Podcasting Could Use a Good Asteroid
joanwestenberg.com
joanwestenberg.com
This is why I switched to audio books. Many podcasts with real guests contained too much salad and not enough meat (e.g. a machine learning podcast but they talked about going to conferences).
Contrary to what many think, I believe AI generated content can increase the nutritional value. I've done experiments with turning technical PDFs into podcasts, e.g. summarizing machine learning papers (similar to NotebookLM).
I have not only switched from podcasts to audio books but now I am on to all the books I have wanted to listen to but are too obscure to ever hire a voice actor for.
This week I have been listening to a PhD thesis in the car that is on an obscure subject of interest to me. In contrast, even what I use to think of as good in terms of podcasts seem more like junk food now.
It seems just about every celebrity has started producing one based on the new golden globe award the other day.
Why does abandon podcast clog up your feed, and a blog does not?
My contribution to help fix this is earsay.fm. It’s an iOS podcast client with 100% in device ad detection and skipping.
100% amateur stuff, no ad, nothing to sell, just humans having fun in front of a mic
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The recent reboot of the medium is more akin to the talk shows from TV, but instead of trying to reach a wide range of audience, podcasts are targeting niches.
Which allow more podcasts to exist... but make it harder to be sustainable since their goal is mostly to make money
Thanks to the Libby app, I have "read" several thousand books over the past 7-8 years. An excellent pair of earbuds is mandatory to allow a 2x listening speed, which you can work up to in about a week.
Everyone tells me that they "don't have time" to listen to 2-3 books a week. I listen when I'm doing my morning routine, when I'm cooking, when I'm cleaning, when I'm cycling, when I'm shopping, when I'm clearing snow.
Listening to influencers and celebrities hang out, pretend to be friends and try to be funny just doesn't do it for me.
So basically you don't subscribe to any podcasts out of ignorance. Influencers and celebrities hanging out isn't the only type of podcast.
I've certainly enjoyed episodes of, for example, This American Life, which friends have recommended to me.
However, our time on this earth is finite so if I am to choose between ephemeral content and things which have made it through an editing process, I will choose books every time. When you encounter people who seem incredibly smart, I all but guarantee that your first thought is never going to be "this person must listen to a lot of podcasts!"
If podcasts make you happy, then I am happy for you.
(If you are serious, I'm happy to point you to resources.)
I cannot read minds so I have to go with what you wrote. What you wrote in the post that I replied to is that the reason why you don't listen to podcasts is ignorance. You gave no other reason. This post of yours also gives no other explicit reason besides ignorance.
> I'm just not interested in wading through mountains of garbage to get to what you insist is worth listening to.
Well, there is also a mountain of garbage books so that is not a very good argument for books. Yes, libraries exist so do podcast libraries.
I'm not insisting on anything.
> However, our time on this earth is finite so if I am to choose between ephemeral content and things which have made it through an editing process
Podcasts can cover many of the same topics that books cover so they aren't necessarily ephemeral. Most of the books are also ephemeral. Many podcasts go through editing process.
> When you encounter people who seem incredibly smart, I all but guarantee that your first thought is never going to be "this person must listen to a lot of podcasts!"
It won't be but then again, I never thought "this person must read a lot of books".
> If podcasts make you happy, then I am happy for you.
I don't listen to podcasts. Maybe once in a blue moon as background noise.
On the other hand, if I'm listening while doing other things, then my attention is split. Which is why 1x works best for me. I can pay attention and still fold my laundry or make a meal or whatever.
Listening at 2x while cycling sounds positively dangerous to me. Unless you're somewhere with virtually no traffic, or you really just aren't paying attention to what you're listening to. Our brains only have so much bandwidth.
It all comes down to practice, familiarity and instinct.
People aren't speaking on speakerphone at 2x speed.
It has nothing to do with practice. It's entirely about whether you've got enough attention left over to detect unexpected situations the moment they start.
What I've done a poor job of explaining in this thread is that audiobooks are ... recorded ... at ... molasses ... speed.
When I listen to a book at 1x, it sounds like they are doing a bad William Shatner impression.
If they didn't record them slowly, I wouldn't need to speed them up to a normal conversational pace.
