Podcast appearances and mentions of mitchell kaplan

How are book lovers combatting censorship in Florida? What does it take to thrive as a bookstore in the digital age? Today's guest is tackling those questions and much more! In this episode of Cut to the Chase: Podcast, Gregg chats with Mitchell Kaplan, a co-founder of Books & Books and the Miami Book Fair. Together, they explore the evolution of Miami from the turbulent days of the early 80s to its current cultural renaissance. Mitchell shares his journey from law school dropout to successful entrepreneur, opening a bookstore against the backdrop of a struggling Miami. In this discussion, you'll discover the keys to survival in the book industry amidst the rise of large chain stores and digital transformation. He also shines light on the importance of community engagement and cultural preservation in all communities. Plus, Mitchell shares his thoughts on combating book censorship, fostering a love of reading, and maintaining an independent spirit in a rapidly changing world. What to expect in this episode: Survival of Independent Bookstores: How Books & Books thrived against chains and Amazon by prioritizing ambiance, service, and community. Cultural Evolution in Miami: Learn about Miami's transformation from crisis to a thriving cultural and literary hub. Community as the Core: Hosting 400–600 events annually, Books & Books fosters literary culture through author engagements and its Literary Foundation. Combating Book Censorship in Florida: How Mitchell champions academic freedom, highlighting National Banned Book Week's role in resisting book bans. Diversification and Adaptation: Beyond books, Mitchell turns literature into film and shares insights from his podcast journey. Upcoming and Noteworthy Reads: Mitchell teases exciting new releases from South Florida authors like Dave Barry, Carl Hiaasen, and Brad Meltzer. Key Actionable Takeaways for Business Owners: Emphasize community engagement to build loyalty and support. Cultivate a unique ambiance and personalized service to differentiate from larger competitors. Embrace diversifying offerings and adapt to digital landscapes to stay relevant. You can always try exploring related ventures (similar to films for bookstores). Reinforce identity by upholding values like opposing censorship or unethical practices. Nurture strong, long-term client and staff relationships to enhance loyalty and brand strength. Support your local bookstores, authors, and filmmakers! Stay tuned for more updates, and don't miss our next deep dive on Cut to The Chase: Podcast with Gregg Goldfarb! Subscribe, rate, review, and share this episode of the Cut to the Chase: Podcast to stay ahead in your legal practice!   Resources: Visit the Books and Books website: https://shop.booksandbooks.com Connect with Mitchell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchell-kaplan-10a442a Follow him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mitchellakaplan Listen to The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-literary-life-with-mitchell-kaplan/id1433854266 The Mazur Kaplan Company: https://www.mazurkaplan.com Chapman Partnership: https://chapmanpartnership.org This episode was produced and brought to you by Reignite Media.

In a time of loneliness and isolation, social rupture and alienation, what will it take to mend our broken hearts and rebuild our society? In this episode, one of Ameriica's leading rabbis, and the author of the book The Amen Effect, Sharon Brous makes the case that it is through honoring our most basic human instinct – the yearning for real connection – that we reawaken our shared humanity and begin to heal. In a conversation with legendary bookseller Mitchell Kaplan recorded live at the 2024 Writers Conference, Brous pairs heart-driven anecdotes from her experience building and pastoring to a leading-edge faith community over the past two decades with ancient Jewish wisdom and contemporary science. Hers is a clarion call: the sense of belonging engendered by our genuine presence is not only a social and biological need, but a moral and spiritual necessity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

PainExam Podcast Show  Episode Title: Exploring PRP and BMAC in Pain Managemen  Host:   David Rosenblum, MD           Release Date:    November 27, 2024    Episode Overview:  In this episode of the PainExam Podcast, Dr. David Rosenblum, a New York-based pain physician, examines the latest research surrounding Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) and Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate (BMAC) in pain management for the knee, shoulder, and spine. Dr. Rosenblum reviews several key studies, providing insights into the efficacy of these regenerative treatments and their implications for clinical practice. Featured Studies:  1.  A Comparison of Functional Outcomes in Rotator Cuff Repairs Using Adjunctive Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate vs. Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate With Platelet-Rich Plasma: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis**      -     Authors:       Seth J. Spicer, Sara Soliman, Robert Malek, Mitchell Kaplan, Jensen Clark, Nicholas Averell, Brandon Goodwin, Richard Jermyn      -  Published in:  Cureus. 2024 Aug 23;16(8):e67594. doi: 10.7759/cureus.67594      -  Summary: This systematic review evaluates the outcomes of rotator cuff repairs (RCR) using BMAC alone versus BMAC combined with PRP. The analysis included three studies and found no significant difference in functional outcomes between the two groups, suggesting that BMAC alone may be adequate, potentially reducing costs and resource use. 2.        Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate Versus Platelet-Rich Plasma for Treating Knee Osteoarthritis: A One-Year Non-Randomized Retrospective Comparative Study            -  Authors: Abed El-Hakim El-Kadiry, Carlos Lumbao, Natasha Salame, Moutih Rafei, Riam Shammaa      -  Published in:  BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, 2022.      -  Summary:   This study compared the effectiveness of intra-articular BMAC and PRP injections in patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA). Results indicated that patients receiving BMAC experienced significant improvements in pain and functionality scores over 12 months, while the PRP group showed nonsignificant improvements. BMAC was found to be more effective than PRP in managing knee OA symptoms. 3.  Patients With Knee Osteoarthritis Who Receive Platelet-Rich Plasma or Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate Injections Have Better Outcomes Than Patients Who Receive Hyaluronic Acid: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis**      -     Authors:  John W. Belk, Joseph J. Lim, Carson Keeter, Patrick C. McCulloch, Darby A. Houck, Eric C. McCarty, Rachel M. Frank, Matthew J. Kraeutler      -       Published in:   World Journal of Stem Cells, 2021.      -    Summary:  This systematic review assessed the efficacy of PRP and BMAC compared to hyaluronic acid (HA) injections for knee OA. The findings demonstrated that both PRP and BMAC led to significantly better patient-reported outcomes (PROs) compared to HA, with no significant differences between PRP and BMAC in terms of effectiveness. 4.          Platelet-Rich Plasma vs Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate: An Overview of Mechanisms of Action and Orthobiologic Synergistic Effects             - Authors: José Fábio Santos Duarte Lana, Lucas Furtado da Fonseca, Rafael da Rocha Macedo, Tomas Mosaner, William Murrell, Ashok Kumar, Joseph Purita, Marco Antonio Percope de Andrade      -  Published in:  World Journal of Stem Cells, 2021.      - **Summary:** This overview discusses the mechanisms of action for PRP and BMAC and their potential synergistic effects in musculoskeletal healing. The authors highlight that while both therapies show promise, further research is needed to standardize treatment protocols and fully understand their combined effects on healing processes. 5.  PRP and BMAC for Musculoskeletal Conditions via Biomaterial Carriers*       -   Authors:       Fabio S. M. Yamaguchi, Shahin Shams, Eduardo A. Silva, Roberta S. Stilhano      -   Published in:** International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2019.      -     Summary:  This review focuses on the use of biomaterial carriers in conjunction with PRP and BMAC to enhance regenerative processes for musculoskeletal injuries. The authors emphasize the growing interest in these therapies as alternatives for treating cartilage, muscle, and bone injuries, and discuss the various biomaterials used in clinical trials.  Key Takeaways:  - The efficacy of BMAC compared to PRP in various orthopedic applications. - Insights into the mechanisms of action and potential synergistic effects of PRP and BMAC. - The importance of research in optimizing treatment protocols for knee osteoarthritis and other musculoskeletal conditions.    Upcoming Events:  Visit        NRAPpain.org  to learn about the virtual pain fellowship and other educational resources. Additionally, check out our live courses designed for healthcare professionals looking to enhance their skills in pain management and regenerative therapies.  Listen to the Episode:   Join Dr. Rosenblum as he provides expert analysis on these studies and discusses the implications for pain management and regenerative medicine.  Connect with Us:  For more information, resources, and to access past episodes, visit our website or follow us on social media. Your feedback and questions are always welcome!         Disclaimer   The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider for any medical concerns.

PainExam Podcast Show  Episode Title: Exploring PRP and BMAC in Pain Managemen  Host:   David Rosenblum, MD           Release Date:    November 27, 2024    Episode Overview:  In this episode of the PainExam Podcast, Dr. David Rosenblum, a New York-based pain physician, examines the latest research surrounding Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) and Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate (BMAC) in pain management for the knee, shoulder, and spine. Dr. Rosenblum reviews several key studies, providing insights into the efficacy of these regenerative treatments and their implications for clinical practice. Featured Studies:  1.  A Comparison of Functional Outcomes in Rotator Cuff Repairs Using Adjunctive Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate vs. Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate With Platelet-Rich Plasma: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis**      -     Authors:       Seth J. Spicer, Sara Soliman, Robert Malek, Mitchell Kaplan, Jensen Clark, Nicholas Averell, Brandon Goodwin, Richard Jermyn      -  Published in:  Cureus. 2024 Aug 23;16(8):e67594. doi: 10.7759/cureus.67594      -  Summary: This systematic review evaluates the outcomes of rotator cuff repairs (RCR) using BMAC alone versus BMAC combined with PRP. The analysis included three studies and found no significant difference in functional outcomes between the two groups, suggesting that BMAC alone may be adequate, potentially reducing costs and resource use. 2.        Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate Versus Platelet-Rich Plasma for Treating Knee Osteoarthritis: A One-Year Non-Randomized Retrospective Comparative Study            -  Authors: Abed El-Hakim El-Kadiry, Carlos Lumbao, Natasha Salame, Moutih Rafei, Riam Shammaa      -  Published in:  BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, 2022.      -  Summary:   This study compared the effectiveness of intra-articular BMAC and PRP injections in patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA). Results indicated that patients receiving BMAC experienced significant improvements in pain and functionality scores over 12 months, while the PRP group showed nonsignificant improvements. BMAC was found to be more effective than PRP in managing knee OA symptoms. 3.  Patients With Knee Osteoarthritis Who Receive Platelet-Rich Plasma or Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate Injections Have Better Outcomes Than Patients Who Receive Hyaluronic Acid: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis**      -     Authors:  John W. Belk, Joseph J. Lim, Carson Keeter, Patrick C. McCulloch, Darby A. Houck, Eric C. McCarty, Rachel M. Frank, Matthew J. Kraeutler      -       Published in:   World Journal of Stem Cells, 2021.      -    Summary:  This systematic review assessed the efficacy of PRP and BMAC compared to hyaluronic acid (HA) injections for knee OA. The findings demonstrated that both PRP and BMAC led to significantly better patient-reported outcomes (PROs) compared to HA, with no significant differences between PRP and BMAC in terms of effectiveness. 4.          Platelet-Rich Plasma vs Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate: An Overview of Mechanisms of Action and Orthobiologic Synergistic Effects             - Authors: José Fábio Santos Duarte Lana, Lucas Furtado da Fonseca, Rafael da Rocha Macedo, Tomas Mosaner, William Murrell, Ashok Kumar, Joseph Purita, Marco Antonio Percope de Andrade      -  Published in:  World Journal of Stem Cells, 2021.      - **Summary:** This overview discusses the mechanisms of action for PRP and BMAC and their potential synergistic effects in musculoskeletal healing. The authors highlight that while both therapies show promise, further research is needed to standardize treatment protocols and fully understand their combined effects on healing processes. 5.  PRP and BMAC for Musculoskeletal Conditions via Biomaterial Carriers*       -   Authors:       Fabio S. M. Yamaguchi, Shahin Shams, Eduardo A. Silva, Roberta S. Stilhano      -   Published in:** International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2019.      -     Summary:  This review focuses on the use of biomaterial carriers in conjunction with PRP and BMAC to enhance regenerative processes for musculoskeletal injuries. The authors emphasize the growing interest in these therapies as alternatives for treating cartilage, muscle, and bone injuries, and discuss the various biomaterials used in clinical trials.  Key Takeaways:  - The efficacy of BMAC compared to PRP in various orthopedic applications. - Insights into the mechanisms of action and potential synergistic effects of PRP and BMAC. - The importance of research in optimizing treatment protocols for knee osteoarthritis and other musculoskeletal conditions.    Upcoming Events:  Visit        NRAPpain.org  to learn about the virtual pain fellowship and other educational resources. Additionally, check out our live courses designed for healthcare professionals looking to enhance their skills in pain management and regenerative therapies.  Listen to the Episode:   Join Dr. Rosenblum as he provides expert analysis on these studies and discusses the implications for pain management and regenerative medicine.  Connect with Us:  For more information, resources, and to access past episodes, visit our website or follow us on social media. Your feedback and questions are always welcome!         Disclaimer   The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider for any medical concerns.

