We are the country that consumes the most internet in the world. No one's wilder on the internet than the Brazilian [laughs] You describe yourself as kind of an influencer, but a journalist first.
I'm a buffoon as well as I'm an investigative reporter. You've been a journalist for around 20 years at this point. Your podcasts too are serious journalism.
Now I'm making more money by being an influencer than I am doing with podcasts. There's very little money in podcasts. Don't Cross Cat cracked the top 10 shows on, I think, the US Apple podcast charts, right?
That was insane. I w- I did not see that coming. Even if you're, like, number one five times in a row, which I, I have been, it's not like I can make a living out of it, especially in Brazil.
You've been so popular in Brazil, now it's time to test you in the English market. Why was this the one? [upbeat music] Welcome back to the Creator Spotlight podcast.
My name is Francis Zierer, and today we're speaking with Chico Felitti, an award-winning journalist, author, and podcaster.
He's the creator and narrator of nine, I believe, chart-topping Brazilian podcasts, including, my Portuguese does need work, so bear with me, uh, A Coach and Alem do Meme. Correct? Alem do Meme, that's perfect. Perfect.
That's terrific. [laughs] Good. I, I practiced. Um, anyways, he is excellent at telling internet stories on a personal scale, which is obviously something I love doing on this show.
Uh, and his first English language podcast, Don't Cross Cat, which is an adaptation of A Coach, is currently airing. Chico, thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me. It's an absolute pleasure. Okay.
So on the first episode of Don't Cross Cat, the new podcast, you describe yourself as kind of an influencer, but a journalist first. And very gay as well. Yeah. Yes, and very gay as well. I think this was very nice.
Even I, who am super gay- [laughs] This is the line... I don't know why I did that. That's the precise line I wrote. [laughs] Even I, who am super gay, can see how, how beautiful she is, or something like that, right?
Yeah. [laughs] It was funny. Yeah. I mean, I made a laugh, and I li- I liked how you were, uh, not like so inserting yourself in the story in this, like,
huge way, but, but really setting the tone and introducing you as the narrator. Um, I, I thought it work- worked really well.
But I wanna, I wanna talk about that because you've been a journalist for around 20 years at this point, um, really since before all the modern platforms that birthed influencers existed.
So what does that mean to you to be kind of an influencer, but a journalist first? It's so weird, 'cause that wasn't in the plans at all.
I started my career at the very young age of 19 or 20 when I joined Folha de S.Paulo, which is the Latin American equivalent of The New York Times, so it was a huge newsroom.
Everyone was so serious, and everyone, I mean, took the craft really seriously. And, and everyone- Mm-hmm...
was like hard news journalists, and no one had a personal life, and no one had a personality, and I guess I was kind of an ugly duckling, duckling there- [laughs]...
'cause I was always the person all-- I would enter the newsroom crying 'cause I had broken up with my boyfriend. Yeah. And I would cry, but I would tell, I, I would tell it to everyone, so people found me weird. Huh.
That I was never willing to give up my personal life in order to be a serious, and I'm quoting, I'm quoting here, "a serious journalist" as people expected me to. So I spent 10 years in a really serious newsh- newsroom.
I covered wars, I covered, uh, economics, sports, and then when I'm about to turn 30, the crisis hit, like, media crisis, uh, hit every single media outlet in the world, and I see myself jobless. And I'm like, "Okay.
Now I get to be myself-" Yeah... uh, on social media, and I get to be stupid," 'cause I am, uh, stupid, as in goofy. I mean, I, I'm a buffoon as well as I'm an investigative reporter. Mm-hmm.
I have both sides, and I-- it was hard at first recognizing, like, people will see a different side of me on social media. 'Cause at first I was just showing to 300 friends, and it was fine.
I mean, I could do jokes, I could show... I travel a lot, so I see a lot of banana cra- crazy stuff- Yeah...
around Brazil and the world, and that's what I used my social platforms for, like, just to show crazy people and crazy things I see and funny things I see, which I would not have used in an investigation for a book or for a podcast or for a news story.
Uh, so when I start getting some recognition, uh, with my books and then with my podcasts, I start gaining more followers, and people start
getting in touch with that side of me that is not what you expect from a serious invest- investigative journalist. Mm.
But I was fortunately able to keep them both, 'cause now I'm making more money by being an influencer than I am doing with podcasts. There's very little money in podcasting.
[laughs] Even if you're, like, number one five times in a row, which I, I have been, it's not like I can make a living out of it, especially in Brazil, which is- Mm... a smaller market.
I read the news on the trade in the US, so Call Her Daddy was sold by $30 million or something like that. Even our biggest podcasts, they, they're sold by, I don't know, $2,000. It's so, it's so steep. Yeah.