I'm not a neuroscientist but listening at 2x taking twice the brain processing feels off to me. I suspect that it's sort of like variable bit rate encoding, and that factors like practice, narration quality, sound quality, external noise, other distractions all come into play.
When you're sitting at a table with multiple conversations going on around you, do you feel like your brain is working twice as hard to separate out what is being said to you? Our brains have evolved some pretty impressive special case handling features for these scenarios.
> listening at 2x taking twice the brain processing feels off to me
It's not about the listening -- you're right, that's all habitual in terms of converting sounds into words. It's about the cognitive processing of the content. Whether you're listening to fiction or non-fiction, you're engaging in twice as much imagination, world-building, conceptualization of what you're listening to in the same amount of time... therefore a much greater proportion of your total attention and focus is engaged in that, which leaves less for paying attention to the world around you. It's mathematically twice as much information streaming in, and our brain's attention mechanism is finite.
People aren't usually consciously aware of these things, in the ways they insist they can drive fine even though they're tired, even though they've had a few, etc. Because we literally can't notice what we're not noticing. But accident rates tell a different story.
If I'm listening to anything involving math or physics, 1.5x is typically a ceiling for true comprehension.
Honestly, it all depends on a few important factors: first, a lot of audiobooks are read at a speed that genuinely feels absurdly slow, as though they are chugging cough syrup before recording.
Next, don't discount what I said about high-quality earbuds; anyone that tries listening above 1x on a speaker is doing it wrong whereas having the sound in your ear makes >1x listening easy. You won't get it until you try it, and then you'll feel the same smug superiority I do, I promise. It's a night-and-day change.
As for the rest, including the listening-while-cycling thing, it all comes down to practice and comfort. Like all things worth doing well, listening effectively in the way I describe is a skill. Your reaction to me listening to a book while cycling seems like how I feel about people driving while talking on the phone; I think it's insane and horrifying, but people roll their eyes when you imply that it seems like it's surely dangerous.
I have the exact opposite problem with podcasts that the author details: I have too many that I want to listen to and not enough time. There are so many people whose opinions and perspectives I value that I will never be able to consume them all consistently. From deep dives into Roman history, miniseries on foreign policy, sports, politics, film music, there are so many people sharing their passion with the world and I want to hear it all.
But finding those people takes work. Yeah, there are a ton of losers out there with nothing to say who put out popular content, but that's not unique to podcasting. YouTube, Reddit, hell the entire internet has that problem.
Stuff like this reads to me like someone wants the internet to be happy fun time that only ever gives me an endless supply of good things to consume and filters out all the bad.
Would someone want the opposite of that?
I would read it as <<there‘s plenty unique and interesting shows out there which might lack some polish („the bad“). I don‘t only want polished, boring, mass appeal shows from large production houses („the good“).>>
Personally, I prefer the latter. You get out what you put in and the best podcasts (for me) have always been passionate people trying to share things with others. There are definitely some with high production value that I would (and do) miss but they were never sustainable to begin with so nothing truly lost there.
Podcasting will always be able to endure in its most basic form: two people, a mic, and an RSS feed.
Maybe the content was better in those days, but as an outsider I'm not too keen on going back. I prefer my friends as separate people.
I do not think this has gone away. Yes, market saturation waters everything down to the common denominator. Podcasting is no different than any other commercial or public market. But there will be always outliers. The only difference is that back in the old days(early 2000s and 2010s), your choices were limited, which made it easier to pick. Today, you have to invest time and effort and hunt down those good podcasts that match your interests by sifting through a ton of the noise(badam, tssss).
I was big into podcasts, even started my own. Until I realised that without interesting guests to bring in week after week, there is no point in it.
But I think that the main issue is, and has been for a very ling time, that there is really not a single good user interface for consuming podcasts, especially offline, managing podcasts or discovering new ones, keeping tabs on what is going on with individual shows or even getting recommendations on and being able to purchase your own podcasting kit, so that you don't have to research and learn about audio, video and other related things that might detract someone from thinking about starting their own podcast. And also all of this in packaging suitable for different consumption situations - walking, driving a car, riding a bus, being at work or at home. Yes, there were many various apps and websites, but they all suck and lack in any useful feature. They essentially just aggregate podcasts and offer RSS feeds. That's kindergarten bs.