We speak with Mitchell Kaplan, founder of Books & Books, a leading independent bookshop chain based in South Florida. Plus: Tom Ellis, editor in chief of Greece's ‘Kathimerini English Edition', and we find out more about South Korean publications ‘Magazine B' and ‘Magazine F'.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of Beyond the Page, recorded live at the 2023 conference, poet and memoirist Javier Zamora talks to legendary bookseller Mitchell Kaplan about his memoir Solito, which chronicles his experiences traveling from El Salvador to the United States, by himself, when he was 9 years old. Javier Zamora writes, and speaks, like someone who believes he can never afford to forget that journey, or the experience on the other side, in America, of growing up undocumented. You won't be able to forget, either. And that is the power of great literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Book lovers unite! When Mitchell Kaplan opened Books and Books in Miami in the 1980s, the city was far from the cultural mecca it is today. He's been on the forefront of the city's evolution, founding the Miami Book Fair and growing from one shop to a statewide place to be. Mitchell (Alisha's ex-boss!) joins to chat about book bans, the Harry Potter effect and why bookstores are so hot right now.*Show Notes* Read along with Mitchell's references: The Year of Dangerous Days: Riots, Refugees and Cocaine in Miami 1980 by Nicholas Griffin The Reformatory by Tananarive DueSlaughterhouse-Five by Kurt VonnegutHarry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling My What If Year by Alisha Fernandez Miranda (your host!) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We talk about some of the best reads of the year with Mitchell Kaplan, the owner and founder of Books & Books. He also tells us about his recently launched literary foundation.

On this edition of The Literary Life, John Grisham is live at Books and Books in Coral Gables for a great night with a room full of readers, basking in the brilliance of a master storyteller. John's new book is The Exchange, and he brings back Mitch McDeer, the hero of The Firm -- and he talks with Mitchell Kaplan about this new book and much, much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode we continue our query - What is a Writers Festival? With none other than Mitchell Kaplan of Books and Books and the Miami Book Fair in conversation with Alia Papageorgiou.

Editor and literary critic Oscar Villalon joins V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to celebrate the life and legacy of the novelist Cormac McCarthy, who died last month. The hosts and Villalon reflect on McCarthy's vast vocabulary and cinematic descriptions, in which he juxtaposed lyrical prose with graphic violence. Villalon considers McCarthy's use of regionally accurate Spanish in the Border Trilogy as evidence of the author's broad understanding of the U.S.'s multilingual diversity. Villalon also reads and discusses a passage from McCarthy's 1994 novel The Crossing, the second book in the trilogy. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf and Todd Loughran. Oscar Villalon ZYZZYVA LitHub “Barbarians at the Wall,” by Oscar Villalon, from Virginia Quarterly Review Oscar Villalon (@ovillalon) · Twitter Cormac McCarthy The Orchard Keeper (1965) Outer Dark (1968) Child of God (1974) Suttree (1979) Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West (1985) All the Pretty Horses (1992) The Crossing (1994) Cities of the Plain (1998) No Country for Old Men (2005) The Road (2006) The Passenger (2022) Stella Maris (2022) Others: “Cormac McCarthy, Novelist of a Darker America, Is Dead at 89,” by Dwight Garner, The New York Times “Cormac McCarthy Had a Remarkable Literary Career. It Could Never Happen Now,” by Dan Sinykin, The New York Times “Albert R. Erskine, 81, an Editor For Faulkner and Other Authors,” by Bruce Lambert, The New York Times Paul Yamazaki on Fifty Years of Bookselling at City Lights, by Mitchell Kaplan, Literary Hub “Crossing the Blood Meridian: Cormac McCarthy and American History,” by Bennett Parten, Los Angeles Review of Books Oprah's Exclusive Interview with Cormac McCarthy - Video - June 1, 2008 Oprah on Cormac McCarthy's Life In Books Oprah's Book Club William Faulkner Cormac McCarthy, MacArthur Foundation Grant City Lights Booksellers and Publishers The Crystal Frontier by Carlos Fuentes Roberto Bolaño Larry McMurtry King James Version of the Bible/Old Testament/Apostle Paul Saul Bellow Ernest Hemingway Caroline Casey Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 1, Episode 7: What Was It Like to Care About Books 20 Years Ago? Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 1, Episode 24: Oscar Villalon and Arthur Phillips on Getting That Big, Fat Writer's Advance Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 5, Episode 10: ‘How on Earth Do You Judge Books?': Susan Choi and Oscar Villalon on the Real Story Behind Literary Awards Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When a borrower faces financial distress, a deed in lieu allows it a voluntary path to transfer ownership of the property in question back to the lender. Though this can help avoid the lengthy and expensive traditional foreclosure process, both borrowers and lenders should be aware of potential cons depending on the circumstances of the situation before proposing or agreeing to the arrangement. In this episode, Ron Gart and Mitchell Kaplan join Dan Evans and Jay Wardlaw to discuss the basics of a deed in lieu in addition to benefits and pitfalls for both parties involved.

In case you missed it: highlights from recent episodes, including our live show in Charlottesville with CBS Face the Nation's Margaret Brennan; Chef Jeremiah of Food Network and Rick Ross fame; indie bookseller Mitchell Kaplan fights back against Florida's anti-book movement; and Julia Lee on her memoir, Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America.

Author Julia Lee on her memoir, Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America; and Books & Books and the Miami Book Fair's Mitchell Kaplan on resisting the creeping book bans of the culture war.

In this episode, I chat with Charlotte Guest, manager of The Book Bird, about ethnic diversity in West Geelong, bookselling, local authors, and books!The Book Bird is a small, independent bookshop that prides itself on matching readers with books they love. The staff believes bookshops are repositories of wisdom and spaces of learning. Located on Pakington Street in Geelong West, Victoria, Australia, The Book Bird has become a much-loved community hub since its opening in 2015. This idea underpins everything the staff does across customer service, events, their book club, and other initiatives, Their eclectic range of books spans children's, young adult, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, gardening, travel, art, architecture, and cooking. They stock the books reviewed in the national papers and books you've never heard of, but when placed in your hands, they just may change your life. The Book Bird thinks of their staff as your literary tour guides. They are knowledgeable and passionate about what they do and will take the time to connect the right books with the right humans. Whether it's in-store recommendations, their review cards, carefully considered displays, or social media posts, all communication at The Book Bird is about sharing the power of books and reading.The Book Bird10 Best Indie Book Podcasts - Feedspo Lee Cole, AuthorLink to The Bookshop Podcast episode with Paper Bird, Freemantle Link to The Bookshop Podcast episode with Fuller's Bookshop, Hobart, Tasmania Link to the Bookshop Podcast episode with Mitchell Kaplan, Books & Books, FloridaRhett Davis, AuthorSearch History, Amy Taylor Sally Rooney, author Lauren Dane, AuthorHopeless Kingdom, Kgshak Akec Forty Nights, Pirooz Jafari Belinda Lyons-Lee, Author  Gregory Day, Author   Limberlost, Robbie Arnott   Support the showThe Bookshop PodcastMandy Jackson-BeverlySocial Media Links

Dave Barry's sense of humor should be on display at the Smithsonian; it is truly one America's great treasures. His latest novel, Swamp Story, is set in the back woods of the Florida Everglades. That's all we are going to tell you, because the plot is so wonderfully wild, you wouldn't believe us anyway. Join us while Dave makes us laugh, and then stick around for our conversation with Mitchell Kaplan at Books & Books. As a Florida bookseller, he has important things to say about why bookstores are on the frontlines in the fight against book bans. Books mentioned in this podcast: Swamp Story by Dave Barry Big Trouble by Dave Barry Best State Ever by Dave Barry Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States by Dave Barry Lessons from Lucy by Dave Barry Insane City by Dave Barry Dave Barry's Complete guide to guys by Dave Barry Tricky Business by Dave Barry Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway by Dave Barry Dave Barry is Not Taking This Sitting Down! by Dave Barry You Can Date Boys When You're Forty: Dave Barry on Parenting and Other Topics He Knows Very Little About by Dave Barry The Benchley Roundup by Robert Benchley Love Conquers All by Robert Benchley My Ten Years in a Quandary, and How They Grew by Robert Benchley Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen Jeeves in the Offing by P. G. Wodehouse Catch-22 by Joseph Heller The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky Go as a River by Shelley Read

Dorothy Jenkins Fields, founder of the Black Archives, tells us about preserving Miami's Black history and the early experiences that led her to this work, like the time she marched with Martin Luther King Jr. when she was a college student in Atlanta. We also hear from two of Miami's biggest book nerds, Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books and Connie Ogle of the Miami Herald.

Books & Books founder Mitchell Kaplan and book reviewer Connie Ogle talk about the best books of 2022 and preview best 2023 books with WLRN Sundial host Carlos Frías.

