Spotify “Instant Hit” milestone & audience growth

1:09Spotify, Apple. I mean, on Spotify, we we're making the charts according to our creator >> uh Yeah. So, this is an important note. Shout out to everyone who's watched us on video or listened to us on Spotify because we got uh a 2025 instant hit award. >> Uh which means we were one of the few shows this year on Spotify that obviously was an instant hit. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's a huge deal. >> And we're in the top 2% of comments, top 2% of >> shares. It's just really incredible. It's and it all comes from the audience and we're extremely grateful.

1:49>> You you all are what enable us to continue to do this. >> What I will say is if you haven't already, >> uh follow From First Principles on YouTube, >> hit that subscribe button, like some stuff. The algorithms that the billionaires control are what allow us to get our science content to more people. We don't make the rules. Don't hate the play. I hate the game. >> Yeah. So, I don't like asking for the subscribe button, but YouTube is huge and it's where we've been struggling to get as much reach as we see on Instagram, Tik Tok, and other platforms. So, if you do have a YouTube and you want to watch it there, that would be super super helpful. But, I was really

2:31surprised that Instagram has been our most popular platform. >> Yeah, that one's crazy. We're reaching almost 60K right now. Yes. >> As of the recording of this episode, >> we're going to have one of our story videos is going to hit a million in the next by the time this episode comes out. >> Yeah. >> The story about the >> the whales >> the whales is going to be over a million. That'll be our first video anywhere. >> Yeah. >> Over a million views. >> U so we're going to go ahead and get started with the episode shortly. But >> before we get into our recap, we're going to start with some unfortunate news that just happened >> uh I think literally yesterday. Yeah. >> Um the um the unfortunate passing of

3:12Professor uh Nuno Lorero who was the director of the MIT Plasma Science Infusion Center uh since 2024 is also just a giant in plasma physics generally. Yeah. >> Uh really bizarre. It's been an weird week for >> Yeah. >> the with the Brown University issue. This one >> and this was also a result of gun violence. >> Right. >> It's just insane.