There's your $1B idea.
Podcasting is drying up because the money left. Everyone went all in on podcasts on 2020. Spotify bet the farm on podcasts. Money poured in. Marketing bros realized there's only so many mattresses and underwear you can sell through the format and left.
You really can't serve personalized ads through podcasts. The relevance of what you advertise can be about the topic of the show (that is, marketing to the type of people who would listen) or the location of the listener. Pretty much every other signal gives you nothing interesting you'd be about to decide "yeah they're a potential good customer". Spray and pray.
The money left. People realized they couldn't justify the time and money they pour into podcasting. It turns out, even if you weren't expecting to make money, you really hoped people would listen. Not enough, because podcasts faded and people discovered TikTok. No more waiting for your favorite show to drop: everything is your favorite show. If you get bored just scroll up.
Lots of folks are still making it work. But a lot more people are going into podcasting with a more deliberate approach. People are doing it because they think it's important, not because they think people will listen or because they want to get rich. I'd argue that some of the best podcasts ever made have come out in the past 2-3 years, but if you're not giving the median listener the thrill of the first season of Serial, they don't listen past the first episode or two.
Bombas documentary pls.
Search Engine
Heavyweight
The Retrievals
Thirteenth Step
Keep in mind, these are from the sample that I've listened to. They're not trying to be too dramatic, they're principled in what they're creating, and the production is high quality.
Please share!
I never understood how that sort of pricing would work. The unit economics were never even close for us. I can see how they might be closer for SaaS businesses like Squarespace, but for retailers? Feels very unlikely. I'm not surprised the money dried up, or rather, figured out that funnelling VC cash into podcast ads doesn't turn into profitable growth.
Interestingly, now in 2026 that same podcast (which according to the hosts hasn't grown), no longer lists their pricing for ad reads, and frequently only has 2 filled spots, and has had periods of only 1 or even no ad reads per show over the last few years as times have been tough. They've now diversified into overpriced memberships.
Is there a good discovery mechanism for people looking to go past the first 3 episodes? Is there anyone trying to do curation of any sort? I wonder if AI that knows you super well could be used to find the right podcast for you.
I'd love to explore more political, science and other types of podcasts but it is too easy to set one up nowadays which results in so much garbage and I have wasted enough time with Rogan, Friedman and their ilk to realize that I'm forced to do curation. For one bit of gold there is so much trash and time is the most valuable thing you have.
I'd guess there's still a bit of money left. On one of the few podcasts I listen to (made by two professional podcasters since 2008), the ads (long and annoying - but luckily easily skippable) are entirely for other podcasts.
Funny thing is that lots of the provider are now owned by Spotify. So right now you basically have the choice: a) listen to it on Spotify with good embedded ads b) listen to it on your podcast feed with bad embedded ads.
Anyway you listen to it on Spotify (Often).
Some podcasts use listener donations but even reasonably popular ones can struggle this way - https://www.europeanspodcast.com/ comes to mind.
I pay for the Strategery bundle (as do enough other people to make him over $5 million a year), a Slate subscription with all of their related podcasts and a couple of others - Downstream and ATP.
On the ad supported side, Gruber’s podcast has been going strong for decades and Manager Tools/Career Tools only has ads for its own conferences and it’s been podcasting weekly since 2005.
The Acquired podcast negotiates long term sponsorship deals.
Relay.FM podcasts seem to be going strong between ads and paid members
The trend you see is that it’s better to be a niche podcaster and have “1000 true fans” and an audience either willing to pay or one that advertisers want to reach - like Apple customers who are more willing to pay for stuff.
So I listen to one totally unserious podcast, and ignore the rest. Makes my day.
That’s both good and bad. Radio was a magical medium to me, but it was utterly destroyed first by the attack of the conservatives and then by the consolidation by Clear Channel, etc, and finally by internet imploding ad models. So you have angry white guys and the annoying, high quality NPR content.
But I think it’s different. Spotify wants to be Clear Channel, but as long as Apple and others have a benign disinterest, there’s unlimited content available. I listen to my old geek podcasts, but there is a tremendous well of quality content in many areas. From history to finance mostly for me.
The radio style content is mostly crap.