The difference is so steep, and there are so few people living out of podcasting. In Brazil, like, five or six of us.
I'm fortunate to be one of them, but a man's gotta make a living, so I start doing influencing stuff as well, which is not outright lying or not offensive. But, like, I can do ads for a product I use. Yeah.
I started using skincare recently 'cause a skincare company, uh, reached out to me and said, "People in the in- internet say you look old. You look older than you are." I'm, I'm 39. I just turned, turned 39.
You're a young man. People calling me daddy. Yeah. So yeah, "Would you like to start using our products and testing our products and showing it on your Instagram, and we'll pay you-"A huge amount, a, a big bag of money.
And I'm like, "Okay." Well, wait. Let me interrupt you for a second.
So in, I think in that same episode of Don't Cross Cat, you describe when you reached 100,000 followers on your Instagram, you say that an American company offered you $10,000 to pose with a bag of chips.
To hold this bag up to. Yeah. Yeah. And this was the exact same amount that you had received for a book you had just spent a year writing. Um- Yeah... and you, you said how this was kind of a strange feeling.
Tell me more about that. I don't think it's... It was astonishing at first, 'cause it wa- I'd never seen so much money in my life. To actually take a picture and post it online of me holding a bag of chips and,
let me just make, make it clear here, I do eat chips a lot. I do eat junk food a lot more than I should. But it seemed almost surreal.
It seemed kind of unfair for me to make that much money by doing so little, whereas I had just made $10,000 to write a book, which took me 18 months, I don't know, and I had to travel to France, and I had to investigate in several Brazilian states and cities, and I, and there was a lot of work there.
Yeah. So I, I, there was a lot of sweat and tears to write a book, and there wasn't that much sweat and tears to hold a bag of chips and say, "Hey, guys, you should try new Doritos." Yeah.
But what you gonna do, I mean, as, as long as I'm not lying, that's why, uh, the Cat Torres case interests me so much. As long as you're not deceiving people, as long as you're trying to be real,
candid about your life and the products you use and the stuff you advertise, I think it's, it's a way out. Mm-hmm. It's a way of making a living.
I see- Well, this, so this, this kind of ethical relationship that influencing has and creators have that journal- versus what journalism has.
Like, with journalism, there's an agreement between the public and the journalist, and the journalist, there's this trust, and there's this, like, understanding of rigor and this responsibility you have.
And I'm always interested in when I speak to people who don't have a journalism background, but they're like a big creator or something, and I ask them how they think about their responsibility, and like, what their maybe code of ethics is, and sometimes people have a good answer and sometimes don't.
So I think that's one thing that appealed to me about you, is you have this, the, you know, these two decades of journalistic ex- experience and like, being in that environment that you said was so rigorous and, and learning all that, but then coming into this world of being an influencer, which can mean multiple things.
Like, I mean, on your Instagram, we can call that being an influencer, but your podcasts too are serious journalism as well.
Um, but I w- I wanted to know if you had any more thoughts on like, the specific ethics of being an influencer ver- versus being a journalist. It was a struggle. It was really hard at first.
I did not wanna do that, and I knew my peers were not looking at me with kind eyes. I knew they were judging me.
One of the people who actually hired me at a very young age to work at Folha, which is a really prestigious job- Yeah... everyone wants to be there. There's like 4,000 people for one job base, for one job position.
She ran into me right before I published, uh, A Mulher da Casa Abandonada, which was the biggest hit in, in Brazilian podcast history, and she turned to me and said, "When did you stop being a journalist?
When did you start being a blogger?" And I was deeply wounded. I was so hurt by that. But then I gave it some thought and I'm, I was like, "Yeah, maybe I am a blogger. May- maybe I'm both."
And specifically because I'm both that I'm able to do journalism. Mm-hmm. Had I not found a, a, a source of income, I wouldn't be able to write books nowadays or, or to investigate.
Uh, I'm releasing a new podcast in Portuguese tomorrow, which took me- Oh... two and a half years. I would not be able to investigate a case for two and a half years had I not had posed with a bag of chips.
So it's, it's a matter of balance, and it's a matter of a market that's ever-changing. Mm-hmm. And but yeah, I do know that many of my colleagues and my peers do not look at me with kind eyes. Mm.
They do not approve of what I do. This is, so- But what are you gonna do? You know how like, you know, this past election in America was termed the podcast election for how so much of like,
you know, the general public has turned away from maybe traditional media, um, to podcasters, influencers, creators, whatever word we wanna say.
Um, I think the thing that would unite them is like a-- people who are more independent and lack the rigor and structure of traditional media.
