Fewer people are creating new podcasts these days
philsiarri.substack.com
philsiarri.substack.com
Maybe I'm not the target audience, but I'm rarely if ever interested in the speaker of whatever information I'm trying to consume, and podcasts' focus on guests (and hosts) always came off as self-aggrandizing and people speaking just to hear themselves speak. Especially with very little editing (uhs, pauses, and general dysfluency) and/or preparation (winding conversations with a lot of fluff instead of a structured outline), I'd almost always just prefer to listen to a narrated book or textbook on whatever topic I'm interested in.
Your problems with podcasts appear more related to propensity than inherent format issues - that is, books too can come off as self aggrandizing, fluff and winding, but you have found mode examples that don't do this perhaps?
Perhaps one thing inherent to podcasts vs books is that you can simply skip sections and skim past the content you find not worth your time, where podcasts are harder to do this without missing your spot, etc.
Podcasts like 99% invisible I find hit the right balance, but again, definitely have more emphasis on interviews than pure factual info compared to books. But I think that's kind of normal, as podcasts do suit discussion and interviews better than a more straight facts approach.
Still, I feel the points you've listed, while valid, are not always the case and like most mediums, you can find examples that would suit your style.
1. They cover a subject I was interested in (economics), but knew basically nothing about. This made it easier to listen to as I found I didn't space out when they were talking about things I already knew. 2. Nice, tight editing and good production. No hosts blathering on for hours - they keep it short and to the point. Most episodes are 20 minutes and easy to get through.
“Money has always been used to buy goods, but did you know you can also use it to buy services? Here’s some pop culture reference comparison to fake a narrative.”
I think the show started suffering when NPR turned every show into a podcast; it removes the ability to cater to a more focused audience because you have to waste half the show doing background.
I think media types decided everything needed to be like Vox Explainers, so now everything sounds like it’s designed for primary school students.
Yes, podcasts are reminding me 'the age of the feuilleton' from Hesses's Glass Bead Game.
Steve O has had some interesting people open up about their issues, same with Jon Bernthal. Especially his episode with Shia LaBeouf was amazing.
But these people are rare. They devolve too often into the host fawning over the guest. Nerdist podcast started doing this at one point.
Many popular podcasts just have guests who are obviously trying to promote a new Netflix special or book.
He stutters and the outcome isn’t that polished but if you can adapt to that his podcast feels very authentic.
It's fun to hear people talking about what they're interested in, or I get to hear people's personal experiences on a subject I care about (entrepreneurship, neurodivergence, software development). I'm here less for structured content than to expand my perspective on general experience and challenges of being in a given situation.
For what it's worth, there are also lots of other formats besides "two dudes/dudettes talking": scripted drama, documentary, unscripted/situational comedy. I even listen to a guy critique classic computer science research papers.
https://ericnormand.me/podcast
A couple episodes you may be interested in:
"In this episode, I excerpt from and comment on Allen Newell's and Herbert Simon's 1975 ACM Turing Award Lecture."
https://ericnormand.me/podcast/computer-science-as-empirical...
"In this first episode of season 3, we analyze a great paper called Lisp: A language for stratified design. The paper asks the question "What is Lisp good for?"
https://ericnormand.me/podcast/lisp-a-language-for-stratifie...
"We read one of the great articles by Alan Kay, inventor of Smalltalk, called The Early History of Smalltalk."
https://ericnormand.me/podcast/the-early-history-of-smalltal...
But to each their own. Not saying there's anything wrong at all with disliking podcasts for exactly these reasons, they're just not for everyone I suppose.
But when I start listening to something titled "X & Y talk about Z" and they tangent off to A, B and C. I just stop listening.
My pet peeve is shows that have interviews with people and preface it with 30 minutes of "banter" that doesn't interest anyone who hasn't listened to the previous 420 episodes.
Just have one episode with the catch-up part and one with just the interview, please.
Repeat listeners are most podcast producers' bread and butter, and those listeners tend to be invested in the hosts, and typically enjoy the banter.
