In her second solo episode, Anita Sharma tackles three things that have been on her mind. She breaks down how her law firm actually uses AI in practice, where she draws a hard line, and what she tells clients who show up with contracts clearly drafted by a chatbot.

Anita then reacts to the massive box office success of Backrooms and Obsession, two low budget horror films from young YouTuber turned filmmakers Kane Parsons and Curry Barker. She pushes back on the idea that content creators are somehow less legitimate storytellers than traditional filmmakers, and breaks down what the numbers actually say about where Hollywood is headed.

Finally, Anita shares the advice she gives most often to law students and aspiring entertainment lawyers who reach out to her for informational interviews, including why reading the trades matters and how creator economy law is a completely different world from traditional entertainment law.

Season 2 recap is coming soon, and Season 3 launches this fall.

Disclaimer: I'm a lawyer, but this podcast isn't legal advice. It's for general information only. Listening doesn't make us attorney and client.

Credits: Produced by: Anita Sharma & Phoebe Dunn Edited by: Carmine Mattia Social Media Strategy: Maureen Lloren Sedlak Signed Theme Music By: Carmine Mattia

Follow Signed on Instagram and TikTok: @signedthepodcast

In Part 2 of this conversation, Anita sits back down with Hank Green to pick up where they left off, and the conversation gets more personal, more urgent, and more honest than ever.

They start with the platforms. Hank has a clear-eyed view of why the algorithm puts us in silos: it's not because the technology is bad. It's because the technology is very, very good at keeping us watching. The problem isn't incompetence. It's incentives. And Hank isn't sure the platforms are going to fix it, but he does think people will eventually change, the way they did during the yellow journalism era of Hearst and Pulitzer. Newsrooms that once competed on salience eventually had to compete on credibility. He thinks something similar has to happen now. He just can't work out exactly how.

From there, the conversation turns to X, and what it has become. Hank goes there to check on cancer drug research and ends up scrolling past videos of people dying. That's not a platform problem anymore. That's something else.

And then: the cancer diagnosis. In 2023, Hank was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma and shared his journey publicly. He talks honestly about his first reaction (annoyance that he didn't get a choice), and how he made peace with it by realizing he actually wanted to talk about it because he cared about his audience. He also talks about the moment he stopped being afraid and started getting curious. He was taking four different chemo drugs simultaneously, each with its own discovery story. One of them can only be made from Madagascar periwinkles. Science, he says, is just cool.

The conversation closes with AI: how he uses it, how he doesn't, why he hates that it gives opinions, and the AI flattery moment that made him want to put his laptop through a wall. Plus a lightning round that includes his worst internet take ever, what he would say to the algorithm if it were a person, and the retirement of 6-7.

Disclaimer: I'm a lawyer, but this podcast isn't legal advice. It's for general information only. Listening doesn't make us attorney and client.

Produced by Anita Sharma and Phoebe Dunn.

Edited by Carmine Mattia.

Social Media Strategy by Maureen Lloren Sedlak.

Signed Theme Music by Carmine Mattia.

Hank Green has been building on the internet since before most people knew what it was. He co-created Vlogbrothers, co-founded VidCon, co-founded Complexly (home to Crash Course and SciShow), and has spent nearly 30 years figuring out how to turn curiosity into something scalable, sustainable, and genuinely meaningful. He is, by any measure, one of the architects of the modern creator economy. And in this conversation, he is remarkably honest about what that means.

In Part 1 of this episode, Anita sits down with Hank to talk about what the internet looks like after nearly three decades of building on it, and what it has cost. When Hank started, there was no money to make and no status to chase. Collaboration was easy because there was nothing to lose. Now, he says, everyone has become islands. The scene that once felt open and weird and creative has collapsed a little under the weight of its own value. That's not entirely a bad thing, but it is a real thing.

From there, the conversation moves into the mechanics of what it actually takes to break through as a creator today. Hank's answer is honest to the point of being uncomfortable: raw exceptional talent, ungodly luck, or a kind of ruthlessness. Often some combination of all three. He shares the piece of advice nobody gives - watch content outside your genre, or you'll look exactly like everyone else in it - and makes the case that the most important decision a creator makes isn't the title or the thumbnail. It's the topic.

Hank and Anita also dig into the difference between platforms that treat creators like business partners and platforms that run like casinos, why storytelling is the only reliable way to keep people watching, and what it means to be authentic when the algorithm is only rewarding certain kinds of authenticity. Hank's take: the algorithm is just the weather. Complaining about it is like being surprised it rained.

This is a conversation about creativity, longevity, and what happens to an industry when it grows up.

Disclaimer: I'm a lawyer, but this podcast isn't legal advice. It's for general information only. Listening doesn't make us attorney and client.

FOLLOW HANK GREEN YouTube: @HankGreen YouTube (Vlogbrothers): @vlogbrothers YouTube (Complexly): @Complexly Instagram: @hankgreen TikTok: @hankgreen X: @hankgreen

FOLLOW SIGNED Instagram: @signedthepodcast TikTok: @signedthepodcast LinkedIn: Anita Sharma YouTube: @signedthepodcast Listen everywhere you get your podcasts

Produced by Anita Sharma and Phoebe Dunn.

Edited by Carmine Mattia.

Social Media Strategy by Maureen Lauren Sedlak.

Signed Theme Music by Carmine Mattia.