It sounds like what you're saying is that this hasn't happened so much in Brazil or, or has it? Like, has there kind of been a shift? Not that much. I guess we're 10 years behind you guys- Hmm...
in the podcasting market. A Mulher da Casa Abandonada, which was my biggest hit, and possibly the, arguably the biggest hit in, in Brazilian podcast history, uh, went on air exactly two years ago. It was our Serial.
So our Serial happened two years ago. Your Serial happened- 2014, I think it was... what, 12 years ago? Yeah, yeah. 12 years, exactly. So, so yeah, I guess we're a little behind on that.
Uh, it's hard to have a podcast with over a million listeners. I'm fortunate to have over a million listeners in everything I have released ever since. But a big podcast in Brazil has a listening of about 100,000. Yeah.
Which is not all that much. So I guess we're still, uh, getting there. We're not quite there yet. Hmm. Is, um...
I may, I mean, maybe I'm ignorant to some of the intricacies of like Brazilian versus Portuguese relationships, but is there like a crossover in like Portugal and versus Brazil?
Do those markets overlap a bit at all because of the language? They do. A lot. I, I, I was in Portugal recently. Uh, the guy, I, I mean, the
guy who's accused of crimes who I'm covering in the podcast I'm, uh, doing tomorrow, is living in Portugal, so I was in Portugal and I, I was fortunate to have conversations with many, uh, Portuguese journalists who also podcast there.
And it's the same as television. They-Hear our podcasts. They mostly hear Brazilian podcasts.
They don't have that much of a listening, and here in Brazil, we do not-- we are not used to the Portuguese accent, so Portuguese podcasts are not successful here.
Even I was recently in love with one of them, and I recommended them on my social media, and I got hundreds of DMs saying that, "I can't. I can't understand what they're saying. I-it bothers me. It's irritating."
So yeah, I guess that's the relation, the current relation as it has been with television for years. Mm-hmm. They see our soap operas. They're huge in, in Portugal. They're huge in Angola, Mozambique.
But we're not consuming their culture. Yeah. Well, I feel like I, [sighs] I mean, I receive some Brazilian culture, Brazilian content. Like, I, I, I'm a football fan, right?
So, like, I'll, I'll get stuff related to that on my Instagram reels and such, and I think of like, you know, it's the kind of Twitter meme of, like, people commenting on artists' posts like, "Come to Brazil," right?
"Come to Brazil." And so- We're insane. Yeah. We're crazy. On the internet, there is no such thing-- No one's wilder on the internet than the Brazilian audience. [laughs] It's insane.
I mean, we ei- we either love it or hate it, and we're very passionate about it. So it's really weird for me to have a podcast that is on in the US, and I got like 20 messages, 20 DMs, and they were all polite and kind.
And I do know that from tomorrow on, when my podcast drops, I will have people saying, "I love you. It's the best thing I ever heard," and people actually threatening to kill me. Mm.
'Cause that's what's happen- happens in Brazilian internet. We're very interactive. We're very-- We're the country that consumes the most internet in the world. Yeah. And we have a sick relation.
I mean, influencers here are gods. They're bigger than soap opera stars. They're bigger than musicians. They're bigger than, uh, pop idols. They are the biggest. And they are the people making most money.
That's why Cat Torres- Yeah... and her case interested me so much.
I mean, how can you give someone so much of your agency and so much of your freedom to the point of going elsewhere, going to another country to live with an influencer you follow, not knowing what you will be doing there?
Yeah. It's insane, and I, I do think it speaks a lot about the Brazilian ethos and the-- how we use the internet in Brazil. It's a tad different. I think it's an amplified version of how Americans use the internet.
We're like you times a hundred. Yeah. Well, I think there's, like, an expressive-- a more expressive, uh, vein in Brazilian culture, from, from my impression. I mean, who am I to say, really?
But I think Americans can be really reserved and, like, almost, like, cautious in a way that I don't- Yes... think Brazilians are so much.
I was, I was watching this Andy Cohen interview, like, two days ago, and he was like, "I was with my kid at Starbucks, and someone asked me to take a selfie," and was like, "No, thanks, I need some privacy."
I was thinking, "You could never do that." They would just take the selfie. You would not... I mean, they will-- I have people stopping me in the street and saying, "I fucking hate your latest podcast.
Whatever happened to you? You piece of shit. You used to do good stuff, and now you're a piece of shit." At a party, someone I had never seen in my life. They really, they really buy into the parasocial relationship.
I, so I read, I read one thing.
I think this is from a couple years ago, a study from Adobe, that Brazil, and you were kind of referring to this, Brazil has the highest proportional population of people who identify as creators in the world.
That at the time- Yeah... it was around-- Brazil-Brazilian population was around two hundred thirteen million, and there was a hundred six million people identifying- Who identified as creators... as creators.