After you've bought Sister Sally the alpaca sweater, brother Billy his baseball bat, Mom her mixer and Dad his golf ball retriever, what small presents should you add? A book, of course! Everyone appreciates the thought that goes into giving just the right book. So have no fear, Kate and Charlie are here with what will be our annual “just the right book for everyone's End-of-year book list.” If you can't find it here, you can't find it anywhere. Mitchell Kaplan of Florida's "Books and Books" gives us fiction selections. Bradley Graham of Washington's "Politics and Prose" on non-fiction, Celia Sack of San Francisco's "Omnivore Bookstore" on cookbooks, Justin Colussi-Estes of Decatur, Georgia's 'Little Shop of Stores' on young adult books broken down by age groups, Otto Penzler from New York City's The Mysterious Bookstore” on mysteries. And best for last, Kate and Charlie ourselves on coffee table books. Why us? Well, we each occasionally drink coffee and we each have a living room table. Oh yeah, and we didn't want to feel left out. Enjoy! And if you want to give US a present, rate us and write a comment where you get your podcasts. We read ‘em. Happy Holidays listeners! We love you all! We love you all!Non-Fiction: (Bradley Graham) Books mentioned in this podcast: Lost and Found: A Memoir by Kathryn Schulz Path Lit By Lightening: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss The Great Air Race: Glory, Tragedy and the Dawn of American Aviation by John Lancaster Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 by Thomas E. Ricks Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America by Dahlia Lithwick Mysteries: (Otto Penzler) Desert Star by Michael Connelly A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz Silent Nights: Christmas Mysteries Edited by Martin Edwards The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly Coffee Table Books: (Us) Football: Designing the Beautiful Game by James Bird, Sam Handy, Jacques Herzog, Thomas Turner, Eleanor Watson The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan African Art Now by Osei Bonsu The Space Shuttle: A Mission-by-Mission Celebration of NASA's Extraordinary Spaceflight Program by Roland Miller Cookbooks: (Celia Sack) Woks of Life: Recipes to Know and Love from a Chinese American Family by Bill Leung, Kaitlin Leung, Judy Leung, Sarah Leung What's for Dessert by Claire Saffitz BUDMO! Recipes from a Ukrainian Kitchen by Anna Voloshyna Diasporican: A Puerto Rican Cookbook by Illyanna Maisonet The Bartender's Guide to the World: Cocktails and Stories from 75 Places by Lauren Mote Children's Books: (Justin Colussi-Estes) Three Billy Goats Gruff by Mac Barnett The Mouse Who Carried a House on His Back by Jonathan Stutzman Everything in Its Place: A Story of Books and Belonging by Pauline David-Sax A Rover's Story by Jasmine Warga Thirteen Witches by Jodi Lynn Anderson The Sea of Always (Thirteen Witches Book 2) by Jodi Lynn Anderson Two Degrees by Alan Gratz The Star that Always Stays by Anna Rose Johnson Shuna's Journey by Hayao Miyazaki

