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Comment by sien | Hacker News Reader

Oh gawd no.

Podcasting is much, much better than radio ever was.

Radio never had anything like Lex Fridman, Omega Tau, The Internet History Podcast, Gradient Dissent, or Econtalk. Where people with real expertise interview people with real expertise. In Econtalk's case you have interviews with a number of winners of the Economics sort of Nobel.

There was never anything on any radio that was like that. There couldn't be. So much of this kind of thing is too niche for almost all radio.

It's estimated that there are ~500K active podcasts ( https://www.thepodcasthost.com/listening/podcast-industry-st... )

Podcasting wasn't like radio when it started in the 2000s and it's very different now.

Sure, there hasn't been another serial, but instead there is so much great stuff out there.

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That's a good point. You or I could whack together a show that'd appeal to a hundred people across the globe for almost nothing. And if we enjoyed doing it there'd be no reason to stop.

That bit of the conversation seems mostly lost in the comparisons.

Yes. Exactly

A friend of mine who is a writer made a podcast where she spoke to writers about how they write and their writing. She made ~100 episodes.

It was incredible how professional it sounded. It was really remarkable.

That's what podcasting makes possible.

It's not a 'mass' medium such that cultural commentators can write about 'the hits' and where anyone cares what they have to say. With Serial being about the only big exception.

But podcasts are a fantastic medium and they are different from radio.

Seriously, back in radio times I could here something super interesting maybe once a month (if even that). Now, I have so many things that I can listen to that specifically interest me at any time that I don't even have time to catch up.

> There was never anything on any radio that was like that. There couldn't be.

I'd claim that there were some (and are) some comparable things on BBC Radio 4, but that's probably an exception as it's not commercially funded.

True.

Radio 4 make some really good podcasts of their shows now too.

In Our Time and More or Less are excellent.

But in radio times if you weren't in the UK you couldn't listen to them.

> Sure, there hasn't been another serial,

Even Serial could not make another Serial themselves. Talk about an outlier.

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