What's Uptin?

Hollywood is shrinking, but entertainment has never been bigger.

Producer Patrick has spent 20 years in television, on shows like The Amazing Race and Naked and Afraid.

He joins Uptin for an inside look at an industry being rebuilt in real time.

They start with Obsession, a $750,000 film on track to earn half a billion dollars, and what its success says about Gen Z, original stories, and the future of movie theaters.

Patrick explains why the old studio lots now feel like ghost towns and what the Paramount–Warner Bros merger could mean for jobs in LA.

He also covers why productions are leaving for Ireland, Bulgaria, and the Gulf, and how South Korea turned K-dramas, K-pop, and Squid Game into soft power.

That’s a playbook America invented and then forgot.

They also get into streaming fatigue, YouTube’s growing power, Washington’s push for a federal film tax credit, and why the best predictor of a hit still isn’t an algorithm.

Chapters

1:44 Welcome, Producer Patrick

1:49 The $750K movie chasing half a billion

3:04 “It’s the story, stupid”

3:49 Are movie tickets really too expensive?

5:35 Is Gen Z saving movie theaters?

6:25 The Paramount–Warner Bros merger explained

7:19 Layoffs and what the merger means for Hollywood

9:33 Tumbleweeds on the studio lots

10:47 Hollywood is shrinking, entertainment is growing

12:40 Ireland, Bulgaria, and the new global production hubs

13:51 South Korea and the power of soft power

16:07 France’s 20% rule and protecting culture

17:14 Nollywood and the new storytelling markets

19:31 Why the Gulf is investing in film

20:38 China, India, and Hollywood

24:30 Can a 20% federal tax credit bring productions back?

26:57 Streaming fatigue: who’s doing it right?

29:21 Is reality TV making a comeback?

30:20 What keeps Producer Patrick up at night?

Subscribe for more conversations on business, culture, and what’s next.

He wrote the book Silicon Valley used to make apps impossible to put down.

Then he spent a decade teaching people how to break free.

Nir Eyal is the bestselling author of Hooked, Indistractable, and his newest book, Beyond Belief, co-written with his wife Julie Li and a New York Times bestseller.

His books have sold over a million copies in more than 30 languages, and he's a former Stanford GSB lecturer and serial entrepreneur who has built and sold multiple companies.

In this episode of WHATS UPTIN?, we get into:

• How he responds to critics who say he helped build the attention economy
• The line between a healthy habit and manipulative design
• Whether distraction is still "on us" now that AI is making apps even better at grabbing attention
• The hidden beliefs that quietly cap your ambition, income, and results
• What it was like writing a book with his wife
• What a social media app built to be "indistractable" would actually look like
• The habit he still struggles with, despite literally writing the book on habits

If you care about tech, money, or getting more out of your own brain, this one's for you.

Oscar Höglund has started six companies. This is the one that turned into a nine-figure business, and along the way, he learned some of the sharpest lessons on hiring, leadership, and building through inflection points that I've heard on this show.

In this episode, Oscar (co-founder of Epidemic Sound) and I get into what it actually takes to build and scale a company: why he believes you should only hire people smarter than yourself, the day he realized he was no longer the smartest person in his own company, how Sweden's economy shapes its founders, and why "done is better than perfect" only gets you so far.

We also dig into AI's role in business today, where it supercharges talent and where it exposes weak links, and why speed without discipline can wreck a company's trust with its users.

In this episode:

• Going from a "mediocre" management consultant to a serial founder
• Why great leadership means feeling like the dumbest person in the room
• How Sweden's safety net changes the risk calculus for entrepreneurs
• Paying for top talent in the AI era, and why the gap between good and great just got bigger
• Balancing speed and quality when you have a loyal, high-volume user base
• Predictions for where the creator economy is headed
• What's really keeping a founder up at night

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:34 What Oscar's company actually does
4:32 Uptin's own founder-story tangent
6:06 Short-form vs. long-form content trends
7:26 Starting from scratch in a legacy industry
10:24 Building a business model people actually want to work with
16:47 Why Sweden keeps producing great startups
20:13 "Hire people smarter than you," and the day that got real
22:18 Paying for talent in the AI era
23:42 Predictions for the next few years
28:18 Is an IPO coming?
29:01 What's keeping him up at night

🎧 Subscribe for more conversations with founders and operators building category-defining companies.

David Sandstrom, CMO of Klarna, sits down with Uptin at Cannes Lions to explain why he thinks the credit card industry is broken, and why Klarna is coming for it.

In this episode:

• Why Sandstrom says Amex lounge perks are secretly funded by people drowning in credit card debt
• The real story behind Klarna's viral Snoop Dogg ("Smooth Dogg") campaign, and the 50/50 boardroom vote that almost killed it
• How Klarna handled going viral for the wrong reasons (yes, the $18 DoorDash memes)
• Why Gen Z trusts influencers over banks, and what that means for the future of financial advice
• How AI is changing marketing, LinkedIn, and social media as we know it
• What it's really like to build a $46 billion company, survive a brutal market correction, and IPO, and the mental toll no one talks about
• Sandstrom's blunt take: "Your self-worth and your net worth are not the same thing"

Whether you love Klarna, distrust it, or just want to understand how a "boring" fintech company became one of the most talked-about brands in the world, this conversation pulls back the curtain.

🎧 New episodes of What's Uptin every week.