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Quentin Tarantino to discuss his first work of nonfiction, Cinema Speculation, out now from Harper. Quentin Tarantino was born in 1963 in Knoxville, Tennessee. He is the writer-director of nine feature films, the winner of two Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay, and the author of the novel Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Cinema Speculation is his first work of nonfiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Dani Shaprio to discuss her latest novel, Signal Fires, out now from Knopf. ________________________________ Subscribe now to The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you find your podcasts! Dani Shapiro s a best-selling novelist and memoirist and host of the podcast Family Secrets (now in its seventh season). Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, and Time. She has taught at Columbia and New York University and is the co-founder of the Sirenland Writers Conference. She lives in Litchfield County, Connecticut. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by David Maraniss to discuss his latest book, Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe, out now from Simon & Schuster. David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post and a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and was a finalist three other times. Among his bestselling books are biographies of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Roberto Clemente, and Vince Lombardi, and a trilogy about the 1960s—Rome 1960; Once in a Great City (winner of the RFK Book Prize); and They Marched into Sunlight (winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Prize and Pulitzer Finalist in History). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Cory Doctorow to discuss his latest book, Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back, out now from Beacon Press. Cory Doctorow is a bestselling science fiction writer and activist. He is a special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, with whom he has worked for 20 years. He is also a visiting professor of computer science at the Open University (UK) and of library science at the University of North Carolina. He is also a MIT Media Lab research affiliate. He co-founded the UK Open Rights Group and co-owns the website Boing Boing. He is the author of more than 20 books, including novels for adults and young adults, graphic novels for middle-grade readers, picture books, nonfiction books on technology and politics, and collections of essays. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Jonathan Escoffery to discuss his debut collection, If I Survive You, out now from MCD. Jonathan Escoffery is the recipient of the 2020 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, and the 2020 ASME Award for Fiction. His fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, Prairie Schooner, AGNI, Passages North, Zyzzyva, and Electric Literature, and has been anthologized in The Best American Magazine Writing. He received his MFA from the University of Minnesota, is a PhD fellow in the University of Southern California's PhD in Creative Writing and Literature Program, and in 2021 was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University. If I Survive You is his debut book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Christopher M. Finan to discuss his new book, How Free Speech Saved Democracy: The Untold History of How the First Amendment Became an Essential Tool for Securing Liberty and Social Justice, out now from Steerforth Press. ________________________________ Subscribe now to The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you find your podcasts! Christopher M. Finan has been involved in the fight against censorship for 35 years. He is executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship and the former president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. After working as a newspaper reporter, he studied American history at Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1992. He is the author of Alfred E. Smith: The Happy Warrior, Drunks: An American History, and From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America, winner of the American Library Association's Eli M. Oboler Award. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This interview features Camila Victoriano, Co-Founder and Head of Partnerships at Sonoro.  We discuss how fan fiction taught her to see nerds as heroes, being in the room when Dirty John was pitched to become a podcast, her crash course to figure out the business of podcasting, becoming a first time founder during COVID, why the Mexico audio market is like the US four years ago, Sonoro's growth to a global entertainment company, and why there are no limits to Latino stories.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow us on LinkedIn: RockWater LinkedInEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.comInterview TranscriptThe interview was lightly edited for clarity.Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders.Camila Victoriano:So in 2017, we had a meeting with the editor in chief at the time, and he was like, let me sit you guys down and read you this out loud. And it was what would become Dirty John. That's when we realized there's something here that I think could be our first big swing in audio and in podcasting. And we got to talking and at that point we were like, I think we can do something here. And I think there's a story here to be told in audio. When it launched, it took us all by surprise with how well it did. Obviously we knew it was a good story, but I think you never know when something's going to be that much of a hit. Today, it probably has over 80 million downloads.Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Camila Victoriano, co-founder and head of partnerships at Sonoro. So Camila grew up in Miami as a self-described nerd with a passion for books and fan fiction. She then went to Harvard to study English, literature and history, which led to her early career, starting at the LA Times. While there, she became a founding member of their studios division and a “audio champion”. Then in 2020, she went on to co-found Sonoro, a global entertainment company focused on creating premium, culturally relevant content that starts in audio and comes alive in TV, film and beyond.Sonoro collaborates with leading and emerging Latinx storytellers from over a dozen countries to develop original franchises in English, Spanish, and Spanglish. Some highlights of our chat include how fan fiction taught her to see nerds as heroes being in the room when Dirty John was pitched to become a podcast, her crash course to figure out the business of podcasting, becoming a first time founder during COVID, why the Mexico audio market is like the US four years ago and why there are no limits to Latino stories. All right, let's get to it. Camila, thanks for being on the podcast.Camila Victoriano:Yeah. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.Chris Erwin:For sure. So let's rewind a bit and I think it'd be helpful to hear about where you grew up in Miami and what your household was like. Tell us about that.Camila Victoriano:Yeah. So I grew up in Miami, Florida, very proud and loud Latino community, which I was very lucky to be a part of, in the Coral Gables Pinecrest area for those that know Miami and my household was great. My dad, he worked in shipping with South America. My mom was a stay at home mom. And so really as most kids of immigrants, I had obviously parents I loved and looked up to, but it was very different than folks that maybe have parents that grew up in America and knew the ins and outs of the job market and schools and things like that. But really great household, really always pushing me to be ambitious and to reach for the stars. So I was, yeah, just lucky to have parents always that were super supportive. Questioned a little bit, the English major, that path that I chose to go on, but we're generally really happy and really supportive with everything that I pursued.Chris Erwin:Yeah. And where did your parents immigrate from?Camila Victoriano:My mom is Peruvian and my dad was Chilean.Chris Erwin:I have been to both countries to surf. I was in Lobitos in I think Northern Peru and I was also in Pichilemu in Chile and yeah, just absolutely beautiful countries. Great food, great culture. So do you visit those countries often?Camila Victoriano:I visited Chile once, much to the chagrin of my father, but Peru, I visited so many times and yeah, they both have incredible food, incredible wine. So you can't really go wrong. I did Machu Picchu and Cusco, and that sort of trip with my mom once I graduated college, which is really great just to go back and be a tourist in our country, but they're both beautiful and yeah, I love going back.Chris Erwin:Oh, that's awesome. All right. So growing up in your household, what were some of your early passions and interests? I know yesterday we talked about that you had an early interest in storytelling, but in some more traditional forms dating back to the ‘90s, but yeah. Tell us about that. What were you into?Camila Victoriano:I was always a huge reader. It's funny because my parents read, but not super frequently. My grandparents were big readers, but I always, always gravitated towards books. I remember, like many people of my generation when I was six, I read the first Harry Potter book and that was just mind blowing for me and I think...Chris Erwin:At six years old? Because I think I learned to read at like five.Camila Victoriano:Yeah. I had help with my mom a little bit but I remember we read it together and we would just mark with a crayon every time where we ended on the page. But I remember that book was like, I think when I first really understood how detailed and how enveloping worlds could be. And I think starting from that point, I just went full on into fantasy, YA, all sorts of books. I was just reading obsessively. It also helped that I was a classic nerd in middle school and high school and all throughout childhood, really. So I think for me, books, literature stories were just a way to see the world, see people like me, a lot of times in fantasy books or in sci-fi books in particular, you have the nerds as heroes.And so I think for me, that was a big part of why I gravitated to those genres in particular. But yeah, I just read all the time and then I did light gaming. So I played the Sims, again, similar idea though. You're world building. You're living vicariously through these avatars, but that was really how I spent most of my time, I obviously played outside a little bit too, but I was a big indoor reader always.Chris Erwin:Got it. This is interesting because the last interview I just did was with Adam Reimer, the CEO of Optic Gaming, and we talked a lot, he was born in the late ‘70s. So he was like a 1980s self described internet nerd as he says, before being a nerd was cool. So he was going to web meetups at bowling alleys when he was just a young teenager. Over through line with you because he was in Fort Lauderdale and you grew up in Miami. So two Florida nerds.Camila Victoriano:Yeah. Nerds unite. I love it.Chris Erwin:Nerds unite. You also mentioned that you also got into fan fiction. Were you writing fan fiction? Were you consuming it? Was it a mix of both?Camila Victoriano:A mix of both. So that's really in middle school in particular, how I really bonded with my small group of friends. I remember my best friend and I, we connected, we were on the bus reading a Harry Potter fanfiction on at that point it was fanfiction.net. And that is also again, similarly because in person with people, it was just like, we weren't really connecting that much. And so that community online was huge for me and my friend. We read all the time, people had comments, you had editors that you worked with and we wrote them ourselves too. And I think, looking back in the retrospective for me, that's where I think I first started to realize the potential of world building really in storytelling and in media and entertainment. It's like, it didn't stop with the canon text. You could really expand beyond that.We loved telling stories about Harry Potter's parents and how they would go to Hogwarts, like super in the weeds, deep fandom. I don't know. I think for me that was just a real eye opener too, of like, oh, there's a whole online community. And I don't think at that point I was really thinking business. But I think for me, that's where I started to redirect my focus much more seriously too of, oh, this isn't just like, oh, I like books for fun. There's people all around the world that are incredibly passionate and spending hours upon hours of time, oftentimes after hours of school to just write and to really immerse themselves in these universes. And I remember writing them and reading them, just realizing how badly I wanted to be a part of creating things that caused the same feeling. And so for me, that was huge in that respect too.Chris Erwin:Well, thinking about fanfiction, literally there are now companies and platforms that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars that foster fanfiction, the communities around them. I think of Wattpad where you have film studios and TV studios, and a lot of the streamers that are now optioning IP from these fanfiction communities to make into long form premium content. Pretty incredible to see. So you go to high school and then you end up going to Harvard. I think you end up becoming an English major at Harvard. Was that always the intent from when you were in high school, it's like, yes, I'm going to go and get an English degree? What were you thinking? How did you want to spend your time in college? And then how did that evolve after you went?Camila Victoriano:I was typical good student in high school, right, but I think the older I got, the more I realized, oh no, my passion really lies in my English classes, my history classes. Obviously, I think math, once I got to calculus, I was like, all right, this might not be for me. And then science never really gravitated towards, so for me, it was always very clear that even though I tended to be a generalist in many things, my passion and my heart really was in writing and reading and stories and in history too, in the real world and how they intersected and how they affected each other. And so I remember when I was applying to schools again, my parents were like, are you sure you want to do English?Because for them, it was in Latin America, many of the schools don't have that many practical degrees like that. You pick something a bit more technical. So I remember I would tell them, oh yeah, don't worry. I'm going to do English, but I'm going to minor in economics, which never happened. Once I got there, I was like, absolutely not, but that's what I would tell them because I was like, oh no, I'm going to be an English major, but I'm going to have some business acumen to go with it. And I think at that point when I was going into college and applying to schools, what I wanted to do was go into book publishing. And I really wanted to, I remember I had seen that Sandra Bullock movie, the proposal where she's an editor and I was like, that's what I want to do. And so at that point I was talking to, we have this really awesome local bookstore in Miami called Books and Books.And I went and met with the owner, Mitchell Kaplan had a conversation with him. And I remember I told him I wanted to get into books. I wanted to get into publishing. And he's like, look, you're young, you're getting into college. I run a bookstore, but I would tell you, don't worry so much about the medium, just follow the content where the content's going. And that was a huge eye opener. Even though it seems now obvious to, sitting here saying that, I think for me at that age where I was, so it's easy to get one track mind of like, this is what I want to do, and there's nothing else, to get that advice from someone who was running a place that I loved and went to so frequently growing up.And I think that for me, gave me a bit more flexibility going into college, just saying, okay, let's see where I gravitate towards. I know I want to do something creative. I know I want to still study English, but maybe he's right and I don't have to just stick to publishing. So when I got into Harvard I still, again, focused my classes, really liberal arts, right, like film classes, history classes. But I was a bit more, when I got there, unclear of what that would actually lead to in an exciting way, I think. But that was probably a really great piece of advice that affected how I thought about what would come next after Harvard.Chris Erwin:Yeah. So following that thread, I really love that advice of, don't worry about the medium, just follow the content. Clearly I think that really influenced a later decision that you made about doubling down on audio. But before we get there, in terms of following the content, at Harvard, it seems like you dabbled in a few different things where you did an internship with the LA Times, which is maybe news and journalistic reporting. You're also a staff writer for the Harvard political review. So what did following the content look like for you when you were at school?Camila Victoriano:So Harvard can be a really overwhelming place. My mom had gone to college, my dad hadn't finished. So it was a semi first gen college experience where I was like, whoa, once I got there. It was incredibly, the first semester and a half were really, really overwhelming. And I had to get my bearings a little bit, but I think once I got there I tried to dabble in a lot of things. And I think there was literary magazine, there was the Crimson, which is a classic. And then there was a few other organizations like the Harvard Political Review at the Institute of politics. And so I sat in a few things and it's crazy. For people that don't know, once you get there, you still have to apply to these things.You haven't gotten there and then you're done and you're good to go and everything's set up. There's a pretty rigorous application process for most of these clubs, which makes it overwhelming. And so for me, what I ended up finding a home in, in terms of just the community and the way they welcomed you in when you came into the club was the Harvard Political Review. And as one does in college, you get a bit more political, you get a bit more aware of what's going on around you, world politics. And so I think I was in that head space already and wanted to flex a little bit of my writing skills outside of class. And so there I was able to really pitch anything. So I would pitch, I remember like culture pieces about the politics of hipsters, of all things, and then would later do a piece on rhinos that are going extinct.So it was really varied and it allowed me to be free with the things I wanted to write about and explore outside of class and in a super non-judgmental space that was like, yeah, pursue it. And we had all these professors that we had access to, to interview and to talk about these things. So it was just a great place to flex the muscles. But I think mainly my focus in college was building relationships with my friends, if I'm totally honest. I think as someone that's super ambitious and super driven, I was very particular and followed step by step exactly what I needed to do in high school to get into the school I wanted to get to. And then once I was there, I was like, let me enjoy this for a second. Let me meet people and have fun and intermurals and just...Chris Erwin:Wander a bit.Camila Victoriano:Wander a bit, 100%. And I think especially freshman year and sophomore year was very much like let me just wander, take random classes. I took a computer science class, which was a horrible mistake, but just giving myself the opportunity to make mistakes. And I think then by junior, senior year is when I realized, okay, no, I still like this path that I'm going on. I like the storytelling. I like literature. I like writing. Maybe I'm leaning a bit more political. Again, that's why I applied junior year for the LA Times internship because was that through line of, I still want to be in storytelling. I still want to be in media, but now in this college experience and getting into young adulthood, I'm becoming much more aware of the political and socioeconomical world around me. Let me go into media, that's maybe pushing that forward a little bit and a bit more public service.Chris Erwin:Clearly it was a positive experience because I believe that after graduation, you decided to commit to the LA Times full time.Camila Victoriano:Yes.Chris Erwin:And just to go back on a couple of points you noted just about wandering. I think, when I review resumes for people that are applying to my firm, RockWater, my first internship was right before my senior year of college. The summer before senior year. I now look at resumes where people start doing internships literally in high school, and they have six years of working experience before they graduate. It's super impressive. My little brother took a gap year before Harvard and I think that wandering around and figuring out what he likes, what he doesn't like is really valuable. And I always tell people, like my own professional career, I did some things early on that I didn't love, but I learned a lot and it helped shape to where I want to point myself later on. So I think that's really good advice for the listeners here.Camila Victoriano:Absolutely.Chris Erwin:I'm curious, so was there any kind of gap period, or did you just get to work at the LA Times right after you graduated?Camila Victoriano:I went straight into it. I took the summer after college to travel a bit. That's when I went to Cusco with my mom, I went to Columbia. So I went a little bit around Latin America, but other than that, that fall went straight into it. But I think to your point, and again, taking a step back a little bit like freshman summer, I went to study abroad in Paris for the summer. So just again, I had traveled outside the country maybe once or twice, but not a lot. And so for me, that was a really, I was like, let me utilize some of these resources that I have. And so it was, again, that wandering and then the sophomore summer I worked at a literary magazine. So again, going more deep into literature. So I did dabble in a couple things here and there before fully committing, but after graduating pretty much went straight into work.Chris Erwin:And so you get there and are you, again, working in the publisher's office?Camila Victoriano:Working more broadly, for the “business side” of the company, right. So I'm working on business development really broadly. What that started as was how do you diversify revenue streams? How do you develop new projects from the journalism? Basically, what are new ways to make money in a digital space? We pursued projects at this time, and I actually got to see through to fruition because I was there full time, an event series within what was called the festival of books. We developed a new zone focused on digital storytelling. So we brought on VR companies, audio storytelling companies, just thinking about how to expand what the company was putting forward as storytelling, which was cool to me.And also an interesting dynamic for me as someone that loved books to be like, let me throw VR into the mix and into the book festival, but it was really fulfilling, and after pursuing a few different things, developing a couple of platform pitches internally, what really stuck with our team and with me was in 2017, a year into that job, audio as a real business opportunity for the newsroom and for the media company. So in 2017, we had a meeting with the editor in chief at the time and he brought us this story and he was like, let me sit you guys down and read this aloud to you. It was very cinematic, but it was what would become Dirty John.Chris Erwin:The editor in chief read this story out loud to your team?Camila Victoriano:Yes. So just literally, it was a team of me and my boss and that was it. And he was like, let me sit you guys down and read you this out loud. And it was what then Christopher Goffard had the journalist had written as what was going to just be maybe a series online for the paper. And I think that's when we realized like, oh wait, there's something here that I think could be our first big swing in audio and in podcasting. And we got to talking and at that point, Wondery had just gotten started to another podcast company that obviously now sold to Amazon music. And so we met with [Hernan 00:17:57] and the early team there and we were like, I think we can do something here. And I think there's a story here to be told in audio.And so again, a year out of college, I'm there helping put together the production team that would create this massive story or what would become a massive story, we didn't know at the time. And what I was able to do was basically help primarily the launch strategy and help the marketing teams and the sales teams put together what's this actually going to look like when we got this out, there was the first time we had done anything like that. And so it was a pretty wild experience. And then of course when it launched, it took us all by surprise with how well it did. Obviously we knew it was a good story, but I think you never know when something's going to be that much of a hit. And I think today it probably has over 80 million downloads and it's been adapted both scripted and unscripted on Bravo and oxygen and had a season two ordered on Bravo.So it was a crazy experience. And I think for me, it was just like the ding ding ding of, oh, hey, remember what Mitchell told you in high school? Which was, follow the content, not necessarily the medium. And for me I had never really explored audio at that time. My parents were not people that listened to public radio in the car. That was not something I grew up with or that environment. So that was really my first entry point into audio and into podcasting. And as I started to dig into it more, I remember I was such a late listener to Serial and to S town. And I was like, oh my God, this is unreal and something that I've never heard of. I've never heard anything like this before. I probably never read anything like this before. And so I remember I asked my boss at the time, I was like, can I do this full time? I was like, can I just work on building out this audio division and this team? And I think at that point, luckily because Dirty John had been such a huge success, everyone was like, yeah, this is worth doing in a more serious way.Chris Erwin:Before we expand on that, this is a pretty incredible story. So you are in the room as your editor in chief is reading you the Dirty John story. So just remind me, with Dirty John, it was initially just a story. It wasn't like, oh, hey, we created this because we want to make this into an audio series or anything else. It was just, hey, Camila, you're looking at different ways to diversify revenue for the company, looking at different mediums for our content. Here seems to be a pretty incredible story. And was your editor in chief recommending that you make it into a podcast or is that something that came up in the room in real time?Camila Victoriano:No, I think he had already been thinking of it and that's to his credit. Right. And he was like, I think this might be it. And how do we get this done? And then I think Chris Goffard in particular is a great journalist. And he writes these amazing, more feature length pieces. And so his style of storytelling really lended itself to that as opposed to a breaking news reporter. And so he had already thought when he got the piece, this might be a good podcast or it might be our good first podcast. And I think he brought us in because we were the R&D crew of two that existed in the organization to really help make it happen. And so again, once we connected with the Wondery team and put the LA Times team together, it was a match made in heaven, I think. And it worked really, really well.Chris Erwin:It seems like you went right to Hernan and the Wondery team, were you like, hey, we should talk to some of the other audio and radio companies that are out there, or did you just go straight to Wondery?Camila Victoriano:We just went straight to them. And to be honest, I think that was something else our editors suggested. And I think to be honest, it did end up working really well because I think, we were coming from a very journalistic perspective and that's where I started to learn a bit more of the different ways to tell stories in audio, right. Start very character driven, really narrative as if you're making a movie. And so I think that it was a great match honestly, and I don't think we may have maybe looked at other things here and there, but it felt like a good fit right off the bat.Chris Erwin:You said you were working on the marketing strategy and the launch, right, of the series. Do you think there was any special things that you guys did? Obviously it's incredible story and it really resonated with audiences at scale, but were there any initial marketing tactics or buzz that really helped tip that into the mainstream?Camila Victoriano:I think what we decided to do, which was perhaps different than how some podcasts had been marketed before, because till then it had really been public radio driven, was I forget who said this, but it was basically like let's market this as if it was a movie or what would we do if we were launching a film? And so we really went all out in splashing our newspaper with these beautiful full page spreads. We were the LA paper, and so we had all this FYC, for your consideration advertising that would, you'd see those spreads for movies all the time. And so we were like, why don't we just make one of our own? And so it was a full team effort with the designers, the marketing team, me and my boss at the time and just putting together this plan where we really went all out.And I think that definitely caught the attention of our subscribers, which obviously were the first touch point to this story. And we did similar things online where we had, what's called a homepage takeover where basically everywhere you look online, you're seeing advertisements for Dirty John for this story. And so we had newsletters and I think a lot of that 360 approach to promoting it online, in print, although that's not as common, but on social newsletters and really just hitting all the touch points is something that definitely I have taken with me in my career. And I think is also just becoming much more common across podcasting as we launch and others launch more narrative nonfiction, fiction series, that sort of thing where they're becoming really entertainment franchises beyond just a really great maybe non-fiction or reported story. But I think absolutely the way we thought about marketing it helped to change the way that our subscribers and then the listeners that came in through more word of mouth, saw the show and understood it for, oh no, this is entertainment. It's journalism driven, but it's entertainment.Chris Erwin:It's a really good note because an increasing challenge for any content creators or content market is how do you stand out through the noise? There is more content across more mediums today than ever before. And so how do you really cut through the noise, drive mass awareness, but also be focused and really go after a niche community as well? It's not an easy formula. Sorry. I wanted to go a little bit back in time, but that was really helpful context. But then to the point where you said, okay, you're talking to your boss, your leadership. And you're like, I think there's something really big here in audio. I want to focus my efforts here full time. I also think this is interesting Camila, because when we were talking yesterday, you said that you took an atypical path in some ways where you followed the content, you followed your passions.It wasn't like, I'm going to go to school. And then I'm also going to get a dual computer science degree or economics or some quantitative math. And then I'm going to go do two years at McKinsey or an investment bank. And I think you following your heart it then puts you into these serendipitous moments, like being in the room when your editor in chief comes with Dirty John, and then you're like, hey, I've been working on these passion projects. I think there's something to do here in audio, let's go forth together. And then you just happen to be in the room at these incredible moments and then you're raising your hand for where your heart is telling you to go. And it's obviously put you on an incredible path, which we're going to talk more about. That's something that I'm just taking away here from hearing your story.Camila Victoriano:Thanks. That's a great way to put it. It's following my gut a little bit, and I think it just goes back to again, how I was raised and I think my parents were always, there's this funny saying in Spanish, [foreign language 00:25:29], which is like, if you don't cry, you don't get fed, basically. And so I took that to heart and like, yeah, I have a passion. And I think that part of me, the inclination is like, oh, if I work really hard, it'll get noticed. But sometimes it is like, no, you have to really actively say it out loud. And I think sometimes for people that are younger, like I was the youngest by like 10 years in a lot of the spaces I've been in, it's hard sometimes to do that and to raise your hand and say, I want this. But I think when I really felt that I did it and I think it's something I've just been working on in general.Chris Erwin:So you raise your hand and you say that you want to focus on what you perceive as a big audio opportunity for the LA Times. What does that look like for next steps?Camila Victoriano:Really, what that meant was I was the only person working full time on the business side, on this project, which was daunting, but also great because I got to have different touchpoints with all the teams. And so for me, it really became, how do I build essentially a mini startup within this legacy organization and how do we make something that moves quickly and can be nimble and can be experimental in an organization that, as I said earlier is nearly 140 years old at this point? So it was really exciting and really daunting. And so what