Yeah, which is the highest proportion in the world. Uh, I think the next highest was like thirty-seven. Fifty percent of Brazilians are influencers. It says, it says a lot. Yeah. Speaks volumes.
Um, okay, let's talk about Cat Torres, though, for a second. Uh, we, we've been, we've been skirting it a little bit, but let-let's get into it.
So this originally came out a couple years ago as a podcast called A Coach, uh, in, in, in Portuguese, and then, uh, Don't Cross Cat is a new retelling of it in English, um, from a different perspective.
But tell me how you originally got into this story and developed the original version in, in, uh, for Brazil. It's a very funny case 'cause mostly all my cases, I will stumble upon them on the street.
A Mulher da Casa Abandonada was actually a woman who lived in a mansion in shambles right across from my new house, so there, there was something very personal.
Whereas Cat Torres and the Don't Cross Cat story came to me through the internet. I, I, I mean, I see this blonde Barbie-like influencer on Instagram, and I'm like, yeah, seen,
seen that, done that, been there, and I'm not interested at all until on Twitter people start questioning if she was kidnapping and trafficking her followers, and then something changes inside of me.
Something shifts, and I'm like, okay, maybe there's something here. And it turns out the rumors were true.
She was actually inviting her followers to live with her and trafficking them to the US and making them do sex work.
Uh, and it was this very non-special influencer who would talk about meditation and about clothes and posed with Gucci bags over a, a Ferrari, who would-- And it was very banal, very not special at first.
But when the internet started mo-mobilizing itself and saying, "No, something's off here. Something's fishy. These young women are disappearing," I was like, no, maybe there is something here.
Maybe she's not just another influencer. And it turned out to be true.
I mean, it turned out to be a, a crime that would have not reached the authorities had it not been for the Brazilian internet, which is also very interesting to me, 'cause usually armchair detectives are seen in a very bad light.
They're like-- They're not making any progress. They're not helping the police. Just conspiracy. They're not helping the justice. Yeah.
And in this case, the biggest heroes are young Brazilian women who used to follow Cat Torres and started investigating when some of her followers go missing.
So it, it, it has a hero, an unexpected hero, so to say, which is-Like armchair detectives. Yeah. It's a case that was only solved
thanks to armchair detectives in Brazil who were spending hours and days on the internet trying to find clues of where those young women were and trying to get in touch with the Texan police, and so i- it's a very interesting tale.
Yeah. Well, we n- A cautionary tale almost. We won't, we won't spoil it all. I've, I've only listened to, I think, three or four episodes so far. Uh, but, but it's really good.
Um, tell me about adapting it then to the US market because, as I, as I mentioned a little earlier, you did shift the story a bit. I think you tell it more...
I mean, I haven't listened to the, to it in the original [laughs] Portuguese, but, uh, you, you shift the POV to, uh, this new person. Um, and I, I imagine you did a lot of new investigative work too.
Um, tell me, tell me about w- the decision-making. Like, was it like, "We think this thing will perform better in the US market?" Like, why didn't you just, you know, "Let's, let me just retell it in English"?
Uh, I think that... I know nothing about the American market. [laughs] I've never worked in the American market.
So I had to be humble enough to listen to the people at Wondery, and they were like, "No, the original version," which was very much a biography of Kat Soares- Mm...
would not work for the American audience 'cause so much of it takes place in Brazil. I mean, she has an affair with Leonardo DiCaprio in Cannes, in the Cannes Film Festival.
There are things which are quite universal and quite appealing to the American audience. But most of it loses punch when it's taken to an American audience.
There are so many things that are so powerful in Portuguese and, and people who interviewed her a- and the beauty pageant she took place. I mean, she, uh...
the beauty pageant in which she was a contes- contestant, that is so good for Brazilian audiences, but I don't think that would translate very well. So I had the help of the people of Wondery- Mm...
and Futuro Media to find a way of how retelling the story in a whole new way that might be appealing to the average American, which I know nothing of.
I know a lot of the Brazilian audience by now, but I know nothing of the American market. So I had to just sit there and learn, which was very valid, which was very helpful.
How many podcasts had you produced, um, before A Coach, like, in, in Portuguese? No idea. I would say seven. Which is a lot.
So, so why was this then the one where it's like, okay, like, you've been so popular in Brazil, now it's time to test you in the, in, in the English market? Why was it this? Why was this the one? I think that
American executives, very rightly, tend to lean towards stories that take place in the US, and all of my other stories are very local, or very São Paulo based, or Rio based, and very Brazilian.
So I, I, I tried to sell Amélia de Casabona now in the American market as the biggest hit, narrative hit in the history of Latin America, and people were like, "Yeah." Thanks.