It's sort of the reverse of radio. In a radio show you want to pander to the widest audience - every show must stand alone and can't rely on the audience's familiarity with the host or past content. In a podcast there's no one tuning in at random because it's something interesting that's "on" at the time that they happen to be listening, so podcasters get by from cultivating and pandering to a dedicated fanbase, who then tend to enjoy content that benefits from a deep familiarity with the show.
It sounds like you'd most enjoy "podcasts" that are really recordings of radio shows (99% Invisible, the many NPR podcasts etc).
Not all podcasts do that, though. I listen to about ten podcasts fairly regularly; one ("Behind the Bastards") has regular guests, though their purpose is largely to have someone for the host to tell a story to, two ("The Rest is History" and "The Rest is Politics") have occasional expert guests, on perhaps 10% of episodes, the remainder don't have guests at all.
My current list is only well-edited and produced stuff
- No Such Thing as a Fish (facts, trivia, comedy)
- 20kHz - audio production and sounds in general
- 99 Percent Invisible - random trivia and deep-dives
- More or Less - analysing statistics
- Cautionary Tales - historical failures, they have actual radio play style stuff with actual name actors (Helena Bonham-Carter for example)
- Crowd Science - people as questions about science and the host interviews people who know about it
- Every Little Thing - More random trivia stuff
- 30 Animals that Made us Smarter - exactly what it says on the tin
(Very strictly, a podcast requires an RSS feed and the ability to download to an iPod, but those criteria have been eroded to "any audio programme that is not on the radio")
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/help/questions/features/subscri...
This thread is teaching me that people would even draw a boundary there at all. It's clear from the people posting here that many really think of podcasts as "couple of guys sitting around shooting the shit", but there's a hell of a lot out there outside of this one genre.
It's a bit "I tried a bunch of science fiction books, but I didn't like them so reading isn't for me."
BBC Radio podcasts are not representative of podcasts, nor is it the reference point for most people that start one. Those people very likely have the image of two friends shooting the shit in front of a mic.
I have 2 of the ones on your list: 99PI and Cautionary Tales and I notice that they are both publish about the ~30 minutes episodes once per week. I think all these podcasts that are 60-120 minutes > 2 times per week are really just replacing talk radio on people's long commutes. It's just a pleasant way to fill the air, not to actually learn anything.
This relies on the moderator / podcaster to have sufficient time / manpower to prepare, or sufficient authority to convince guests not to come without any serious preparations.
On the opposite, there's a podcast from the German Newspaper Die Zeit that has made the long rambling its concept. It's called "Alles gesagt?" and consists in a usually unedited interview with two journalists. The interview (in English or German) stops when the guest considers he has nothing more to say or pronounces a magic word. Yuval Noah Harari's interview lasted 10 hours IIRC. It's decently prepared, but that's not the kind of podcast you can listen to regularly.
- People I mostly Admire (Steven Levitt/Freakonomics Radio)
- The joy of X (Steven Strogatz, discontinued)
Example : Most show on France Culture.
Check out a big podcast producer like Wondery. They approach podcasts with production and professionalism. It takes a team to produce a good podcast.
If a professional podcast is like network TV, the podcasts you're describing are like the old public access channel on cable. They're both the same medium, sure, but they're in different leagues entirely. I don't listen to the podcasts with a random person with a mic chatting about what he thinks is interesting; that would indeed be boring and a waste of time.
If you’ve not tried it I would heartily recommend it - I really didn’t think it would matter before I tried it.
I’d love 50% speed for tough concepts but 300% for the banter and their dumb stories.
Maybe a product idea actually? Feel free to run with it.
It’s hard to find good ones though. I haven’t had as much luck.
And for some good fun (and some occasional new insight), the Soft Skills Engineering podcast (https://softskills.audio/).
But, alas, I would lie to myself if I believe podcasts are driven by the above.
Personally, I like to hear interesting people talk, it became much a tilted board, so for some time, now, I've cut down my consumption considerably and try to appreciate it as a digital social treat rather than actually knowledge building (very limited).
