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slash voxpod this is recode media with peter kofka that is me and i'm staring deep into

the eyes of ben smith who is here in person ben Ben is the co-founder of Semaphore. Because you are listening to this podcast, you know what Semaphore is. Welcome, Ben. Thank you so much, Peter. It's great to, it's great to be here with all these Semaphans. There's me. And then... No, you're people who already know what Some of where it is. I love it. There's people here. Unlike everyone else in media who covers media, I have refrained from writing or really commenting much about Semaphore because I wanted to see it before it came out. We're recording this the Friday of your launch week. So it's been out for a couple of days. It is such a relief to just to be able to say, here's the thing.

Because, I mean, talking about it, I think, to the media is there was no point. And I stopped many months ago. And but actually recruiting, you're like, come join this thing. It's going to be awesome. I promise. Let me tell you a lot of abstract words. It's very hard. And so it's really nice, including for recruiting. I had this theory for a while that you had intentionally tried to confuse people about what it was.

Oh, yeah. It's actually a well-known tactic of mine, just that intentional confusingness. Yes, that's what it was. 100%. Everything is calculated. So I can hear in my head, my, my producer's saying, you should still explain who Ben is and what semaphore is. So if you've wandered in this podcast blindly and you have no idea what any of these things are. You should get out now. You should leave. What is semifore? I thought you were going to say. No, you're talking. Okay. We're a new... I might hear your new explanation of it. Yes. Well, you can see it and see if it matches my description. But we're a new global media company. You know,

our kind of core bed is on transparency and kind of, you know, which means when it comes to the

web, just literally breaking down the form of the story and saying, here are the facts, here's

the journalists' point of view on those facts, here's some other opinions. In trying to be humble,

open to outside views and bring global perspective to the news.

So in the sake of transparency, we should disclose that you and I talked a couple times about me coming there and obviously didn't happen. I'm here. You're there.

Now, is that your secret you just told or my secret?

I don't know if I said it. I just want to have transparency. By the way, I feel like, I think you talked to a lot of people, so I don't feel

like I'm in a special category. Gosh, that was really weird thing to say, Peter. I mean, I'm a huge admirer of yours, but I would not comment on personnel matters. I just figured in case someone I asked we could do it.

And it would be a fun gimmick to have transparency.

Yeah, the problem was we already, like actually the problem was we already had like

an overpaid media reporter in me.

...