And it takes place, the crime takes place in the US, in Washington DC, in this story. But people were like, "Nah, most of it is in Brazil." We would have to explain what Brazil is.
We would have to explain what São Paulo is.
We would have to explain you've got a big city there, bigger than New York City, and a wealthy city as well, which is dangerous, but then again, it has safe and wealthy regions, and they thought there was
too much explaining to do- Mm... to take it to the American market. Whereas, uh, Don't Cross Kat takes place in the US. Like 90% of it takes place in the US. Yeah.
And it's a very American story with, I would say half of the interviews are in American English with Americans, and half of the interviews are in English with Brazilians or Latinos. Yeah.
So I think there was a certain balance that was needed to break the bubble, to burst the bubble of the American market, which is really hard to do. It's not easy to do.
I, I know that other countries in Latin America or in Europe, France for instance, have a big appetite for stories that take place elsewhere in the world. Mm.
Whereas it's harder to have something that's mass communication in the US and it doesn't take place in the US at all. Yeah. Well, I think this, I noticed on your, on your Twitter?
No, it was on your Instagram, uh, that in early April, Don't Cross Kat cracked the top 10 shows on, I think, the US Apple- Yeah... podcast charts, right? That was insane. I w- I did not see that coming. Yeah.
And I was like, "I have a, this thick accent. Everyone has a thick accent. People won't be able to go through, like, five minutes of it."
So when we reached the top 10, it was, everyone was yelling, "What the fuck is going on?" Yeah. I don't think anyone was expecting it to be honest. I mean, it's, it's amazing. I think...
I mean, y- you, you are, as I was saying at the beginning of this, you are a very good storyteller, and, like, the rigor of the research, like it's really well-woven. Your narration is, is really good, I would say.
Um, all this is making me think though about, I was list- listening to another podcast recently, Colin and Samir.
You know, they do interviews with creators on YouTube and such, and they had MrBeast and Mark Zuckerberg on. And, uh, they were talking about AI dubbing.
So, you know, obviously, MrBeast, biggest YouTuber in the world, one of the biggest creators in the world, period. Pretty big international audience too because his content is so...
It doesn't necessarily need language or specific cultural context often, right? It'll say, it's like the, you know, competing for $100,000, whatever type of thing.
Um, but he was talking about how they spend a lot of money to translate their content into other languages for other markets, but that it's not always worth it because, as we were referring to earlier, like, the, the advertising revenue you can get in, in markets that are non-US, the money doesn't match up if you're producing it in the US market where it's so expensive.
So Zuckerberg was talking about how, uh, on Meta, Meta platforms like Instagram, uh, Facebook, they're going to soon introduce-A feature where you can automatically dub content f- into it from one-- any language into, into any other.
Which I think is really interesting, and they were speaking about it in the context of like, "Oh, okay, now MrBeast can reach more global audiences, uh, without having to spend hundreds of thousands to, to translate the content manually."
But to me, what, what they didn't really talk about and w- what I was more interested in, and I wanted to ask you about, you, you kinda just got into a bit, is like, well what about like bringing content from other culturals, other cultures, other languages into the American market?
And like, will that happen or will it be, again, more of an American cultural imperialism where the, you know, once again, American, you know, movies taking over the world and stuff. Is it just gonna be like that?
Um, it, it kinda sounds like you're setting up to say it probab- it will be harder for like other cultures to crack the American market. I think culture is changing.
I read recently in The New York Times that the Chinese, uh, movie market is about to surpass the American movie market in revenue. So I do think, and I do think young- younger generations are more avid.
They have a bigger appetite for content that is not produced necessarily in the country they're from, 'cause they're-- they've grown up with the internet. Mm-hmm. So they're used to having this
cosmopolitanism, uh, in the tip of their fingers since they were babies. So I do think it's a different-- They didn't grow up watching Johnny, Johnny Carson. Yeah.
[laughs] They grew up watching TikTok, and TikTok content produced all over the world. So I do think there will be a shift that will be positive for creators elsewhere in the world as well.
I do think I'm, I'm a little optimistic about that. But then again, I, I'll, I'll lose my job. [laughs] Anytime now I'll lose my job. The New York Times is already using, like, automated voices to read their stories.
Yeah. What's the use of me? [lips smack] Well, I, I think, I mean, the use of you, again, going back into like why I like your podcast so much is it's real- it's really well told. It's really well-researched.
Again, it's like I-- this is expensive, though. It's like you were saying with your book too. 18 months going, like, all around, like, interviewing people literally all over the world. Like, that is very expensive.
But I think that I, like, I'm confident in all this conversation about AI and creative jobs, et cetera, like, I'm very confident that that kind of quality and that kind of rigor and that kind of care and attention to people and storytelling and telling people's stories, like, I think that wins out still.