For that there must be some large enough "active" part involved and as a mere listener I get too comfy too easily. It is a bit like not writing down your ideas, the moment you commit them to "paper" most of the time they are not so "great" anymore and you realize there is more nuance to it ;)
I really struggle with this, driven by this anxeity that I am "falling behind" in terms of knowledge if i don't consume it all the time.
How I try to cope is by striving for contextualizing decisions.
Everything I do or could do and every value I attach to something depends on and is influenced by context.
Every choice I make affects more than just one area or part of my life.
My life consists of more than one thing.
Yes, I could spend all day doing X. How would this affect different areas of my life? Is this the single most important thing in my life right now? How will this benefit me? At what cost? Is it worth the cost?
Striving for a more holistic view of my life helps me balance my tendency to lose sight of the whole for focusing in too much on one single thing without context.
Plus, dealing with the roots of my anxiety rather than the outgrowths alone.
Yes - I was wondering downthread what the boundary between "podcast" and "radio programme" was, and I think this is an important aspect that makes certain things not documentaries. It's a parasocial (it is after all one-directional) connection through the voice of another human or humans. Some people like to listen to this kind of thing all the time, even if they're not really paying close attention, because they like to hear talking. Broadcasters have understood this for a very long time.
Over that, and both the production is slipping and my attention wanders or is interrupted.
There's also only so much that can really be absorbed in one sitting.
I do like the interview or "issues and ideas" format, though there are also scripted monologues (Peter Adamson, History of Philosophy) which can be quite good. HoP is interesting in that it also features fairly frequent interview segments which ... on the whole are less captivating than the scripted episodes (though there are some exceptions).
Shorter than 20 minutes and there's usually too much structural framing around the key bites, over 60 minutes and either the episode is poorly-edited (there's a lot of cruft which should have been cut out) or there are multiple key concepts being presented. There are exceptions to this, but they are rare.
I'm generally not interested in hearing a multi-person ramble, even on what is otherwise a topic of interest. Panel discussions can work, though those tend to fall into either (1) a series of individual lectures or (2) a multi-party interview when they do work, and rarely work past about 3--4 participants.
Dave Weinberger: "Conversation doesn't scale very well." This has multiple dimensions, in participants, duration, audience, time, and more. True conversation is ultimately intimate: small, immediate, and private.
A few weeks ago I was sick and I put on some podcasts as I was resting. Made me realize how much I miss the content.
I wonder how much the radio/podcast industry is reliant on car radios and such.
I find that without this, there's no time to think about the near and far future and plan what to do about those.
I think walks help with thinking, and exercises can block it.
Some people I have great respect for take daily walks.
I think having a dog helps here. ;-)
I also hope the high amount of Zone one Training I get for free will help my ultra running but I would still do it just for lifestyle reasons.
All these podcasters know each other. It may as well be network television
It feels like an obligatory side income stream for every "creator" out there, one that only requires them to turn up in front of a microphone and banter once a week. The signal to noise ratio is way off. I don't want to start of with 15 minutes about how the creator's week was.
Nowadays I realise that there are podcasts that are actual "productions" (educational or otherwise), which I would enjoy a lot more. I'm probably missing out on a whole medium. But I haven't come across that many yet.
Think of it like replacing niche, once local-only radio programs. Those too aren't very high production because of resource and time constraints. It won't please everyone and doesn't have to.
Part of that is a lack of a focus on podcasting. Serial drove a lot of interest, and that momentum faded with no obvious replacement. Podcasts were something folks made time for on their commutes and during their workouts. When folks started working from home en masse, they had less and less reason to listen.
Listenership fell for shows that have remained consistent. Some of my biggest customers have half or less than the number of listens they were pulling per week in 2019. And that's without changing cadence.
Your customers' data may reflect that, but industry data shows that podcasting is still growing steadily. In their more recent (2022) report, Edison Research notes, "Monthly podcast listening saw growth year-over-year among those age 35-54, as 43% are now monthly podcast listeners, up from 39% in 2021."
