Editorial platform · Brand · Film · Contextual Intelligence

The PuckVenture Capital and Beyond

A podcast, reimagined by Auteur Studio as a media brand—a name and identity, a brand film, a living editorial website, and an intelligence trained on every word the show has aired.

For Jim Baer & CMBG AdvisorsBrand · Web · Intelligence2024–2026

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A conversation show becomes a media brand—and then something no podcast had before: an intelligence that has heard every episode and can talk about any of them.

Auteur Studio — scope of work

The mandate

The Puck, hosted by entrepreneur and CMBG Advisors president Jim Baer, had built a serious audience through honest conversations on markets, technology, geopolitics, institutions, and culture. What it did not yet have was a brand—a face, a voice, a home, and a way for that growing archive to keep working after each episode ended.

Auteur Studio was brought in to build the whole of it. Working alongside Jim and the CMBG team, the studio shaped a name treatment and visual identity, directed and shot a brand film, designed and engineered a multi-page editorial website, and trained Ask The Puck—a contextual intelligence that answers only from the show’s own episodes and newsletters. The same contextual-intelligence engine runs through everything Auteur makes, in the browser and in AR.

The approach

A signature Auteur method, in clear phases

Phase 01 · Brand: Identity from the ground upThe studio and the CMBG team defined the name treatment, wordmark, circular marks, palette, and motion language—the fixed points every later phase builds on. Reviewed and signed off with Jim before production began.
Phase 02 · Film: The brand, shotAuteur directed and produced the brand film and title ident, the city “plates” that run through the site, and Jim’s portrait session—the moving-image layer that gives the brand presence.
Phase 03 · Platform: A living editorial websiteA multi-page site engineered around the show’s live feeds—episodes, watch, follow, newsletter, and contact—so new conversations, clips, and issues appear on their own. Iterated with the client at each pass.
Phase 04 · Intelligence: Ask The PuckThe full media footprint—over 120 podcast episodes, the video interviews and clips, 44 newsletters, and the show’s social feeds—trained into a contextual intelligence that reasons rather than retrieves—holding a real conversation, answering in audio and video, speaking in Jim’s voice, and routing qualified leads to the business. The differentiator at the centre of every Auteur build.

Phase 01 — The brand

A name, made unmistakable

The remit was to overhaul the brand at every level. The show arrived with an inherited identity—a red serif wordmark stacked over a night-time city photograph—that had carried it this far but didn’t read as a media brand. The replacement sets a clean Gotham wordmark against an editorial serif with a single amber-gold accent on deep navy: confident, financial, and warm rather than corporate. That system then ran through everything—the lockup and roundels, the film and its title ident, the site, and the social cuts.

Before

00.

Where it started

The inherited mark and cover—red serif type over a city at night.

After

01.

Where it landed

The approved lockup—“The Puck with Jim Baer” in gold over “Venture Capital and Beyond” in white.

With Jim Baer · roundel

Venture Capital and Beyond · roundel

Phase 02 — The film

Shot for the brand

Sound off

Brand film — the title ident, produced by Auteur Studio · press play with sound to hear the theme in sync

Original theme

A theme, composed for the show

The music behind the brand film, written for The Puck. Hear the theme in full.

The Puck — Original Theme Theme · 0:50

Composed by David Van Eyssen

Honest, unfiltered conversations that treat the audience as intelligent adults—on markets, technology, geopolitics, and where the country is going.

The Puck — the founding idea

Phase 03 — The platform

A total facelift—and a homepage that plays

Auteur designed and engineered the full multi-page site—home, a searchable episode library, a watch reel, follow, a newsletter archive, and contact. The centrepiece is the media itself: the show’s YouTube and social cuts run live on the homepage, autoplaying and looping in place, so the first thing a visitor meets is the show performing rather than a list of links.

Clip 3:59

Debt, QE, and the End of Gold: Why a Fiscal Reckoning May Require a Crisis

Clip 2:06

Why Republicans Still Avoid Healthcare Reform After 2017

Clip 2:15

Why U.S. Healthcare Is So Expensive—and How the Fair Care Act Aims to Fix It

Clip 1:01

Avik Roy: Why the U.S. Debt Crisis Could Hit Sooner Than 20 Years: CBO Projections vs. Reality

Clip 4:04

The “Black Box” of Healthcare Billing

Clip 1:17

Longstanding Promise to Transform Healthcare

Clip 1:32

People Are Traveling to China for “Special Treatment”

Clip 2:01

Hospitals’ Hardball Pitch to Creditors “Worth More Alive Than Dead”

Clip 1:04

The Healthcare Billing “Black Box” Exposed

Clip 0:27

The Real Reason People Don’t Trust Institutions

The homepage reel, running live here — the show’s real YouTube cuts, autoplaying and looping silently in place

The Puck episode library — every conversation, searchable and filterable by topic.

i.