I don't think it will ever die or ever vanish, but I do think it will become more and more niche, as it happened to the media. Yeah.
As it's happened to the newspapers, as it's happened-- I mean, they all diminished so much. They're still there. They're still pulling some, pulling out some great stories, but they're so much smaller than there was.
Yeah. The Sunday Times is so much smaller a- and thinner than it was then. Yeah. And I'm sure your, your former paper has less people on staff. Yeah. It's a tabloid now, which is very sad to see. Yeah.
It's not a, on standard size anymore. It's a tabloid, so it's really sad. It's really disheartening to see media companies dying.
[air whooshing] Hey, if you're enjoying this conversation, consider subscribing to the podcast. We release a new episode every Tuesday. All right, back to the show.
[air whooshing] Let's talk about all the different media that you've produced. So newspapers, stories, books, podcasts, I think TV and film scripts. Um,
it seems to me that you are probably best known in the Brazilian market as a podcaster at this point. Uh, but tell me about, like, your experience with these media, what you find most fulfilling to produce.
I think it's every media has a different relation with their audience. So with books, I have people who actually read my books, and they're usually young, and they're usually LGBTQ,
uh, in the community, and they're us- usually living in big cities. Whereas my podcasts are-- I mean, true crime podcasts are listened by 34 to 50-year-old women- Yeah... all over the country.
So now when I go on tour to, to, to speaking appointments or something, I will find housewives who are 60 and, and get to, got to know me through my podcast.
So I think every media has a different relation and a different niche as well. Mm-hmm. I mean, I, I love the relation I have with my readers, the people who actually read my books, 'cause it's, it has more depth to it.
It's more intimate. Whereas the people-- Yeah. Whereas the people who follow me on social media or listen to my podcasts are like, all they want is a selfie a- and it's all good.
I mean, they, they don't care a lot about the big themes. I think it's more- About ideas... of entertainment. Yeah, precisely. And, and also, my writing changes so much.
I mean, the, the subjects of my books are so different from the subjects of my podcast. I had never covered crimes in my books. Mm-hmm.
They're always biographies of people who are marginalized and people who have this really sad and, and touching life stories, and people who were abandoned by society.
Whereas my podcasts are like, "This guy killed 30 people. Let's get to know his story." Yeah. Yeah.
Well, like a book too, it's like those stories aren't-- it's gonna be much harder to market them to a mass market, which a podcast needs to, to be sustain- sustainable. Right. How did you get into podcasting as a medium?
It was the same as everyone who listened to Serial. I was living in the US when Serial came out, and I was obsessed with it. And when I returned to Brazil, I was like, "Fuck it, I'm doing a podcast."
[laughs] So I started trying without any training or without any preparation of myself. I started, like, recording stuff on my old iPhone 2,
uh, recording audios, and I had a friend who was a musician editing the first pod- It was, was shit. It was so bad. But then again, I had to learn, so I w- I was just- Gotta make shit to make gold. Yep.
I was mimicking what I had heard in the US and trying to emulate it, and so I found a voice that was my own voice.But it took a while. I mean, I, I had four
like average sized podcasts, like medium-sized podcasts prior to having a big hit, and now there's a burden of having
to keep up with the, with the numbers and to keep up with the sponsors and to keep up with the expectations.
But, but, but it was really-- It was so much fun when no one was podcasting in Brazil, especially narrative podcasts. Mm. No one was doing them. So we were like four of us, and we would talk every week.
Uh, we, we weren't competing or anything. We were helping each other, and we would cover whichever case we wanted to. It was so- Are there kind of like people with a serious journalistic background as well? Most.
Most of them, yeah. One of them is a professor in the journalism school. The other one was also in the newsroom, yeah. Okay. Yeah.
And so then you guys were kind of this community and building this thing, building your thing separately, but collaborating, helping each other out maybe, and now is it much more saturated but nobody...
There's just so few that are mass market? Yeah, but still, I mean, it's a hard time for podcasting, not only in Brazil, all over the world, but especially in Brazil. Uh, so-- But there's a bright side to it.
There's a silver lining to it as, uh, as well, which is the big companies stop producing in Brazil.
Spotify's not producing in Brazil anymore, so we, the few ones who still can pull it off and produce it by ourselves, we will have the market to ourselves. There you go.
'Cause there is a certain demand, and no one's offering anything. Tell me about, um, Alem do Meme, which I, I believe translates to like much more than a meme or behind the meme or something. Beyond the meme, yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Um, so I, I, I used my Google Translate on this, uh, that it-- each episode is a profile of a person whose life has changed, for better or worse, after going viral on the internet.
Um, and it's one of- Yeah...your very popular ones, and it's all about these bra- specifically Brazilian people who became memes, right?