> Some of my biggest customers have half or less than the number of listens they were pulling per week in 2019.
Shows fail. There are countless podcasts whose listens have grown substantially since 2019.
The number of people listening isn't a proxy for _how much_ they are listening. Nor is the number of times they listen per month. What matters is the number of hours listened.
It's also the case that with more shows, there's a dilution of listeners' time. There's a pretty firm cap on the number of hours of podcasts that people can listen to. It's easy for folks to dig their heels in on one or two favorite shows and stop listening to the rest of the ones they had previously been interested in.
> There are countless podcasts whose listens have grown substantially since 2019.
And there are countless more podcasts whose listenerships have shrunk substantially since 2019.
Yes, podcasts (and YouTube channels, and blogs, etc.) fail all the time. I'm not disputing it, but it's not a new phenomenon.
Do you think QCode has a viable business model? Producing scripted podcasts that are designed to be trial runs for TV shows/films?
There's no reason to assume podcasting would behave differently: if there's compelling content, people will go out of their way to consume it. The trick is making audio that people will want to listen to.
For instance, a couple weeks ago I was listening to an 20+ year old album I've always loved that doesn't get much attention. I searched in Spotify and sure enough I found a podcast that was doing a multi-hour series just on that album and broke down its history, production, etc.
Another example is that yesterday I was out training for a race I'm running in a couple months and managed to find multiple interviews with the race director, past winners, etc. to put me in a great mindset for a tough day training.
I was shocked at how much I needed to have in place to record, to get listed on the major players (and Google took DAYS to publish my show but Spotify and Apple did it within hours).
The problems, as I see them:
- must be resistant to gaming. Many of the really popular podcasts are backed by marketing money, many of the best ones are buried
- must be able to account heavily for taste. I really love midst, magic tavern, darknet, zzyx (RIP), night vale. Lots of people aren't into fiction so the system would have to have market segmentation built in. like a music app recommendation engine.
- should provide mechanisms to link to other stuff for the podcast. A huge part of the problem for the podcasters is the friction there is to give them money. This is mostly solved by podcast metadata but any good tool needs to display these properly.
as it is, current podcast recommendation algorithms miss tons of good content. There should be more than enough data on me to recommend a lot of stuff that I've had to hunt down Internet 1.0 style by googling and reading blogs.
What surprises me is how many podcasts are INSANELY long -- like, 2+ hours. Where do people find the time to listen?
(Granted, I say this as someone with a zero podcast diet. I'm not opposed to them or anything; I just don't have a place in my life for listening to them. I have no commute. I prefer music when cooking or cleaning or whatnot. My exercise is usually biking, and I don't listen to anything for that.)
Well, if the story is engrossing enough (The Fall of Civilizations podcast's episode about the Aztecs/Mechica, for example), then one episode turns into a week-long series of listening sessions and sets a great mood for the whole week. If it all works out well.
I find 2+ hours of podcasts episodes way to long to listen.
I simply cannot find the time.
After work + learning + side projects + social life + friends and family + hobbies (both creative and consuming types), I don't have the time for 2+ hours podcast episodes.
I have found 20-30 minutes lengths as the sweet spot. Like: Darknet Diaries, History of Philosophy without Gaps, BBC in our Time Science, etc.
Shorter than that, I feel it doesn't penetrate my mind enough, like: Moments of the American Mathematical Society, Developer Tea.
Larger ones, I simply can't fit into my day: Huberman Lab podcast, some episodes of Lex Fridman's, etc.
I simply can't find the time.
Working my way through the back catalogue of my current favorite podcast, Reconcilable Differences (200 episodes at 1.5-3 hours each), took me around 12-15 months.
This is the heart of it. I generally prefer listening to people talking as opposed to music. So instead of music I listen to podcasts when doing chores, going on walks, or going to the gym.
Although, when I stopped commuting my listening time went way down.
