Hacker News Reader

Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

I have tried my best to get into podcasts, but am turned off by every single one being multiple hours long. Even though Lex is an outlier, the average show still has 1-2 hour episodes, sometimes releasing multiple times a week. I have tried my best to find quality ones with a 20-30 minute limit, but they don't seem to exist. Why is that the case? Is there really that much information to share? Or are they just not bothered to sit and edit their work? Do people really have the time to listen to all of them?

View on HN

If I want an efficient method of receiving information, I read. If I want to listen to two people have an interesting conversation, or have information conveyed in a way unique to audio (eg. Hardcore History), I listen to a podcast. Two different mediums with two different appeals, imo.

There's also the passivity of it. I can't read while I drive, but I can listen, and length doesn't really matter in these cases because it's a way for me to pass time as much as anything else.

May just not be your cup of tea though!

There are lots of podcasts that are 20-45 mins. I don't know of anyone that sits in a dark room and just listens to a podcast. Try going for a walk or on a commute or on a plane.

The long ones are the best to me because I enjoy interesting conversations rather than edited quick cut tiktok/twitter hot take style stuff.

If you have recommendations I'd love to know of them, but my search has come up empty.

There's a world of difference between a 10 second TikTok clip and a 25 minute episode of some show. The latter used to be enough time to get an entire day's worth of news not too long ago. So I don't think that the medium fundamentally needs to be movie length to be effective.

I suspect it's simply the case that shorter, more information-dense content takes a longer time to produce. It's a lot easier to have a 3 hour conversation with someone and dump it online. And I understand that there's an audience for just that. I do also think that there's a huge gap for short form podcast content waiting to be filled.

Pattern Recognition is the most similar to a "Lex style interview show" but there are many episodes in the 20-40 min range. Mostly with founders of companies. Really really good interviews. https://open.spotify.com/show/3Q267Ar7l43e1NeQIvUanv?si=2b7e...

Indicator by Planet Money is 15 mins with news about the economy in a fun way

Adam Grant's podcast has a bunch of episodes that are 40-45 mins about organizational psych that are awesome. This is the highly produced one you are looking for https://open.spotify.com/show/0uFXKiNiC05GOrjE9AXnkn?si=2172...

HBR's ideacast presents an idea in a rigorous info dense way in 20-40 mins https://open.spotify.com/show/4gtSBBxIAE142ApX6LqsvN?si=6fe6...

Paid ones: https://dithering.fm/ Ben Thompson and John Gruber have a 15 min conversation about latest strategy and tech news.

The Stratechery podcsast (ben reads articles) is about 15-20 mins.

There are tons and tons of any style you want. Just tried to choose some that matched business/founder/interview/idea that this one hit on.

Right; but there’s also a big difference between scrolling 25 second TikTok videos and settling in to listen to a 2 hour podcast with interesting people. I think the latter is better for our brains somehow. I don’t think the highly produced nature of TikTok makes it “better”.

As for 25 minute, produced podcasts? I really enjoy The Economist‘s Intelligence podcast for that. It’s definitely in the middle ground. Each episode is about 25 minutes. They’re tightly produced. They come out every week day. And each episode talks about 3 things going on in the world. If that’s what you’re looking for, give it a try!

If you spend time listening to podcasts you’ll learn to get the best 15-60 minutes out of a much longer episode. But ultimately it’s something you do while weeding, folding laundry or going on a run.

There are podcasts that try to edit down long conversations but they tend to cut the tangential and inadvertently revealing good stuff to deliver main points. If you just want main points you should just read an article.

I'd love to read an article. OpenAI's Whisper seems to solve this problem, and I'm amazed there isn't a youtube-to-text yet.

"Just listen to it in the background" isn't really workable for everybody. I barely listened to my own podcast episode. Text is just better for some people, which happen to be a majority on HN.

It's better for HN too. Note that we can't get any interesting comments until submission plus two hours, since it's two hours long.

I’m concerned you might thought I said everyone should be interested in podcasts, or able to listen to them. (I’m also concerned I misunderstood you!)

Besides that, yes, I love to read articles, too. I do a lot of transcription skimming of episodes where the voices and cadence don’t add much but the information is solid.

YouTube auto-transcripts are usually fairly readable or at least skimmable for the interesting time stamps. There are sites and services (like Readwise) that display them side by side with the video.

I don’t think HN benefits from people quickly skimming article text to add comments, unless they are primary sources themselves and can quickly address a misunderstanding, but that’s another discussion…

Oddly enough, Lex used to have full transcripts of his videos, through his website, but they seem to not be available anymore. I too prefer to read than passively listening. As of now, I just download the episode and listen at small intervals. YT-DLP can download a video/audio and separate it in chapters, that might work for some.

Sorry for misreading you; I appreciate the clarification. You're right of course. Thanks for pointing out the tools like Readwise – I wasn't aware of that, and it's super helpful.

In the spirit of the podcast, I asked GPT-4 for help in writing a reply, and it did a pretty okay job. https://imgur.com/a/MBQoq4A

> Do people really have the time to listen to all of them?

Yes! People really do have time to do all sorts of long attention span things. Podcasts for me are a mostly-downtime activity. They fall into the same category of activity as chilling on the couch with a good book. But the advantage is I can be doing something else while I’m listening - like driving, cooking, drawing or going for a walk.

You have just as many hours in your week as I do. We all need some downtime from time to time. I think podcasts are a delightful option. (If you find the right ones!)

I don’t listen to this particular podcast, but I do follow a few.

You don’t just… sit there and listen. (At least I don’t). Slap on some headphones and go for a walk, do household errands, etc. Put it on the background during your commute. Some folks have it on the background while they work, like people have done with radio shows for decades.

When I think of these long podcasts as movies, 2 to 3 hours sounds doable. However you will spend time on a movie or a podcast only if you think it will be worth your time. It turns out, some of them are indeed worth it. You don't have to watch them all.

I think it's a form of parasocial relationship. It's like you are "conversing" with someone who has the exact same tastes as you, which is kind of hard to come by in real life.

I just listen to longer episodes in chunks, just like an audiobook.

My impression of the target audience of podcasts are people who are stuck in traffic for 2-3 hours a day, which is why so many podcasts are that long.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com