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Comment by flir | Hacker News Reader

I do feel that IOT would benefit from being longer - it often feels rushed. Podcasts excel at "deep dives" in a way that radio is barred from doing: a podcaster can say "I think I'm gonna do 30 hours on George Jones this year" (real example), and nobody can stop them.

IOT's format has a lot of statements, but not many questions. Bragg doesn't often say "hold on, what are the consequences of that?" (unless it's a prepared question designed to move us through the biography). Ironically, this lack of curiosity gets worse on subjects he understands well (the arts).

The unscripted chat afterwards is often the best bit. I could do with 10 minutes of on-script introduction and 50 minutes of experts discussing something they're passionate about.

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The time pressure is probably more important than you realise.

The guests are often pretty eminent academics, feted in their field and used to being indulged. There have been some I know that very much enjoy the sound of their own voice as they tediously ramble for hours, bending any topic to their own pet themes, with colleagues and students obediently hanging on their words. Melvyn has the stature to get testy "Enough about his wife, you still haven't answered the question, get on with it!" and the Oxford emeritus professor complies.

The after show chat works because it's post-time-crunch. It's pressure release and reflection. If you do recruitment this is something to learn. You will have a much more valuable interaction after you have scraped off interviewee armour.

I generally agree with you and the "short" format is what makes it successful, but Melvyn said himself that they choose teaching professors because they would know how to explain subject clearly and after almost two decades of listening I'd say it has mostly worked.

> they choose teaching professors because they would know how to explain subject clearly

Hmm! The majority of academics in the UK teach... most of them reluctantly and badly because it's mandatory for their research contract!

Those that revel in it are used to monologuing extemporanously for hours every day in the lecture hall and supervision without interuption. It's quite far from a snappy conversational media performer.

I like it exactly because it moves through biographies quickly and to the point. I can ponder about “what are the consequences” on my own.

Most of the time I don’t care enough about each topic or what are passions of the experts are to listen to it.

Having an episode where someone prepared information so I can get acquainted with the topic but I don’t have to deal with forwarding some professor ranting about his pet peeve is huge amount of value.

The fact it never extends further than an hour is what I like about it.

If ever I feel there is a need for a deeper dive into a subject, there a thousand ways I can spend hours listening or watching someone drone on about it.

Yeah he always cuts them off in order to make sure each person gets their rationed time, preventing any real points being made

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