So I listen at between 2x and 3x with Overcast’s Smart Speed flipped on; but the upshot is I get through them a lot faster and I adjust the individual podcast speed to a level where I can still understand and process the discussion.
Personally I break the podcast up. Whenever there is a guest or the host is talking about something I'm really interested in, I'll listen to the 3hr episode over the course of like 3-4 days, typically 30min to an hour per day.
And that's where the time is found.
Podcasts play in my headphones as I do any mindless physical tasks I need to get done, snowblowing, renovating something, mowing my lawn, etc.
I'm not a good enough cook to do it without 100% of my focus.
Also despite WFH, I still drive quite a few hours so often there as well. I like music for quick drives around town, but 30+ minutes I prefer podcasts.
good curated content is needed, but goog's search is just plain terrible in this regard. seo optimized pages everywhere with useless recommendations.
Sometimes I find a lot of shows with great content in some forgotten part of the Internet, but these cease to exist after a few episodes... maybe because they saw the initial numbers. and these good people will never come back to create more content, only the brave idiots stay in the arena :(.
Common problems:
- zero editing (respect your audience by cutting the slack and interrupt your interview subject if the discussions veers towards personal things). at least timecode topics in the description. the subject's personal life is only interesting if the person is well known, in the mainstream, or a good story teller, but most of them just like to talk and talk and talk. the interviewer's job is to interrupt the person and make him/her stfu and bring forth another, interesting subject.
- interviewer sometimes is just an idiot, and just regurgitates what the other party has said with different words... mind boggling
- interviewer can't ask proper questions, hard questions. the subject just sits there, like he paid for 3 hours of time and talks about offtopic things.
- good shows drown after a few years or become routine for the creators. There is a podcast about security... it was also quite good in the beginning, but lately it's now all about all kinds of political shenanigans, geopolitics and the like. To be honest it's dead boring, the hell do I care about these high level shit stirring things? I want to hear some insights, expert opinions about the topic.
The dry engineering humor still works best without any response, and even without a pause for laughter or remarks
Not that Lex hits all your points, but it's some of them.
There's also a pool of topics which everyone has an opinion on that are saturated and you really have to have an interesting angle to stand out.
- Rude Tales of Magic: easily the best D&D podcast out there. Has a real insane, cartoon quality to it, cast is great, production values are through the roof. Always funny, sometimes surprisingly affecting. They have another one called Oh These Those Stars of Space, similar thing but in space.
- Seeking Derangements: In the "funny people chatting with no structure" genre. Either you like that or you don't, I happen to think they're hilarious, but wouldn't blame anyone for not liking it.
- High & Mighty: This one I tune in when there's an interesting guest. Jon Gabrus is hysterical, though. I suppose the premise is that Gabrus and guest get high and talk about the topic of the guest's choosing, but usually it's just funny to hear him riff with his friends
- Most everything on CBB World, including everything on CBB Presents. If you're not familiar, Comedy Bang Bang is, IMO, the original comedy podcast. Been going on for like 14 years, Auckerman started his own platform recent called CBB World with fan favorite characters and comedians getting space to do extended bits and explore ideas. They don't always hit, but there's some gold there.
- ALAB: A bunch of lawyers chat up law topics. Funny, sometimes unbelievably grim, depending on the topic
- What A Time to Be Alive: 3 NYC comedians pick goofy stories in the news to riff on
- E1: Premise is that each episode is the first episode of some other podcast. I think Andy Daly did this concept, as well, but these guys are killing it.
- bigsofttitty.png: Australian comedians riffing. I just recently found this one, pretty good so far but I've only heard part of one ep.
I've heard good things about The Teacher's Lounge, but haven't listened to it much yet. Dan Lippert has been on Comedy Bang Bang a lot and he's really funny, though.
Less niche:
- Comedy Bang Bang: the GOAT. A zillion years now and still going strong
- Chapo Trap House (polarizing, I know, but I've been a listener since the beginning, big fan)
- The Neighborhood Listen (Paul F Tompkins is simply the funniest man alive IMHO)
With the likes of the BBC creating tons of them which are written and recorded by professional journalists, the quality is pretty high and I can see these capturing the market from the amateur "I just recorded some crazy stuff and threw it out there" sector.
