As part of our March 2nd feature of Jacob Reed and Me, we spent some time with Danny O’Malley, the show’s Executive Producer and lifelong creative.
Danny is an Emmy, Grammy, and James Beard-nominated film director and responsible for some cultural bangers like Netflix's Chef's Table, Being Mike Tyson, and CANARY; his 2023 feature documentary about pioneering climate scientist Lonnie Thompson.
All of that creative energy is harnessed and run out of his production company, End of the Road Films.
This is the second entry in a multi-part series with the team behind Jacob Reed and Me. You can find part one here .
SO: When you first heard the idea — a comedian tracking down people with the same name — what was your immediate reaction?
DO: When Jacob first told me about the idea, it was in a long list of projects he was working on. He said “You know how everyone has a low-effort podcast these days where two people just have a conversation?” I said “Of course” he then told me he had a spreadsheet of Jacob Reeds, and he was going to do a low-effort podcast where he interviews other Jacob Reeds. I kept coming back to that project saying “there’s something to that.” Not long after he dove in, and I jumped on board. It soon became the most high-effort podcast imaginable.
SO: Did any of the other Jacob Reeds make you rethink something about your own life?
DO: In our episode, The Head Case. The Jacob Reed we reach out to had a tumor in the same place as our Jacob’s childhood head injury. They both happened in the same year and there was a real parallel universe aspect to the story. Learning about the struggles caused by Jacob's disabilities, I thought a lot about how a workplace should be able to accommodate people with different ways of thinking. I have ADHD and for a long time, I ignored it. During the pandemic, I realized that it was something I needed to address. If you polled people who work with me, I don’t think anyone would suspect me of having a disability. My ability to mask it, also masked the toll it was taking on me to leave it unaddressed. Performing at a high level with an untreated disability is not a recipe for a balanced life. The way Jacob talked about his situation made me realize that it’s important to understand your needs and how to accommodate them. So you can advocate for those conditions at work. Also, I hope that episode gets others to think about their workplace and how they can make it more accommodating to people with disabilities.
SO’: Jacob Reed and Me wouldn’t exist were it not for this obsessive attention to the details of people’s names. Can you help people understand what an apostrophe in your last name does to systems built before the year 2000?
DO’: It’s not just systems before 2000! Nearly every time I put my name into a computer it’s a dice roll. I’ve had issues making payments, getting on to film studio lots, submitting online forms, and registering software. Seeing big red letters that say “Please Enter Valid Name” on an online form is never pleasant. Sometimes you leave out the apostrophe, but then have to put everything in caps to make it look right. Sometimes you put it in. Then you don’t remember which accounts go one way or another as you return to those accounts later. The Irish have suffered many indignities throughout history. This is our smallest and least damaging one. These tech billionaires are out to “save the world,” but can’t even take an Irish name on their websites. It’s hard to not take it personally when the problem persists after 30+ years of using computers!
SO: Narrative podcasts often hinge on a single question. What was the core question you felt the show needed to answer?
DO: I see it a little differently. To me, the power of a story comes from a character’s need to change. If they are out of balance with the external forces of the world, it’s like a sling shot being pulled back. There is kinetic energy stored up. The question is: under pressure will they change or not? So for me, it’s really about zeroing on our Jacob and the ways he feels out of balance. It’s an unresolved question, a nagging feeling, a habit of mind, a limited perspective, and if we can find the Jacob Reed that would be an opposing force to, we have a great episode. To me, Jacob Reed and Me was a perfect premise to do that over and over and over again.
SO: What part of the show changed the most between the Tribeca premiere and the public release?
DO: The biggest change is the community. When we started, we were completely on our own–building an ambitious and high-effort storytelling podcast. When we went to Tribeca, we found that the community really resonated with the effort we were putting in. A lot of people who love podcasts fell in love with Mystery Show, Heavyweight, Radiolab, This American Life, and Reply All. That’s our experience too. In a lot of ways, Jacob, the team, and I threw reason and practicality out the window to continue the tradition of doing podcasts like that. With extensive reporting and high production values.
SO: You’ve worked in cinematic documentary storytelling for years. What had to change in your approach when the medium shifted to narrative audio?
DO: I don’t know that my approach is any different. With the other projects I do, I spend most of my time on the audio. When you’re doing documentaries, it’s rare to have a project that is fully driven by cinematic storytelling. More often than not the audio material is what drives it. On Chef’s Table, it’s a very audio driven show. People don’t notice, because we have great visuals. I would say I feel a bit freer in this medium. Having a host as a main character and the ability to write voice over makes telling a clear story easier. Also, not having to worry about visuals is very freeing. If we had unlimited time, I’d probably be going full-Jad-Abumrad and making sound collages with samplers and synthesizers for our soundtracks.
SO: Are you taking podcast pitches right now?
DO: At the moment, I’m a bit piled up on projects. So, unless someone is pitching something that has funding behind it, I’ll have to politely decline. Story consulting work is another service I offer.
SO: You mentioned spending parts of the year chasing funding and building pitches for new projects. For an independent narrative podcast like this, what does the reality of that process look like?
DO: The reality is that the podcast industry and the film industry are recovering from an unrealistic growth period. Money flowed in because expanding old media into a digital space felt like an infinite landscape for growth. We’ve since learned the obvious lesson that the minds and attention of the audience is a hard limit and the expansion stopped growing audiences. Now, these industries are pulling back costs, and the focus is on financial success and executives keeping their job. No judgement, it’s a hard position for everyone to be, but it’s led to a surge in true crime and celebrity driven content. The problem this creates is that there’s a lot of scarcity for truly innovative and quality work.
Ultimately, the massive corporations have pushed all the risk on to the creatives that keep the landscape fresh. With Jacob Reed and Me, we had to push through a lot of personal and financial struggles to make this podcast up to our standards. So, it becomes a process of building the project as you are selling it, because no one’s buying ideas anymore.
SO: What’s the next big risk you think you might take?
DO: I’m very passionate about science communication. My white whale project is a TV series which takes all the techniques we pioneered on Chef’s Table and applies them to the stories of scientists. Our film CANARY (which was featured on The Daily Show season finale last year!) came out of developing that We’re currently raising money to make that happen. In developing these projects, I’ve climbed an 18,000 ft mountain, had a close call with a King Cobra snake, and even went to places where we needed armed guards to take care of us. So, there will be a slew of risks taken in the process of making that happen!
Obviously, if you or anyone you know cares about science communication, reach out to me! We’re looking for all the momentum we can get.
SO: What’s your hot take on the media landscape as we enter the second quarter of the 21st century?
DO: Creatives are going to be hostages to multi-billion dollar corporations as they figure out how to satiate shareholders while they rediscover the old model of cable, radio, and theater. Most of the promise of big tech is moving analog businesses into an unregulated digital space, devaluing their product in a bid to win over users/engagement/audiences, and calling it innovation. They ultimately raise the price once they’ve captured the market.
Ultimately, Uber wasn’t actually cheaper than a taxi, they subsidized low costs with VC money. Uber is as expensive as a Taxi now. It’s a shell game dressed up as innovation. We’re going to see it again with VCs subsidizing AI as it gets integrated into these industries. The way streaming’s massive expansion hurt the quality branding associated with Netflix, AI will flood the market with films, tv, and podcasts that are not worth your time. People will like podcasts, films, tv less and quality will have an even more uphill battle.
Even knowing this, I think the only way is to aim higher. While everyone’s racing to the bottom, it leaves a vacuum at the top. That’s the idea behind Jacob Reed and Me, as well as my other projects. Raise the bar with every choice.
Jacob Reed and Me is available now with new episodes every Wednesday.
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