I did first and foremost was figure out a good cadence to meet with my colleagues in the newsroom. And what it allowed me to do was really focus on offering them insight into the content that was really working well in the space that perhaps is maybe a bit more data driven, I would say.I was really looking at what was working well and also working with our data and product teams to see what were the types of stories that listeners or in our case, readers were gravitating towards and offering that insight to the journalist and to the editors and really working hand in hand with them to figure out based on that, what were they excited about turning into audio or what were they excited about putting resources behind? And so I was focusing a lot on content strategy in the very beginning of how do we follow up this phenomenon, which was also, I think for everyone, you have this huge hit, you want the sequel to be just as good.Chris Erwin:And to be clear. So the data that you're looking at is both in terms of the content that the LA Times is putting out. Like your articles, I'm not sure if you were also doing video as well, looking at who's consuming that, how often are they consuming it, is that type of content performing well relative to other content? In addition, looking at metrics for just podcasting overall, what genres are performing well, what do the formats look like? Is it short form or long form audio? So you are taking that for your own understanding and then educating a lot of the writers and the journalists in the newsroom. Because then when you put that information together, better ideas can start to germinate within your business. Is that right?Camila Victoriano:Absolutely. Yeah. And then what they would be able to offer me was insight sometimes into maybe investigations they were conducting, or they would be able to tell me, yeah, that is a great story, but maybe the sources aren't going to speak on audio. So it was a really wonderful collaboration between the business side and the newsroom in a way that was really organic and really respected the work that they were doing, but also offered them a bit of insight into, hey, we're exploring this new thing together. Here's how we might do it in the best way. And so I was doing a lot of that in a lot of that more high level content strategy, basically to guide the editors into figuring out what might come next. And then also just doing everything else, basically that the journalists weren't doing, right, or that they couldn't do because they were busy reporting amazing stories, which was building on an actual business model for what this might look like, which was difficult, because it was very early days and our sales team had never sold a podcast before.They had sold digital, had sold print, had sold events. And also marketing is like, how do we replicate what we did with Dirty John in a way that was sustainable and in a way that, how do we replicate that by tracking what actually worked well from that experience? Right? Because we could always splash all of our pages and flash all of our online presence with images and with links to the show, but figuring out how to basically make a report of what actually worked to drive listeners. And so it was a lot of in the very beginning, trying to digest and figure out what are the things that we could replicate and what is the “formula” that worked in Dirty John and others. Some of the stuff is hard to quantify and you can't measure, but trying to measure as much as I could to be able to build out a plan for, okay, we think we can make this many more shows and they have to hit these particular metrics. And I was doing a little bit of everything. Literally, like I said, my sales team or the sales team at the LA Times, they had never sold podcasts before. So I was literally calling podcast agencies and selling ads.Chris Erwin:You were selling ads yourself?Camila Victoriano:Yeah, I was. I remember I called ad results. We were doing a show about Bill Cosby, which is not an easy subject to pitch to sales, but I was getting on the phone, calling people and selling ads into the show. So it was really scrappy.Chris Erwin:Yeah. So essentially a one person team where you're creating the vision and the business plan and then also executing against it as well. That's a lot. Did you have a mandate from your leadership, which is like, hey Camila, we believe in your vision here, but we want within one year we expect like X amount of revenue or within three months. Come with a clear business plan and how much capital you need to grow it and then we're going to green light it. What were the expectations from your boss?Camila Victoriano:Yeah. It wasn't anything that specific to be honest, I think mainly the main mandate very broadly was like, Hey, this needs to make money after a certain point. Right. And it can't go on for so long of just, because a lot of people while making podcasts is cheaper than making a pilot, it's also very resource intensive. So while maybe it's not a lot of cash out the door, it's a lot of time from a lot of people to make something that is high touch investigative, like a year of reporting sometimes. And so I was asking a lot of the newsroom and the journalists. And so I had to work with our finance team at the time to build out a model that basically showed at least break even for year one and then started to make some profit after that or some revenue.And so it wasn't as super strict thing, but I think obviously they wanted it to be revenue generating and relied on me and my counterparts on finance department to put that model together. And again, I was an English major. I had never made a spreadsheet. I had never made a model V lookup, it was very new to me. All of that was the first time I was doing any of that. So for me, those next three years or so were an incredible crash course into all of the practical skills that perhaps I hadn't learned in the English major was those were all learned in that time period of building a business model, putting together business plans, content strategy, and then executing marketing plans and sales plans at the same time.Chris Erwin:So I have to ask, clearly your love and your passion is for storytelling, right? So now you're figuring out the business plan for how can you actually create a new sustainable business that's going to tell stories in a different way on new mediums. Did you enjoy doing some of that business work or was it more of like, eh, I don't mind doing it because it allows me to execute towards this primary goal or were you starting to see like, oh, I actually like using both sides of my brain, operating on both sides of the house. What did that feel like for you?Camila Victoriano:I think it was definitely the latter. I think I never expected to “business” as I had always thought of it. Right. I think there were certain things that I could really do without, I did not love sales calling and pitching. I was like, I could do without ever doing this again. But I think for me, what I realized during that time period and working with the folks on the finance team, our COO, our sales, I was like, these guys are all really creative and actually figuring out how this is going to work and how this is going to be sustainable is actually weirdly fun and interesting and challenges my brain. And it's funny to put it that way, but again, as an English major, as someone that didn't grow up with parents or in a community where people were doing really traditional jobs or working as high powered business executives, I had never been in that space.And so I think for me, the brainstorming of what are we going to do, what types of shows are we going to make? How is it going to make money? How are we going to make stuff that's meaningful and powerful and makes a difference, but also not go broke? That was actually really fun for me and really creative in a weird way. Business can be creative. And at the same time, I got a lot of joy from just sitting in newsroom meetings and hearing their stories that they wanted to tell and working with, call them creatives, but the journalists really.And I think that's when I realized, oh, I can be in this space. I can be in this creative space as a facilitator of all these people that maybe have the boots on the ground, making the stories. And I actually really enjoy the operational part weirdly. And I think my brain does like being in both sides where I can brainstorm stories and I can be a part of green light meetings and I can have my opinion based on obviously personal taste, but also what I understand about the market and at the same time, really enjoy putting spreadsheets together, which sounds so lame, but it was fun.Chris Erwin:Hey listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guest, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work. And it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it, everybody. Let's get back to the interview.I think you're hitting on a couple notes, which are important. So just one, I think I can just sense from our listeners, some tears of joy, we are calling finance professionals and the FP&A teams at these media businesses that they have creative aspects to their work. I think they really appreciate that, but I think it is true. And I think, look, I've seen this because I started after my banking career, I was very early in the YouTube MCN, digital video days. And there's all these incredible visions of how to build these new modern media businesses, but the actual business fundamentals of how do we make money? How do we have sustainable profit where we can keep doing this year over year? I feel like a lot of those big questions were not addressed. Now that's fundamentally changed 10 years later, but I think people with your mindset is there's a chance to bring great content to these new audiences that want to consume content in different ways.But we got to find a way where there's business sense here, right, where there's going to be money pouring in from partnerships and from brands or from investors or from the fans themselves. And that allows you to keep building, to keep iterating, to create something beautiful and great and different. So clearly you have a really sharp mind for this. This is a good transition to talk about how you ended up going over to Sonoro and meeting Josh and being a co-founder of that business. To tie a bow in your LA Times experience, where did you essentially eventually take the business before you decided to do something else?Camila Victoriano:By 2019 or so, we had launched about eight or nine different shows. They were true crime limited series, but also what was important to us was to have some more recurring community driven projects. We did a really wonderful show called Asian Enough with two of our reporters, Jen Yamato and Frank Shyong. And it was just about what it means to be Asian enough and how that question is something that they asked themselves a lot and other people in the community asked themselves a lot. And I think that's an in general question that I, as a Latina can relate to. So there was a lot of also really, I don't want to say public service, but really community driven projects as well that I was really proud of. And then also of course, we had Chasing Cosby men in the window, Detective Trap, all these really awesome, true crime series that were our bread and butter by the end.And luckily all of them did really well. They all would hit the top of their charts. A couple of them I believe are in development for TV. And I was just really excited to see more than anything too, that the process of brainstorming those ideas and of bringing them to life was so much smoother by the end. Our sales team was total pro that's selling podcasts by the end. Now they still have a podcast salesperson. I think what I was most proud of from year one to year three basically, was that it wasn't anymore a struggle to push these things through, it was very much LA Times studios as we called it was really embedded in the organization and podcasts were a real serious part of the business of the LA Times and still are.And we got to make some amazing shows. All of them had advertisers when they launched, which was again for us a huge success metric. We were able to sell things before they even came out because advertisers trusted us to make it successful. And I think that was a huge success point for me having been on those calls in the beginning. I feel like that's a little bit why too, again, making this jump into Sonoro, why after that point I felt good about leaving because I was like, I feel really great about what I've built and what I've helped set up here. And I feel okay that I can step away now.Chris Erwin:Okay. And so were you planning on transitioning out or did this opportunity to work with Sonoro come up and you're like, hey, this is hard to turn down?Camila Victoriano:It was a little bit of both in my head. I was itching for something bigger, a bigger challenge, how I mentioned LA Times studios was really this mini mini startup within a legacy organization. I had gotten the itch of building something from the ground up and feeling really excited about that. And so I think at that point, I had been at the LA Times total, including my internship probably for close to five years. And so it had been a really solid run. And I think I was ready to look for my next challenge and as I was in that head space, just so happens, got introduced to Josh through our mutual friend, Adam Sachs. And when I met him, I think our energies, just to jump right into it, but our energies really, really matched well. We met over zoom a couple times.Chris Erwin:And when was this Camila?Camila Victoriano:This was in early, early, early 2020. So gearing up for what was to come unbeknownst to me.Chris Erwin:It was right before COVID.Camila Victoriano:Yeah. Yeah. And so we had met a couple times and I'm a real detail oriented person. And I think what was exciting to me about working with someone like Josh was he came in and had a really inspirational vision for what he wanted to achieve. And I got very excited and felt very aligned with that vision and what I had been thinking about recently over the last few years, just being in the audio space and in media.And I thought, might as well go for it. I felt like it was the right time for me to do something from scratch, to take honestly a risk. And what seemed like a risk at the time, because I had been working in a very sort of traditional company that probably wasn't going anywhere. And in general, I think in my life had been pretty risk averse. I think I had just done everything the way I was supposed to do it. Right. And so I think that for me this was, okay, I'm going to take a risk. I feel like I've gained a lot of confidence over the last five years and a lot of skill sets and I'm ready for the challenge. So, yeah, chose to jump in it with him.Chris Erwin:Camila, what's the quick elevator pitch or overview of Sonoro?Camila Victoriano:So, Sonoro is a global entertainment company that creates audio content with the goal of developing it into TV, film, books, other audio derivatives, and our community focus is 500 million global Spanish speakers and US Latinos. So our entire shows are made by Latinos and our entire team is a hundred percent bilingual and bicultural.Chris Erwin:In terms of being inspired by the vision, were there things from the outset where you're like, hey, Josh, I love this idea, but here's what I would do a bit differently? Was there any of that in the beginning?Camila Victoriano:What I was able to offer was the experience being in the industry. Right. And so I think my eagerness really came from wanting to try shows that were outside the podcast norm "a little bit". We had done a lot of true crime at the LA Times, but I was really excited to try stuff that would resonate. For Sonoro, it's really our core consumer are the 500 million global Spanish speakers and the US Latinos. Again, I came from Miami. I'm a Latina. What was exciting to me in general about creating stories that were empowering Latino creators was let's not set a boundary about what the narrative that they have to tell is. Let's let them tell sci-fi stories, fantasy stories, horror, thrillers, that maybe don't have anything to do with being Latino, but are just feature Latino characters in it like they would any other sci-fi.And so I think for me, what was really exciting was pushing those boundaries a little bit and leaving that creative flexibility to the creators and trusting them and their experiences, knowing that if we really relied on the specifics of their experience and their story, inherently, that would have a universal impact. What we Josh and I talked a lot about in the beginning was the success of shows like Money Heist, and those that hadn't come out yet reaffirmed our point later in the year, like Squid Game and Lupin, that more and more people were consuming global content.That was, if you're a French person watching Lupin, there's probably so many inside jokes that I totally missed, but I still really enjoyed it. But they're going to enjoy it even more because it's culturally specific to them. And so I think that's what a little bit what I was really trying to push forward in the early shows that we made and still today of we can be really culturally specific, so that if we're making a show set in Mexico, Mexicans, they're like, oh yeah, this is really made for me, and I get this, and this sounds like where I'm from and who I am. But someone that is listening in the Bronx can still really enjoy it and have a sense of cultural community with the story, but it's more universal in that sense.Chris Erwin:Got it. Very well said. So, you align on visions with Josh, but you also have your distinct point of view. And then is it like, hey, within one to two months of meeting, you joined the Sonoro, and you helped co-found the company and build it to what it is today, or was there a longer [courting 00:43:24] period?Camila Victoriano:I think we literally talked on Zoom twice.Chris Erwin:And then it was like, all right, Camila's on board.Camila Victoriano:Yeah. I don't know. We just, we really got along really well and we clicked really easily. And I was like, I think this can work. I think we have a good rapport. We always joke, we're both Capricorns, so I think that that helps.Chris Erwin:What are the attributes of a Capricorn?Camila Victoriano:Very driven, very type A, very low BS. So I was like, okay, I think we can understand each other. So I don't know. It just felt right. It felt like everything was aligning. I was getting that edge to go and build something and start with... In general, I was just saying, I want to start with a really young team. That's what I wanted to do. That's as far as I had gotten in my head space about it, and then to get this connection from Adam, literally as that was happening, it just felt way too serendipitous to pass up.And also then to have honestly such an immediate connection with Josh of like, oh, okay, I think we can work well together, and I think we understand each other and how we like to do things and how we like to work, that still to this day nearly three years in is true. I think it checks so many boxes that I was like, I just have to, again, it was the first big risk I've taken, honestly; career wise or school wise, if I'm looking that far back. But it felt right, and it felt like the right time to do it. So I just went for it.Chris Erwin:Well, so it's funny that you say all this. I've known Josh for a few years now. And in terms of how you describe him of like he's very ambitious, very driven, very direct, no BS. Camila Victoriano:Yeah.Chris Erwin:And as I'm getting to know you, I get that sense as well. And literally just, I think we spoke for the first time yesterday, but I'm also seeing just how complimentary the both of you are in working together. So I think that explains a lot of the recent success that we've seen with Sonoro over the past few years, not surprised. After a couple Zoom meetings, you guys partner up and then what do you first start working on?Camila Victoriano:So the first year that we really started, and we really formally kicked things off, kid you not, March 2020. So it was weird timing. But really what we were first trying to do is test out if we could actually make things that people loved. That is all we cared about. We were like, can we make shows that people love, that people binge into the deeps in the middle of the night? And can we do it well? And can we do it at a high quality? Because I think that was important to both of us is in general when you're seeing, especially in Latin America and the US, content for Latinos, like traditional telenovelas, the production value just isn't there. And so that was really important to us. And so the first year we launched a lot of traditional bread and butter podcast, chat shows that really quickly climbed up the charts.Personal interviews, comedy, wellness, your traditional categories in Mexico specifically, and started to build out our network there really quickly, because I think a lot of the creators that were more independent there saw us as a reliable resource to help them grow their shows and to really be; for us, it was like, we want to be the partner of choice for any creator podcast or media company, executive director that wants to work and make really great content that just so happens to be created by Latinos.And so that along with let's make stuff people love were our two big mandates in the beginning, and it worked really well. Our first original scripted series launch that we did was a show called Crónicas Obscuras. It was a horror franchise that we launched in October. And that came off of a similar premise, which was Latinos over index and horror. We love horror movies, horror shows, anything. But most of the horror shows or movies that do really well are either based on European legends and European horror stories or feature zero to no Latino characters that, and if they're there, do they make it towards the end? Maybe not. And so-Chris Erwin:They get killed off early.Camila Victoriano:Yeah, definitely not the final character left. So for us, it was like, this is one genre that we know already has a huge gap in terms of how Latinos consume it and how it's being made. And so we said, this is going to be our franchise where we're going to tell Latin American legends, set in Latin America with Latin American characters. And so our first season of Crónicas was about these things called Los Nahuales, which are basically werewolves, but they also turn into other characters like snakes and things like that. And the show, we did it super high production value. We recorded with this thing called binaural audio where you literally have a mic that looks like a head and people can walk around it. And so if you're wearing headphones, the show, you can feel things coming up from behind you, but it's just because of the way that we recorded it with this special mic.And we had the voice actor who's done Homer Simpson in Mexico for 20 years. That was our big celebrity for that season star in the show. And the show ricochet up to number one podcast in general in Mexico. And it did really, really well. And that was our first success of this is an original show that Sonoro produced fully in-house, wrote, direct, production, casting, marketing. And we were able to launch it and people really, really loved it. Next few months after that, we launched a few similar series. The big one, of course, is a show called Toxicomanía, which launched in April of '21, which was, again, similarly mission driven, but always entertaining. It was based on a true story. A Mexican doctor in the 1940s that convinced the president of Mexico to legalize all drugs for six months, which no one knows happened.For six months in Mexico, all drugs were legal and you could get them in government mandated dispensaries. And it was this doctor's way of saying, hey, this is how we build a progressive society. This was an obvious one. Again, it's like the combination of our mission, which is, this is a story about Latinos, in particular Mexicans and drugs that you haven't seen before because when you think Mexico or drugs in media, you think Narcos, but this was actually something very different. But then what we did is we turned it into a really entertaining dramatic thriller. We were inspired by movies like The Big Short and things like that, where it was like it was teaching you something about history, but in a way that was really, really entertaining.And then we partnered with the actor, Luis Gerardo Mendez, who's an amazing Mexican star and really starting to come into his own in the US to executive produce and star in the project. And that show did insanely well. We launched it on 4/20. So again, it was the combination of mission, entertainment, production value, the right partner, and also a really strategic marketing launch of this is obviously a story that people are going to love and it's about drugs, so we're going to launch it on 4/20. And it did really, really well. It was number one in Mexico across Latin America. Number two in the United States in fiction, even though it was only in Spanish.And now we just announced earlier this year that it's going to be developed into a film at Paramount+. And so that to me is a perfect case study of what we really tried to do that first year is let's partner with the best creators. Let's make the best content and see if people love it. And I think we proved that to ourselves that first year, year and a half.Chris Erwin:When you entered the, call, the Mexican creator and audio landscape, was it competitive? Were there a lot of other production companies that were either Latin America based, Mexico based, or from the US that were trying to operate in that market? And two, follow up question, was there a sense of with the creators that were there, did a lot of them want to create in audio and to expand their creator ambitions, or was it something like, oh, we didn't even know that we can do this, but then after talking with you Camilla and your team, they're like, oh yeah, typically, I just create a bunch of videos on YouTube or whatever else, but I'd love to do something in a more scripted or [premium 00:50:55] or narrative form in podcasting. Let's figure out what that looks like together?Camila Victoriano:Yeah. I think in terms of the landscape, there were very few to none established. There were a lot of independent creators. So we actually are head of production; Andrés Vargas. He is this great heart of the Mexican podcast creator network. He was really a first mover there for sure. And I think we worked together really to bring on a lot of these early chat show podcasts into our network to kickstart that, but there wasn't a lot of established companies there. There weren't any. And so for us really, it was a mainly an education challenge, not so much the creators. I think there were, like I said, independent comedians or wellness experts that had already started to realize, oh, this podcasting thing is makes a lot of sense for me to expand into. And we focused on working with them, but really more so for the talent.So for our scripted projects is explaining that, hey, you don't have to have hair and makeup. You can just go into the studio for literally four hours and you make a whole series. And I think for us, that was how, especially when we were early on unknown, reaching out to these huge stars like Luis, being able to pitch it as this is still a really... And this is what I love about audio, right? Is like it's still, even though it's been around for a good chunk of time and you could argue all the way back to radio dramas and radio plays, it still feels like such a creative and experimental space. And I think that's what got a lot of the talent in particular that we were speaking to for our scripted projects excited, that they could try something different. This wasn't your traditional production, where you had to go in with a 5:00 AM call time.It was very much, especially in early COVID days. It's like you could do it from your house. We'll send you a kit. No worries. We'll do it over Zoom. But it was a lot of education really for them, for their managers, but people were excited. I think they thought this is a chance for me to play and for me to have fun and for me to do something different and which made the whole experience, especially of those early recordings, just really special.Chris Erwin:So going back to a point that we talked about with your experience at the LA Times, it was follow the content, but then figure out the business model. How do we make this sustainable? So what did that look like for you working with Josh and the team of like, okay, we found this incredible creator community. We have these shows that are becoming number one in their local markets and they're crossing international borders into the US and more. But how do we actually generate sustainable revenue for this? And what are the right revenue streams beyond what everyone just talks about for podcast ad sales, et cetera? So what was some of the initial work? What did that look like for you guys? And where does that look like going forward as you think about the medium and monetization differently?Camila Victoriano:Yeah, absolutely. I think in Mexico, in particular, again, it was all about education, education, education. And I think for us, since we focused that first year really on just launching great shows and making sure that they were hits, then our counterparts in Mexico were able to go to brands and say, hey, look, we already know this works and explain a little bit the medium and how to interact with consumers and how to write an audio ad. So it's still early days in that market, but we've been able to work with really amazing brands like McDonald's, like Netflix. A lot of CPG brands in particular are really excited about this space. And so I think we're really, the more we talk to brands every month, it gets easier. And I think where the podcast market in the US was maybe four years ago is where they're at right now.And I think we're reaching those innovators in the brand space that are excited to try something new and it's working really well for them. And we're getting a lot of people that come back, come back again because the audience for podcasting is the traditional ones that you see here in the US. They are younger, they have more disposable income typically. And so I think a lot of the brands are really excited about that. And then the US, of course, it's a totally different game. You have your direct response advertisers, which are the bread and butter of podcast advertising, but what we're really excited about is bigger brand presenting sponsorships, especially in our fiction series. That is where we're really looking to double down on in this year. For example, we had a show called Princess of South Beach, which was a 36 episode telenovela in English and in Spanish, and [Lincoln 00:55:02] came on as a presenting sponsor. And we produced this really incredible integrated piece into the content itself.So it was a funny telenovela set in Miami, and we created a chat show or a TV show basically like an Enews called Tea with Tatianna, where she was talking to people around the family that the show was about while integrating Lincoln in a really seamless way. So for us, it's always about thinking a few steps ahead of what's the market going to look like in a year or two, and how can we get ahead of that? And how can we be really, really creative about the way that we integrate brands, so that it doesn't disrupt the content; number one, but also it gives them better value and it gives them much more seamless integration with the content that we already know listeners are loving. And so that's really what we're focused on in the US in particular is those bigger integrations into, in particular, our scripted content.Chris Erwin:Camila, as a young rising leader, where you raised your hand and essentially got to be at the helm of what is the new LA Times studio division, where you're helping to tell stories in different ways. And now you're a co-founder at Sonoro. Looking back on your young career, what are some of your leadership learnings to date, upon reflecting of you as a leader earlier on, maybe a few years back to the leader you are today? What have you learned and what do you want to keep working on?Camila Victoriano:The main thing I've learned has probably been more about human interaction, how you work with people and how you build a team. I think at the LA Times in particular, newsrooms are tough, because it's the business side traditionally and over the years has never... hasn't always been super friendly. And so what I learned really well there and also building a team over Zoom these last few years is communication is critical. And over communicating and making sure everyone knows what they're supposed to be doing, why, and just offering up the opportunity to answer questions and to be there as a leader that listens to people and to listens to maybe questions they have about work, about their life. I think for me, that's always really important and something that I've valued from mentors in my life of they're there to listen and they're not going to... I was a very precocious early career person.I was always like, why is this happening, or what's going on? And I wanted to know as much as possible. And so communication, I think, is something that I always valued as a younger employee or as an early career. And so that's always what I'm trying to communicate or to convey to our employees now and to back then the newsroom is like, I want to be someone that they have a lot of FaceTime with and that communicates a lot with them about strategy and about what we're doing, what we're doing and gets them really excited.Chris Erwin:I like that. I run a lean team, but I realize, I can never overcommunicate. So things that I just assume that the team knows, the reality is that they don't. These things are in my head. And so every day it's important to just remind the team, what is our mission? What are we focused on? What were wins from yesterday? What are learnings and what are we maybe changing? That is literally a daily conversation. And I would much rather over-communicate than under-communicate. So I think that's very well said. Another point here is you now have investors. Yo

