribution model where everyone knows Thursdays at 11:00 AM on the First We Feast YouTube channel is where you can find it.

So once I kinda put all that on paper, then the scope of the deal really kind of narrowed.

Do you have a research team?

Yeah

... you know, on the sidelines, which I'm like, wow, like the way that he's approaching this Uber Eats commercial, you know, like talking to the director, like in real time, workshopping alt lines.

I think the original line that I had in it was like something that was like, um, uh, these...

I- I can't remember what the original line was, but he was the one that changed it on the spot to be like, "These wings deserve a team." You know, like, and then, and then he's talking to the director, and he's like, he's like, "Uh, uh," and then, you know, "What if I'm like, uh..." I look over to Bill, and I'm like, "You got any, you got any good team, good team names for Buffalo, Bill? Bill?" You know, he's like doing that, and he's like, "You like that? You like that?" I think the director is just like, "Y- yeah, that sounds good to me." He's like-

Yeah.

So, uh, but, m- no, I always...

Thanks for saying all of that.

Um, yeah, I think, you know, weather's challenging.