Twitch CEO Dan Clancy has no PR team filtering his live streams, argues with his own mom about playing football, and thinks failure is the entire point of success.

On this episode of What's Uptin, we sit down with one of the strangest, most disarming CEOs in tech.

Dan Clancy went from NASA researcher to running Twitch, and along the way built a leadership style that looks nothing like Silicon Valley's usual playbook.

He explains why Twitch creators keep coming back even after leaving for YouTube, why "community" doesn't mean what most platforms think it means, and how a random Kevin Durant story reveals exactly what makes Twitch different.

We also get into:

- Why he's not worried about YouTube or Instagram going all-in on live streaming

- The real difference between a "commodity creator" and a platform star- His honest take on AI streamers (including "AI Jesus")

- Why Amazon owns Twitch, and why almost nobody notices- His NASA to Google to Twitch career path, and why he was a theater major in college

- The 3 pieces of advice he gives every new grad- Why he forces himself to fail on purpose, literally counting rejections as a weekly goal

- What actually keeps the CEO of Twitch up at night

This is a rare, unfiltered look at how one of the internet's biggest platforms is really run, by someone who insists he's just a regular guy who happens to run it.

🎥 Full interview above.

👍 If you enjoyed this episode of What's Uptin, leave a like and subscribe for more conversations with the people building the platforms we use every day.

💬 Drop a comment: what surprised you most about Dan Clancy?

Alison Lomax, Managing Director of YouTube, joins What's Uptin? to unpack how a platform once dismissed as "amateur bedroom vlogging" has become one of the most dominant forces in media and why most people are still underestimating it.

In this conversation, we cover:

• Why YouTube viewing on television sets has overtaken every other format in some markets
• How podcasts went from irrelevant to essential on YouTube in under 4 years
• The real math behind creator monetization — and why one YouTube subscriber is worth far more than a follower on other platforms
• How YouTube's multi-format strategy (Shorts, live, podcasts, long-form) is built to defend against competitors, not cannibalize itself
• What 21 years of platform evolution reveals about where attention, and advertising dollars, are headed next
• Alison's take on AI's role in content, productivity, and the future of work

Whether you're building a media business, investing in the space, or just trying to understand where audiences are actually spending their time, this is a rare look inside the strategy of one of the most influential platforms in the world.

3 billion people open Instagram every month. Someone decides what they see. This week, I sat down with that person. Tessa Lyons, VP of Product at Instagram, on the future of your feed, AI-generated reality, and why the app that knows everything about you is now coming for your TV.

We get into how Instagram went from a square photo app to consuming 60% of all time spent on social media and why that happened faster than anyone expected.

Tessa takes me inside the moment she personally launched Reels six years ago when everyone was skeptical, how they decide what gets built next, and why Gen Z is forcing the entire platform to rethink what sharing even means.

We also get into the AI problem that should concern every single person who scrolls, when photos and videos look completely real but aren't, and what Instagram is actually doing about it. Plus, Instagram is coming for your living room, and Tessa explains exactly what that means.

This one got personal. We ended up talking about the strange new world where you run into someone and realize you know everything about their life but you've never actually met. Is that a beautiful thing or a terrifying one?

• 0:00 Intro: Instagram started as a photo app. So what is it now?
• 1:03 Reels launched 6 years ago. Now video is 60% of all time on social media
• 2:12 Why Gen Z refuses to perform online and what Instagram built because of it
• 4:21 The 30 minute notification we all ignore and what Tessa says about that
• 5:24 Instagram is coming for your TV. Here's exactly what that means
• 12:51 3 billion users. Does that kind of power ever feel like too much?
• 16:42 The AI problem nobody is talking about and Instagram's plan to fix it
• 18:43 A green checkmark for real humans? Tessa's answer will surprise you
• 21:23 When you know someone but you've never met. The new reality of online connection

Oliver Yonchev spent 15 years in entrepreneurship, starting as a musician, and worked closely with Stephen Bartlett before launching Co-Created, an investment office that has incubated 14 businesses.
He breaks down what he actually looks for in founders: domain expertise, resilience, and humility over degrees or credentials, and why a business plan is basically irrelevant at day zero.

He talks about AI shrinking teams, why the UK lacks enough support for small business builders, and what he took from living in New York, namely the audacity and confidence that British entrepreneurs tend to lack. He's conflicted about Gen Z: yes the challenges are real, but the tools available to young people today are unprecedented.

The conversation touches on shiny object syndrome, when to quit, the loneliness epidemic, why real-world community businesses are massively underrated, and why human connection will never be replaced by AI, because nobody wants something "artificial."

He closes on his new company Potential, which helps people protect and monetize what they create with AI, and is heading toward a public listing on London's AIM market.

David Cox runs AI research at IBM and leads the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. He's testified to Congress twice in 60 days, built AI his entire career, and he thinks we're getting almost everything wrong.

In this episode at WebSummit Portugal: why 95% of AI projects fail, why China is quietly winning the open source war, why your chatbot could get your company sued, and why the real AI threat isn't Skynet ... t's poorly built software making bad decisions at scale.

GM President Mark Reuss doesn't hold back. Uptin asks about Hummer's insane electric comeback, the death of Apple CarPlay, robo-taxis, Gemini AI in your car, China's brutal price wars, Detroit's rebirth, and the one thing that keeps him up at night.

If you care about the future of American cars, this is the interview you need to watch.