An audience that is tense or self-conscious needs the performer to engage them directly and loosen them up to create a successful comedy environment.

“everybody seemed like a little off-put by it like everyone the audience was tense they were tense but when as soon as you started [ __ ] around with the audience and and going into them they they got loose they got loose a little bit”

The host expresses a deep, genuine appreciation for the podcast's community and feels connected to the listeners.

“I feel like we have such a tight commu- tight-knit community of people who really understand us, and we genuinely love you.”

The show is prioritizing better engagement with the audience as part of the year of the audience initiative.

“When we talk about doing hashtag tear talk, you're going to have to follow us on on our social channels, buswtb when we drop our tear talks, it's usually around every Sunday, Sunday evening, Monday morning. You guys can chime in.”

The podcast will improve its audience engagement by better incorporating listener input into conversations.

“It's about time that we'll Compan the one the boys in the back of the bus and all of us bust with the boys in its entirety start giving back to you and that's going to be a big thing this entire year hence the phrase year of the audience.”

While retention is a metric, creators should focus on making storylines that genuinely energize viewers and invite them to think about their perspectives.

“retention you can exploit that you can exploit people's tendencies to stay if you do this and that or you can make the the storyline something that is literally actively energizing them and making them think about what their perspectives are and adding to their lives”

Modern audience attention spans have declined, making it necessary for YouTube videos to be highly engaging.

“I think it gave everyone like a little form of like adhd in a way I was going to say that I think that's uh the everybody's attention now is way way worse and I think that is contributing to it”

D'angelo emphasizes that audience retention is his primary priority and that he structures his long-form videos to maintain viewer engagement throughout.

“before I think about click-through rate or anything like that the most important thing to me is like if I'm going to be putting this much work into a video how am I going to make sure that people are actually watching the video”

He is interested in exploring decentralized, small-scale meetups for listeners, though he acknowledges concerns regarding potential reputation liability.

“It's a I don't know if we should do this. There's like a lot of liability of like we're we're not In our heads we're like, "Oh, this is just you opt in and you it's not our experience." But I think fundamentally they'll attribute the experience to us.”

He wants to host a curated event for the top 1% of listeners to facilitate networking among high-quality participants.

“My only motivation with an event is I want to know who the top 1% of MFM listeners are. And this is a extremely selfish request”