The socials, embedded live

The YouTube and social cuts are pulled in as live embeds, not screenshots—autoplaying muted and looping in place, refreshing as new clips post. Tap one for sound, or open the full video. The show performs on its own homepage.

ii.

One search across everything

A single smart search spans episodes, full video, short clips, and newsletters—by keyword or by topic—and surfaces the media itself, not just a list of links.

iii.

A custom intelligence layer

A first-party, cookie-free analytics dashboard built for the show—what resonates, what people search, most-played clips, and how visitors turn into subscribers. The data stays on The Puck’s own infrastructure.

iv.

Live by default

Episodes pull from the podcast RSS, the reel from YouTube, issues from the newsletter platform. New conversations, clips, and issues appear on their own.

The Puck's custom, first-party audience analytics dashboard — visitors, engagement, most-played clips, top searches.

Audience Insights — a custom analytics dashboard, first-party and cookie-free

About — host profile & timeline

The Puck Follow page — every platform to subscribe on. — Follow — every platform, one page

The show’s entire media footprint—over 120 podcast episodes, every video interview and clip, 44 newsletters, and the show’s social feeds—trained into a contextual intelligence. Not a search box with a chat window on top. It reasons across the archive, argues a point and pushes back, plays you the exact moment someone said it, answers aloud in Jim’s own voice, and recognises when a listener has become a lead.

This is the piece at the centre of every Auteur build. The same contextual-media engine turns an archive into a conversation—in the browser here, and in AR elsewhere—so an audience can reach straight into the work instead of scrolling past it.

i.

It reasons—it doesn’t retrieve

Ask it something and it engages: connecting ideas across episodes, weighing tradeoffs, testing the premise, offering a considered view. It will push back or take a fresh angle—and it marks the line between what a guest actually said and its own read.

ii.

A conversation made of audio and video

Answers arrive as media, not links. The exact spoken passage surfaces as a playable moment—timestamped to the second—beside the video clips that belong with it. You hear and watch the evidence inside the conversation.

iii.

It speaks, in Jim’s voice

Talk to it and it talks back, in a clone of Jim’s own voice. Voice in, voice out—the archive stops being something you browse and becomes something you hold a conversation with.

iv.

It works as a sales tool

When a listener turns into a prospect, the agent recognises it—and, only with explicit consent, routes a qualified CMBG Advisors lead straight to Jim. The archive becomes a front door to the business.

v.

It knows the world, not just the archive

For anything current it searches live and grounds the answer in what it finds, naming the source and its date—so the conversation never stops at the edge of the catalogue.

vi.

It never dead-ends

If nothing sits exactly on the question, it finds what bears on it and reasons from there—then hands over a real next step: an episode, a moment to play, or a considered answer.

A two-turn Ask The Puck conversation: a follow-up that carries the thread, answered with a quote, two playable audio moments, video clips, an inline link and cited source episodes. — A conversation, not a query — the follow-up carries the thread, and the answer comes back as playable audio moments, video clips, inline links and cited sources

Ask The Puck returning a curated, timestamped list of video clips with a Watch rail of playable clip thumbnails. — Ask for clips — it returns playable video, curated and timestamped

Ask The Puck answering with cited source-episode cards and spoken replies on — the footer reads 'voice: Jim Baer'. — Every answer cites its sources — and can speak in Jim’s own voice

Live captures from the working “Ask The Puck” build

Try Ask The Puck on the live site

126
Episodes in the archive: 44
Newsletter issues: 9
Editorial topics: 1
In Jim’s own voice

Venture CapitalTechnologyGeopoliticsEconomicsHealth PolicyInstitutionsCultureEntrepreneurshipLeadership

Scope of work

What Auteur delivered

Client: Jim Baer · CMBG Advisors
Brand: Name treatment, wordmark & marksLogo system, circular marks, palette, and type—the full visual identity.
Film: Brand film, ident & portraitsDirected and produced, including the city plates used across the site.
Sound: Original theme & soundtrackAn original theme composed for the show—carried through the brand film and playable across the site.
Platform: Multi-page editorial websiteHome, episodes, watch, follow, newsletter, and contact—wired to live RSS, YouTube, and newsletter feeds. Looping in-browser clips, one smart search across every content type, and a custom first-party, cookie-free analytics dashboard.
Intelligence: Ask The Puck — contextual intelligenceA natural conversational system, not a retrieval tool: it reasons across the archive, answers in playable audio and video, speaks in Jim’s cloned voice, searches live for anything current, and routes consented CMBG leads to Jim—the same contextual-media engine Auteur runs across web and AR.
Live at: thepuckpodcast.com ↑

See it live

The whole brand, in motion

Visit The Puck ↗ Watch the reel