It's also very different from the podcasts I think other posters are talking about, which have a host and guests, all of whom bloviate about whatever the topic of the day might be. That's just like an old-school radio show and not really very interesting to me.
As a point of reference, I've been an avid podcast lister since the beginning, and I've never subscribed to any of the high-profile shows.
The first time I tried podcasts I listened to ones about my work (internal medicine, hospital based physician), I started with a few. Some were outgrowths of already established medical journals and they were very formal, posted rarely, and usually had bad audio quality but pretty good density of information. Then I found The Curbsiders, which was a much more down to earth podcasts of guys that sounded like they worked with me. More laid back but still informational. But over time they got successful and started having commercial backing and then that legal rapid voice-over and the honeymoon was over, it wasn't something that was "average joe" like me anymore, it was establishment and I stopped enjoying it and would rather just read medical literature or journal blogs because it's similar.
Around the same time I also started listening to podcasts about spaceflight. The first one I listened to regularly got put aside when my wife couldn't stand the hosts. After listening to her reasoning, I was respected that it was not something that she enjoyed listening to because the hosts really turned her off by being stereotypical white male nerds that would interrupt guests to show off their knowledge and really gave off mansplaining vibes.
That led me to look at other podcasts and then I found one (and by extension a set of three) that I really enjoyed them to the point where I decided to support it on Patreon. When I supported it, I found out there was a side benefit of joining a "members only" Discord. I didn't intend to use it and had never used Discord before but it happened right when COVID hit so I gave it whirl. That discord became a fun distraction and place to talk socialize online (probably amplified by the COVID isolation situation everyone went through). Now, I usually get spaceflight news from people there, and if I listen to the podcast it is behind the news, so I don't tend to listen to it as much.
In summary for me: One successful podcast became big and something I didn't want anymore. Some were just not good quality and found better ones out there. And some are good and still going but the evolution in social media disrupted and replaced the podcast.
From the article :
219,178 new podcasts were created in 2022 as opposed to 337,063 in 2019.
2022 saw the publication of 26.1 million new episodes, up from 18.1 million in 2019. Yet, those numbers fare poorly compared to 2020 and 2021 figures (30,130,431 and 29,513,070 respectively).
Even if it's declined it is a mind bogglingly large number of new podcasts.
It's like book publishing but arguably even easier. Who knows, perhaps 100K new podcasts per year is enough....
In the 1.0 era, websites were hand-crafted and made for no other reason than curiosity and time. Then businesses got into the game, and personal websites disappeared. Today, unless you are a developer or have something to sell, chances are that you wouldn't even think of creating a website.
It seems that podcasts followed the exact same path. As late as 2012, podcasts were niche things that most had heard about, but few actually considered doing. Today, like websites, podcasts are just another arm of marketing at best, or an ad delivery vector at worst.
> Hermitix is a podcast focusing on one-on-one interviews relating to fringe philosophy, obscure theory, weird lit, underappreciated thinkers and movements, and that which historically finds itself 'outside' the academic canon.
I'm not sure if we should be worried. 2020 and 2021 seem like outliers. While the number of new podcasts is below 2019 levels (roughly at 2018), there's still plenty of new episodes. Still below 2020/2021 but above 2019, so I think nothing bad is happening
Do that many people have that much to say?
Or looking at it from the other side: are there that many people who listen to podcasts? If you take 500 listeners as a bound of "podcasts with such low listenership that they are at risk of ending" and suppose that the average person listens to 5 podcasts regularly, then you need 100 million podcast listeners just to sustain 1 million podcasts. Again, are that many people listening?
Slicing it yet another way, if the average podcast lasts for 3 years, then at present rates that means there are ~600K active podcasts at any one time.
There should obviously be a flow of old podcasts ending and new ones springing up to take their place. But it seems unlikely that 600K individual podcasts is sustainable.