I, I, I mean, I obv- I'm obviously obsessed with stories about-- telling stories about the internet through the people who create it.
Um, so I wi- I wish I could've listened to some of this in English, but yeah, tell me about it. It was so much fun to do that. That was the first time I got paid to do a podcast by Spotify in Brazil.
And it was so much fun 'cause I'm so obsessed with the internet, and I, I always wondered whatever happened to those people who had became memes and, and had their life changed, and they were so popular, but no one had a- actually told their story.
Then I had-- I got the chance to travel all over Brazil telling their stories, and there were some stories that were touching, some of them were happy, some of them were really sad.
There was this old man who goes viral on Facebook 'cause he tried to cr- create his own Play-Doh, and he's really old.
He's like eighty, and he tries to create his own Play-Doh, uh, on, on his backyard, and it never goes right, and people started like feeling affection for him 'cause he was always failing. Mm-hmm.
And then he goes viral, but then there's this rumor that he's a pedophile, and he sees his life being ruined, and there was no evidence whatsoever to him being a pedophile.
So I, I find this person in his house in a very remote country region of Brazil, and his life was destroyed by the internet. That's so intense.
That's one of the episodes, and it's-- But most of them are funny or, or, uh... I mean, people have a lot of affection for memes in Brazil, so they were actually glad to get to know those people better.
But some of them are really a cautionary tale of h- how the internet works if you're not responsible. Mm-hmm.
Which I mean, this, this obviously kind of sets the foundation for then telling the story about Cat Torres, right?
That was-- Was this was kind of- Yeah...how you got into like, "Well, here's how I tell a story about the relationship between a person producing content on the internet, their real lives, and the lives of the people who are interacting with them."
I'm fully obsessed with the internet and social media in twenty twenty-five. I do think that is the biggest subject we should be discussing.
My latest project, uh, project in Brazil, podcast in Brazil was about this famous YouTuber, this huge Brazilian YouTuber who vanishes. Yes. She disappeared. Deceida? Uh- What it's called? We find-- Deceida, yeah.
Precisely. Okay. We find her like in a small farm. She has no electricity. She has no power. She-- And she's living there with her newborn baby.
No one knew she had a baby 'cause she was not in the internet for two and a half years now, and she's-- decides to speak for the first time and let us know why she decided to quit the internet.
So yeah, I-- As you can see, I'm very obsessed with social media a- and the effects of social media, uh, in humanity in twenty twenty-five. Yeah. I, um...
Am I right that with this specific concept you want to tell more stories about people who, who have kind of withdrawn from the internet, or was it just the one-off about this person?
I think that was so-- I mean, it was such a fascinating narrative, and she was making so much money. She could be so rich.
She could have just kept recording videos without being on the internet, and her rupture with the internet, her leaving the internet is so brave and bold that it was worth a podcast.
I don't know if I would tell other stories that are similar- Yeah...to that one, 'cause that one was a big story. It's rare, yeah. And she was-- Like MrBeast.
If MrBeast tomorrow gives up his YouTube channel w- and go, goes live in a ranch in Utah, that, that is that level of insanity. Yeah.
And just vanishes and leaves like hundreds of thousands peop- thousands of people crying and wondering whatever happened. Yeah.
Was it a situation too where she'd like made enough money where it's like, "I don't really need to keep doing this," or is it more spiritual? I think it's more spiritual 'cause, yeah, she has amassed a lot of money.
She has a lot of money, but she's not using the money. She's living in a very simple house. She has no running water.
What's-- what she use the money for?She's become a real hippie, like a '70s hippie, which is not very usual in Brazil, especially amongst the people who live, uh, on the, on the internet. Yeah.
So the-- I think it was more of a spiritual search, and she tells it herself that it was more of recognizing what the internet was doing to her and her psyche than like, "Yeah, I'm done. I've, I've earned enough money."
She could be living in São Paulo or Rio in a penthouse, had she wanted. She would have the resources for doing so. Yeah. Was, um... What, what was the first story-- Pardon me if you already said this.
What was, like, the, the first story you told about the internet and, and people on the internet? Whether it was, like, something, uh, more in, like, a written journalism format, um, or was it one of these podcasts?
Like, how did you really get into this beat and, and then get hooked? Yeah. It was when I was twenty-nine.
I wrote this big profile on this homeless person in Brazil who had a face deformed by so much silicone he had injected in, and he also became a meme on the internet, and no one knew his name, but he was very popular.
Like, people would use his pictures, and people would make fun of him. And I actually spent six year- six months trying to tell his story 'cause he was in a hospital bed, uh, about to die, and no one even knew his name.