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Javier Zamora to discuss his memoir, Solito, out now from Hogarth Press. Javier Zamora was born in El Salvador in 1990. His father fled the country when he was one, and his mother when he was about to turn five. Both parents' migrations were caused by the U.S.-funded Salvadoran Civil War. When he was nine Javier migrated through Guatemala, Mexico, and the Sonoran Desert. His debut poetry collection, Unaccompanied, explores the impact of the war and immigration on his family. Zamora has been a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard and holds fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Dwyer Murphy to discuss his debut novel, An Honest Living, out now from Viking. Dwyer Murphy is a New York-based writer and editor. He is the editor-in-chief of CrimeReads, Literary Hub's crime fiction vertical and the world's most popular destination for thriller readers. He practiced law at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York City, where he was a litigator, and served as editor of the Columbia Law Review. He was previously an Emerging Writer Fellow at the Center for Fiction. His writing has appeared in The Common, Rolling Stone, Guernica, The Paris Review Daily, Electric Literature, and other publications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Monique Roffey to discuss her novel, The Mermaid of Black Conch, out now from Knopf. Monique Roffey is a senior lecturer in creative writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is the author of seven books, four of which are set in Trinidad and the Caribbean region. The Mermaid of Black Conch won the 2020 Costa Book of the Year Award and was short-listed for several other major prizes. Roffey's work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, Wasafiri, and The Independent. She was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and educated in the United Kingdom. Her website is moniqueroffey.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan revisits a Books & Books virtual event with multidisciplinary artist Blitz Bazawule in conversation with Beasts of Prey author Ayana Gray. Bazawule's debut novel, The Scent of Burnt Flowers, set in the mid-1960s, tells the story of a Black couple, Melvin and Bernadette, who have fled the United States for Ghana after Melvin kills a racist assailant in self-defense. “The literary world has given me so much in terms of freedom and the ability to zig-zag though the world of time and space, in a way I probably could never do in another medium,” said Bazawule. The filmmaker, musician and now author is currently directing the musical adaptation of The Color Purple movie.  The Scent of Burnt Flowers is available at Books & Books.  BLITZ BAZAWULE is a multidisciplinary artist born in Ghana. His feature directorial debut, The Burial of Kojo, premiered on Netflix via ARRAY Releasing. He co-directed Beyoncé's Black Is King, which earned him a Grammy nomination. Bazawule is set to direct the musical version of The Color Purple for Warner Bros. His artwork has been featured at the Whitney Biennial. He is also a TED senior fellow and a Guggenheim fellow. The Scent of Burnt Flower is his debut novel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Geraldine Brooks to discuss her latest novel, Horse, out now from Viking. Geraldine Brooks is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel March and the international bestsellers The Secret Chord, Caleb's Crossing, People of the Book, and Year of Wonders. She has also written the acclaimed nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence. Born and raised in Australia, Brooks lives in Massachusetts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if an app could quantify exactly how happy you are? That's the premise for Clare Stanford's debut novel, "Happy For You," in which a philosopher leaves academia to work as a researcher for"the third-most popular internet company" where she struggles to find belonging as a biracial woman. "Happy For You,' is a funny story of a woman searching for her identity and a satirical commentary on today's h(app)iness-obsessed world. Plus, a conversation with Mitchell Kaplan at Books and Books. Other books mentioned in the pod: The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño The Bernstein Bears Series by Stan and Jan Bernstein Year of Dangerous Days: Riots Refugees and Cocaine in Miami 1980 by Nicholas Griffin Big Trouble by Dave Barry Trust by Hernan Diaz

