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Comment by kristianp | Hacker News Reader

I wish that hour-long podcasts weren't an hour long. They are often too unstructured and slow paced. I think with some editing for pace they could be winnowed down to say, 20 minutes. I don't have time to sit around listening to an hour long podcast, especially not every day and multiple different podcasts!

I remember the old giants robots ruby podcast was about 20 minutes and covered 3 topics (not sure if I'm remembering correctly though, it's around 40 minutes these days). http://giantrobots.fm/

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> I wish that hour-long podcasts weren't an hour long.

Or at least that more podcasts were better edited. For example, John Gruber writes a blog, which he edits. Whether I agree with it or not, it's readable and terse. But he also does a podcast, which is him and some other person going on random tangents, pausing to cough or let out the cat, etc. I can't stand it.

I guess it's like the difference between talk radio and the nightly news: one is trying to fill airtime, the other is trying to squeeze into 22 minutes; one is meant to be background sound, the other is meant to be watched. I happen to prefer other kinds of background sound, but that's just me.

Structure is an editing problem, but there are lots of people who listen to podcasts sped up, or with silences removed. Apps like Overcast will do this for you.

Some podcasts, like Hardcore History, are worth the 5 hour runtime and they're so rarely published it doesn't really matter.

Structure is an "editing problem" but once you go beyond a fairly straight interview or talk show format, the amount of post-production work increases dramatically. With the help of some automation, I can edit a 20 minute interview in an hour so so. Structuring a 1 hour show from different clips and inserting various breaks etc. would probably add a good day to the whole process.

When I say it's an editing problem, I mean it's not something you can easily change as a consumer. On the other hand cutting out silences and speeding up slow speakers is something you can fix 'in post' using a generic podcast app.

Any recommendations for podcast apps on Android?

I'm carrying around my a junked iPhone 5C and using it just for Overcast. I haven't been able to find any podcast players on Android that work as well for me. If I could find one, I could stop carrying two phones.

I've been a fan of PocketCasts. Lots of people recommend podcastaddict because it's free and has a million knobs, but I enjoy the comparatively slick interface of PocketCasts.

I'm personally a fan of PocketCasts but with a small caveat: Syncing feeds goes through their servers, which means smaller feeds aren't updated instantly, even when manually syncing.

Another happy customer of PocketCasts. When I moved from Android to iOS, I still find PocketCasts to be superior to alternatives.

I'm going to give PocketCasts a try. Overcast was pretty much a perfect app for me. If I can't find something I like as much on Android, Overcast might be the killer app that makes my next phone an iPhone.

I find antennapod decent (and open source). To be honest, it might be wise with something in the cloud that can keep tabs on what episodes you have listened too. Most do it locally and it is easily forgotten when switching devices.

I have been using DoggCatcher for years now, and I have no complaints.

I'm a big fan of player.fm

At the other end of the scale are podcasts that are a few minutes long - daily briefings, the news, etc. I've always found these hard to listen to in normal podcast software since they're meant to be ephemeral and quick, so I've been working on a new approach: http://briefings.fm/

I agree on both counts. A 5-10 minute podcast often feels like it's "not worth" selecting and playing--at least as part of a standard podcast queueing and listening flow. At the same time, a straight interview/discussion without a lot of production work to break it into segments, etc. that's an hour feels too long. (And producing a radio show rather than just putting an interview up is a lot more work.) I find the interview podcasts that I do naturally gravitating into the 20-25 minute range.

There seems to be a market for all kinds of lengths. I like the 60-minuteish with some banter but mostly on topic. I mostly listen to podcasts while walking or doing the dishes or something like that so I'm not super focused and the longer and slower podcasts work best for that. Running the garbage disposal or a truck driving past won't force me to rewind. If they go to multiple hours I usually rather opt-in for an audiobook at that point.

Yeah, I'm totally with you on that. That's how I want my podcasts to stay. I do see the value in quickly grabbing an up to the hour briefing on something though, so want to explore ways to do that.

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