About a year ago Spotify surpassed Apple for monthly regular podcast listeners. https://www.aakashg.com/2021/12/14/spotify-podcasts-apple/ Some portion of spotify podcasts are "spotify exclusive" (that they pay the creators for, and that can only be listened to on spotify app) -- they bought Gimlet and several other podcast publishers. But I think they also distribute podcasts that are not exclusive? (not totally sure, I don't use spotify). I think the spotify-exclusive podcasts, along with their existing customer base used to using spotify app to listen to things, are probably crucial to their success in market share.
They want to be the (or one of the) only way to reach listeners with a podcast, so they can take a cut. They're working on it. While right now I think even their exclusive podcasts can be listened to on free spotify accounts (they still make money off ads), if they can get to this dominant position they will of course have subscription-only podcasts too.
More on the efforts of Spotify and others to get in a chokepoint position on podcasts: https://fair.org/home/the-new-podcast-oligopoly/
Now TikTok and short form videos are having their moment. Something else will come again.
- Newer content listed over "best fit" content. - Time of viewing prioritizing longer videos over shorter ones.
Both these were done for advertising purposes. Both result in more drawn out, less dense content (both from an information and entertainment perspective). This is the result of the ad driven model. People would rather waste time than buy things. Want quality content in audio format that doesn't waste your time? Buy an audiobook. You get what you pay for.
At the same time, the math means that at some point you'll have so many creators that it's hard to get the attention of an audience. And a lot of the folks who created some kind of content channel because someone promised that it would be an easy way to make a lot of money then realized that they bought a shovel that they really don't want to use to dig.
As a side note, I've found it harder and harder to find good podcasts. A select few seem to be able to game the metrics so they end up at the top of whatever lists I used to use to discover new content.
In a sense they are the perfect enhancement to the radio of yesteryear which served people reasonably well and was loved for many, many, decades.
But the good guys don't always win.
Personally I think good podcasts are more like zines than radio programs. Poorly slapped together, maybe short lived, but often containing something unique and special.
He throws in extremely open ended questions. And the guests can answer any way they like.
I like the freedom Lex offers his guests, as opposed to traditional media interviewers. Lex does open ended questions and the guest can answer it anyway they like- any depth they are comfortable at speaking.
Traditional media is not only narrow in scopes but questions, and hence, answers are bound by the intelligence level of the host and the audience.
He snags many big names and interesting topics ... and utterly mangles the result.
I'm boggled that he is as frequently recommended as he is, particularly on HN.
--too much expenses such as production, audio, set-up, etc.
--hard to get good guests unless you are part of the clique/network , although I don't think this matters too much. It's not like you need top gusts to have a good podcast.
History of Rome
Revolutions
History of Japan
And the podcast-like YouTube video series “Computer History Museum Oral Histories”.
My list of strongly preferred podcasts slews strongly to those without any commercials. A patronage pitch by the creator is acceptable.
This in particular hits numerous media-organisation and radio-adapted podcasts particularly hard, with NPR, BBC, CBC, Vox, and NYTimes being particularly notable for this.
Academic-organisation podcasts avoid this very nearly completely, and are far more appealing simply on this basis. ("History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps" being probably the examplar of good content devoid of any advertising.)
Now that the election is over and Trump is fading I guess I've lost interest in the political stuff. Also, I think I'm realizing how useless it is to my life to just hear about politics.
As for people being outraged for or against the woke stuff, it is just the same talking points being rehashed over and over, so I'm tuning that out as well.
I've also noticed that when someone has something interesting to say, such as Richard Reeves recently, then that person appears on all the podcasts in my feed, so it becomes a bit repetitive for me.
Even podcasts related to the carnivore diet, which I follow closely, have basically beaten the subject to death over the last 2-3 years. I know the diet works and I've been convinced from every angle and there just isn't much more to say beyond that.
The only podcast that I really look forward to anymore is The Rest is History with Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. They have a great rapport and the historical episodes they recount are fascinating. It is the only podcast I would recommend to almost anyone.