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Mark Kurlansky to discuss his latest book, The Importance of Not Being Ernest: My Life with the Uninvited Hemingway, out now from Books & Books. Subscribe now to The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you find your podcasts! Mark Kurlansky is the New York Times bestselling author of Milk!, Havana, Paper, The Big Oyster, 1968, Salt, The Basque History of the World, Cod, and Salmon, among other titles. He has received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Bon Appétit‘s Food Writer of the Year Award, the James Beard Award, and the Glenfiddich Award. He lives in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Hernan Diaz to discuss his latest book, Trust, out now from Riverhead Books. Hernan Diaz is the author of two novels translated into more than twenty languages. His first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has also written a book of essays, and his work has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Playboy, The Yale Review, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and a fellowship from the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Alexander Maksik to discuss his latest book, The Long Corner, out now from Europa Editions. Alexander Maksik is the author of three previous novels: You Deserve Nothing (Europa, 2011), a New York Times and IndieBound bestseller; A Marker to Measure Drift, which was a New York Times Notable Book; and Shelter in Place (Europa, 2016), named one of the best books of the year by the Guardian and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and the Andrew Lytle Prize, as well as fellowships from the Truman Capote Literary Trust and the Corporation of Yaddo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Steve Almond to discuss his latest book, All the Secrets of the World, out now from Zando. ________________________________ Subscribe now to The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you find your podcasts! Steve Almond is the author of ten books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. He teaches Creative Writing at the Neiman Fellowship at Harvard and Wesleyan, as well as Hugo House, Grub Street, and numerous literary conferences. His essays and reviews have been widely published in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, GQ, The Wall Street Journal, Poets & Writers, Tin House, and Ploughshares. His journalism has received numerous awards including the top national prize for feature writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. His short stories have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, Best American Mysteries, Best American Erotica, and The Pushcart Prize. He serves as a literary correspondent for WBUR and appears on numerous podcasts. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Don Winslow to discuss his latest book, City on Fire, out now from William Morrow. ________________________________ Subscribe now to The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you find your podcasts! Don Winslow is the author of twenty-two acclaimed, award-winning international bestsellers, including the New York Times bestsellers The Force and The Border, the #1 international bestseller The Cartel, The Power of the Dog, Savages, and The Winter of Frankie Machine. Savages was made into a feature film by three-time Oscar-winning writer-director Oliver Stone. The Power of the Dog, The Cartel, and The Border sold to FX to air as a major television series, and The Force is soon to be a major motion picture from 20th Century Studios. A former investigator, antiterrorist trainer, and trial consultant, Winslow lives in California and Rhode Island. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Peter Balakian to discuss his latest poetry collection, No Sign, out now from University of Chicago Press. Peter Balakian is the author of Black Dog of Fate, winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for Memoir and a New York Times Notable Book, and June-tree: New and Selected Poems 1974-2000. He is the recipient of many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. He holds a Ph.D. in American Civilization from Brown University and teaches at Colgate University, where he is a Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mitchell Kaplan made Miami lit — well, literate. He founded Books & Books, an independent bookstore in Coral Gables that has become a major gathering place for Miami-area writers and has grown into a major brand with seven bookstores. And it just turned 40.  The cafe at that Gables store is Miami's original “third space” — where people who are not at home and not at work can stop in for coffee, a change of scenery to write their The Great American Novel — and a bite to eat from a James Beard Award-winning chef. Books & Books is the one place a writer in Miami is always welcome. The food is always good. And where a copy of a local author's book (like host Carlos Frias' "Take Me With You") is always on the shelf even 10 years after it was published. Mitchell also helped found the Miami Book Fair and he started a production company to turn books into major Hollywood films. I call him the patron saint of Miami writers. Hosted by James Beard Award winning host Carlos Frias and Miami.com editor Amy Reyes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Jeff Deutsch to discuss his new book, In Praise of Good Bookstores, out now from Princeton University Press, from a live event at Books & Books. Subscribe now to The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you find your podcasts! Jeff Deutsch is the director of Chicago's Seminary Co-op Bookstores, which in 2019 he helped incorporate as the first not-for-profit bookstore whose mission is bookselling. He lives in Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Diana Abu-Jaber to discuss her new book, Fencing With the King, out now from W.W. Norton. ________________________________ Subscribe now to The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you find your podcasts! Diana Abu-Jaber is the award-winning author of seven books of fiction and nonfiction, including Crescent and The Language of Baklava. She lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan talks with Julie Otsuka about her new novel, The Swimmers, out next month from Knopf. ________________________________ Subscribe now to The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you find your podcasts! Julie Otsuka was born and raised in California. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her first novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, won the 2003 Asian American Literary Award and the 2003 American Library Association's Alex Award. Her second novel, The Buddha in the Attic, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2011 and won the 2012 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the 2011 Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction. The Buddha in the Attic was an international best seller and the winner of the prestigious Prix Femina Étranger in 2012, and the Albatros Literaturpreis in 2013. She lives in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Richard Blanco, inaugural poet for Barack Obama's second term as president and Elisa New, creator, director and host of PBS's Poetry in America series, are Mitchell Kaplan's guests this week. Richard's poem, "Looking for the Gulf Motel," is featured as season three of the acclaimed series begins.  “The episode with Richard is a wonderful example of the opportunity we had to really get into the cultural life of Cuban-American families,” said Elisa. “Often people say “I don't get poetry” and I ask, when was the last time that you read a poem? Maybe 20 years? It's not that you don't get poetry, you haven't given it a chance probably since high school,” said Richard. “I'm a big champion of humanities. Poetry in America is taking poetry out there, letting people have access to it in ways they might not have otherwise,” he added. To bring Richard's poem to life, the episode includes home movies from his family, illustrations and special guest, his friend Gloria Estefan, who sings throughout the interview with Elisa. Listen to this special conversation recorded in New York and Miami, and watch the Poetry in America episode -- and please, support the arts! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mitchell Kaplan opened the first Books & Books bookshop in 1982 in Coral Gables, Florida. Since then, Books & Books has grown to seven bookshops, two of which include restaurants.Mitchell served as president of the American Booksellers Association and received the Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation.As co-founder of the Miami Book Fair in 1985, Mitchell has served as the chairperson of its Board of Directors and continues to guide the programming team at the Fair which takes place on the campus of Miami Dade College in the heart of downtown Miami. Each year the Fair presents close to 500 authors over one week in November, along with a street festival, where bookstalls line the streets adjacent to the campus. Programs take place in Creole, Spanish and English, reflecting the diversity of Miami. Mitchell also hosts The Literary Life podcast, and along with producer Paula Mazur, owns Mazur Kaplan, a film production company bringing books to screen.Books & BooksRichard Flanagan, booksFlowers For Algernon, Daniel KeyesBlack Like Me, John Howard GriffinDharma Bums, Jack KerouacJames Baldwin, booksThe Paris Bookseller, Kerri MaherLight Years, James SalterContinental Drift, Humphrey MullerBewilderment: A Novel, Richard PowersMatrix: A Novel, Lauren GroffKlara And The Sun, Kazuo IshiguroNeil Gaiman, booksWriters for Democratic ActionMiami Book FairMazur Kaplan CompanyThe Color of Law, Richard RothsteinHow the South Won the Civil War, Heather Cox RichardsonOn Tyranny Graphic Edition, Timothy Snyder, Nora KrugLost & Found: A Memoir, Kathryn SchulzThe Year of Dangerous Days, Nicholas GriffinSupport the show (https://paypal.me/TheBookshopPodcast?locale.x=en_US)