I mean, there is this urban celebrities all over the place. New York has their urban celebrities. São Paulo also does. He was a very, like, a urban celebrity, but no one knew his name.
So I took the time to investigate his life, and what was really special about that is that the story that was published by BuzzFeed Brazil went viral, and immediately
he started being called by his name, which had been a secret up to this point. So I was with him the following day, and he was this very scary person 'cause he, like, was like the Elephant Man. I mean- Yeah...
his face was actually deformed, and it was actually three or four times bigger than an av- average face. Uh, and people started calling him Ricardo from day to night. I mean, that story was published on a Friday night.
On a Saturday mor-mor-morning, I went out with him for a walk in São Paulo downtown, and people were actually calling him by his name thanks to the internet. The same people who had- Thanks to you...
made fun of him and had made-- created a m-meme out of him, uh, were now recognizing his e-existence and recognizing there was something in common between them.
So that was-- I mean, that was the, my biggest achievement in my professional life by far, by far. Yeah. So the, the project that you were saying is about to come out tomorrow.
This, so this podcast that we're recording right now will be out three weeks from today. Um, what's the-- So I don't know if embargoed or whatever. Uh, what is the- Yeah... project that's about to come out tomorrow?
It's called The Super. It's about a person who goes to... In São Paulo, it's-- there's something happening, uh, with
the architecture and the urbanism of the city, which is we're building a lot of buildings with tiny apartments that are not meant to be bought as homes. They're meant to be bought- Airbnbs... as an investment. An Airbnb.
Mm-hmm. So yeah, so you got this, uh, brand new building that's called Vibe in English, which is a very pretentious and nonsensical name in Brazil. And in the first meeting, a guy walks in, and he looks very sleek.
He looks very rich. He has a, a sport jacket. He's driving a Porsche, and he says, "I own 20 apartments here. I'm a big investor. I wanna be the super." He gets elected. In
one or two years, people find out he lied about his identity. He had never owned a single apartment there, and he had stolen all the money out the building.
So he goes and does, does that to another building and then another building, and then he changes his name and goes to Europe with a new name to sell mansions.
So it's a, it's a, also a cautionary tale that speaks a lot about living.
I mean, why are we building buildings that are so impersonal that people don't even know if you're-- Like, y-you're a stranger coming into the building and saying, "I live here.
I have 20 apartments," and everyone will buy it. That is so topical. That, that could have never happened 20 years ago in Brazil 'cause everyone knew each other. Everyone knew the neighbors. Yeah.
So there is something like, uh, a silver surfer kind of aspect to it, which is he destroys a building, then he moves on to the next one. He destroys a building. He moves on to the next one.
He destroys a building, and then he gets away with it 'cause it's not illegal, which I also love. I love endings that are not fulfilling. He gets away with it 'cause it's not illegal. Yeah.
That's-- You know, I, I wonder, I wonder if this is a, a very American thing too.
I've always-- Like, growing up, I've always felt that these endings that are very fulfilling are very American, and I much prefer that ending that kind of puts a twist on it.
Like, one thing I, I always remember, a really foundational learning of this when I was a kid, was there's I Am Legend, which is, you know, a movie with Will Smith about vampires. Mm-hmm. And it's also a short story.
And in the short story-- Or, uh, first it was in the movie, what happens is, like, basically Will Smith and the humans win.
Like, the vampires are just these monsters, and they get away with, like-- Will Smith and the humans kind of get away with this serum to cure yourself.
But in the book, what happens is the character who Will Smith is playing gets kind of arrested by these vampires and, and he's looking out the window of the cell he's in, and he's noticing they're kind of interacting, like, like a, a society, and they're gonna, they're gonna execute him.
They're gonna, you know, hang him or something. And he realizes-- And this is where the entire title of the, of the movie, of the story comes from. He realizes, "I am legend."
Like, I'm the vampire, and this is the normal society now. And I remember being so pissed off when I was, like, 11 or 13 or whenever this movie came out. I'm like, they lit- like, uh, the... How could you do this?
Like, this is... Anyways, that's neither here nor there. There's such pleasure in frustrating the audience. Yeah. There's such pleasure. It's so good.
I mean, having people pissed off 'cause nothing's happening to someone who pulled some bad decisions or, or who harmed other people, there is such pleasure in it, which was not possible in the US, for instance. Yes.
It's a very happy, very happy ending with Don't Crosscat. I'm not giving any spoilers here, but it's a very happy ending which is- Mm-hmm...
focused on love and focused on hope and focused-- And it's not quite how it finishes in the Portuguese version. That's amazing. Uh, well, I think there's no better place to end it than with the ending.
So, Chico, thank you so much for coming on. It was a pleasure talking to you. Likewise. Thanks so much for having me. Of course. Listener, I will see you next week.
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