Of particular interest to this crowd E1 with Ange Yaghi & Engine Simulator just released last Wednesday and we talk about it going viral along with some of the technical details.
https://leetrout.com/fishtales/e1/ and links to the show's pages on the popular platforms is on the parent of that page.
A terrific antidote to this has been the New Books Network, an audio universe of literally hundreds of channels and many thousands of episodes on the back-catalogue. Topics, content, technical quality, interviewer quality, and recently advertising intrusiveness are all over the map, but despite all that, there are in fact many excellent episodes, a huge back catalogue, and a selection of interviewees and topics which I'd otherwise have entirely missed. There are of course some well-known (or at least known) names, but many I'd otherwise never have come across.
Note that a specific episode may appear on multiple channels, but you can also focus or diversify your interests and discovery by picking topics with which you're both familiar and unfamiliar.
Toss in the people who think they need 2 minutes of intro, or spend 30% or more of their time greeting/acknowledging/whatever people who aren't present/involved when the audience actually consumes the content, and I just don't know why these things ever became so widespread.
That's my mileage, anyway.
I like to listen to podcasts while I run. I listen at double speed and my shortest runs last a half hour minimum. I also listen for the entertainment, not necessarily solely because I want the information, so I don't mind listening to the hosts be people (though they can drag on too long, and don't get me started on "podcast network" ads).
The downvote storm I received has made me grumpy, though, so I'm just going to pass on.
> I do not understand people who have the time to create these, nor people who have the time to listen to these, nor people who believe people should take the time to listen to these, where "these" is informational audio or video content on any single topic exceeding 15 minutes in length.
When your comment now is saying you know people who do listen to them. It's a bit confusing and could use some clarity I think.
Most people have at least a couple of hours each day where they're stuck doing something that doesn't fully engage their mind (sitting on the train, sitting in traffic, cooking, doing the dishes, cleaning, jogging, working out etc etc).
It's less "having the time" and more making time taken up by mundanities more enjoyable.
What else to do at work?
See: On the Media and the Ezra Klein Show (both offer transcripts), or Santa Fe Institute's Complexity and History of Philosophy both of which have amazing show-notes.
HoP also releases a book series based on the podcast.
I'd argue that you want the programmes which perform this through human means, as the work-product (shownotes, transcript) a signifier of the process, which is what produces a high-quality podcast in the first place.
AI-based post hoc highlights or transcript ... won't fix a poorly-planned, poorly-conceived, poorly-edited mess. Which is what many podcasts are.
i've tried seemingly everywhere, but no luck.
For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34056715
but after all my searching, there are no new-to-me pods, unless i just can't find the newly-created pods, which is very possible, even likely.
Good luck on your hunt.
That might be searching for specific podcasts within a topic area, specific creators, or (and most usefully) searching by episode for a specific topic or interview subject.
Occasionally there will be references within one podcast to another which I find useful as well, though ... this occurs far less often than such promotions are presented, most especially those which are commercial promotions rather than the more-organic spontaneous mentions of a host or guest. (Many of these are of course not entirely spontaneous, the best however are.)
I've had a few good experiences with referrals from other people online, which may be how I came across the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast (absolutely excellent). Several other "History of..." series have mutually recommended one another, notably of Rome, Byzantium, and China. You're Not So Smart being another.
Podcasts based on programmes I've known elsewhere (usually radio series) are also a source: CBC Ideas, On the Media, This American Life, and a few others. These ... can be good, though I'm finding some make the pod transition less gracefully than one might hope.
Good podcast search tools are another challenge. The Podcast Republic app has a search over all episodes known to it. I don't use Apple iTunes, though suspect it may as well. There are a few Web-based podcast search sites, most have proved disappointing and/or annoying, and the most comprehensive one I've found has been throwing up CAPTCHAs incessantly, which rather entirely makes it useless. I believe that's ListenNotes.
I'd really love to see a good podcast search option under DuckDuckGo, hint, hint...