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan is joined by Anjanette Delgado, Yaddyra Peralta, and Mia Leonin to discuss their new anthology, Home in Flordia: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness, out now from University Press of Florida. ________________________________ Subscribe now to The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you find your podcasts! Anjanette Delgado is a Puerto Rican writer and journalist based in Miami. She is the author of The Heartbreak Pill and The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho. She has written for the New York Times “Modern Love” column, Vogue, NPR, HBO, the Kenyon Review, Pleiades, the Hong Kong Review, and others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan talks to Kerri Maher about her latest book, The Paris Bookseller, out now from Berkley Books. Kerri Maher is the author of The Girl in White Gloves, The Kennedy Debutante, and, under the name Kerri Majors, This Is Not a Writing Manual: Notes for the Young Writer in the Real World. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and was a writing professor for many years. She now writes full-time and lives with her daughter and dog in a leafy suburb west of Boston, Massachusetts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Some people don't want to read about younger people, because they can't relate to it. But for me, reading a book like Open Water or Sally Rooney's book Beautiful World, Where Are You, it's like looking at the lifestyle of people who live on a different planet. That's how much older I am now, but it's really interesting to me because people in their twenties look at life differently than I do.” This week, in a new ongoing series on The Literary Life, What Are You Reading, Mitchell Kaplan and Miami Herald‘s Connie Ogle discuss what books she's read or looking forward to read this year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Miami's Books and Books talks about how his store has operated during the pandemic.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us in today's interview with the amazing Mitchell Kaplan. Mitchell established our favorite local bookstore, Books and Books, cofounded the Miami Book Fair, which brings together more than 300 authors, and has recently turned literary works into wonderful films. To Mitchell: Thank you for creating an inspirational space where we can find the story at the turn of the page. You can find out more at https://booksandbooks.com . You can also help support the show here: https://anchor.fm/miami-lit-podcast/support ❤ Jenny ======================================================== Hey!! New merch is here: https://shop.miamilit.com

From an early age, Mitchell Kaplan was afforded the freedom to go explore life and discover possibilities. For him, finding an exact focal point for his passion for a literary life came in stages. It took from being and English major in Colorado where the Beat movement was experiencing a resurgence in the 1970s to fleeing law school to settle for becoming an English teacher back in his hometown – Miami to realize what he really wanted to do was start an independent bookstore. The rest – as they say is history. As his career as an independent bookseller progressed, Kaplan also became a principal in founding the Miami Book Fair and began bringing books to screens big and small. Today, it is no exaggeration to say that Kaplan has built a legacy that guarantees his place among those who have made Miami the city it is today. I spoke to Mitch Kaplan, not very long ago,  at one of his 5 Books & Books stores in Miami on a busy weekday morning.Support the show (https://www.paypal.com/biz/fund?id=HGJKF8TKYSKRN)